Sunday, February 17, 2013

The day started out sunny but the clouds rolled in mid-morning and I thought that might be it for our nice day. Just a short time later though the sun was out again and I think we may get a lovely sunset tonight.

It took most of my morning to clean up my studio from my last two projects – my flower quilt and my lunch sac. I was anxious to get going on my tie quilt so there was incentive to finishing the clean up quickly.

I haven’t gone far on the quilting, but I’m enjoying myself – so far. I’m used to using a zigzag stitch on Pearl for my applique work, but I was certain that Ruby must have the more common blanket stitch. After looking through my manual I found it. I played with it a bit and was able to use it on the centre piece of my tie quilt. The practice piece looked good but once I started on the quilt I thought the stitch length should be a bit longer. I didn’t want to change it in the middle of my stitching though so I’ll experiment more in another project.

I think I’m going to enjoy quilting this piece. The pattern is quite clear about what the quilting should be, and with Deloise’s hint of using a magnifying glass to view the photo in the book I think I can reproduce the look. There will be some thread changes, and a lot of different stitches (that will require different feet) but I think Ruby is capable.

I had a lovely afternoon of knitting, coffee, blackberry pie and visiting with my neighbour, Carola. She had a couple of knitting books from the library and I enjoyed looking through them. The books had all sorts of ideas of things I can make with my odds and ends of wool. Carola has promised she will tell me when she returns the books so I can borrow them next.

As I was looking out the kitchen window today (as I’m wont to do when I’ve forgotten what it was I was on my way to do) I noticed that the crocuses are blooming in the grass across the street at City Hall. My apologies to those of you who live in colder climates, but I think Spring is here!