Friday's Child

Friday's child is loving and giving, or so goes the nursery rhyme/poem. Well after many Fridays not off from work because I was either traveling or working in trade for a day off to travel, I finally spent last Friday- all day-  in my sewing room, loving every minute of it and giving it the old college try on progressing on projects. I worked on the pink quilt  of my last blog entry where I agonized on the tiny strip insert before the border. Here it is and I am glad of my selection.


I cut the longer, outer side borders twice.  I will know in the future that when using a striped border it is less obtrusive if you add the borders that run the way of the stripe after the other borders, regardless of which is shorter.  Then the seams parallel the stripe and are less noticeable.



I did not do this on the inner beige striped strip but that is narrow enough I think it does not matter.  It made a big difference on the outer border so I reordered the sequence.Now it is ready to be backed (with the border fabric and FMQ'd (gulp!).

Friday I also made  great progress on the patchwork blocks on the little witch girl quilt. Saturday I finished piecing the patchwork blocks and decided how I will treat the rectangular ( rather than square), smaller sized feature picture blocks of the witch and kitties. Since my daughter's baby is due in October I wanted a hint of Halloween but not and overdose of it.  That is try I am trying to play up the softer colors.

My patchwork blocks will finish 12 " square. I will border each of the picture blocks in a fabric that picks up the green, purple, and orange or yellow of the patchwork blocks. The image portion of the blocks are 10.25" wide x 9.75" high so the "frames" will need be about 1" wide or less. I will sacrifice the built-in orange preprinted border so as to incorporate it in the seam allowance and have more of my custom selected contrast border showing. I figure I will align my border along the printed picture edge, then square off the bordered blocks later to accommodate for the not perfectly square printing of the pictures. Here are some fabric considerations for the binding. The purple and green are a bit darker than the colors in the quilt but I generally prefer a matching or darker, binding to a paler one. The purple is a pretty interesting pattern but because it is so intense I would not go with a wide binding. I am also considering an outer sashing of a pale yellow before the binding.

Here is the quilt I used for inspiration so you can see the patchwork block.  The  quilt came from the book Two-Block Theme Quilts by Claudia Olson   I love this book and already made another quilt from it.  See my elephant and lion patchwork quilt for my  grandniece here.

I also finished completely the lilac, pink and mint baby cardigan and cap. I was not fond of the pink buttons I'd bought, too coral in nature and not pink enough, and there was no mint green buttons to be found.  I found a U-tube video on how to crochet button covers with no hole in the center and I adapted it to cover small plastic rings instead of a big flat button.  I like the results and will use this idea again.

I finished knitting a pair of baby socks, blue and grey, and today started another pair, yellow and blue.  I am thoroughly enjoying working with the Babyboo yarn from Knit One, Crochet Too. Is is a very soft, silky feeling bamboo, with a bit of nylon in it.  However, when knitting tiny baby socks, it seems to take as least half as long to kitchener stitch the toes and weave in the loose strings from all the color changes, as it does to knit the sock. No photos of these yet.

Completed projects:  

1. Crocheted baby cardigan and cap set
2. Knitted pair of blue and grey baby socks
3. Knitted one yellow and blue baby sock 

Ongoing projects:  

1. Pink squares baby quilt-  back, FMQ myself (eek!), and bind 
2. Little witch girl quilt to be- finish frames on picture blocks 
3. Duck, Duck, Goose - completed binding-  will FMQ (again, eek!) by self
4. Doll quilt - attach binding and call it good

This week's stats:

     Completed  projects - 3

     New projects - 1- Yellow baby sock new and completed 

     Currently in progress - 4
     Those in closet - many enumerated in earlier posts and not repeated here