A Bluestocking Knits

  • Sewing Stars

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    For a long time, I've had a hankering for a quilt like the one called "Kate's Stars" in Diana Boston's book about Lucy Boston's quilts — she of the "Green Knowe" series of children's novels set in and around a house much like her own ancient one at Hemingford Grey. All of Mrs. Boston's quilts — and she was famous for them, not only their number and her skill in designing and stitching them, but in her frequent use of them not only on beds but as sofa covers and curtains in her exceedingly drafty house with its origins in the 12th century — were stitched in the English patchwork manner, basting fabric around paper shapes, then stitching those basted shapes together along the edges by hand. 

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    Godmanchester_to_St_Ives_084_The_Manor_House _Hemingford_Grey_(22324526065)Source: Wikimedia Commons

    (This photo is the "newer" side of the house — for more photos of the house and of Mrs. Boston's patchworks, see the Green Knowe website here. Tales of Cloth has a post about Mrs. Boston's quilts and their inspiration for other quilters.)

    I know I need another project like I need a hole in the head, as they say, but there it is — I've had the quilt papers for some years now, and piles of fabric scraps even longer.  I had some semi-inactivity last week, staying with my mother-in-law after her hip surgery, so it felt like the time was right!  I got most of these stars basted and sewn then — the method has long struck me as rather tedious and inefficient, having to baste the paper shapes to the fabric then go over the whole thing again to sew it together, and this is certainly true — but if you consider the exceptional tidiness of the finished block, especially in places where numerous points come together, and the fact that you almost never need to re-sew a block that got off-kilter (ahem …), the "tedium" of the prep loses much of its sting.

    After making up a few more stars, I will decide on a solid color — some shade of off-white, I suspect — for the diamonds that will go between the arms of the stars to connect them to each other.

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    This and That

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    Here are some of the things I've been doing lately —

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    Crocheted dishcloths for Julia, off to university at last and living with three roommates in an apartment on the edge of campus, cooking and cleaning for themselves.  Above are the Berry Stitch cloth (without its edging), the Waffle Stitch cloth (potentially useful as a trivet, I suspect, it's so thick!), and a returning favorite, the Spiral Double Crochet cloth.

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    I'm quite pleased with these, actually — a pair of potholders (also for Julia) to the 1960s "Pinwheel Potholder" pattern from Free Vintage Crochet.  Because I thought it would be fun, one side is solid and the other variegated.  I had to add another round to get the recommended dimension on the variegated side, as apparently the two Sugar 'n Cream colorways are not quite the same weight (!) — and then fudge the edging that stitches them together — but this was not difficult.  I'm highly amused at the plainness of the solid pink with the surprise of the variegated colors when you turn them over — simple pleasures!

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    And a set of table napkins in a fabric selected by herself from the deep-sale bin at Hancock's of Paducah —

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    This one is to replace a decrepit one at home — it is actually a face scrubbie pattern, but eh, I'm using it as a dish cloth!  I like ones with a good amount of texture to them, which the front-post DCs certainly give.  (My phone camera, by the way, seems entirely content with the color balance and saturation of fabrics, but gets a bit manic when confronted with kitchen cotton.  None of these is particularly accurate — though the blue-and-white one is probably the closest.)

    And the current state of my "Quaker Sampling III" — nearly there!

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    Two Finishes

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    I have finished the little embroidery kit from Hoffelt & Hooper — it's called "Charlotte" in light gray on their website, but is unnamed in their Etsy shop — the frame is from Universal Happy Gift (!) both on Etsy.  My photo does not do justice to either its color or its prettiness, but it is just too hot to mess around with the now-manual-focus-only camera any more, I'm afraid — at least I did pretty well in keeping most of the reflections off of the Plexiglas.  On the bright side, I'm delighted with the frame and the finished piece, which brings the score into the positive!

    Heat wave

    Yeah, it's just really hot, and it has been for over a week.  Our old house looks wonderful with its new coat of paint, but it still doesn't have air conditioning, and a week-and-counting of well over 100°F temps (40°C!!) leaves us just lying over flat surfaces like Dali clocks.

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    Also finished, well in time for Julia's departure for her university dorm room, is this Prism quilt à la "kelp forest".  I'm still a bit regretful that I couldn't manage something more like a proper kelp forest, but there it is.  I might never have finished! — I've enjoyed in the past figuring out how to sew curves on clothing bodices, but so very many curves, in different fabrics, for a bed-sized quilt … well, Julia liked this pattern and the batiks with the sand-colored Kona Cotton, and I think it came out all right (!).

    I "arranged" the blocks so that there are more of the darker colors towards the bottom and lighter ones towards the top — underwater and all — though I'm not sure now if that really reads as such.  I do get a kick out of the little fishies print here and there, though!

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    “Virtue Outshines the Stars”

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    The "Virtue Outshines the Stars" sampler by Darlene O'Steen, one of my must-do pieces — about six months of fairly steady stitching.  I confess that I was getting a bit weary of it towards the end, but I'm very happy with the result!  I used the original DMC colors — on 32-count linen from xJudesign in "Milk Chocolate" — but made a few tweaks here and there, re-spacing the alphabets slightly, centering the elements that were (curiously) not so, and as I mentioned previously, changing out the uppermost flower in the vases in the bottom band — though on the whole, obviously, a superb design, I think one of O'Steen's best.

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    Lots of queen stitch! — here in the flowers in the border and horizontally as a small dividing band, an unusual use for it but effective.

    The new-to-this-piece larger flower is from O'Steen's "Tudor Rose Sampler" in her The Proper Stitch book, here with the arrowhead stitch center in 3045, the outline in 356, the double-backstitch "tips" in 356 + 358, and the satin stitch in 758.  I'm not entirely pleased with my choices, but I do like the proportions much better now —

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    One of my favorite details is the birds in the upper corners! —

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  • Revisions, Decisions

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    Nearly there!

    I have made a few revisions to my "Virtue" as I went along, perhaps the most obvious being the top flower in the vases at the right and left sides near the bottom, which the more I looked at, the more I thought seemed a bit stingy, almost cowering, even.  O'Steen's original is made of queen stitches, and attempts at simply enlarging it with additional queen stitches around the edges proved pretty much impossible, and so I searched around and found a different flower of the size I wanted, in the "Tudor Rose" sampler in her The Proper Stitch book — it seemed only fair to use one of "her" flowers, of course!  I'm not entirely delighted with it in this sampler, though, and so now I'm pondering my options.

    Orig

    The new flower on the left, the first one I did, is too vivid, as it were, too eye-catching.  Even though the red in the outline is the same red used in the large flower band above it, it stands out too much in contrast with the medium and light pinks ("light" and "lighter," technically!), and as much as I love satin stitch, it seems just a bit too shiny here.  This is 355+356 Terra Cotta Dark and Terra Cotta Medium blended for the outline, 754+758 Peach Light and Terra Cotta Very Light for the double-backstitch, and 758 for the satin stitch —

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    I toned down the red outline a bit for the second one, on the right, which I think is better, with 356 alone for the outline, and 758 for the two fills.  I suspected that the different reflective properties of the double-backstitch and the satin stitch would make the color look just different enough, as it were, but now I think it does need just a little bit more contrast.

    I guess that because the original flower "fades" as it goes outwards from the center, I had pictured the revision that way in my mind, but now I wonder if a slightly darker color for the double-backstitch at the tips of the petals might work ….

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  • ,

    Yowza!

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    The top border is done!  I'm pretty sure there's some more queen stitch left at the bottom — which is still rolled up on the frame — but this feels like a milestone!

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    Progress: Friday

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    I have finally joined the second corner of the Eternal Queen-Stitch Flowers border on the "Virtue" sampler — oh, it's tedious sometimes, but I'm happy with the results!  Strangely, I don't think that, area-wise, queen stitch takes much more time than cross stitch, but it sure feels like it.  On the bright side, the colors of the DMC threads — I'm using the same list as in the original — are richer than they are in the photo on the cover of the chart, which is pleasing.

    By the way, here are some more mini-quilts-turned-placemats that I just found languishing in my drafts folder (!) —

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    Above is a riff on the "Snowball" block, but done in English patch-work because a) I wanted to try that, and b) I didn't want seams across the white squares.  I had some trouble with the fit of the white squares and had to quietly (guiltily) trim off a bit here and there, I guess because I didn't get the pieces aligned as well as I should have, but I'm really happy with the result, and this is already one of my favorites in the set.

    And below is a "Windowpane" from the instructions in Kathleen Tracy's Small and Scrappy, enlarged by one column to make a rectangle instead of a square.

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    But despite the call of samplers, I am for the most part focusing on Julia's soi-disant kelp forest quilt, as she has been accepted at her first choice of university, and is off to live on campus in early September! 

    This was sewing the blocks into strips —

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    and the strips into a quilt top —

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    and now I can be found most evenings with a quilting hoop in my lap, a thimble on my finger, and the ceiling fan on full-blast because it is hotter than July!

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  • ,

    “Which Quilt Block are You?”

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    Jacobs ladder

    Jacob's Ladder Quilt Block You're a traditional Jacob's Ladder block. You're a sentimental person who often recalls days gone by with fondness. You love historical quilts and enjoy visiting museums and antique shops, but at the end of the day, you can't wait to snuggle up under a quilt and dream. Make your very own Jacob’s Ladder quilt here

    These "Which [Blank} are You?" questionnaires are often like horoscopes — often you get "you are [something]" that fits, but when you answer the questions differently (because sometimes you're just in-between), "you are [something else]".  But "Which Quilt Block are You?" from Missouri Star Quilt Co. was clearly a tempting question!  I got "Jacob's Ladder" the first time, and "Log Cabin" multiple times after that (green or blue? bread pudding or pineapple upside-down cake? shoes, well, actually Birkenstocks would generally be my first choice — and aren't an option here — but you know, those pink double-strapped heels kind of knocked me for six …).  To be honest, I'm not particularly fond of the Jacob's Ladder quilt — too many jagged angles, I think, and certainly not in mustard — but I do really like Log Cabin, and I find this particular variation very pleasing, and even more so in these soft florals with a soupçon of black.

    But, yeah, both of these descriptions are pretty accurate, as far as they go!

    Log cabin

    Log Cabin Quilt Block
    You're a lovely Log Cabin block. You're a happy homebody who enjoys cuddling up with your favorite quilt and a good book. Quilting keeps you and your loved ones warm and cozy. Make your very own River Log Cabin quilt here.
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    Felted-Wool Ball Trivet à la Oak Park Skylight

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    While we were staying with David's aunt and uncle in Wisconsin last month, she apologized one evening at dinner that the potatoes had gotten cold rather quickly, and asked another time that when we went to Taliesin in a few days, we look in the gift shop and see if they still have placemats to match the table runner she'd bought there years ago.  I took a photo of the runner so as to be able to double-check — as it turned out, this particular runner is no longer available, but we had discussed and searched the internet for the pattern enough that it stuck in my mind long afterwards, and when we got home and pondered what we could send them as a thank-you, both the cold potatoes (which David and I suspected were due to setting down the dish on the cold granite counter with only a thin mat in between) and the Frank Lloyd Wright table runner pattern came together in my imagination, and I thought of making one of these felted-wool ball trivets.

    These felted-wool balls are the 2.5 cm ones from The Rainbow Barn on Etsy, who easily and promptly supplied my request for the various quantities and colors I requested, which were roughly the same percentage as in the original runner. 

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    (I think that the runner is based on the Oak Park skylight …)

    I used the tutorial by Lauren at The Bluebonnet Farmhouse which was very clear and easy to follow.  I didn't get the balls smooshed together as snugly as I might have liked, but like so many ostensibly simple things, there is a knack to getting it just right, and keeping the tension snug when moving from one row to the next wasn't as easy as I expected.  (Hand-quilting knots worked only about forty percent of the time, but later, when running an extra length of thread around the edges "just in case," I found that small quilting knots were fairly successful not so much in tying off a thread but just for keeping the thread from slipping and loosening.)  What with that and using 2.5cm balls instead of the 2cm ones that Lauren used, my mat is bigger (about 9 inches/23 cm square) and more flexible than it might have been, but that is not necessarily a bad thing when going under a large serving dish at dinner — and I'm very happy with the colors and the nod to my original inspiration!

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    In Which We Spend Ten Days in Western Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota

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    We are just back from a trip to Wisconsin and Minnesota, to visit family in the former and old stomping-grounds in the latter.  It was a good time, not too hot and muggy, though it was close a couple of times, and on one memorable afternoon, we raced a tornado warning home — it seems that river levels all over the Midwest are alarmingly high, with at least one historical home we visited now having the Mississippi much closer to it than on the day we visited.  It's strange to be back in this dry, brown Southern-California summer! 

    I took two project with me to fill in some extra hours if there were any, and as it happened I got much further along with both than I have on other trips — the benefits of visiting family, as one can knit or stitch while talking!  The embroidery is a charming little kit from Hoffelt & Hooper on Etsy — it clearly goes pretty quickly, as I hadn't even opened it before we left.  I might have got further than this, but I was merrily French-knotting along on that purple stem at the top when I thought that I should alternate the direction of the knots, to make it more "natural," but it proved to be too drastic a contrast with the quarter-inch or so that I'd already done, both in tidiness and pouf, strangely, so I had to pick them out, which was very time-consuming.  I think I'm going to have to take out all of the lavender ones and do them again all at once, as my second attempt was also not very satisfactory.  The first branch of white blossoms turned out well, though —

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    I also turned the heel of the first Petty Harbor sock — which, yes, got scrunched somehow in our checked bag, and one of the needles has come out.  Oh, well — I was thinking that I'd got off somehow when returning to the pattern stitch on the instep (the danger of talking and knitting at the same time!), and was already resigning myself to ripping it back to the picked-up stitches along the heel flap.  The yarn is a bit splitty at times, but very soft and quite pretty, though always a bit darker in real life than it is through the camera.

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    I guess I didn't take many "touristy" photos while we were away, as the selection below doesn't really illustrate the places as such! and so I will just quietly link to the ones in these photos.  In Wisconsin, we went to a number of local sights that David had chosen — although some weeks earlier when he called out from his computer, "Does anyone want to see Frank Lloyd Wright's house while we're in Wisconsin?" there were immediate and loud yesses from both Laura and me — but mostly we were happy to just go along.

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    The Japanese Garden at The House in the Rock, near Spring Green, Wisconsin.  This is not a particularly representative photo, as it is an extremely peculiar and eccentric place, but worth a visit just for the oddity of it!

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    Frank Lloyd Wright's home, Taliesin, is also near Spring Green.  It was a remarkably lovely day while we were there.  This is the Romeo and Juliet Windmill not far from the house, so called because it is actually two structures, a lozenge- or diamond-shaped section "embraced" by an octagonal portion, "Romeo" and "Juliet" respectively.  Taliesin itself has been damaged and rebuilt more than once — apparently Wright's extensive collection of Asian art was almost completely destroyed in the terrible 1914 fire, and he incorporated surviving fragments, like this little horse and rider, literally into the fabric of the new living-room —

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    Laura took this photo — a chipmunk taking a rest on a fallen log at Effigy Mounds National Monument.  It was a warm hike, but very quiet and serene the morning that we were there, quite fitting for the place.

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    Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, before the Minnehaha Creek meets up with the Mississippi River.

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    From a bridge over the St. Louis River in Jay Cooke State Park, in Carlton County, Minnesota.

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