Things I realised this week: about quilting

On Friday last week, my mother-in-law suggested that I spend the afternoon at the Spring Quilt Festival being held on the outskirts of Edinburgh. She went in the morning with the ladies from her sewing group, and came over afterwards to look after little bean while I skipped off for the afternoon. 

I had never been to a quilt show before. I've read a lot about QuiltCon and those mind-blowing American quilt shows with millions of breathtaking quilts and booths and yeah, and I've seen all the lovely pictures of the Quilt Show at Malvern and places. But, it was nothing like any of that, and it was not at all what I expected. 

There were lots of forbidding signs saying that you Must Not Take Photographs, and Dont Touch the Quilts. And then the exhibition itself was slightly underwhelming. There were some small pieces displayed downstairs, and some full-size quilts upstairs. Some of it was very lovely and impressive, but there just wasn't very much of it. 

Above all, the festival seemed to be about the stalls. Crammed with fat quarters and quilters gadgets and bolts of fabric in every colour under the sun. Fat quarters were this price on one table and that price on another, and there were Frozen fabrics and Star Wars fabrics and Japanese fabrics and batik and flannel and prints and solids and cottons and tweeds. There was some very lovely stuff. I'd show you some photographs, but all those forbidding signs put me off. 

I was rather overwhelmed. I looked at the quilts. There were lots I didn't really care for. There were some I admired (wow, you  collected 205 colours of silk, and appliqued them with invisible thread; you quilted that amazing design with a regular sewing machine: respect) but none that really made me want to study the colours and techniques and patterns and then rip it off the wall to take it home. 

As I wandered round and round looking at this and that, I had a few thoughts. 

1. It seems vaguely completely ridiculous to me to spend many many ££ on fabric to make a quilt, when I have oodles of fabric scraps and old clothes which could be repurposed into equally beautiful quilt tops. And, it seems completely ridiculous to spend many ££ on fabric to make quilts when there is so much textile waste in our society. 

2. I love the bright and modern and clean looks of modern quilts. I like quilts with space. I don't like the traditional flowery and busy designs involving lots of piecing. I also like improv quilting and quilts which are given meaning because of the fabrics included in them: uniforms from soldiers lost in conflict; clothes from people we love - the things children wore when they were small; a life time of scraps from a grandparents house. 

3. I have one quilt top in progress (and not finished yet), so what do I know?

Of course, I didn't let the opportunity pass me by, and came home with a few fat quarters in my bag. I managed to resist the sparkly Frozen fabrics, and the cool Star Wars prints, but bought a few Christmas sorts of things to make something festive. There's nothing like long-range project planning is there?

Making Stuff Happen: Feb update

It's bright and crispy outside, and I've been working hard on that 2016 to-do list. I thought I might do a little Feb update to record progress. 

1. Tame the stashes 
Progress: after halving the yarn stash, I have done a bit of fabric organising. It's in a new place. It's more accessible. I've also bought some more fabric for very specific projects. The fabric stash cull is yet to come, but sewing plans are being made.

2. Use the stash!
Progress: I'm doing really well with the yarn - and several new WIPs on the needles which all come from the stash: some new socks; a cowl and a tank top for the bean. 

3. Make some things to fill gaps in my wardrobe: 
After ordering a pattern, I have now ordered and received some blue jersey to make a navy skirt. The cowl I planned to make is all but finished, it just needs grafting.... 

4. Finish the UFOs
Progress: one pair of socks has been repaired, and the fourth (and final) fabric bag has been sewn. 

5. Continue to work on mending,  exploring different techniques and making mending a social thing too by doing it with friends.
Progress: the invitation to come and mend still stands, but we haven't managed to find an agreeable date! Meanwhile the mending pile keeps on growing...

9

It's the bean's birthday! Happy Birthday to you, sunshine. 

My how you've grown!

  

Comfort knitting

It's cold out, and grey and damp (we had some snow for a day or two, but now it's gone), and I need something to sustain myself through these short January days. So I've got me a bit of comfort knitting, it's very plain and simple. 

I'm going round and round on a circular needle, with 100g of sock yarn. It's meditative and sort of slow, because you can't see it growing.  Before you ask, it's that famous brand can't remember, in the colourway no idea. 

I'm knitting a loooong tube  - and will just keep going until I run out of yarn (I weighed things this morning, there was still 46g of yarn left in the ball). When I do run out, I'll graft the two ends of the tube together to make a soft and purpley cowl. Yum. 

 

Mending Monday 2016 #1

Hello chaps.

The new year has heightened my desire to mend stuff. Or, maybe it's just that I'm in tidying up mode and have been sorting things out like a demon. Anywayz, sometime in the Christmas melee, I got my sock needlez out and rummaged in the darkest corners of my knitting bag for a pair of socks that needed repairz. 

(Sorry about the z thing, I'll stop now. Promize)

Here they are in all their newly knitted glory sometime ago (2011 I think!). But they were getting dangerously thin on the ball of the foot, and needed some repairs. Of course, I decided not to darn the darn things, but rather to reknit a goodly portion of the foot.

I chose the spot, snipped a single stitch and then carefully picked up the live stitches with my needles.

As the original socks are striped using two yarns, I picked out two sympathetic yarn colours from the stash and got to work. They aren't a perfect match, but hey, these dudes will be on my feet and unless I am at home, they will be inside my shoes and Noone Will Ever Know.  Okay? 

This time I alternated the colours stitch by stitch rather than round by round to give a thicker and more durable fabric. I did this before with my socksperimental socks
and the man socks with a squidgy toe. Scientists have not yet reported on the outcomes of these important sock trials; an independent commission has been established to examine the reasons for the non-reporting. It is expected that resignations will follow. 

Where was I? Oh yes, re-socking: a surpisingly short time later (silent witness anyone?) the blighters were done and on my feet.  Hurrah for mending. Hurrah for hand-knitted socks. Hurrah for extensive sock yarn collections. Hurrah for me! 

Ahem. 

My reward for mending these socks is to make myself a cowlowlowlowl. Not sure about the pattern yet, but have picked out the yarn...

Bag Lady (FO)

Christmas was a bit of a crafting disaster this year.  I don't think any of the craft projects I planned actually came to anything, so the only things that got made were fudge and peppermint bark (which were both excellent by the way).

No-one noticed about the crafty stuff. 

Sniff.

Even if I didn't finish anything in time for Christmas, I did start a few things, and one afternoon -  before the big day - I cut out a wee pile of these fat-quarter shopping bags. I was given some fat quarters by my MIL a year or two back, and this seemed like a perfect project for those particular bits of fabric. 

Last week I summoned up the effort to get the sewing machine out and start stitching. For something so simple, there seemed to be a lot of sewing to do, and it took me two whole evenings to progress from a pile of fabric shapes to three finished bags!

Let's just go through the details then. These bags have a handle facing, which is finished at the raw edge (2 seams), attached to the bag fabric (6 seams), then joined at the handles (2 seams), and top stitched (3 seams). After that the sides and bottom of the bag are finished with French seams (6 seams) and the corners bagged out, again with French seams (4 seams). 

Add to that pressing, turning inside/outside and pinning (where required). All together it's a lot of small seams to stitch and restitch, and takes a bit of time. A 20 minute tote this ain't. 

Sigh.

I  cut out 4 bags, but because I am very stupid a design visionary, on the first one I omitted to place the fold of the pattern piece on the fold of the fabric and ended up with some different shaped pieces. I decided to leave my hacked version to last, and made up the other three as per the instructions. 

I say that as if I followed the instructions to the letter, but I didn't. We'll just gloss over the other mistake I made with the French seams shall we, oh, and the fact that I completely forgot about the elastic loops too? Ye-es. 

So, here they are: three pretty cute bags. 

The flowery ones have been sent off to live with my parents. The green one is for my brother, and should soon be joined by the design hacked alter-ego version (when I get off my a*se to sew it up, ahem). 

So, my overall verdict: a nice project to do if you don't mind spending a bit of time sewing seams, and you have some fat quarters to 'use' up. Things might go a bit quicker with the overlocker perhaps, so I might try that for bag four.  (I did pink all my raw edges, just because). 

I like the integral handles and the handle facing - because, well I might be over those webbing or self-fabric handles that most shopping bags have and which inevitably break/wear through. 

I guess the bottom will fall out of these first...

Stash. Bust.

Howdy folks. 

Some kind of crazy tidying and organising bug got me over the holidays, and even before the New Year bells rang, I began whittling away at the accumulations of things around me, those little drifts of stuff that collect here and there, in a drawer, on a window ledge, above a fire. Then when the rain stopped long enough for me to sprint across the garden to the shed, I tackled a stash. 

[Side note: not The stash, but A stash - more specifically my stash of yarn.]

Last year, we remodelled our bedroom and substituted a gargantuan built-in wardrobe for something slightly smaller. While all of that was happening, my stash of yarn - organised into 4 clear plastic boxes - was sent to the shed to await repatriation. Over the summer my knitting mojo has been fairly elusive and not much has happened (see this if you don't believe me), but with Christmas and all, I picked up my needles again and the mojo was back. 

Kondo's approach to tidying/decluttering is to discard first and then organise. She advocates gathering things into one place, and handling everything as you decide whether to keep or not. Her test involves asking yourself if something gives you joy. For the stash I used a 'do I want to knit with this?' test. 

It was surprisingly easy to part with a lot of stuff: novelty bobbly yarns; squeaky acrylic; single balls of chunky yarn; half a pack of green wool yarn - I used the other half to knit a nice cardigan, but couldn't imagine making anything else in that colour; a whole pile of slubbed cotton yarn in bright pink, and something similar in black which I've had since the 1990s, Habu paper yarn which I've had for about 5 years but never worked out what I would do with...

I also let go of two very lovely handknit Aran sweaters that my maternal grandmother made. They were made for my dad, and I have had them for at least 10 years. I tried them on (again). They still made me look like a lumpy sausage. My husband tried them on too. They made him look like a badly dressed schoolboy, wearing a too small hand me down. I hope they find good new homes with people that they fit.  

Other things were definitely on the keep pile - all of my nice hand dyed sock yarn, and plain 4 ply for baby things, small piles of nice DK yarn, some odds and ends of mohair, and some cones of grey and teal yarn that I have distant plans for. I managed to hunt out all the little project bags concealed around the house and gather them together. 

The end result was a big pile of things 

To 

Go

Away.

We donated it to a local charity shop later that day (the Bethany Shop next to Summerhall in case you are interested). 

And, the rest of the yarn was organised into 2 clear plastic boxes, and stowed without drama in the wardrobe. Tada! 

One box is mostly DK or heavier weight yarn, and the other is 4 ply, sock yarn, lace weight and other special skeins. 

It's nice having my yarn nearby again, so I can squish it whenever I want. It feels like a good to be clearing out and clarifying like this. 

My next target is books, and then after that I will have to take on 

the 
fabric 
stash. 

Cue scary music.