Welcome, 2017

There are so many great things about a new year! While I try not to set unrealistic goals, I do appreciate the feeling of a fresh start!

In my never-ending quest to use up more fabric, I have a fun project I'm going to try this year: a Temperature Quilt!

Inspired by this lady's temperature afghan, my mom decided to start a temperature afghan for 2017, in crochet. She suggested I try something similar, and I was intrigued. Since I'm not likely to crochet a whole row of an afghan daily right now, I decided to design a temperature quilt.

My quilt design involves a horizontal quilt row for every week, made of 7 "bricks" (which can be precut and handy in a variety of colors). If I keep track of the daily high temperatures (or look them up online after the fact!), I can put together a week's temperature bricks pretty quickly.

Here's my color/temperature scale:

100s - Reds
Upper 90s - Dark Oranges
   Lower 90s - Oranges
Upper 80s - Golden Yellows
   Lower 80s - Light Yellows
Upper 70s - Darker Greens
   Lower 70s - Lighter Greens
Upper 60s - Turquoises
   Lower 60s - Teals
Upper 50s - Lighter Blues
   Lower 50s - Medium Blues
Upper 40s - Dark Blues
   Lower 40s - Deep Navy Blues
Upper 30s - Light Purples
   Lower 30s - Dark Purples


Here are some of my initial fabric choices, although I've since decided to take out the pink and brown and add in more blues and purples:

My color scale gives me some freedom to make the quilt scrappy, pretty, and use a variety of fabrics, so that I can mostly use what I have. I figure, even if the high temp today is the same as tomorrow, I can use a similar-color-but-different-print, just to keep it interesting.

My design looks like this:

I spent some time looking at temperature quilt designs, and found most of them uninspiring. So I figured out my own layout. Long skinny rows for each week help to organize the randomness. Offsetting the rows and adding a border make it look neat. I'll probably do black prints (or black-and-white) fabrics for the borders, which should set off the colors pretty nicely.

I'm precutting a bunch of colors today ... bricks cut at 2¼" x 12½", and little black squares for the offset-border-edges cut at 2¼" x 2¼". The idea is to end up with a queen-size quilt (80-something inches by 90-something, maybe?).

I've started a daily-high-temperature list, and I might even fill in or color in my graph paper design as I go.

So, I'll try and include some pictures and updates as I make some progress!

Knitting socks

I'm knitting these blue mock-cable socks.

Because there's a football game, and knitting and football go well together. :-)

Orange UFO ...

A long time ago, I posted about playing with orange fabric ...

Much of that fabric is still partly-assembled ... Orange sheet fabric, and solid, striped, and plaid shirt fabric.

So, the other day, I used the orange Un-Finished Object to test my "new" sewing machine. I assembled more triangles that were already cut out, and I developed a layout for the pieces I have.

I got a great deal on the sewing machine at my favorite thrift store, and it runs well. Even though I have multiple sewing machines, I like them all for different reasons. And since sometimes I'm not the only one sewing, it makes sense to have a collection of reliable machines!

I only occasionally find myself sewing these days, but I'm always impressed at how much progress can be made in little bits of time.

I'm linking this post to this week's UFO Challenge at Jo's Country Junction. What Jo said in her post makes sense to me - a regular Wednesday UFO post is motivation to get "just a little more" done!

Socks, again

I've been making occasional progress on this pair of socks. Blue, with mock cables.

I'm knitting both socks at once, and the hard part of the heel is done on each, so I think I'm on the home stretch!

UFOs: These quilts are happening!

My UFOs have been coming along! 

Here's the short version: 

Finished Quilt Top: Hopscotch Butterscotch. This turned out big (75" x 88"), since I used mostly 2½" cut pieces, instead of the 2" in Bonnie Hunter's pattern. I love the organized randomness! I REALLY love the fancy piano-key border.

Still in the works: the quilting on my great-great grandmother's Dresden Plate. Haven't worked on it since last week; more details about this one in last week's post.

Up for border & quilting soon: the 1008 checkerboard.

Got a few stitches in this week: My modern Double Wedding Ring. I've almost got the 5-circles by 7-circles main section done. I last mentioned this quilt top in my initial UFO "goals" post here. Before that, it had been a while since I worked on it. Actually, I started this gorgeous thing about 3 years ago (2013: see this post and also this one), but then I didn't blog about it for another year (2014: see here). For whatever reason, I blogged about it one time a year ago (2015: see this post.) Who knows ... maybe this will be the year this one gets done! I'm not pressuring myself, but it does feel great to get these projects worked on!

Finished & Given away: Baby Happily Scrappily Irish. I blogged about it last Friday.

Got their portrait painted: A couple of quilts ... Two of my quilts served as inspiration for a friend's beautiful painting! See that post here.

 

I'm linking this post to this week's UFO Challenge update at Jo's Country Junction ... lots of other quilters are working on their "Un-Finished Objects", and a weekly link party helps remind us to keep up the good work.

Two Little Quilts -- Painted on Canvas!

A couple of years ago, I made two little quilts as gifts when my friend Christy adopted two little boys. I blogged about the quilts (see this post), and posted pictures of the little quilts.

Photo from my blog post a couple years ago

Some time later, my friend Caryl Lynne saw one of the pictures. She asked me if I would mind her using my quilts-on-the-clothesline picture as inspiration for one of her paintings. Of course, I had no problem with it, and I looked forward to seeing Caryl Lynne's rendition of the quilts on canvas.

Just this week, Caryl Lynne listed the painting Quilts in her Etsy shop. Didn't she do a great job?! I love paintings of quilts, and Caryl Lynne's realistic style is so beautiful.

Photo used by permission of Caryl Lynne's Crafts

Caryl Lynne does beautiful work - In addition to selling paintings, she also makes and sells recycled plastic yarn bags. She even does custom pieces by request, so be sure to visit Caryl Lynne's Crafts on Facebook & her Etsy shop CarylLynnesCrafts on Etsy.

When she sells her beautifully crafted artwork, Caryl Lynne donates a portion of her Etsy sales to support Homeward Bound Pet Rescue, a non-profit group helping provide rescues with fur-ever homes! And, according to her Etsy shop, "Custom Orders are always welcome for both crocheted purses and paintings."

Little Happily Scrappily Irish

This week, I finished up this little quilt for my newest nephew, who's due to arrive any day now.

It's a small version of Bonnie Hunter's Happily Scrappily Irish, from the book Adventures with Leaders and Enders. Basically, it's a scrappy double Irish Chain quilt.

I was pleased to be able to make this entirely with fabric I already had ... even the backing fabric had been stashed away for an opportune time!

I had fun working with smaller-than-usual pieces: the little squares finish 1½ inches -- usually my smallest squares finish at 2 inches. So these were fun and tiny.

I did an all-over quilting meander, with variegated blue thread.

In the outer border, I quilted overlapping wavy lines, with the same variegated blue thread.

The quilt measures about 42" x 42".

I'm linking this post to today's Finish It Up Friday at CrazyMomQuilts.