Comfort quilt

I needed a quick comfort quilt for my brother-in-law who is undergoing surgery next week.  I had made a red and tan quilt top a few years ago, that seemed to have been waiting for just such a need.

I sent the top to be quilted by Laurena, a wonderful professional longarm quilter, and she did a superb job with a leaves and swirls pattern.

For the backing fabric, I actually had enough yardage of a Hoffman print in my stash.  It was something  that I had bought when a nearby fabric store was going out of business.  I knew it would come in handy someday.

Due to time constraints, I took the plunge and used my sewing machine to sew down the binding.  I'm pretty happy with the result. The busy-ness of the background fabric was very forgiving of any little variations.

Here is the completed quilt, ready to be delivered this weekend:

I think that sometimes a quilt just waits for the right circumstances to find it's perfect home.  In this case, the top was already completed, the backing was on hand, and the color palette was suitable for a man.  I know that my brother-in-law will enjoy having it, and I hope he finds it a nice, comforting quilt to wrap up in as he recovers.

It's a shawl roll call

I've really been enjoying knitting or crocheting shawls for our Prayer Shawl Ministry.   My first shawls were knitted, so I decided to try my hand at crocheting the next one. 

This shawl is based on the familiar Granny Square pattern, but made into a triangle shape.  For this shawl, I used the yarn from this scarf, which I never wore, so I tore it out and combined it with the rest of the yarn to make it into a shawl.  The pattern came from this website.


For the next shawl, it was back to knitting.  I chose this pretty heathery purple yarn,

and used a waffle weave pattern,

to make this shawl:

One really nice thing about the waffle weave pattern is that the edges didn't try to curl.

The next shawl was just straight garter stitch in a chunkier yarn.  It was a variegated yarn with color changes that were very spaced out, and the resulting shawl had a self striping effect.  I didn't get a photo of it before I turned it in, but here is the little bit of yarn I have left:

After the nice break of garter stitch, it was time for a challenge.  I had found a crochet pattern that looked like a large version of a crocheted doily, and I decided to give it a whirl.

After the first rows, I began to think it was going to be too small, so I started over again with a bigger crochet hook.

I'm so glad I did!  The resulting shawl was very soft and pretty, and I ended up giving it to my mom.  The pattern came from the Red Heart website .

Back to knitting for the next shawl.  I saw this very unusual color combination in a variegated yarn:

It didn't have quite the impact I thought it would have when I knitted it up into a basket weave stitch, although I still liked it:

I separated the yarn into colors to make the fringe, and I liked it better.

My most recent finish is another crocheted half-circle shawl:

This had just enough challenge to keep it interesting, and just enough repeat to keep it simple.  I found the pattern on the Lion Brand website.   I will probably use this pattern again.

My current shawl is on the knitting needles.  It will have to wait for it's own post.