Margie Pearl's

Tuesday, I stopped at Margie Pearl's Fabrics in Bolivar, Missouri on the way home from my mom's. Margie Pearl's has a wide assortment of mostly quilting fabric at lower prices than most shops. I saw batiks for $4.55 a yard, flat folds for $2.99, and a display of quilting fabric on bolts for $3.99 a yard. I think everything was less than $8 a yard and mostly less than $7. I'll have to remember the knit fabric the next time I need fabric for pajamas.

The stop was mostly an exploratory trip for me, but I did get 10 fat quarters at 50 cents each. I'm seeing a Yellow Brick Road quilt in their future.

I've been working on the one-seam flying geese blocks. I have 70 geese made and I'm sewing them together in groups of 7. I plan to sash the groups together with more of the background fabric and add a border.

Review: Crazy Shortcut Quilts: Quilt as You Go and Finish in Half the Time

Do you love an embroidered crazy quilt? Crazy Shortcut Quilts: Quilt as You Go and Finish in Half the Time by Marguerita McManus and Sarah Raffuse combines quick to piece blocks with quilt as you go to create a modern version of the crazy quilt.

The block patterns use the Stack ‘n Slash technique with slightly different cutting instructions. Four block designs plus instructions for creating your own designs are included. The instructions are clear, detailed and illustrated with lots of photographs.

The pieced blocks are layered with batting and backing material and quilted before the quilt top is assembled. The quilting is done with machine embroidery stitches, combining the embellishment and the quilting of the block. The quilted blocks are joined in rows using sashing strips and more machine embroidery. Then the rows are joined using more sashing strips. With this method you never have more than the width of one quilt block under the arm of your sewing machine.

The authors are a mother / daughter team that live in Alaska. They have created CrazyShortCuts.com, a website with photos of quilts from the book, teaching tips and the authors' blogs.

Finished Objects

Remember the pajamas I finished cutting out on April 13 in End of My Sewing Slump? They're finished. I actually finished them 2 weeks and just got around to taking a picture. Naturally, I finished these long winter pajamas about the time the weather warmed up enough that I've switched to short summer nightshirts. It will be a few months before these pajamas are worn.

You may remember this quilt top from New Year, More Charity Quilts. I layered it with batting and backing fabric and finished it on Saturday. I machine quilted diagonal lines through the blocks, which goes fairly quickly. I turned it in at our Project Linus group on Sunday.

Time to cut more fabric for one-seam flying geese.

Project Linus - Third Sunday Group - May

Our third Sunday Project Linus group met at JoAnn's yesterday. Jodie arrived with this colorful quilt top. She layered it with batting and an orange flannel back and got it ready to quilt or tie. I brought it home to quilt.

We stitched some more bar quilt tops.

Lucille stitched some tone-on-tone blue squares together with a cute print to make this one patch quilt.

Susan (that's me) disrupted the group productivity. Linda_J posted a link to a video showing how to make a flying geese block with one seam last Thursday. I took squares and rectangles for 40 geese and did a demonstration for the group.

Then I offered to demonstrate a bow tie block, with no set in seams, made from squares. Louise cut some 3 ½ inch squares and the fun began.

Several tried their hand at both the flying geese and bow tie blocks. Louise really got into making the bow tie blocks and cut lots more squares and bought more of the light print fabric we were using.

Christy cut some of the bars quilt fabric into 4 ½ inch squares and finished the center of a bow tie quilt top. She took it home to add a black border.

All this fun came with a price. Our productivity was lowered and some reverse sewing was done as new techniques were learned. For example, this goose is wrong side out. Whoops!

Debby spent the afternoon tying quilts. She tied 6 quilts all by herself. Combined with the finished quilt and 2 granny square afghans I brought in, we ended the day with 9 finished blankets and 7 complete quilt tops stitched. Plus a couple dozen 1-seam flying geese blocks and about 30 six-inch bow tie blocks.

Grand Sierra Knee Socks - There Be Heels

There are heels and about an inch of gusset on my Grand Sierra knee socks. I'm trying them every few rows and the fit looks good. I worried they might suddenly turn baggy over the instep when the pattern stitch used on the leg ended. I expect to continue the gusset decreases until I have several stitches less than at the bottom of the leg.

Technical details: I used an eye of partridge heel and continued the eye of partridge pattern through the heel turn.

Earlier Posts about these socks: Grand Sierra Knee Socks - Rip-it, Rip-it,Grand Sierra Knee Socks - Progress, Grand Sierra Knee Socks - 2½ Frogs Later, Grand Sierra Knee Socks - A Frogging We Go, Grand Sierra Knee Socks - Designing

Hats for Charity - The April 6

Project: Hats for City Union Mission from local AT&T Telecom Pioneers.

Personal Goal: Make 48 hats in 2008.
Hats made in April: 6
Hats made Jan. thru Apr.: 19

In April, I used bulky yarn to speedily make 6 hats.

Cap #1 is made with Lion Brand Jiffy yarn and a J hook using double crochet and my Formula Hat pattern. (I promise will write this pattern up for the website sometime.) I had just enough of the El Paso color left for one round of double crochet at the top, then did a couple of rounds of black and finished the hat with the color wine.

Cap #2 is another Formula Hat in double crochet. This time I crocheted until I finished the skein of wine colored Jiffy yarn and then switched to black to finish the cap.

Cap #3 is a Formula Hat, this time in half double crochet. I started with the end of skein of variegated Jiffy (color Salem) and then switched to Dusty Rose. Instead of a turn-up brim, I used front and back post double crochet to make a thick bottom band.

Cap #4 is another Formula Hat in half double crochet. I finished the last of the black and hot pink Bernat Super Stripes yarn. I used some black Jiffy yarn to make a bottom band in front and back post double crochet.

Cap #5 is knitted top down in Jiffy yarn on size 10 needles. I started with the remaining Dusty Rose color and switched to black when I finished the skein of Dusty Rose. The top of the cap is stockinette stitch. The brim is knit 2, purl 2 ribbing.

Cap # 6 is a Formula Hat in half double crochet. The dark green yarn is Bernat Soft Boucle. The light green is a fuzzy bulky yarn. I have no idea what it is as it was given to me with the label missing.

I abhor waste. I bought 4 skeins of Jiffy in early March (with coupons), choosing colors that went together and would go with some grape colored yarn I already had. About 4 weeks later, I went shopping (with another coupon) for something that would go with the Salem variegated and came home with a skein of Dusty Rose. From those 5 skeins of Jiffy yarn plus about ¼ skein of grape Jiffy, I made 7 hats. There is about ¼ skein of black left. There was less than a yard thrown away of each the other colors.

Granny Square Afghans

Remember these unfinished granny squares I was coerced into adopting at National Make a Blanket Day last February. I have crossed this UFO off my list.

After buying coordinating yarn, I sat down about 4 weeks ago and started weaving in ends. And picking out bits of foreign matter. I couldn't match the brown that was used for the outer 2 rounds, so I ripped out 1½ squares worth of brown. That left me with 3 granny squares that had 2 rounds of green around the gold center and a bunch of gold centers.

I started adding green to the remaining centers. When I had about 20 gold and green squares, I started adding the taupe. I used a join as you go method, so the joining didn't create any additional yarn ends to weave in. I decided to make one afghan that is 5 by 6 squares and a second that is 4 by 5 squares. A friend had given me a few skeins of variegated yarn that I used to edge the afghans.

This is the 5 by 6 square afghan, folded in fourths. There are 3 squares with the green used by the person who created the unfinished squares. In the photo it looks a lot lighter than the yarn I used to finish the squares, but it isn't that noticeable in normal light. The finished afghan is about 35 by 43 inches.

This is the 4 by 5 square afghan, folded in fourths. I didn't have enough gold centers and appropriated some blue from my drawer of leftovers to make 4 more centers. When I ran out of taupe, I used the variegated for rounds 3 and 4 on 4 squares. I did more edging rounds on this afghan to make it a bit bigger. There was just enough of the green to use it for one round of edging. The finished afghan is about 31 by 38½ inches.

To complete the 2 afghans, I used the following:

• 3 skeins Red Heart Soft - color guacamole (15 ounces total)
• 1 skein Caron Pounder - color taupe (16 ounces)
• approximately 1½ skeins Red Heart Super Saver - color 305 Aspen Print (approx. 9 oz. used)

I much prefer working on afghans made in rows. These granny squares were made in 3 colors, which means there were 6 yarn ends to work in on every square. I'm adept at crocheting over the beginning end, but it still takes time. Repetition and organization speeds the process.

Do you want to join some granny squares? Sandra Petit has several methods of joining squares at Crochet Cabana. Join-as-you-go for Granny Squares is similar to the method I used to join these squares. Continuous JAYG by Susan Van Winkle joins finished squares with one continuous set of stitches with only 2 yarn ends to work in.