Mystery Project, Continued...

I've got little batik squares coming out of my ears!

After I whipped up my table runner and four matching square place mats, I still had a whole bunch of batik squares that were too pretty to just put away and forget about. I decided to try my hand at some half square triangle (HST) action. 

This was fun! I tried the method of placing two squares face to face, drawing a line down the center, and stitching two rows- 1/4" away from the line on each side. You then cut it apart on the line to create two HSTs at once. Handy! I worked up a whole bunch of contrasty little squares really quickly.


Then I went for the layout. I really liked this HST quilt that I found on Pinterest, but I didn't have enough squares to make the spiral really prominent and it kind of  reminded me of a symbol I didn't really want to be associated with. My suspicions were confirmed when I asked my hubby and he flat out said, "It looks like a swastika". Yup. Back to the drawing board...

What I was going for... 

What it looked like. Not quite right... maybe it's the colors?

I spent a bit of time rearranging my blocks to get something that was appealing. I liked this "saw blade" look a lot. 



I'm glad I took a picture of that one... because the next time I looked at this project, the infamous Quark had jumped up on the table and shoved them all off onto the floor. Jerk. While I was reassembling from the photo, I played around with the blocks in the corners and ended up with this:

Perfect! Stitch it!

And so it was. I still need to finish all of my little batik projects; I haven't completed the quilting on any of them yet. Stay tuned to see them... eventually! :)



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kaffe Fassett Jelly Roll Jam Quilt

Image
Here it is! I tried something new with this quilt, and I'm not sure I was 100% successful. The binding was unusual for me. I normally do the whole 2.5" strip, hand-sewn binding thing, but I wanted to try using the backing as the binding this time to keep it simple. I LOVE this backing fabric ; it's so soft, and it tied in so nicely with the color scheme of the Kaffe Fassett "Tides" jelly roll. I have noticed though, that this particular fabric shows a lot of poke holes, so be careful with pin placement and try to get your seams right the first time around. I worked really hard to turn my edges under nicely and pin well, at least every 2 inches. Unfortunately, as I kind of  suspected, some of the loose ends bulged out in between the pins as my presser foot went over them. Now that I've washed the quilt, I can see that I need to do some seam ripping to fix a lot of little peeks of batting and frayed edged. Sad face. I also noticed tha
Read more

Temperature Record Cross Stitch

Image
I tried telling people years ago that cross stitch was cool again... and I WAS RIGHT! Pay no attention to the random pet hairs... I'm in this crazy cross stitch group on Facebook that features non-traditional subject matter, from naughty words to feminist themes to potty humor and beyond. While I don't consider it my style to be crass or subversive, I do appreciate the modern approach to a very old craft that is normally associated with "grannies" (not that there's anything wrong with that, either). This group has introduced me to a variety of interesting new project ideas, including the concept of a temperature stitch. Essentially, each day's high and low temperature are recorded in different colored stitches to provide a really interesting visual of our climate and seasons. This whole idea has my head spinning around ways to physically represent climate change in artsy-crafty form by going through the last hundred years and stitching a huge collecti
Read more

Football Blanket Crochet Chart

Image
Here is the chart I worked off of for the football blanket... it is sized for a baby afghan, about 36 by 48 inches, but the chart can be easily modified to make it bigger. I worked the entire blanket in double crochet, and the white laces in the center were made with the tapestry stitch, in which the color not being used is carried across the top of the work and the stitches are made over it, concealing the color. Here's a pretty good tutorial for the tapestry stitch, although as I stated earlier, I did all double crochet for this project, but the concept is the same. For this particular blanket, I used five balls of Bernat Waverly yarn in brown, and almost a whole skein of Red Heart Super Saver in white for the lines and laces. I believe I used a size J hook, which made the project go nice and quick. Adjust the size of yarn and hook to fit your needs- everyone crochets differently! Happy crocheting! :) Update: if you love this football blanket, check out my football
Read more