Tackling the queue

 I spent last weekend enjoying several hours of sewing, it was really nice to be back in the sewing room.  This week I've been tackling various projects that have been in the queue for a while.

I put together a hand-appliqued wall hanging of Japanese style tea cups and tea bowls, based on a pattern from Today's Quilter but I redrew the shapes to make them more symetrical, and seamed squares together instead of using one background piece.  I still need to embroider the 'rim' onto each cup.  This was a case of having recently ripped the pattern from the magazine, then shortly afterwards coming across the Moda 'Kimono' layer cake on sale last year, which was perfect for it. Love these blue fabrics!

Another Japanese-inspired make was this kit for foundation pieced little kimonos that I bought at FoQ last year.  They went together really easily and the pattern is perfect for these ditsy Japanese-style fabrics.

I even made a start on the Hatched & Patched pincushion kit that I bought in New Zealand!  I've done the embroidery and applique but need to add some buttons for wheels on the caravan.

I added a skinny border to my Lori Holt My Favourite Things large wallhanging. I had bought the fabric to use as a backing, but it worked for the border as well - reminds me of a vintage style fabric. It was a bit of a struggle to find a suitable border that would pop the quilt colours rather than overshadow them, this was the best choice from my stash. So this quilt has now moved upstairs to the longarm quilting queue.  Once it's quilted, I will probably trim down the side borders a bit so it will fit onto my hallway hanging system.

I discovered the Edyta Sitar Little Red Houses quilt in the back of my sewing room, waiting for its binding.  I think I parked it before I went to New Zealand.  So I've trimmed up the borders, and marked and cut eight scallops down each side using the Easy Scallop Template Set by Darlene Zimmerman - a useful bit of kit that is the right tool for the job.  Next will be sewing on the binding.

I started knitting the second Latvian mitten, and realised that what I was knitting was turning out so much better than the start of the first mitten when I didn't know what I was doing. So I was gloomily thinking that I would have to knit a third mitten.  But then I realised that I had just reached a plain black row on the new knitting, at the end of the cuff, which would be the best place  to graft if I wanted to replace the cuff on the old mitten (which was the worst bit - all tight and lumpy).  So I snipped the corresponding black row on the old mitten, and carefully grafted the new cuff into place stitch by stitch.  It was quite tricky, especially with black wool which is hard to see.  But eventually the old cuff fell away and the new cuff was in place - magic!  I had to go around and tighten up the new stitches until they matched the old mitten, but now it is hard to tell that it ever happened.  I've cast on again for a second mitten now.

And I've returned to the longarm to keep quilting on the reproduction Lone Star quilt.  I've completed all the continuous curve quilting on the star itself now, but I still have some background quilting and then the border to do.  It's so much easier to quilt this on the longarm than it would have been at the domestic sit-down machine.

Another long-time queue resident is a big dollshouse kit to build a Greenleaf McKinley victorian-style dollshouse which measures approx. 31" square by 9" deep - it's designed to hang on the wall like a display shelf.  I bought the kit in 2011 when Greenleaf had a 25% off sale.  They shipped it to the UK to me.  And there it sat in a closet for a few years until we moved house in 2013.  And it's been sitting in my dollshouse room here for 10 years.  I need to either build it or sell it.  I dithered a bit because I can remember how much I used to like the house years ago but now I'm not so into miniatures. But I've decided to have a go at building it anyway, I'll see how I get on. I won't clutter up these pages with the build, I'll put them in a separate blog.  I've had to move a couple of my other houses upstairs to our dining room, to make room for a secondhand table to do the building work.