Granny gets her day

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made this quilt, called "Valentines for Granny" in the Spring of last year.  It was too late to enjoy it for Valentine's Day of 2012, but now it has officially been hung up in the living room to celebrate the holiday.

The quilt that was hanging in that spot before "Granny" replaced it was a winter quilt of an ice skater that I made back in 1999.

Our guild challenge that year was to make a quilt representing the upcoming turn of the century to the new Millennium. We were given a fabric with "2000" printed on it that had to be used somewhere in the quilt.  Can you spot it?

How about now?

Yup.  There it is in her earmuffs.  In order to bring the Millennium theme to the forefront, I quilted "2000" in the ice section at the bottom of the quilt as if the little skater had just traced it with her skating.

Lucky for me, it was a year with lots of "0's".

Have a sweet day!  My parents are celebrating their 67th Valentine's Day together today!

Valentine for Granny

I have finished the Granny squares quilt top:

My original plan was to put red borders on it, but when I saw them sewn on, I thought the large red outer border was too overpowering for the center squares.  Here is the "before" picture:

Faced with the prospect of unsewing the four borders, I decided instead to just trim them down instead and then add a white border.  The red trimmings won't go to waste.  They are just wide enough to use as binding.  I think a red binding will be just the finish this quilt needs.

I really enjoyed making this quilt, and am thinking of making another one using Civil War repros.

On the knitting side of things, I have finished the front of the sweater I am making for my son:

The shoulder shaping on the first side was less difficult than I thought it would be, but I had a hard time reversing the shaping for the other side.  The instructions tell you to work the same as the first side, just reversing the shaping.  I had to write out by hand the reverse shaping because I couldn't seem to keep it straight in my head.

Now it's on to the sleeves!

A dozen Grannies

I have 12 Granny squares finished now.

I want this to be a wall hanging, so I'm going to stop with a dozen blocks.  I made my squares 2" to begin with, and so my finished block size is about 6".

I have finally decided upon a name for this quilt.  I'm going to call it "Valentines for Granny".

I made the first few blocks one at a time, but by the time I made the second set of six blocks, I was doing as much chain piecing as possible.  I want to show you a handy gadget I have for cutting apart a long chain of pieced units.

It's called "The Cutting Gizmo" and is basically a razor blade on a stand.  You take a stack of chained pieces like this:

and press the connecting threads onto the blade to cut them:

In no time at all you have a stack of separated block units:

I find this so much easier than using scissors to cut them apart.

And speaking of cuts... don't you just hate it when this happens?

See that little slice in the edge of the white fabric triangle? That's what happens sometimes when you are using leftover fabric from another project.   Of course I didn't see it until the block was sewn together.

Have a great week!

Rockin' with Granny

Here are the first six blocks of my red and white Granny square quilt.

See my previous post to read more about Granny squares.

Go Granny!

Perhaps you have seen the multitude of Granny square quilt blocks that are popping up all over the place.   It seems to have started with a blog post by Jolene Klassen at Blue Elephant Stitches.  It's a very simple, yet appealing block that is reminiscent of the crocheted granny square afghans that were so popular at one time.

Krista at My Bugs  suggested a Granny Square quilt along and the Granny craze was launched.  I have been seeing lots of marvelous granny squares posted in the flickr group that Krista created for the quilt along, and I finally decided to make one too.



I wanted to dig into a stash of red and white fabrics that I had collected, so I began cutting lots of 2" squares:

After a little sorting and swapping, I came up with my first 2 Granny square blocks:

As I work on these, I've been mulling over what name to give the quilt.  There was one quilter in the flickr group that used all fruit and vegetable fabrics for her granny squares and she called it "Granny goes to Market".  I've been thinking maybe "Granny paints the town Red", but I've also considered "Making Granny Blush", "Granny sees Red", and even "Redneck Granny".  I'm open to suggestions if you have one.

Speaking of red, I wanted to share with you my red loaf pan that I just love.

It is longer and narrower than the average 9 X 5 loaf pan, and as a result whatever I have baked in it comes out evenly cooked.

Take a look at this banana bread I made this past Sunday:

See what I mean?  Evenly cooked from one end to the other! 

The pan came from Ikea and was not expensive.  I have never actually been to an Ikea store, but my daughter sent me this picture of a quilt studio that she saw when she was there:

I guess I really need to go to Ikea sometime and see for myself.