Day: November 25, 2019

Ombre Socks

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A month ago when I had shopped at Have A Yarn in Mahone Bay, I came home with a ball of Lang “Happy Stripes” Twin Soxx ombre sock yarn. You can see the colour gradation in the finished socks but it wasn’t really visible as I was working on them since the colour change is so gradual. The single repeat actually gets a lot lighter but the sock foot stops at 50 rows past the gusset because that’s all the socks need to fit someone wearing a size 7 1/2 – size 8 shoe.

Ombre Socks

Decided to use the striped yarn to complete the toe in order to get the lightest pattern repeat possible.

I have enough yarn left over to make a pair of legs – just have to find a complementary yarn so I can knit a full pair of socks!

Medallion Quilt II – Comment

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Just on the phone with a very close friend who thought my medallion panel was striking just as it is – make an effective wall art piece, she thought.

Medallion Quilt – Centre

I certainly wasn’t seeing it that way – in my head I was working on something much larger. Now I have to rethink the whole thing. Maybe just one more border in a darker grey to finish it off?

Decisions, decisions….

More Small Zippered Bags

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When I got home from my sewing weekend I showed my niece my stash of small zippered bags. Offered her one, she took two. She was going out that evening for dinner with a friend whose daughter was having a birthday – she took one for Fiona and another for her sister Dana. I took another and put a birthday gift in it for a friend of mine. Now I was down five bags from the collection intended to be for Christmas gifts.

My niece sees me put the gift in a bag and asks if I would make ten bags for her to use as gifts – she’ll pay me, she offers.

Can’t say no to a request like that, so after she left for Toronto the next day, I dug out what fabric I had left over from the original batch, prepared 10 more bags, sat down and stitched them up over the next two days.

Zippered Bags For Maxelle

Past Thursday, I packaged them up and sent them off to Toronto – as a gift for my niece. What am I going to charge her? $5 is too little and $10 is too much to ask her (although were I selling the bags at a craft fair I’d charge $10 for the smaller size, $12 for the larger ones). I was using leftover bits of fabric and batting, I buy zipper tape by the yard, so while I have an idea as to what my materials might cost there’s still nothing much to reimburse me for my time. Better a gift to my niece than try figuring out what to charge her.

She should get them next week. I told her to make sure she tells her friends where she got the bags! I’m sure whoever gets one will enjoy having it. You can’t have too many small zippered bags for carrying stuff, right?

Medallion Quilt II

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Funny what calls out to you when you sit down to work. The small triangular cut-offs from the Nine Shades Of Grey quilt said “Play with me” – so I did. I began by sewing them together into half-square triangles, then laying them out in blocks, formed rows, and stitched the rows together. I was trying to mix up the colours so they weren’t adjacent (and I was pretty successful doing that). I ended up with an 8 X 10 array with a bordered square on point in the centre. My piecing isn’t perfect but it’s close enough to live with as it is.

Medallion Quilt – Centre

Once I had the small half-square triangles sewn into a panel, I decided to enclose it with a narrow border rather then a wider one. Had I been doing a wall panel, I’d have used the golden fabric as a piping, but I thought for a quilt it probably needed to be a narrow strip of accent fabric. And then the medium mottled grey seemed to settle the whole panel down – it’s strong enough to stand out and yet sets up the yellow which brings out the golden shades in the batiks.

I have no idea where to go next! Medallion quilts are usually square, but for a comfortable throw/lap quilt it wants to be longer than wider so I went for a rectangular panel. I will see if it’s possible to increase the length with perhaps two insert rows in top and bottom edges as I build the quilt borders out.

Time to look at Medallion quilts and see what inspiration I can find for taking this quilt further. I think I want to keep the “Nine Shades Of Grey” idea going in this project which means whatever I do next should use the grey fabrics extensively with perhaps just hints of the bright batiks – who knows….