A May Furtle

 So what happened in May?  Ooh a finished knitted item or two, the ending of a large quilt, getting out and about again - not much really!

I finished my Kingfisher quilt, which was about 3 years in the making, but it lives on the bed now, replacing one I made back in 2002, and makes me smile each time I see it.  It is that lovely to me.  I wrote about it in this post here. It’s another quilt ticked off my Finish a Long list.

Another item on the list is the Tubix quilt.  I’ve machine quilted the plain white square with multi coloured thread and wiggly stitch and I’ve utilised the excess backing fabric to being over to the front to bind. This a photo from laying out on the bed. Needing a bit more stitching the the outer border before I call it finished, but it looks ok.

I finished and presented the long cardigan for Sarah and a it’s been a cold month until just recently it was worn straight away.  She had a long cardigan (bought) which was worn to death and this a replacement for that. There may be another in the pipeline soon....

I also finished Alex the Mouse, which was a project from A Year of Techniques book from Arnall Culliford Knitwear.  Pinhole cast on and I-cord are the main techniques for this and he does look cute.

And here he is amongst the menagerie in my room.  The shelf is getting more crowded with softies. 

Look how ridiculously big he is compared with the tiny badger sitting on the rabbits lap! He’s even bigger than the owl (that owl if it was real would have problems eating the mouse!!) and there would be a mouse and cat fight with the pink sock cat! 

My next project out of the book was to be a Lacy cloche hat, the Talmache cloche.  Working on the double pointed needles was proving difficult and after 32 rows on more stitches falling off I’ve frogged (ripped back) it.  This might not be the end as I will work on slightly bigger circular needles instead on magic loop.  There’s a 5 pattern repeat, so 3 repeats will be on one needle and 2 on the other with stitch markers separating the repeats. The picture below is the early one while still increasing stitches from the crown.

I’ve made a couple of blocks for the block mama of the Siblings Together bee and this month it’s been quarter log cabin blocks.

These we fun to make and I’ve seen some of the blocks on Instagram and they should all make a fabulously colourful quilt.

Another small quilt I’ve made is a Kawandi quilt.  I’ve seen some of these on Instagram and I’ve looked at  some on Pinterest.  There is also a You Tube  video by Joe Cunningham who interviewed Margaret Fabrizio, search for Margaret’s Kawandi.  This is a fascinating video and Margaret herself is a colourful character.  Anyway, Kawandi quilts are worked by Siddi people in India, who have African ancestry where they apply small pieces of fabric onto a larger background and sew the pieces as they go (which is the best way I can explain it.

This is my version, which I made cutting my background, a piece of calico, to A4 size and hand folded the  edges over.

And added the pieces.  There are little triangle pieces of fabric in the corners, which I held down while applying the patches, but I think I should have sewn them in place in the corners first. Below is my first round of patches.  They are all worked from the outside in and I went around in a clockwise dierection.

This is it completed, though there may be a bit more stitching.  I like this quilt as you go method and the size if just small enough to try something out.  It may be a wall hanging,  it sure yet if it’s purpose.

I love how the back looks, with the multi coloured thread that I’ve used.

What’s coming up for June?  Lovely sunny weather and time in the garden, but there will be intervals of sewing, knitting and crochet too.

Joining in Mini Archie’s Furtle Around the Blogosphere for May