To Do Tuesday #23

My list from last week included the following:

- start on an edge-to-edge design for the baby quilt panel; this will take some time as I need to trace the design a number of times on to the Golden Threads paper. Also I am a bit undecided about which design to use...feel like something new and have been exploring designs over at Urban Elementz (always dangerous as I end up spending money!)

- if time allows, start quilting in the ditch around my other small baby quilt and maybe even working on the draft for the pattern. We shall see.

- start knitting another beanie...got the right needles now for the decrease of the top of the hat, so that should come together quickly.

- finish sewing on the binding on the table runner.

Let's see how we did.

Well, I did end up buying another edge-to-edge design from Urban Elementz. It is called 'Lorien's Festival by Hermione Agee. Caught my attention straight away on the first page as this was featured in the new design section.

The design is 6.5in wide, has lots of open spaces and flows really well which makes it very suitable to do on a sitdown longarm machine. If you are interested in the process, I wrote a little bit about how I do this in the previous blog post. It is not difficult, just demands a bit of patience and is a bit more work intensive, but so worth the effort. Looks really good. I then started on the binding...choose a fun stripey binding.

Made sure I joined the stripes properly, but was not so sure about the closure and then this happened

When coming to the end to join the binding I was able to align the stripes almost perfectly for the final join. This certainly does not happen usually to me. Could not believe it! The join is totally invisible when folded over. Looks great! I am now sitting in the evening stitching the binding to the back by hand. Taking my time a bit as this quilt will go into the Etsy shop but I need a bit of a sunny day to photograph this properly and at the moment the weather is just cold and rainy.

Started to stitch-in-the-ditch around my other little quilt which will become a new pattern for the Etsy shop

I get incredibly bored doing this task so yesterday I mucked around with making a little video for IG on this. Managed... that's all I can say. Takes me a long time to edit and cut to bitses and then try to figure out what IG wants. My daughter explained it again to me but I don't know...I don't find that easy at all and her explanation was that it is basically a piece of cake, just press here, do this and that and it's magically done. Took me a very long time...probably could have finished that little quilt instead!

Also still knitting...instead of another beanie I am now trying socks. How difficult can that be, said she. Oh boy, was I wrong! I had to re-familiarise myself with doublepointed needles. But that was not my only problem...as I am European I am used to knitting in the European way, hence I had to look for videos that show that way of knitting. I did find a very good video on sock knitting, however that person knitted the other way and no matter how I looked at it, I could not translate that to my way of knitting. So it took a few days and I found a very entertaining European knitter on You Tube who also runs a blog (Nimble Needles). His You Tube videos are in English which is useful as the patterns I am reading are in English and use English abbreviations. Wow, I can't tell you how challenging even the starting of the sock adventure was...I literally sat here a whole day unable to get all my stitches on those blasted tiny needles. A few times I managed but then kept losing stitches in between. I reckon I did about 8 - 10 attempts before I finally got going. At the moment I am approaching the heel...will take a photo when I get there and hopefully manage. So far it is looking good and I think I have understood from the videos how this is done.

I did finish the binding of my table runner in between, but forgot to take a photo. Still planning on doing another one of those, but not just yet.

So, for the remainder of this week I am planning to

- finish off the ditching around my little baby quilt pattern, then do a little bit of ruler work and hopefully make a start on the binding.

- finish off hand stitching the binding on my panel baby quilt and if weather allows to take some photos

- drop off all the charity quilts and pick up some new quilts to finish off

- continue plugging away at knitting the sock.

That's probably enough for the week

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #23 over at Quilt Schmilt

Karin