Not your Grandma's Ripple

When I was growing up, anyone who knew anyone who crocheted seemed to have a "Ripple Afghan" over the back of their couch.

In my family, it was a pink and blue ripple afghan made by my grandmother.

It seemed almost like a rite of passage in the crochet world to attempt a ripple pattern.  It was even showing up in a few of the Prayer Shawls being crocheted by the women in my Prayer Shawl Ministry.  I particularly liked this one, done by Paula,  using a gray yarn with silver flecks:

I decided to give the ripple pattern a try, and chose this Summer Sonata shawl from the Lion Brand website:

I made mine using a teal colored yarn.  There are only two rows to this pattern, but you have to count carefully to get the peaks and valleys of the ripples to line up.

Here is the finished shawl.  My mother requested a prayer shawl from me to give to a friend who just had back surgery, and this one will be going to her.

Today, I think that the pattern I affectionately refer to as a "ripple", would now be called a "chevron".

Perfect spot for a quilt

My sister-in-law, Brigitte,  inherited this beautiful washstand, and set it up in her guest room.

When I saw it in the corner, I immediately thought that the little towel bar was the perfect spot to hang a quilt.   I measured the open space and began thinking about creating a little wallhanging to surprise her.

Keeping her favorite color palette in mind, I chose 2 small charm packs and some yardage of this Moda fabric called "Castlewood":

The opening was an odd size for a quilt, so I made up an asymmetrical design to include a few stars, and I sewed it all together into this mini quilt:

The next thing to do was to figure out how to be able to hang it from the non-removable towel bar. I decided to make tabs with button closures for hanging.    I made the tabs using 2 inch strips of fabric, folded with short sides together, and then sewn up the two long sides:

I turned the tabs right side out and experimented with the button hole maker on my sewing machine until I came up with the right size for my buttons.  I sewed the tabs to the back of the quilt at the same time that I attached the binding:

I brought the binding around to the front, and sewed it by hand.  (It was just a happy accident that I aligned the tabs about 1/2" in from the sides so that they didn't interfere with the binding.)  Then I sewed the buttons to the front of the quilt:

The finished quilt looked like this:

This past weekend, we visited with my brother and sister-in-law and I surprised her with the quilt.  As soon as she opened it, Brigitte said "I know right where this belongs!".  She brought it into the guest room and put it on the washstand right away.  I could tell that she loved it!

She later added a pitcher and bowl to the washstand and it made a very pretty pairing:

And then the quilt and the washstand lived happily ever after.