Sewing - Mini Quilt

I took part in a mini-quilt swap recently. I've had to wait to post until the recipient confirmed receipt of the quilt, but now she has it, here it is!

I used the cathedral windows ironing method.

What that means is that I made 25 large squares, fold the corners in to the centre, press, fold the corners again, press again, then sew together in strips.

I ordered a set of pre-cut squares to fill the windows with, in a rainbow pack. I then planned out the squares to progress in a pattern from red to violet, approximately.

Once this was ready, I hand sewed the windows themselves, including the edge windows which do not have anything in them. I also sewed the points together. Had I thought about it, I would have sewn the windows in such a way that I could have used the ends to sew the points together, but I didn't always do that, which meant more ends to weave in.

I'm pleased with the effect though, and my recipient likes it too, which is the most important part!

Dyeing - Sock Yarn Gradient Dye

What is a gradient yarn? There's a lot of discussion about this in the yarny world; but for the purposes of this blog, a gradient yarn is one that changes from one colour to another over the course of its length in a gradual way. Sometimes there is a third or fourth colour.

There are a number of ways to make a gradient yarn.

1. spin one long single from two colours of fibre, blending as you go, and then n-ply it
2. spin one long single from a dyed length of gradient fibre, and then n-ply it
3. spin two singles using one of the above methods, and 2ply it (this could soften the blend but may also result in barber-poling)
4. dye the yarn by splitting it into several small skeins and gradiating the amount of dye used on each skein (there are a number of ways this can be done)
5. dye the yarn by dipping one end in one colour and the other end in another colour (this risks ending up with a quite distinct colour change)
6. dye the yarn in a ball and a pan

I decided to try method 6 first.

The first thing I had to do was work out how much yarn I wanted. I plan on making some socks, so I weighed a pair of socks I own in a similar yarn. They were 60g, so I wound 60g of yarn from this massive ball of sock yarn I have.

Once I had that, I wound a smaller amount, around 15g, which I intend to use for afterthought heels. I'm not especially fond of the undyed colour of this yarn, it's a bit yellow.

Once I had my 60g, I set about finding the middle, which I did by winding a new ball until the existing one weighed 30g. Then I took that middle yarn and re-wound the ball two strands together. This is so that I will have two similar balls to work the socks from two-at-a-time.

I dug around in my "dye" box and found some nice food colours. I started with the red one. I put a good splash of red into the pan, added the yarn (including my heels bit) and warmed it up. I rolled the ball around every few minutes to try to get an even saturation.

Once it had cooled, I squeezed some of the water out and then let it dry a bit more. Since this isn't superwash, I had to be careful with it to avoid felting.

I rewound the ball in the other direction with a view to either leaving it as it was or dying from the other end in a different colour. I found that the red had split a little on the inner sections into a quite pretty shade of orange. The colour is also kind of variegated in the middle sections. I expected it would be a bit variegated, but I am surprised at how it's come out. I like it as it is though,

Next I decided to try method 4. 

I hope to knit Bosc Pear (Ravelry Link) which is an asymmetric shawl/scarf. The length can be adjusted to change the size. I'm hoping to make a smallish one, so I wound off 4 lots of 25g into connected skeins. 

I then got 4 plastic cups and put food colouring in them, red in one, a mixture of red and "black" in the next, "black" and red in the third, and then "black" in the fourth.

As you might know, black food colouring isn't actually black. The one I have is green-based, so I expected that the yarn will be green rather than black on that end. I expected the middle two colours to be a mixture, probably reddish-brown and greenish-brown, but it's always a bit of an experiment!

Once they had soaked for a while (overnight), I transferred the yarn into some cling film and put it in a bowl to zap in the microwave. I don't usually do this, I usually use a steamer, but the steamer is in the garage behind a lot of other boxes, so microwave it is!

As I expected, the black separated into other colours, but it's a nice progression still from the red, through burgundy, to a greenish brown, and then to a greenish grey. I think this will make an exciting scarf!

I was a little disappointed though, the cups were not really big enough for the amount of yarn, so the red is a bit patchy. 

Sewing - Memory Quilt

My sister asked me if I would make a memory quilt for my niece's 2nd birthday.
Despite having only made one quilt before, I agreed.

A short time later, my sister provided me with a massive box of baby clothes from my niece's first 3 months or so. I selected a few specific items with fun logos on. The centerpiece was to be the baby-grow with "Born in 2013" on it. My sister told me that she especially liked a baby-grow with some clouds on, so I combined those to produce a fab center square, as shown to the right.

Because the baby clothes are all made from jersey, which is stretchy, I ironed interfacing onto the back of all of the pieces before cutting them out. This has two benefits: it stops the stretching (mostly) and also means that you can draw on the seam-lines.

I made a few other combined blocks to try to produce 5 columns of approximately the same width.


Once I'd finished piecing the quilt, I had to find some nice backing fabric for it. I found this lovely poly-cotton with fun animals on, and after checking with my sister, this was deemed to be appropriate.

I then stitched a 1/4" seam around each block. Every single block, including the small ones. that made for a lot of ends to weave in, but it looks really nice.

I had some grey binding left over from my last quilt, so I decided that this would be a good bet for this quilt too. (I'm very fond of the Klona cotton)

I'm really pleased with how this came out, and my sister loves it too!

Sewing - My First Quilt

I have finished my first ever quilt. I decided to make this prior to making a memory quilt for my sister as I didn't want to make my beginners' mistakes on her precious baby clothes!

I bought the Gone Fishing panel from Benartex to use as the main blocks, and then cut some smaller squares from orange and grey fabric to finish the design. The back is done with the grey, and I also made my own bias binding from the grey fabric too.

I used a couple of tutorials to help me through this, here they are:

Piecing basics
Quilting basics
Making bias binding
Attaching bias binding with a machine

Things I've learned through this process:
1. Matching up corners of blocks is really hard! I understand why so many quilts have border strips in them now. For my sister's quilt I might think about staggering the blocks to reduce the amount of corners I need to match.
2. Quilting is quite hard too! I only did "stitch in the ditch" and it still took concentration and time!
3. Adding binding is also tough because of the layers!
4. Despite 1, 2 and 3, it's totally worth it, and addictive! I'm having to be really strict with myself about buying all the fabric for a new quilt, not to mention a new sewing machine! Ha! I'll have to console myself with some other sewing instead.

Crochet - Basic Beanie

Pattern: Basic Beanie
Yarn: King Cole Bamboo
Hook: 4.5mm
Size Made: Toddler

Mods: I only made 13 rounds. I then finished with a basic shell edging as follows:

*skip 2tr, ch1 (tr, ch1) five times into next tr, skip 2tr, sl into next tr* repeat all around.

Verdict: This is a really simple, really cute hat! I think I probably should have used a 4mm hook for this yarn, but since it's an autumn hat the slightly lacy effect is fine. I'll probably use this pattern again.

Knitting - A Wide Triangle

Yarn: My handspun, approximately sport weight, 283 yards.
Needle: 4.5mm

Back in early 2014 I spun some lovely fibre from Spin City (colourway Bombay)

It's got all sorts of lovely bits and bobs in it, firestar, angelina, and merino, in shades of pink and blue. It was the first time I had spun from a batt (rather than roving) and it was great fun to do. I spun about half of the batt onto one bobbin, and then the other half on another. I plied them together with a basic 2-ply, and to make sure it all got used I Andean-plied the last few yards.

When I have hand-spun yarn I'm always torn about making something from it. The yarn itself is a finished thing, but it's also full of potential to be something else, something even more beautiful. In the past I've made hats, mittens, and shawls. I'd love to be brave and make a sweater or something, but I'd have to spin a greater length of yarn than I usually do.

This is about 280 yards for the 100g. I made a lovely triangle shawl from 240 yards of handspun in the past, so I thought that might be nice in this yarn too. The previous version is a little on the small side, but part of that is that I worked it at a firmer gauge than I want to work this yarn.

I selected some lovely beads from my bead stash. They're clear beads, so they don't clash with the very multi-coloured yarn.

The pattern I've chosen to use is A Wide Triangle from Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby. It's a really simple garter-stitch pattern, with picots along the edge. It's worked sideways. which has the benefit that you can maximise your yarn usage. I weighed the yarn before I started and it came in at a lovely 108g.

As instructed I strung the beads onto the yarn before beginning, and I strung a few extras in case my shawl ends up needing more than the pattern as written. As these are small beads I strung them using a crochet hook.

I decided that about 8g of the yarn should be reserved for the center section of neither increasing nor decreasing. This leaves 100g for the rest of the shawl. I stopped increasing at around 58g remaining, and worked the 6 apex rows.


Sadly, when I got to about 60 rows remaining, I weighed the remaining yarn. There was 10g left, and I calculated I needed about 20g to finish. So with a little sadness, I pulled back to before the straight section and re-knit from about 63g remaining instead. Unfortunately, this was still not enough, so I had to rip back a second time.



I finally (with a little fudging) made it to the end, I had to add a couple of extra decreases so it's not 100% symmetrical, but then it's handspun so it wouldn't be anyway.

Verdict: This pattern is a joy to knit. It's so simple and it really shows off the handspun yarn nicely. This yarn has turned out sort of variegated, which is fun. It's a bit of a pain to pin out every single picot when blocking this scarf, but honestly it's well worth the extra time in blocking to get a nice sharp picot edge. If anything, I could have used even larger needles to get an even airier fabric.




I'm not sure if the decreases use more yarn than the increases, or if my spinning is a bit uneven, or perhaps a bit of both. I'd love to make this yet again, or possibly some of the other variations on this shawl. I previously made the Ruffled Fichu, which is basically the same design with a ruffled edge instead of the beaded picots, (pictured left). I used significantly more yarn on that one though; 850 yards in two different yarns. It's like a triangular blanket and I love it!

Festivals - Yarndale

Yarndale is a “creative festival celebrating all things woolly and wonderful” in Skipton, Yorkshire.
This is the third year that the festival has run, and it was a lot slicker than the first year (we didn’t go last year). Our only problem was that we parked away from the venue which made getting there with the pushchair a bit tricky.

With everything from knitted and crocheted bunting...



...to beautiful shawls made by stallholders...



...to the very animals that provide the fibre we spin, weave, knit, or crochet with...



...and so much more!



I had a great time meeting stallholders, squishing yarns and fibres, and doing a little shopping.

My favourite purchase of the day isn’t strictly yarn related, as it’s a new bag. I love bags. I love Star Trek. So this bag blew my mind. I love it so much. It’s from Side Car Knits.

I was also pleased to meet the lovely Louise of Spin City. She’s really friendly and has some amazing stuff. Even if you don’t spin, go check her shop out because she sells handspun too!

(Note: I am not affiliated with either of the brands linked in this blog, I just love them both!)