Edge-to-Edge Quilting

Have finished another charity quilt, this time though with an edge-to-edge design. Could not resist, using the beautiful 'Ambrosia' design by Hermione Agee. It is a feather design about 6.5in wide. Given that I am now back on the sit down machine I had to use my trusted Golden Threads paper to draw this one out, row by row, then align each row to the next and slowly working my way across the quilt. This is probably where I most miss the frame...really enjoyed that on the frame. Mind you there is equally lots of alignment that you have to do on a frame. I feel the real difference is in the time it takes to take all that paper out of the quilt which I usually do as I go along. The stitching out takes very little time as the design is bigger and flowing nicely with bigger open curves so you do quilt them in BSR1 with a little bit of speed. 

The charity quilt lent itself beautifully to this design. Old-fashioned floral type fabrics in a simple railroad like set up.

Also, this quilt had cotton batting for a change which I really enjoyed.

Some closeups

And then I got side tracked...

Started knitting a little jumper for the grandchild. As so often with me I had my heart set on a top down rolled collar jumper pattern. You can find that pattern on Ravelry under Top Down Roll Raglan by Melinda Goodfellow.

I used to be a very prolific knitter when I was younger, so went ahead to re-work the whole pattern to suit my wool which had a different gauge. This took me ages to do...

Started knitting...this is really quite an easy jumper to knit, but boy I am out of practice. It is knitted top down, then split for the arms and continued in the round, so really very simple. When it came to the arms I started to have some issues with having big unsightly holes from the stitches stretching. Was not impressed and had to re-do this a number of times. Also had to use DPNs for the arms which was a bit of a hassle as the arms were so small. Lucky I had done some sock knitting in recent years, so at least that part worked out well.

Eventually though this got done and came out very cute. Even my sizing almost worked out. I was aiming for a 2 yr old jumper but with my re-calculations it came out at a maybe 18 mths old jumper, so the child will be able to wear it this winter. Bonus!

Took me the longest time though...still got more of that green wool left and will be on the lookout for another jumper in a bigger size.

But for now it is back to quilting for me. This is what is on my list:

- got a whole container full of charity quilts, 

-some new I spy 10in fabric squares for an I spy quilt, 

-another 10 blocks for my scrappy Courthouse blocks quilt

-got the batting for a jelly roll rug

-...and several finished quilt tops in the cupboard waiting patiently to be done!

Happy Quilting!

Karin