A Finish and a Quilt Top

Following my last post, last weekend I finished blocked my Hastfagring shawl and it drapes really well, so here are a couple of photos of it hanging up.  It looks quite good, doesn’t it

My finish this week is the last of the Little Box of Crochet projects from back from September 2018.  It’s a lovely little sleeping fox called Gareth, after England Football manager Gareth Southgate, who was famed for wearing a waistcoat. Fox Gareth is crocheted in Waistcoat Stitch (hence his name) which looks like a knit stitch and creates a very firm fabric.  It’s not an easy stitch to do as it is hard on the hands with the firm Rico Cotton and together with changing colours it became challenging to do, but I managed to get the tail, head and ears done (the body was made ages ago) and sew the parts together this morning.

All the bits ready to sew

And there he is, done!

As for quilting I have a quilt top made. The Youngish Quilters Block of the Week’s last block was made on Thursday morning.  It was another appliqué block but stars this time.  Having run out of Bondaweb I turned to using the iron on Vilene appliqué method that was used for the Orange Peel block instead.

I didn’t really like using plain white sashing for framing the blocks, so I utilised the white background fabrics on the horizontal bands and other colours for the vertical ones with assorted squares for the corner stones.  It looked less stark than plain white fabric.

I needed some wadding and also backing and binding.  My local quilt shop, so local I can walk to it had wadding and threads for quilting.  Wool Warehouse had some of the Cocktail Time fabric (it’s now discontinued) so having ordered the fabric on Thursday it arrived on Saturday morning.  I’m hoping to layer up tomorrow to get on with quilting.

Another finish I hope to get done this week is my dark red cardigan which has been hibernating for a few months. The sleeves and side seams have been sewn, so the front bands have to be knitted up. If I can get the picked up stitches right that shouldn’t take too long.  See how we go.