Sprinting for the finish line

 It was late May that I started to unpack and assemble my quilt frame in the dining room.  Six months later and I have now quilted 13 quilts on it, mostly bed size.  This was the latest to come off the frame: the Spindrift BOM quilt which is nautical themes, so I used a panto that suggests wind or sea.

As you can see on the reverse, somewhat wobbly quilting but hey, done is better than perfect.

Yesterday I loaded up my 30s Sampler quilt and basted it on the frame with my Microstitch gun (which jammed and eventually broke completely) supplemented with safety pins. It needs to be quilted at the sit down machine but it's so much easier to baste it on the frame, it took less than three hours and so much easier on my back.  I find the microstitch tacks don't lock the layers together completely, since they have a little play in them, so I run a line of safety pins across every time I roll on the quilt, for security.

And today, similarly, I loaded up the Giggleswick Di Ford quilt and basted it as well (using the replacement gun delivered by Amazon Prime this morning).  Yesterday I found the Hobbs Heirloom wadding was sticking to itself when I tried to use the fourth roller , so today I just floated both the top and the wadding.

That leaves one more quilt to baste (a Lone Star) and one more quilt to actually quilt on the frame (Tannenbaum) and then I think I can take the frame down just in time for Christmas.  There were a few other odds and ends I was thinking of doing on the frame, like the pumpkin placemats I bought in Italy, but they aren't worth keeping the frame up for.  It will be nice to reclaim the dining room after six months. And it will make decorating for Christmas a lot easier.

This week I assembled the 2nd re-knit of the Aldi boucle t-shirt jumper and it actually fits this time.  The shoulders are hanging off my shoulder point a little too widely, but I haven't knitted the neckline  yet so I can draw up the neckline a bit when I add the neckband.  The front and back of this jumper were knitted twice, and the sleeves three times (six sleeves in total) so there is a lot of knitting time in this!  I did knit a tension swatch but to no avail, the first attempt was huge on me so I ended up tweaking the fit the hard way - by making it, trying it on, and knitting it again.  I hope I actually wear it next summer.

 I used the beast in the attic (BITA for short?) to finish making the tote bag I started on the last day of the bag retreat back in October.  The project had been sitting around because I didn't want to risk sewing the layers with my Janome 8200 in case it threw out the timing again.  This is an adaptation of a backpack pattern, it's 8 inches deep so will hold all my craft projects, books and pastimes when we go caravanning. BITA behaved impeccably throughout the sewing.  Afterwards I sewed a simple machine cover to keep the dust off the machine when I'm not using it.

And I added the finishing touches to the Heart shaped spool wreath that I blogged last week - the hanging ribbon and a bow.  I'm pleased with how it's turned out.  It's Christmassy but not overly so, it could be used year round.

When I was looking for fabric to make a few more folding pouches (same pattern as the one I blogged last week, but I made a longer one for tools and a smaller one for klips), I came across some Japanese-themed fabric and decided to make a pencil bag to take to my language school in Japan.  The pattern is from a free Youtube tutorial. The pouch is only stabilised with iron-on fleece so I was able to sew it on my normal machine.

Last night we went to a Christmas Tree Festival at a beautiful old church in town with an unusual round shape.

One of the parishioners had produced this knitted tour de force of the 12 Days of Christmas, including appropriate numbers of each character - a lot of knitting!

A simple knitted angel on another tree - probably knitted all in one piece as a cone shape, and just the head stuffed then the neck tied off.

Being as how it is now December, we have started to put up decorations - starting with advent calendars, the door wreath, the lights today, and we bought a tree.  The garden has been unseasonably green until recently even though it's now pretty cold out (5 or 6 degrees C in the daytime), and somehow it feels too early still for Christmas.  I've been enjoying a fabric advent calendar I treated myself to, from Cotton Cuts, an American online fabric store that a quilter at the Coventry retreat regularly uses.  Each day has a little brown packet with an FQ in it (or maybe a fat eighth, can't remember) so it's a little treat every morning.  Because I need more fabric.