Quilting & Binding

I quilted my modern HST quilt ... two, maybe three weeks ago.  Then I attached the binding, sat down to sew it down to the back, got almost to the first corner, and saw this:

There was no way that corner was going to work.  I unpicked the crooked stitches, but I haven't gotten around to getting the machine back out to re-sew them, so this project is kind of stalled.  What with moving this weekend, it's not going to happen until we're settled in the new apartment (but in a dedicated sewing space!  Yay!!).

Notwithstanding the fact that it's almost done and I haven't motivated myself to actually finish it, I really, really love this quilt.  It's my favorite one that I've done so far (my niece's lone star baby quilt is a close second).  I love the fabric and I love the solid negative space.  I think I managed to capture the "modern quilt" aesthetic that I admire so much.

I had a great time at Quiltcon last weekend, and took a few pictures.  I also bound off my gradient Multnomah shawl last night.  I'll be so excited to post reports on both of those after we get moved!

Getting ready for Quiltcon!

I cut the pieces for the paper-piecing workshop I'm taking! (#717 Crash course in precision piecing with Lee Heinrich.)  I'm so excited!

I still need to assemble the practice quilt sandwiches for my FMQ workshop and gather all my little supplies.

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I keep working away at my Gradient Multnomah, and I'm getting close to the end!  I did almost two repeats of the lace in my two hours of seminars this past Thursday (last week I did just over two).  I added two more repeats on each side of the shawl, so the rows are taking longer.  I now have more repeats than the pattern calls for, but I'm going to keep going until I run out of yarn.

Last night I was reading an Interweave Knits magazine, and drooling over all the lovely patterns.  I can't wait to finish at least one of my embroidered pillowcase projects so I can start knitting a sweater!

Two weeks of CMS/Colloquium knitting

This picture is from last week, but I didn't manage to get one between my seminars on Thursday afternoon and church this morning.  It looks pretty much the same, just with three-ish more repeats of the feather and fan lace.  I'm getting to the next color change!  I'm really happy with how it's turning out, and from now I'm just chugging along until I run out of yarn.

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I started the lace edging of my Gradient Multnomah shawl this week.  It feels like it's going a lot slower now that the rows are so long.  I weighed my remaining yarn after the first feather and fan pattern row, and I had 48 grams left (of a skein that claimed to start at 75 grams).  When I was choosing the pattern for this yarn, I came across a pattern with a wide lace edging that said to start the border when you have 50% of your yarn remaining, so I'm guessing that my lace edging will be quite wide.  That's okay with me!  I'm really enjoying how the shawl is turning out and how great the shifting colors look.

Cello Bow Sleeve

 I finally got around to making a sleeve for my cello bow.  One of the issues I have with my cello case is that when it is closed, the bow touches the front of my cello, leaving rosin residue on the instrument that I can't seem to get rid of.  It's really not good, so for a long time now I've been planning to make a sleeve to store my bow in and protect my cello.  A lot of violinists use a blanket or a bag around their violin, but for a large, vertical cello case, I think this is a more manageable solution.  I used a piece of fabric I got in a Hawthorne Threads scrap pack.  It was about 4.5" wide at its narrowest point, and is a large-scale print that I didn't think would benefit from being cut into smaller pieces for some hypothetical future project.

I cut a piece of fabric 4.75" by about 35", which was the longest piece the original scrap of fabric would allow at that width.  I made a wide (about 2.5") double hem at the selvedge end, and then did a narrow french seam around the raw edges.  I used a few internet french-seam-pillowcase tutorials for inspiration.  The sleeve fits the cello bow perfectly, with enough ease to get it in and out easily, but not so much that it gets in the way snapping it into the case's bow holder.  Here's an action shot:

Seminar knitting

I've been knitting along on my gradient Multnomah shawl.  This week my department had two job candidates visiting, so I knitted in both of their talks.  We've got another candidate tomorrow and our two regular seminars on Thursday afternoon, so by the end of this week I should have some good progress to show on the lace section - I'm one row away from starting the lace.  I took it to church yesterday and worked on it between services and I got a lot of compliments on it - including from some people who don't usually comment on my knitting.  (Although I did hear the story about the time one of the choir members sat on another choir member's knitting needles in the middle of a service.  I hear that story almost every week, from the same man.  It has a faintly misogynistic note about it: a cautionary tale about the danger that a woman can pose to men, paired with a reminder that I should be careful about where I leave my knitting needles.  I've given up trying to tell him that I've heard it before and I don't want to hear it again - when I did that a few times, it was like he was genuinely surprised that he'd told it before and he was very apologetic about it.  It was super awkward.)