Monday, March 21, 2016

We all scream for Ice Cream

Forgot to post about my finished Harlequin Ice Cream quilt.

This was a block of the month mystery quilt sponsored by my quilt guild.  I sent my quilt top to my local long arm quilter, and she did a beautiful job with a swirly overall design.

I entered the quilt into our guild's annual quilt show, where it was displayed together with the other completed BOM's from our guild members.

Here is how mine looked, hanging in the show:

And here are some of the others:
These were all made from the same pattern of blocks, yet how different they all are depending on the color placement and the block layout.

This one used the exact same layout as mine, but the lights and mediums were in an alternate position in the block:

This one was made by my friend Rosemary.  She was the only one who used sashing between the blocks, and also the only one with a pieced border.

I'm not usually a fan of mystery quilts.  I like to know what something is going to look like before I invest the time into making it.  On the other hand, knowing that so many others were getting their quilts finished in time for the show was great motivation to get mine done too.



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Monday, March 7, 2016

Shawl wrap up

In 2015, I completed 12 shawls as part of my church's Prayer Shawl Ministry. It's time for me to blog about them so that I can look back and remember how they turned out and which ones  I might like to do again.


 This first one is a crocheted triangular shawlette from a free pattern on the Lion Brand website.
I added a pretty scalloped stitch to the lower edge:


 After making the shawlette, I wanted to make something more suited for a man,  and I settled on this rectangular shawl in two shades of green:


This name of the pattern for this next shawl was called the "X Stitch" shawl.  It was a little tricky to begin with, but then the pattern was easy to memorize.
I gave this shawl to my sweet mother-in-law for Mother's Day.  She almost wasn't going to wear it because she thought it was "too pretty to use".  But, the next day she called me and told me that she was sitting with a cup of tea, and her feet up, and wearing the shawl.


This next  shawl started out completely different, but I got off track with the pattern and ended up pulling it all out.  I wrote about this one here.   This was round 2 with the same yarn.


I like to have at least one easy-to-knit project to keep in the car to pull out on long car trips or when sitting in doctor's offices.  This was one of my car projects.  The yarn was so beautifully variegeted that the the simple pattern of straight knitting was all it needed. 

I gave it to my aunt who had a spell of bad health this past winter.  I was so pleased when my cousin sent me this picture of her wrapped up in it:


After success with the long variegated yarn of the previous project, I picked out some new variegated yarn, in colors of pink, green and purple, and started the shawl pictured below:
I pretty much hated the way these colors were coming out, but the other members of the shawl ministry encouraged me to finish it anyway, saying that someone was sure to like it.  Sure enough, somebody picked it out with much happiness at our next dispersal of shawls


 These next 3 shawls were also travel projects that I just kept in the car to pull out and work on whenever time allowed.


I wrote about this next one here.
It has since been given to my mother's friend, who it turns out, has a favorite color of "turquoise". 


This one was knitted with a blue heathery yarn,  in a pattern of 3's, with alternating sections of plain knitted rows:
This next picture shows the pattern a lot better, although the color is off a little.

It was the leftovers from the blue heather shawl above that formed the basis for this most recent shawl finish, which I wrote about here.
This one was given to a family friend who just underwent knee replacement surgery.

On February 1st of this year, our Prayer Shawl Ministry celebrated it's second anniversary, and to date we have crafted and given away over 500 shawls.


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