My secret garden BOM finished

The blocks for this quilt have been finished for a few months. I had already sewn them into three strips of four but one strip was a different length, so I had to measure every block and all that was necessary was to add a thin strip of the background fabric to one strip.

I soon had it sashed with a low volume text print with my usual grey screen print as backing.

A turquoise dotty print by Moda was a perfect find in my stash for the binding. Looking forward to seeing what will be chosen as the June project to work on.

May 2017 socks

I may not have shared my April socks with you yet but my May socks have been started, finished and blocked. One of the reasons my April socks were delayed is that I lost my knitting bag along with three pairs of needles, a half started pair of socks and my sock ruler. It took me a few weeks to come to terms with having lost my bag. Silly I know!

I have knit plain vanilla socks with a fish lips kiss hill using a multicoloured yarn that I purchased at the Edinburgh Yarm festival in January 2016.

So faded sweater

I have admired the technique used by Andrea Mowry for her find your fade shawl but didn't like the finished product. For me the shawl was too big and I didn't like the shape. A sweater however has been on my to do list for some time. When I heard that Andrea had also designed a sweater using the same technique, I knew that I had to cast it on.

I searched in my stash to find some suitable yarn. The Long sleeved sweater variation uses five skeins of wool. All of them fingering weight.

After some dithering I've chosen my colours and  I cast on the sweater 10 days ago. I have made good progress given that this is my first knitted garment.

May 2017 UFO challenge

Having done no UFO work in April I had already chosen the garden BOM as my main project and fortunately it was chosen as the project for May for the APQ UFO challenge. I had previously tried to piece the top together but found that some of the strips were not lining up. Fortunately when I had a closer look there was only one block which was half an inch too small. I added a small piece of the border fabric to make the block larger.

Once I had focused on putting the top together it was finished in less than a day. Today I loaded it onto my long long arm and it was soon quilted. I also trimmed it down today ready to apply the binding tomorrow.

I have picked out a red fabric from my stash for the binding and need to check that I have sufficient to do at 2 inch double folded binding tomorrow.

Once upon a time – April update

I didn't make any progress on my frosted pumpkin once upon a time sampler in April. However I have worked on the April block this week and I'm pleased that it is now complete. I think this sampler was originally published in 2014 so I am only three years behind.

I am now going to focus on the May block. Fortunately as you can see about 50% of it is already complete. Fingers crossed I can get it finished this week and on to something else.