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Showing posts from April, 2013

415 and 502

My second First Step is coming along. In some ways it's going much faster.  I'm familiar with the stitches and color scheme so I don't have to refer to the directions as often. But, I've been having difficulties in the medium section.  For greens I chose the DMC 500's, which are my favorite green.  I tend to have plenty of floss and lots of spares.  I ran out of 502. I have spares of every other 500 green, but not the one I needed.  I searched drawers.  I looked for projects I kitted up to see if there was any spare 502.  There wasn't. I was busy at lunch and couldn't swing by a store.  When I was doing errands I miraculously never went by a store that floss.  Finally, after over a week, I finally managed to find a skein and I'm going again. Then, I noticed that one of the gray squares didn't look right.  It turns out I had one length of gray floss that was not 415 wrapped around my 415 bobbin.   Grrr.  I didn't notice it

Spring Flowers

The pasque flowers are finally peeking out of the ground a little late this year. The temperature barely made it out of the teens earlier this week and the wind was brutal so some of them appear a little worse off than usual. But, the important thing is that they are here signally another spring with warmer weather and flowers!

Tetradic First Step

A few months ago I reached into my stash for an new project and picked out First Step by Genny Morrow . You need a light, medium and dark of four colors.  I was in the middle of a color class so I picked a tetrad of yellow, violet, blue and orange.  This, for me, is unusual - no greens!  But, the colors do illustrate many of the concepts from the color class and it was an interesting exercise. I especially enjoyed the squares that where the same stitch but with different colorways.  They all look so different. When I was about  a week into the project I was having fun and happened to be by a needlework store.  So, I bought a second canvas and picked out colors for a second.  This time colors I felt more comfortable with. By now, I'm ready for something new but am stuck working another one. Note to self:  no matter how much fun you are having, the second one won't be as fun. This time I used earth tones and my favorite colors: sea, sand, forest and moun

Purple Potholders

Last month I finally got to tour a friends new kitchen.  She loves color and painted the walls purple.  I assumed a nice muted purple but it was really bright.  I instantly thought of a fat quarter pack of purple fabrics I won as a door prize a few years ago.  Not being a great fan of purple I put them aside.  My friend didn't have any potholders to match her new kitchen so my purple fabric came to the rescue.  She likes potholders that are 7 - 8 inches square which elimitates most 9 patch designs.  So, the churn dash block has a larger center. I even made the backs purple.  My friend was delighted. While I had the purple fabric out I made some blocks for my next quilt. I made 3 blocks about 5 years ago and then stopped.  Now I'm up to 9 blocks and am not going to stop until I have a full quilt (final size is still undetermined).  These will be the only purple blocks.  The others will probably be blues, greens and reds.