Joyce's Daughter

Missing Some Stitching

I haven't knitted in a while.  Knitting tends to get put on the back burner in the hot, sweltering summer.  By the time fall and winter roll around, I tend to half finish projects and then its too warm again to enjoy them anyway.  

I revisited Ravelry yesterday and found this sweet photo of my oldest in a really quick hat I designed and knitted up a couple of years ago.  Now I am itching to pick up some yarn again.  I just need to find the right project.

Ironically enough, two of my favorite fabric designers, Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably, also design some stellar knitwear.  Brandon has been Kaffe's studio manager for years and also has his own line of fabric.  Both design for Westminster Fibers. 

Brandon has these coming out any day now.

And these, by Kaffe, have become staples in my stash.

It seems everything I do circles back around to quilting.  I guess that is my cue to log off and go sew!

New to Me

After staring at the quilt blocks for the quilt along, I got antsy to get my hands on some real deal feedsack fabric and found these blocks on Ebay!  I got seven of them for about $15.  They are hand pieced dresden plates made of feedsacks from the 1930s.  The stitching is lovely and they seam pretty sturdy.  I tend to get precious with stuff like this and just horde them in a safe place.  I think I might actually use these.   The edges seem a little brittle for needle turned applique.  I have pondered the idea of trimming them into circles and making new quilt blocks.  Taking scissors to these does sort of scare me.  Any ideas? 

Before I bite off anything else I have to get these put together.  I am a week behind, which is just ridiculous.  So close to the end, but yet so far . . . 

Color Conundrum

While planning the quilts in my first post, I was totally shocked how long it took me to find seven shades of green that liked each other.  I think I stressed over the choices for about two months before I had enough.  I needed a pair of fresh eyes. A friend of mine, an artistic Montessori teacher, fixed it in about two minutes.  She fiddled around with about ten fat quarters I had chosen and pulled out the most pleasing little palette, just like that.  And dang, she nailed it.  

Green can be hard to work with.  I thought I had the worst behind me until I went to my stash to get solid white background fabric.  I had four shades of white in my stash!  Some was fabric meant to be dyed, some Kona cotton, and some just random.  That all got worked out and I chose to work with Robert Kaufman's white Kona cotton.  Easy, peasy. 

To save myself a future headache I ordered a Kona cotton color card from Purl.  I knew I would need it as a reference tool and what I got was a color dreamland.  And gosh, there are multiple shades of white.  

The collection consists of 196 colors, yes 196.  I am now addicted to this stuff, like the quilt shop is not already a problem for me.