A Finish, and a Very Cool New Project!

Love Heart from Bothy Threads is finished!

Love Heart from Bothy Threads

I sewed on the last of the beads yesterday. It is hard to see them, but here is a close-up.

I always forget how big heart-shapes are. I do wish now I had stitched it on 32 ct instead of 28 ct.


And now for my cool new project!

Keith gave me this for Christmas!

I have always loved astronomy. When I saw this quilt from Haptic Lab, I knew I had to stitch it!
If you are not familiar with Haptic Lab, you can read about them here. They have city quilts from all over the world, and a map of the constellations from the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Very cool!
I am stitching the Northern Hemisphere Constellations.

For the night sky, I chose a marbled cotton from Moda.

The template is placed over the quilt sandwich.

It is a bit awkward stitching this way. I am making the wall or crib size. I cannot imagine stitching the full size version. The template is very stiff, but at the same time, it is fragile. It tears very easily when the stitches are pulled through it. I tried to tape it together in some places but the tape doesn't stick to it.

I am a very traditional quilter, and stitches on this quilt are larger than I am used to making. Also, it is a leap of faith how the stitches will look, because I won't see them until the template is removed. The stitches need to be tight, but it you pull too tight, it tears the template.

It will be hard to show my progress on this because the stitches do not show on the template.

Here is a shot of the back. I think you can see the stitching better here. I chose the same marbled pattern from Moda for the back, but in a light blue, for the day sky.

I haven't gotten to stitching any of the stars yet. I am still working on the construction quilting that holds it together.
By next time, I will hopefully have some of the stars done.

The weather looks like is is starting to warm up here. I am certainly looking forward to that! The chickens and bees are too!

Thanks for all of your kind word about my stitching. Some of you, I tried to get in touch with, but the email was bounced. I have no idea whether is is you or me. Please know that I appreciate all of your comments though.

The Pillow

This was not my first pillow!

I have made pillows with piping before, and I have installed many zippers in my time.
I have no idea why all of this went so wrong. It seemed like everything that could go wrong, went wrong!

I finally finished Winter Watch, after what seemed like forever filling in all that gray and then making all the French knot snowflakes!

I decided to turn it into a pillow. I remembered that I had a piece of gray velveteen in the attic that I thought would be perfect for the backing. As it turned out, it wasn't the best match, but it was ok. I wanted to stay away from the Christmas reds, so it would be displayable in January-March.

Well, then my troubles began. My trusty 50+ year old Kenmore was acting up! The tension was all messed up, and the clutch for some reason wouldn't engage. How does this happen when the last time I used it, it was perfectly fine?

Well, after an entire afternoon of fiddling with it, I got it so it would work, not perfectly, but enough to get me through hopefully.

I had a lot of trouble with it. First I made the piping out of the same material, Then I basted it to the canvas, and sewed it on. That went ok. Next step was to put the invisible zipper in. The side of the zipper that went onto the canvas went in ok, but when I tried to sew the other half to the velveteen backing I had a lot of trouble.

 No matter what I did, I couldn't get that pillow to line up! It seemed like the backing had skewed itself, so it was crooked. I don't know how this happened because I basted everything, but it slid around somehow!

After hours of trying to straighten it out, I gave up. This is what it looks like:

I was going to make a pillow liner for it but I didn't, thinking that maybe someday I would go back and revisit it. For now though, I am so frustrated, I can't even look at it!

I guess it is ok if no one turns it over, but people always do, don't they?

I would love to fix this, but I really don't know how I can make it any better. I can feel my blood pressure going up just thinking about this! What a disappointment! Maybe I shouldn't have attempted the zipper with the piping on such a thick fabric as the velveteen. Certainly not my best work! Oh well! Moving on . . .

I knitted a pair of socks for me! This was actually my first finish for the year.

I knitted these using Kroy sock yarn, in Brown Marl. I liked the colors. They seem so cozy.

For a change of pace, I am now stitching Love Heart from Bothy Threads. I love this design. It is so fun and quirky!

This is what I have so far:

I did swop out the aida for 28 ct linen, which I much prefer. In hind sight however, I wish I had chosen 32 count linen instead of the 28ct. I didn't realize how big this design was. I would like to frame this one, but my wall space is somewhat limited

That's all I have for now. I am looking forward to spring as I am sure all of your are. I suspect that winter is not quite done with us though! March is always a tricky one!