BOMs Design Wall

I played with fabric last week.  During the first week of January it seemed like there were so many new BOMs starting.  And I downloaded several first blocks but right now I am only working on two.  This block is the first of the 2015 BOM by Morning Glory Designs:  the quilt is called Happy Days.
It was so much fun to again be searching through my fabric to put this one together.  My plan is to do all of the applique from stash: I did shop for the background fabric so I did have a little bit of fabric shopping therapy.





Do you have trouble deciding what stitch to use for machine applique.  This is such a fancy design that I had difficulty deciding about using the blanket stitch, fearing it would make the piece look too “homespun”.  And then whether or not I would change colors for each piece.  In the end I did go with the blanket stitch and decided to use black for all the pieces.  I think it looks classy and am glad I went with this.




The second BOM I am doing is Ginger Bread Party by Fat Cat Patterns.  This  is the same designer who gave us my Funky Chickens quilt.  This one hasn’t be sewn down yet but I do think I am going to use different colored threads and maybe some fancy stitches. I’ll know better tomorrow when I sit down to begin.




















Here is a picture of what we will be putting on our Gingerbread men.  I would like to make each of them out of a different fabric so I will probably have to buy some fat quarters somewhere along in the year.



















DH is going to be busy for the next month as he is directing the play Our Town for the community college where he still works (part time since his retirement 8 years ago).  Maybe this will give me more time to sew and knit and maybe even get back into my blog writing routine.   Gari

Linking with Patchwork Times: Design Walls from all over.  And with What A Hoot Quilts where you can see more BOMs in progress.

Happy Anniversary

It is hard to believe but this sweater is finally finished.  I had all the parts knit by the end of October but panicked when it came time to seam them together.  But last week I decided that it had to be completed as I wanted to wear it on our anniversary, which interestingly is today.

 

And since we have been having cold weather I decided I needed a cowl to go with the sweater. 

 

I still need to block these and then decide if I am going to put a closure on or not.

 

 

I paid a visit to my local yarn shop where the owner is beginning to dye her own yarn “exclusively” for her customers.  I found this skein of yarn and a pattern called something like “rib error.”  The funny thing is that this is not what it looked like so I guess this is a rib errors error.  Anyway I really like how this turned out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So much so that I made a cowl to match the hat.

Of course all that meant that I was out of that yarn: what’s a knitter to do?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I bought these two recently hand dyed skeins of yarn.  I said I wanted to knit bright socks so how’s this?

 

 

Well, and this is the yarn I decided to use to begin a new pair of socks (yes, I bought three different skeins). This is the milder of the three but I am working myself up to BRIGHT.

 

 

 

 

 

I need to get back to the short sleeved sweater but

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had started these socks before I bought the above yarn so I want to finish them first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what do cool people do to celebrate their 54th anniversary?  Yes, they go to see Paddington.  As I said, our anniversary is today but we celebrated yesterday.  Having given it some thought I decided that Saturday would mean a theater full of little children but Friday might not.  And I was so right.  The movie was great: we will get it again to see at home.  And afterward we did some antiquing, ate out and finished our day in the big city with a stop at Dunkin for coffee and, of course, donuts.

 

 

And now we are back to our daily lives and beginning our 55th year.  Yay!!       Gari

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: 1/23/15

 

Since I only have one additional photo I decided to amend this post rather than write another. 

 

As you can see these socks have grown some this week.  I have been either sewing or gadding about more this week so there has been less knitting.  The orange socks have also grown some but not enough to take time for another picture.  I hope to have more next week.   Gari