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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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 (!) —
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.
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 —
and the strips into a quilt top —
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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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 Quilt BlockYou'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. -
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.
(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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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 —
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.
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.
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!
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 —
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.
Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, before the Minnehaha Creek meets up with the Mississippi River.
From a bridge over the St. Louis River in Jay Cooke State Park, in Carlton County, Minnesota.
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Carrying on with the Border of Endless Queen Stitches. They look quite pretty, once they're done. (Sigh!) The title of the previous post made me dig out The Serial Garden, wh. I had bought (without ever having read it myself) for the girls years ago on the recommendation of some list of quirky books for children — Laura apparently wasn't interested at the time, and Julia, who I would have thought more likely to appreciate the sang froid with which the Armitage family, especially siblings Mark and Harriet, meet the surreal events that occur — usually on Mondays, "but not always Mondays, and not only Mondays, or that would get a bit dull" — read a few stories and put it down in favor of something else, and was never again tempted to pick it back up. I thought that the book had been weeded from the girls' shelf — and I had read only the first couple of stories! — having searched high and low for it to no avail. I was quite relieved to find just recently that it hadn't after all, and have been enjoying the rest of the stories very much over the past week or so. (I already had a fond memory of Aiken because of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, which I now must dig out and re-read ….)
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This band of the "Virtue" sampler is getting worked in stages, a few threads of each color at a time: first the light-green "arcade" and adjoining leaves as I come to them, then the very-dark green ditto, adding the stems and tendrils, then the purplish grapes, and lastly filling in every other grape (why every other? I don't know, I've been tempted now and then to fill all of them …), with queen stitches. Darlene O'Steen is the queen of queen stitches — strewth, there are queen stitches all over this piece! Grapes, flowers in the central field, dividing bands worked horizontally, that border — thirty-nine flowers, each made of forty-five queen stitches! I don't even want to do the math. I like the way the finished queen stitch looks, but it's a bit of a pain to work, as for me it takes two hands to get it to lie flat. Oh well — this is one of my favorite charts ever. (Not that I'm resistant to a bit of tweaking. I came to that dividing band between the two parts of the small alphabet and thought, "wait, just crosses? Darlene O'Steen did a dividing band in plain old cross stitch?!" and I worked it in Montenegrin, because there isn't any in this chart at all!)
These are O'Steen's original colors, all DMC, though I must say they look noticeably darker in real life than in the photograph on the cover of the chart! I like the fabric a lot — there was no suggestion for it, and so I chose this 32-count “Milk Chocolate” from xJudesign, a lovely soft brown with a bit of depth from that hint of mottling.
I have not given up knitting, though it may seem so at times from the lack of it here — it occurred to me not long ago that I am actually running short on knitted socks (!), and so I dug out some KnitPicks Stroll in "Mountain Pass" that was a years-ago gift (thanks, mom!), and cast on for "Petty Harbour". The pattern is fairly simple, though I admit that the dark-green of the yarn makes it hard to see which row I'm on, and I'm having to check off each row as I go.
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I'm embarrassed to say that I've had these photos for a year and not written up the post — so here it is.
I wanted to make something for my choir director — she quilts, and so I didn't want to quilt something for her just yet … and so I thought of these Quaker-style pin-keeps that quietly show up around the interwebs now and again. It didn't need to be all from my stash, but it turned out that I could, and so it was frugal as well as plain — also very Quaker. This seemed an entirely fitting quotation for a choir director and musician —
This was testing colors. The "Shepard's Blue" has a lot of purple in it (pretty, but not the effect I wanted), and "Blue Jeans" is a handsome mid-range blue, but I went with "Brethren Blue" (the wrapped one). "Collards" and "Schneckley" were my first choices for green and gold, respectively. "Lancaster Red" is definitely more scarlet than "Williamsburg Red," which has a slightly muted note to it, but I went with "Old Brick" since it played well with the other very-saturated choices.
The assembly is a bit fiddly, but fairly straightforward. Between the mat-board round and the needlework are two layers of cotton batting, just to give it a bit of softness. The needlework is gathered around the edges with small stitches, then inveigled onto the mat-board round, and stitched across the opening to keep it in place. I don't much like the idea of glue on needlework, and so I whip-stitched the two rounds together. The stitches are covered with a narrow ribbon, and glass-headed pins stuck in at regular intervals to hold the ribbon in place. (Historically, you could actually use this as a pin cushion, lining them up all around the edges.)
I was very pleased with how this turned out — although I would rather that it was a bit smaller, this was the fabric I had, and the design and the beautiful colors are very pleasing.
I'm happy to share this chart, which also has finishing instructions (though without pictures) — Download Pin Keep 1 (Make a Joyful Noise)
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I came across the Victorian Motto Shoppe some time ago, in my travels 'round the interwebs looking at samplers and threads, as one does, and I said to myself, "interesting!" — Laura Ingalls did some embroidery on perforated paper, mentioning designs and silks that were in the barrel that came for the family on the first train that made it through at the end of The Long Winter — and I thought little more of it until for some reason a few months ago, it snuck into my mind again and would not leave. I chose this one for reminding me of my German heritage. The designer (and owner of the Etsy shop), Nancy Turner, assures us in the instructions that it is very easy and will take only "a few evenings" to complete! It took me a bit less than a week, actually, but that might have been because I had to forget a lot of cross-stitch method, and partly because getting the curves pleasing while limited to 45°-angled stitches took a bit of trial and error! but this was not particularly onerous, and the heavy paper is sturdy enough to withstand a fair amount of (gentle) picking out and re-stitching. I'm a sucker for a bit of satin stitch anyways!I changed the originally-red flowers to blue, as they reminded me of poinsettias, and that made it a bit Christmassy — all four flowers took four out of the five strands in a skein of Gentle Arts' "Crystal Lake".
Starting and stopping threads took a bit of finagling, as there aren't many places to secure ends, and you have to be careful about crossing an open hole in the paper, as the thread will show. I tried a couple of different ways as I went, and found that what seemed to me the most efficient and secure way was to bury the end between the paper and the satin stitches as much as possible! though obviously there are still some ends coming out at the back. These can be trimmed, which I haven't done yet. (Nor have I poked out the numerous "hanging chads" …)
I thought this was going to be just a single flirtation with perforated-paper mottoes, but I could be persuaded to do another. In the meantime, here are some links about the history of perforated-paper embroidery, with numerous examples —
- a post at Mary Corbet's "Needle 'n Thread"
- another at Adirondack Girl @ Heart
- Claudia Dutcher Kistler's entire website devoted to perforated-paper embroidery!
- two posts at Tricia Wilson Nguyen's "Thistle Threads," here (these "lace"-edged cards are I think the kind that Laura Ingalls worked) and here (some free charts for small pictorial projects)
- and an alas now-defunct blog by Jennifer Clement of Sage Stitchworks with photos of all of her company's designs (most in the motto style)
(I don't know what the ratio actually is, but there are some Victorian mottoes worked in tent stitch, whereas many more seem to have been worked in this 45°-angled stitch — quite a number of the latter in variegated thread!)
The other project I finished recently is the "Awake My Soul" cross stitch by La-D-Da, which I thought would be a good piece to donate to my choir's next fund-raiser. I missed this year's, since I had to wait so long for the fabric, but I really wanted to use what was in the original chart, which is 36-count "Legacy" by Picture This Plus. The threads are a combination of Weeks Dye Works, Gentle Arts, and DMC. Now I have to look for a frame!
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I had a bonus book for the 1937 Club since I managed to acquire — and read! — eight instead of just seven. The bonus is Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham, which I chose because the girls and I had watched and enjoyed the Peter Davison "Campion" series some years ago, and I remember them fondly. This particular book has a similar setting to Marsh's Vintage Murder, being full of "theatricals" with the detective thrown in amongst them not particularly willingly, but while much of the action in Vintage Murder takes place in a theatre, Dancers is set at the country home of wildly-famous actor/dancer Jimmy Sutane, which is filled with fellow actors in the current hit musical and numerous hangers-on, as well as the household staff. Sutane asks Campion to the house to find out who has been playing rather dangerous practical jokes that have brought his nerves to the breaking point, but things turn deadly when a universally-disliked has-been actress is hit and killed by Sutane's car.
I was, I suppose, already predisposed to like Campion, but he certainly comes across more warmly than Alleyn, possibly partly because Campion is generally wittier than Alleyn, but also because we are given much more of Campion's feelings than of Alleyn's — certainly in this particular novel, in which Campion, to his dismay, finds himself falling hopelessly for Sutane's wife. Although Campion's man Lugg does not make his entrance until about midway through the book, the rapport between him and Campion, so effective in the series, is happily much in evidence here as well.
(Dancers in Mourning is available in a Canadian e-book edition here.)
Links to other readers' reviews of books published in 1937 can be found here.
A Bluestocking Knits 