On The Needles

I've made pretty good progress on my Plain Jane socks that I work on while being a passenger.

A couple trips to the beach has accomplished an almost complete sock.

I also worked on them Wednesday at my sewing group until I got to the toe decrease.

I can't pay attention enough to remember to decrease on both sides while I'm chatting and laughing.

I'll finish this and start then next one so I'm ready for when I need them.

I've been knitting a few rows each night on my Blueberry Waffle Socks.  I am really excited to be back in knitting mode. I really do think it's because of all the inspiration I see each day on the Facebook group called Addicted to Sock Knitting. It's a large group-over 10,000 members-and I see so many fabulous, jaw dropping socks every day! They share links to lots of different patterns and I want to make them all!  I'll try to finish these first.

See what others have on their needles at Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday

While at the beach last week, I set myself up a sewing station.

I brought along 2 bags of fabric pieces and Pineapple Crazy papers.

I completed 5 blocks and started 5 more.

Here is my sewing station.

The table is too high, the chair is too tall.

I am not complaining. 

I sewed at the beach. 

All was right in my vacation world.

While out thrifting one day, Ernie spots this gem.

She is a New Home 443 single stitch.

Made in Japan by Janome.

I'm guessing early 60's.

She needs a spring for the pressure foot lifter bar but

other than that, after drinking up oil,

she sews a great stitch.

A few days before we left I had basted and started quilting this quilt.

My version on Bonnie Hunter's Sister's Choice

Pattern found on her free patterns page.

With Ernie on his 2nd week of vacation,

I'm doubting much will get done here,

but with a few minutes here and I should make a bit of progress.

See what others have on their design wall at Patchwork Times.

Slow Stitching Sunday

This week we took a much needed vacation to the beach. I don't know how much resting we did because it was razor clam digging time. I cannot stand the smell of those creatures but I love to dig them. Ernie loves to eat them. So to earn good wife points, I dig, help clean and cook them. I cashed in a few of those good wife points at a thrift store and brought home a new to me machine. (More on that in a different post.)  We didn't spend much time in the hotel, it was a beautiful week at the Washington coast. Sunshine and warm with very little wind. We drove around looking at property, went in to several thrift and antique stores where I only bought a few men shirts and the machine. I found lots of pretty glass that I wanted to bring home and several old quilts that were priced way too high.  We went into Boardwalk Quilts and looked around. I bought a few fat quarters to add to my neutral stash and drooled over all the pretties.

At one antique store, I asked the man if he had any old sewing machines and he told me a story of taking treadle machines apart, throwing the machine away and making tables. I almost cried. He asked me why in the world I would want those old relics. Mean, mean man!!! So we bought nothing from him! I doubt I ever go back there.

I took my old relic of a featherweight with me to do some hotel sewing. I spent the drive to and from knitting on a sock. Not one hand stitch was sewn until Saturday evening at home. It was time to finish this Castle Wall block. I believe it is number 14.  Number 15 has been started and is the last block kitted up.

Today I will take my slow stitching time to finish round one-the squares onto the octagon-and then I need to kit up some more blocks.  It takes me a while to decide which fabrics to put together but once that is accomplished, the tracing of the templates and cutting happen pretty fast. This is a good project to work on during the Daytona 500.

I'm excited to see what everyone is working on at Kathy's Quilts today.

Design Wall Monday on Sunday Evening

There is nothing on the design wall this week.  I've basted one of the Scrappy Sister's Choice tops and have started quilting it. But I'm taking a few days off and headed to the beach for a few days.

I've packed the suitcases, the clam digging stuff is loaded and the sewing stuff is packed and ready to go.

In this bag is my leopard print ironing board, a bag of reds, a bag of neutrals, a bag of colored scraps and papers for Pineapple Crazy.  If I tire of those, I have phone book pages cut to size for neutral string blocks for another project.

In my rolling tote, the top bin contains all the sewing supplies I might need.  I had a lot of doubles in my sewing room so I filled up my cart with the seconds and bought the extras. It's nice not having to remember if I packed this or that.  I haven't needed anything that wasn't in my bin. Let's hope that continues.

The bottom holds my featherweight with foot control and power cord, small iron, power strip and an Ott light.  Everything I need. I hope. One good thing, there is a fabulous quilt shop right close by. Just in case.....

I'm pretty excited for this little vacation. I even said maybe I didn't need to take my machine and hubby laughed and asked why I wouldn't. He knows me pretty well.

On The Needles

I used to be a better blogger. I did an On The Needles post every Friday forever. Then the Mojo left me so I had nothing to share. It shows up sometimes and this time (cross your fingers for me) it might be here for a while.  I joined a group on Facebook called Addicted To Sock Knitting with over 10,000 members. There are lots of sock pictures that will knock your own socks off!  I am in awe of these knitters. Joining that group brought the Mojo home.

Last Friday I had good intentions to post my progress on the purple socks I was working on from the January 2nd post but Ernie decided he wanted to drive to the beach so who was I to say no. I can't work on anything with a pattern so I grabbed a skein of sock yarn from the stash and some dpns and we were on our way.  This is how far I got on Plain Jane socks using Knit Picks Felici in the Coney Island colorway.

I was using the Tadpoles pattern but messed it up something awful. I don't know what I did to mess up such an easy pattern, so I frogged it all and started over. I was part way through the ribbing when someone on that FB group posted socks using the Blueberry Waffles Socks pattern. This is an easy peasy pattern with not much thinking or counting involved so I decided to make the most of my Mojo's return and use this pattern. I love the texture it gives this Opal sock yarn.

To see what other knitters are working on, check out Patchwork Times. While you are there, you will see Judy L's super cute granddaughter as a hat model.

Design Wall Monday

I haven't worked on Pineapple Crazy since retreat in November. I've thought about it but haven't touched it. Wednesday at sewing group, one of the ladies showed her blocks and that's all it took to get me jazzed up to work on mine again.

I pin my blocks into groups of 10 so I did a quick count and was at 86. I made 4 on Wednesday afternoon. Then on Friday, we drove 2 1/2 hours to the beach for lunch so that evening I made the 5 border blocks. Saturday I made 9 more pineapple blocks and got up Sunday morning and finished block #100!  I am deep into Gilmore Girls on Netflix. I discovered that I can make 1 complete block per episode......don't judge.

I wanted to work on more blocks Sunday but I had to show some restraint and clean my sewing room. Instead of just putting things away, I decided to rearrange things and that lead to organizing and that lead to scrap and strip sorting and that lead to no sewing.  With all the scrap sorting, I bet I have enough little scraps for 4 more of these quilts.

I'm hoping that will change this week.  See what others are up to at Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday

UFO busting at it's finest is what is happening on my design wall this week. I pulled out a bin full of SWAN (Swap Without A Name) blocks that were made by a group of internet friends in 2005. For this swap, when it was our turn-2 quilters per month-we sent each of the 23 participants a 12" square of our focus fabric along with any wishes we had for the quilt block. I used some of my stash fabric-the purples, green and peach, I asked for white or WOW background. These needed to be 12 1/2" unfinished, do your best work.  I did have to remake 1 of the blocks but no big deal. I have 4 that just didn't fit so they will be used in the orphan block quilt.

This purple star is my favorite...made by my friend Sonya. I remember her asking if I had any extra purple fabric because she wanted to make me a special block. I did and Oh Boy did she make me a special block. It's called Connecticut from Carol Doak's 50 Paper Pieced Stars book.

Step 1 - Make 20 9 patch blocks for the back using 5" charms. At one of our retreats, I won a huge stack of charms, such a fabulous variety of fabrics-even a Millennium square. I set the stack of charms at the machine, reached over, picked up 2 off the pile and sewed them together, picked up the next pair and the next and next, you get the idea. Then I added the 3rd charm. Pressed those all in one direction, grabbed a few, flipped them around so the seams would butt up to each other. Then did it again until I had 20 blocks.  There are only a few charms left to go into the charm bin. That UFO bag is busted!

Step 2- Make the batting squares.. Since Quilt As You Go is being used on these blocks. (Lots of tutorials on YouTube.) I am able to use up a big bag of batting scraps. All the batting is Hobbs 80/20 from other quilts. Batting scraps bag busted!

Step 3 - Quilt each square-Done!! How much fun I had doing this all week. I pulled out matching thread, filled bobbin with white thread, put on my walking foot and had a blast.  No new thread was purchased but no spools were emptied either. No problem since I didn't want to run out of thread.

Step 4 - Add borders to blocks. I messed up this step. I should have added borders to each block before quilting, 10 with one fabric, 10 with another fabric. I need to do this because the blocks now range in size from 11 3/4" to 12 1/2 ". So I now have to do this by adding backing strips, batting and sashing strips, quilt and cut to 15" since that's the size of my biggest ruler, that's the size I will use. The 9 patch seams will not line up, that doesn't bother me since they will have sashing on them also. I have the fabric to use on the back but I'll buy something coordinating for the front. My stash isn't that deep. I learned a very valuable lesson here.

Step 5 - Make borders.

Step 6 - Join everything together.

Step - Bind, wash, dry, cuddle.

Looks like I have a good plan for the week.  See what everyone is working on today at Patchwork Times.