Knit One Quilt Too

Autumn Leaves

Today, despite still recovering from the flu, I had to take the kids to the park for our annual leaf pics.  It was a gorgeous fall day, just right for playing in the leaves.

 
  

 
 

And here's a silly answer to, "well, what else can you do with leaves???" 

 

Something for SOAR

It's Gaenor- a Ravelry download from Corrina Ferguson!  This pattern is so easy and yet so satisfying to knit.  It's also made from my handspun.  This is a superfine merino batt from Lisa Souza that was an utter joy to spin.  I just loved this project from beginning to end.  And I got it done just in time for the Spin Off Autumn Retreat. 

 

SOAR continues tomorrow with more classes and the Halloween night Spin In.  I'm looking forward to that, but so tired from a long day today.  Photos to come in the next few days I hope. 

Meanwhile, this sock yarn stack (and a whole lot more) could be yours if you head on over to Norma Knits and make a donation to the Red Scarf Fund.

PQS2

My swap partner, Krommama, has received her package and I can finally share the secret project I had for the month of October.  This is the Placemat Quilt Swap 2, which is a Flickr swap.  It was lots of fun to do!  Sarah and I decided to challenge ourselves with this: use all scraps, include at least one word, use fall colors/theme and do it free pieced.  Mine is all free pieced and scrappy (including the batting and back).  I even free pieced those apples.  The apple centers and little squares on the basket are appliqued.  Can you guess why I put those little squares on the handle?  Applique can cover a multitude of sins.

 

I did free motion machine  quilting so that it should last for many washings.  The back is made of lots more scraps and with another pattern, it's two-sided.

 

 

I also made a bonus hotpad, just because.  This shoo fly block was in the scrap bin so I whipped this out in no time at all.
 
 

And here's the whole package.  I included a few extra goodies just for fun.  I hope Sarah has many wonderful meals with this new placemat!

 

Apple Days

We just got back from a day in the Hood River Valley- the so-called Hood River Fruit Loop.  It sprinkled a bit and was cloudy and cold, but that didn't stop us from having fun.  At our first stop, Kiyokawa Orchards we had a picnic and took a hay ride.  Unfortunately, it wasn't a great year for apples, so they had a smaller harvest than normal and the u-pick trees were picked clean.

 

 

The bins in the fruit stand were full and after an apple tasting I picked a big box of apples for sauce, baking and eating fresh.  They grow over 80 different varieties of apples and pears, so we had a lot to choose from.  We started our apple day by sharing a couple of delicious apple turnovers.
 

 

Our next stop was the Apple Valley Country Store where we watched them making apple butter on an outdoor fire.  We also sampled some bisquits and fresh apple butter- yum!  This is a favorite stop because they have a huge selection of delicious foods including home baked pies and all sorts of jams to taste.

Then we went to the other side of the valley to see the Gorge White House.  I'd been curious about this one on past drives through the valley.   The u-cut flower garden was past time, but I'll bet it's gorgeous in the spring and summer.

Next stop, Rasmussen's Farms, which had a corn maize, pumpkin patch and the Pumpkin Funland.  Here we got a bag of fresh walnuts ready to be cracked.  The kids have had fun with them since we got home.  Who would've thought cracking walnuts would be such entertainment?

 

 
 
 

Next stop was Cascade Alpacas and Foothills Yarn & Fiber.  What a great view these alpacas have! 
 

Last stop was Draper Girls Country Farm for cider doughnuts and hot cider.  We got some more apples here too because they had a variety called Christmas.  The kids got one last swing in and we hit the road for home.  What a delicious day!  We'll be cooking up apples for a few weeks and hopefully have enough apple sauce to carry us through until next fall and more apple days!

 

A Winner of a Week

 

It's been a great week here.  I've had lots of sewing time and I won two contests this week!  That was a surprise.  Kathy of Pink Chalk Studio gave away a ton of goodies she got at Quilt Market and I won a really cute bag pattern, the Abigail Bag by Serendipity Studios.  Also, Norma at Now Norma Knits did a suprise drawing for the Red Scarf Fund and I won a gift certificate to Knitspot!  On top of that I got a swap package sent out.  It will have to remain a secret for now, but I'll post about it soon.

 

Meanwhile, I've made great progress on several quilts.  I finally got the binding finished on this quilt.  This is the last of the free pieced stars I made during the Bushfire Quilt project.  I had said a while ago that we would keep this one because Mark liked it.  But I just can't do it.  From a distance it looks pretty good.  Up close, I don't like the wool batting and I don't think the quilting looks that great.  I think it will make a fine community quilt though, so I'll bring it to the guild next month.

I also got the last of the Project Improv blocks put together and ready for machine quilting. 

I started a new quilt with this sweet Matryoshka fabric which was in the discount bin.  I can't believe it wasn't selling.  The hand of the fabric is really luscious!  The squares are framed in various solids and then sashed with linen.  It's pretty, but not for me.  I plan to offer this one for sale locally.  I'm still working on the quilting because my machine needs to be serviced.  I haven't tried it yet on my old machine, but I'm hoping the quilting proceeds without a problem.

 

Last Saturday was month 2 of the Collaborative Chicks classes at the Stitchin' Post.  We did the quilt "1937 Revisted" from the second Collaborative Quilts book.  It was fun, but it turned out that the scraps that I was using weren't quite long enough to get more than one 12' block out of and there was a lot of leftover "strata" sections.  I ended up trimming all the leftovers into smaller squares or spiderweb sections to use later.  Some of the 6" squares did end up in this quilt because I had 13 blocks and just couldn't justify cutting a bunch more strips when I had the small squares to work with. 

 

In the photo below you can see how I used the small squares with the larger ones.  I like it, but I'm not sure these colors are me.  Most of this fabric was in my stash.  I did buy some of the black and white just for the quilt and went out today to get backing fabric. 

The Lone Star quilt that was month 1 is still in the same spot it was before.  I hope to get to it soon.  It feels good to clear up some of the wips around here.  Tonight I was working on another oldie.  I'll show you that soon.  Have a great weekend!