Catch-up and Clean-up

Gumdrops String quilt - working through my strings. Simple tumblers made using the Fat Cats ruler, working with pinks, yellows and oranges with a black on white background. This cheerful quilt was popular with visitors to my studio, and was donated to charity.


Gumdrops, 54" x 46", quilted with Butterflies

For Mother's Day, my son gifted me with several hours of work. He chose folding fabric over yard work! That helped me get started on the long-overdue process of organizing my stash fabrics. I still need to get to a few more drawers before they are all done. Eventually it would be great to fit all quilting fabric into the drawers, and out of tubs. I have a growing stack of fabric to bring to quilt group and also donated some nice wool yarns to a local charity shop.

I'm slowly working through projects in boxes, and with the help of a new serger, finished three t-shirts and a camp shirt. It's been a learning curve to work with 1/4" seams on garments (both happened to be Kwik Sew patterns.) It's challenging to cut knits accurately with such a small seam, I missed being able to clip into the seam for alignment marks. Chalk has been the replacement, and is so much easier with chalk wheels (Chakoner or Clover.)

The first shirt made was from inexpensive cotton to test the pattern, so I knew that it fit. Two of the t-shirts were from fabric that I'd ordered from Spoonflower a while back. It was great to get a short-sleeved tee from one yard of wide knit fabric. Spoonflower only sells in 1-yard increments, so a long-sleeved tee from their fabric will have some waste and may just cost too much.

A twin-sized charity quilt using the Disappearing 4-Patch is finished, not pictured. It is well made and cozy, made from blue & green reproduction fabrics.

Knitting has slowed for a bit with the heat we're finally getting. I'm still working on charity projects, and also developed a knit stitch for scarves that is mostly garter with occasional slipped stitches. It gives an interesting accordion-like, reversible pattern. I finished a new scarf for myself with this stitch, and got to use it for a couple of weeks before it got too warm.  Another, shorter scarf used up a skein of self-striping yarn. They are pictured on my Ravelry page.