February 2018

I finished knitting a sweet little swaddling blanket this month for Project Linus. It measures 22x26". Now I am trying to use up the leftover yarns in a larger blanket. I just realized that this is the second blanket this year that has chevrons. I am on a roll!

The flu drug me down this month. The old man and I have been sick concurrently and it hasn't been fun. Please take care of yourselves and try not to 'catch' this. I haven't fully recovered from this flu, I'm tired and there is a residual cough. My ambition is gone, so when I get home from work I sit and crochet. We were sick on Valentines Day so we didn't go out to eat. We waited until this past Friday, during a nasty snow storm, to go for dinner. The roads were icy and people were driving too fast for the conditions so there were plenty of cars off in the ditch.

I actually have gotten two quilt tops pieced this month. One is a kit from Connecting Threads called Cottage Lane. The one I made is all greens not the fabric shown in the download. I actually had the presence of mind to order extra fabric since I wanted to enlarge it enough that there would be considerable drop on the bed. The top measures 108"x108" (yikes!) and I am trying to come up with a quilting design for it. The old man is really rough on quilts so straight line quilting is out since it doesn't have the 'give' that would be needed. I can't count how many times I've repaired one quilt because of popped stitches but I'll come up with something. The other quilt is one my SIL asked me to put together for her. She had a dozen counted cross stitched blocks that measure 13"x13". Since they were stitched on Aida cloth, which is very unstable, I had to stabilize them with interfacing. Now that the sashing is on, I realize the sashing is not as thick as the blocks. I think I'm going to spray baste some strips of batting onto the backside of the sashing to bring it all to the same weight. Then I'll add a lightweight batting or flannel (instead of batting) and back it and quilt it. What to quilt? A simple pattern like ribbon candy in the sashing and border and echo quilting in the cross-stitched blocks.