Honeycomb Patchwork

Another project is in the works. I saw a cute zipper pouch on Flickr and was inspired to do some more paper piecing. 

I drew up a pattern piece with graph paper and selected some fabric scraps.

I now have the pieces basted and sewn together and need to decide on a background fabric. I will machine appliqué the patchwork onto the background and then...do something with it. It will probably be too big for a zip pouch, so may be another knitting project bag.

Gloves to Give As Gifts

Making gloves kept me interested for a few weeks so I had a few pairs to give as Christmas gifts. I like making the fingers but sometimes I reject those patterns because I don't much like weaving in all the ends. Some folks really like wearing this type of glove; for me, if it is cold enough for gloves, I want my  fingers covered, too. They were all fun to make.

The pattern for this pair is here. I happened to have a copy of the magazine in my cupboard.

This pattern is here. There are some good notes on Ravelry about centering the cable pattern. I read them too late for this pair but next time, I'll make the adjustment. The yarn is Madeline Tosh (yum!) and, though I only used the one skein, the gloves look like they are made from different colors. Hand painted yarns can be odd like that.

This is just my generic glove pattern with a garter rib cuff, made with fingering weight yarn.

The Back of The Pillow

Now that I have a picture, here is the back of the Tallahassee Pillow. I used this tutorial for inserting the zipper. It was a pretty smooth operation!

Tallahassee Pillow

I was inspired to make this paper pieced pillow after viewing these two pillows on Flickr. I started out intending to use the light fabric as the background for all of the blocks but ran out of that particular shade fairly quickly and switched to the alternating light and dark backgrounds. I printed the paper patterns from this website, scaling the pieces to end up with 6.5" blocks. Nine blocks sewn together finish up as an 18 inch pillow.  It has a black and white striped binding and the back has a hidden zipper under a placket. The quilting is by machine, with golden thread, enhancing the circular shapes formed when the blocks were joined. 

Kauai

All pictures by Jon Prescott

Shave Ice

Ray went to Hawaii in June with his friend, Blake, and Blake's parents. Blake's dad, Jon, took some beautiful pictures and copied all of them onto a CD for us. I procrastinated with posting some to the blog for so long that eventually it seemed like the best course was to just wait until the dead of winter, when beach scenes would seem especially appealing.

I try hard to just be happy with where I am and not pine away for other times and places. Ray is completely absorbed and busy with high school friends and activities these days and my focus is supporting him, which mostly involves feeding him and driving him around. But, the days have been short and dreary, and the clouds low and oppressive and I do think the beach looks inviting.

Sandman

Queen's Bath

Potholder

I sewed some scraps from bee blocks into a pretty potholder. It has two layers of cotton batting and one layer of Insul-brite and is quilted with zig zag wavy lines. It landed in a box of goodies sent as a gift to a friend.

Placemats

My sister, Anita, made the pretty basket

I'm not sure this project really deserves a ton of pictures but since blogging is paid for on a flat rate basis, why not post them all? 

I have been planning to make placemats for our table for some time and had even bought some different fabric for the project. I ended up using most of that pile for other things and finally fashioned some placemats out of a charm pack of Mama Said Sew, mixing in a few other fabrics from my stash.  The designs are pretty traditional - 16 patch, 9 patch and wonky stars.

I did some zig zag machine quilting to hold the layers together and then sewed on the binding before adding some utility hand stitching. I used #8 red perle cotton for the hand work, which doesn't show up all that well on most of the mats. Hmm, not quite how I envisioned it, but I couldn't see any better plan so I powered through and finished. They look just fine on the table and will eventually get splattered with wine and spaghetti sauce anyway, so I wasn't going to get too picky.

Backing