What's On My Needles?

 Another grey day here in Worcestershire. I have spent the morning dyeing up some more gradient with speckles yarn, in a glorious pink this time. It's still in the slow cooker getting all steamy.

Two projects are occupying my knitting time at the moment. Firstly I'm knitting up some of my own dyed yarn with my own pattern. Hopefully this will be a sample for kits. It's the Ten Bump Shawl  which I created to show off the Urth Yarns that my sister and I have a shop shelf for at Cromford Mill, Derbyshire in Weaveknitit. The yarn is a 4 ply in the colour 'Dahlia Garden'.

The second WIP is the socks I put on last weeks post. Still knitting but I have put in the short row heel, not on the pattern but the heel I prefer, and am working my way down the foot. They will be finished very soon.

There is one more WIP which I could finish today if I got on with it,  As this needs to be done by Saturday, it's for my granddaughter, and I'm seeing her on Sunday I really should get on with it.

Grey Monday

 Tis a very grey and dull day here in Worcestershire, I was thinking of going outside to clear out the greenhouse today but the weather is so bleugh that I'm not feeling the love for that idea. Instead I have been playing with my dye pots. Two skeins of dip dyed red and green, a skein of aran I used to mop up excess dye from the pot and a dye mop, all drying.

The day is so grey that this photograph of my Easy Mosaic Socks, free pattern, courtesy of Winwick Mum. Makes the solid colour look blue. It is infact a gorgeous turquoise, this is a lovely quick and easy knit to brighten up a dull day. This is the pattern that many knitters have chosen to take part in the Winter Haven KAL Hopefully  the sun will shine again and then I shall take another picture to show off the colours.

This post is a tentative step towards increasing my presence on the webs as I try to launch my embryonic yarn dyeing business. Nothing to see yet but soon I hope to have an Etsy shop open and lovely yarns to look at and purchase.

Posy Baby Cardigan in Three Sizes

I'm sorry it has taken me ages to rewrite this pattern to include three sizes. I have made all three and this is the latest one which is the middle size. I just love this colour and the red heart buttons. I did go with a moss stitch collar, button band, button hole band, cuff and welt on this one just to ring the changes from the garter stitch a little. Looking closely at the picture it seems I have missed a ring of moss stitch on one of the cuffs, should you make one, you won't do that. That's what comes of trying to finish in  hurry.

As I have been a bad blogger I have forgotton how to create a link for this pattern in the tutorials and patterns section of the blog. I will work it out but in the meantime here is the link from this blog post. So I shall post this for now and go an play with creating the better link.

Red Ohio Star Quilt

Well this has been a long time coming. I put it up in the loft a couple of years ago meaning to finish it.  It began as an idea for our bedroom which is cream and dark red. I love red and had seen other ohio star quilts and thought this would be it.

I really enjoyed choosing fabrics and went for those I loved, fat quarters and bits and pieces from other projects as well as a large piece from a fabric shop in Berwick Upon Tweed. I used a patchwork web site to design my quilt, the name of which is long forgotten but it really wasn't hard. This site was really about quantities of fabric which I completely ignored. Anyway I needed to make 20 12" blocks with an added inch and a half border of cream to each block.

Once made and having quilted a bed size quilt on my machine before I decided that I would 'quilt as I go' this time so I sewed four blocks together and then made a quilt sandwich with 'quilter's dream' wadding and backing fabric. I made myself a leaf shaped stencil and drew on quilting lines, they were gently curved as a contrast to the straight lines of the blocks. Quilting was minimal as I don't like the stiffness you get from close quilting. The quilting is hard to see in the main picture.  

I machine stitched the top pieces together, trimmed the wadding, hand stitched the wadding and then hand stitched the backing. I actually really enjoyed the hand sewing part of this quilt. I love that we can make quilts really quickly with our sewing machines but for me that detracts from the hand made essence of quilts. The hand made quality that comes with fabric choices, personal touches and hand work, all things that make a quilt unique.

This is just a piece of the backing which is patchy with left over pieces of fabric from the stars. I will post a picture of the back in a later post as the quilt is in the washing machine and I didn't take a photo.

I love this quilt, it makes me happy when I look at it, I'm glad I made it. 

Housey, Housey

I've had this quilt idea in my head for a while. I really fancied lots of little houses and was desperate to use up some of my stash of fabric bits and pieces.

I used this pattern, a simple little house on an eight inch block, just the job.  I did have to make a couple of adjustments. The door/ window /house section comes out wider than 61/2" and also I didn't do the roof in two sections, I just cut 1 piece 21/2" by 6 1/2".

I'm really happy with the block and have worked out that I need 88 of them to create the quilt. I've made 8. So a long way to go then.

Aubusson Cardigan

I thought the dress I made, see previous post, needed a cardi. I saw this in the Knitter Magazine issue 92.  I did change it so it doesn't look much like the original, but I'm happy with it. The Drops Air and Big Delight yarns were lovely to work with and the Air is beautifully soft.

The sleeves have been changed form the original pattern to full length and the pattern at the cuff end rather than at the top.

It's just waiting for buttons, I always struggle with finding the right buttons.

Double Fen

Fen Dress by Fancy Tiger Crafts

I had to have this pattern as soon as a I saw it, I loved the casual look of it and that it would be lovely in many different fabrics.

The first one sadly is only wearable with a T shirt under it as the neckline is too wide, having said that I have worn it quite a lot, it's comfy and easy to wear and at this time of year a T shirt is no bad thing.

I did follow the pattern to the letter including the dropped hem the back, it was so easy to put together (especially if you read the pattern carefully) I like the pocket detail and the soft gathers at the front and back are good on me. It doesn't look very good on the hanger though. I know I should model them but I'm settled on the sofa watching the rugby. 

This is the second one, both the pattern and this linen cotton blend fabric are from Backstitch. This time I closed up the neck by redrafting the pattern at the neckline. I made the straight hem option as I wasn't really happy with the dropped hem. I'm very happy with this one. The gathers could have been a bit more even and I'm thinking that next time I'll make the skirt a little wider and put some pleats in the front between the pockets.

Love these pockets. Also added three little buttons as an embellishment on the neck. If I remember correctly these came on a dress label from White Stuff. 

I think I'll get lots of wear out of this one, so much so that I'm knitting a cardigan to go with it. It's almost done.

One of the most exciting things about this second Fen dress is that I used my newly purchased Juki overlocker to finish the seams. Yay!