Look what I found when I walked round the garden this morning! Proof that spring really is pretty much here. I should say that very quietly, we could still get more snow, but I really hope not. We’re forecast to get up to 20 degrees tomorrow. Amazing in March!

It’s quiet here today.

My son had an accident in sport at school yesterday, banged his head twice and has concussion. He’s still a bit woozy and has a bad headache. I’m monitoring the situation and got up every two hours in the night to check on him. Luckily he escaped having a night in hospital, but he’ll be staying home quietly till the end of the week.

I’m having a quiet morning – well, you would too if you’d been up half the night!

I’ve finished my March socks. Here they are…

Aren’t they gorgeous? I’m thrilled with them. I absolutely love the yarn and the colour – it’s Crown Mountain Farms Sock Hop Yarn in the Peggy Sue colourway. Sooooo pretty and the yarn is soft and delicious and such fun to knit. The pattern is just a plain vanilla sock of my own devising. No frills!

Hope you’re having a lovely spring day wherever you are (not in Australia of course!)

Helen

Thanks for all your comments yesterday. Quite a few of you agree with me that the dark grey I was using is too strong…..and actually the more I’ve pondered, the more I actually think that maybe the white isn’t right either.

I’ve been scouring the internet to see what other people have been doing.

The nicest quilt I’ve seen made from Terrain is probably Susan’s, which you can see here. She used navy as a contrast – and I think you’ll agree, it’s brilliant!

(Mmmm…..ponder navy…..)

Hopscotch quilts are a bit few and far between. There’s currently a Flickr group on Swoon and Hopscotch (both patterns by Camille Roskelley)…..and there is approximately 1 Hopscotch to 9999 Swoon projects. You can check it out here. (I’m going to say this very quietly…but I haven’t seen any projects yet that light my fire!)

So right now things are rather on hold here. I really, really want to make this project with this fabric….and I’m sure I’m only a hop, skip and a jump away from finding the answer. I’ve been forced (kicking and screaming, as you can imagine!) to order some more fabric. More Terrain and also some more Kona Cotton Solids and when they arrive I’m going to do some auditions and try to find something to take over from the grey and white…

Watch this space!

Helen

I didn’t get very far with my clear up yesterday. I was seduced (there is no other word for it!) by a project that I’ve been dreaming about for ages.

This is it:

Hopscotch by Camille Roskelley made with Kate Spain’s Terrain and Kona white and coal fabrics….

I’d really been pondering this for ages and thought I’d come up with such a sophisticated winning combination.

But now I come to look at it, I don’t like it at all. Actually it reminds me of the black and white tiled entrance halls that you sometimes see in posh houses in England. The glorious sixties effervescence of Terrain is lost. Completely diluted. It just looks ordinary (which it certainly isn’t) and the blocks look masculine, flat, lacking in charm.

I’m having a re-think. Luckily I have yardage of two of the Terrain fabrics, so I’m thinking this…

What do you think?

I think it’s going to knock my socks off and I have a fair bit of unpicking ahead of me!

Helen

My sewing room/office is possibly the smallest sewing room / office in the world. When it’s tidy and the velux windows are open it sometimes feels quite roomy and airy – well if I’m honest it only feels like that for people who like really small rooms, which luckily enough, I do.

Right now I seems to have accumulated a LOT of UFO’s, projects that are on the verge of taking off and well, OK…..stuff. I’m actually starting to feel a bit claustrophobic in my little room. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it, it’s still my refuge and one of my favourite places to be, but right now I can’t move and there are just piles of things everywhere. Tidy piles, but piles nonetheless. I’ve got to the stage where I can’t even really relax – there just seems to be so much to do….

This afternoon I’m going to have to try to have a sort out, but to be honest I think the answer is to get some of the UFOs finished and to use up more of the stash. Finishing the tablerunner helped a teeny bit, but it’s only a drop in the ocean.

Things seem to be a little out of control…..!

Helen

This morning I finished up my wonky star table runner. It took me much longer than I expected because I faffed around for ages handquilting and then unpicking it on the stars. I just couldn’t get an effect that I liked – it didn’t seem to matter which thread or stitch I used, I just didn’t like it and didn’t like the combination with the stippling.

Finally I decided to do very narrow straight line quilting – rows about an eighth of an inch apart from the outside of the stars moving in. I did more rows on the bigger stars than on the small ones. And I absolutely LOVED the effect. I even amazed myself at how straight I could sew!

But….and I guess you knew that there had to be a but…

I’m not entirely happy with the centre squares of the stars, which pouffed up slightly once I’d done the outline quilting. I tried ironing them really well and also handquilted round with transparent threads to try to hold it down a bit. It helped a little, but didn’t solve the problem. I guess the only way round it is to start quilting from the inside out, because I really did the opposite. I don’t know….the blocks were certainly completely flat before I started mucking around with the quilting….has anyone out there had this problem? More to the point, has anyone solved it?

Woteva…

I love the runner. I just hope it turns out to be very washable because it’s going to get pretty heavy use!

Helen