Blimey, It’s the End of March

 How did that happen? This year is whizzing by a break neck speed! It’s the Easter weekend already and tomorrow will be April.

So what has kept me busy this month.  First, a finish at the beginning, which was my second Sungold lap blanket in the Dahlia stitch, which I posted about here. The two blankets came in useful recently when we had a cold night the early last week without heating as we had the boiler replaced.  Here’s a pic of both blankets together (the first one was finished last month) and there was still some yarn left! 

I did a small crochet make to replace a cactus that I had neglected (I’m not good at keeping houseplants) and dug out my book of Crochet Succulents by Emma Varnam to make a small ball cactus with a little pink flower.  I had to make the crochet ‘soil’ to fit into the little planter with fewer rows to fit it, but it looks good and I will make two more to fit in the planter. There is a real plant next to it, hanging on for dear life! This was a quick make which only took an afternoon.

Another bit of knitting done is this clown, Mr Fortywinks, which I’ve mentioned on the blog in my last post just a few days ago.

Now on the needles is Florrie the Chicken Mad Fox. She just looked so cute. I’ve got as far as making the body parts other than the legs and am currently making Florrie’s Cardigan.

This was a kit from Lucy Locket Land, the pattern by Julie Williams of Little Cotton Rabbits. There is a lot of detail.   I would like to make a sheep one later.

So that yarny stuff, but there has been some stitching.  With the middle of the month being International Quilting Day I did some quilting of some blocks which will eventually be joined Quilt As You Go style.

Some of the blocks were made last year, some several years before and it was time to start making the blocks into a quilt,  but as yet not joined together, but getting there.

I made myself a big bag, just like the large red one I’ve made way back in 2008, but this time in blue. A good size to take to workshops. I made a large sew and flip quilted panel and cut off part of the panel to make gussets for the sides.  A good contrast for the inside of the bag helps to make things easier to find.

A joint effort this month was to recover the dining chairs and there are 6 of them.  They were recovered several years ago in vinyl fabric, which was crumbling.  It’s getting harder to find furnishing fabric by the metre, but found in Westbourne (between Bournemouth and Poole) this crushed velvet effect fabric. It’s smartened them up a treat. (That’s not a real dog, just our doorstop).

I have been doing some paper crafting this month with the Townswomen’s Guild i Group making a couple of cards using folded squares of double sided card, onto mirror card. I didn’t have plain 12” card for the base so used a patterned on which was white on one side.

My ATC for this month is ‘Alphabets’ and I made this using cut out letters from magazines (one crochet, one quilting) on a painted (not by me) background. I covered over with Modge Podge to make sure the letter ps were really stuck down. The border top and bottom were the stitch diagram from the crochet magazine.

I did make a doodle version, but decided not to send that. It may be something to have another go at sometime though.

No wonder this month went quickly.  Next month I hope to have a finished fox and the quilt blocks progressed further, but April we will be on holiday for 8 days in Holland.

Happy Easter 🐣

 And today a make was gifted!  I finished a clown for Cecily, my youngest granddaughter, for her 5th birthday. This was Mr Fortywinks, Mark 3 as I’ve already made one years back for my eldest granddaughter when she was young in 2016 (she’s 17 now) and for Flo a couple of years ago. In between I’ve made Godfrey Gadabout for the eldest’s sister in 2017. The patterns are quite old now and designed by the late Jean Greenhowe. All the links above relate to my posts about the individual clowns. I hope I’m done with clowns for a while. 

As my reward I treated myself to a kit from Lucy Locketland of Florrie the Chicken Mad Fox 🦊.  She did look really cute. This kit uses a patterns for fox and clothes by Julie Williams of Little Cotton Rabbits (do have a look at her blog, the latest post shows her making more animals and photos of nature too). The kit came within a few days and everything, yarn, patterns and woollen stuffing were all included along with a couple of chicken stitch markers.

So far as at today I’ve made a head, one ear, arms and a tail of the body and knitted (but not sewn up) the dress.  These pieces are quite intricate and there are some new to me things to learn, like the backwards and forwards cast on stitches to increase. 

So this will be my project over Easter.  I’ll go through my projects at the month end, coming up on Sunday.

A Wee Bit of Sewing

 Saturday 16 was (Inter)National Quilting Day and a long time ago my friend and myself arranged a Quilters’ Day.  But these days I’m on my own and this year I had a project to finish.  Back in 2008 I went on a quilt retreat in Devon (post about this here)and made a quilt and large project bag and I decided it was time to make another. I started the week before (it was raining again, perfect sewing weather) to make a large sew and flip panel, part of which was cut to form gusset pieces for side.

Above is the old bag.

This is the new bag in progress with strips around he side gusset panels

Now with the fabric strips, handles and top strips.

It even sports a pocket, look at all those elephants on the lining fabric. I look forward to using this next time I’m at the embroidery group.  While at the machine some strips turned into a quilted square for a pouch once I get some zips.

Sunday was spent quilting some quilt as you go blocks, some of which were sewn last year and had been layered up ready to machine quilt (very basic, just quilt in the ditch). Five were already done so I had seven more to do.  I’ve laid the blocks out on the spare bed so I have time to rearrange. As you can see the colour scheme is pink, red and purple with low volume white background.  The backs of the blocks are purple, lilac pink and red. Watch this space for more progress on this.

There will be some knitting coming up soon as a clown is making progress.

Tale of Two Blankets

 I’ve finished a second lap blanket today.  This was using the Sungold yarn pack from Wool Warehouse and patterns by Lucy of Attic 24. I started with the Crochet A Long (CAL) in January to make a lap sized version of the Sungold blanket pattern.  At the same time as I was crocheting the instalments of this blanket I also started on another one but using the Dahlia stitch pattern. Having gone onto the Attic24 and more Facebook group, there had been several people who were have previously made two lap blankets with a yarn pack (there are 15 assorted Stylecraft yarn colours in this pack).

The normal sized blanket would fit a single bed, which is quite large. Fortunately in the pattern Lucy gives the stitch count and number of stripes for different sizes of blankets, be it cot size or king size. 

Part 7 of the CAL were the instructions for the border rows, which I worked on the first blanket and the first time in this I played yarn chicken with the Lavender and Gold colours and won, with tiny bits left.  I consequently had to change the colour order of the border on the second blanket.

The Dahlia stitch is ever so slightly bigger than the Sungold, so I did less stripes but the same stitch count and are slightly different in size, but that is ok with me.  The Sungold is 54.5” long x 34.5” wide and the Dahlia is 52” long x 37” wide. Here they both are side by side.

They are fabulously colourful and cosy, I will miss working on them, but will love cosying under one of them when it’s a bit cool in the evenings. 

And there’s still a bit of the yarn pack left so that can be added to my yarn stash.

If you haven’t had a go at a crochet blanket then Lucy’s patterns are easy to follow with comprehensive instructions. I also love her use of colour, so these blankets were an enjoyable project.