Sunday, October 7, 2012

My quilt ;)

Guess what? I made another quilt. I stumbled onto this tutorial for a great looking quilt block called Granny squares. The moment I saw it, the little voice inside my head went: You must make this. And it was a great opportunity to use up the fabric and batting I had left over from my previous quilt. I added some red fabric from my stash, the stuff I originally bought because I wanted to make a bed-sized quilt. The chunk of batting I had left measured about 60 x 42 inches, so my quilt is about the same size - Google tells me that this size is a lap quilt. 




The piecing of the blocks was relatively slow - each block consists of 25 little squares that need to be sewn together. Simple, but time consuming. But I really like the result, it's an effective block. 


 
I quilted the whole thing with free motion squiggles. Mostly because I wanted to secure my stitching in the pieced blocks a little more - some of those fabrics were really fraying. 


The quilting is better that it was the last time, but still far from perfect. It's so freaking hard to maneuver the quilt around when you don't have a decent sewing surface. I need a conference table, I really do. 

For this quilt I sort of grouped my little sewing table, my computer table, my ironing board and the TV table. Made the Alps from furniture, because each table was different height. And my quilt would regularly fall into the empty spaces between them. The amount of curse words I uttered would probably set a record. 



I managed to pinch the fabric on only two places, so that's an improvement. And I learned how to bury the threads in the quilt, new skills are always good.


I didn't have a big enough fabric chunk that would cover the whole back, so I combined the stuff I had. 





The whole quilt is perfect for lying on the couch while watching TV, reading or knitting. 



 
And that brings me to my finished knitting project. Express Lane socks. The socks that almost took me a year to knit. No idea why, the pattern is great and not that complicated. The yarn is Regia, one of those 100 gram skeins. I decided to use the whole thing, so the socks are almost-but-not-quite knee socks. 



Next project? Well, since I put my sewing machine away and finally vacuumed all the little bits of thread my whole apartment was covered in, my next project will be good old knitting. Such a clean craft, with barely any mess. I'm starting the Middlefield Pullover.