Pictured above are two hundred and forty hand pieced geese for our quilt. I’ve been working on these since we moved into our apartment almost two years ago and it is very exciting to see them all finished and laid out on the table.

The next step is to sew them into groups of three. I’ll have to pull out the pattern to check what order they are supposed to be put together in - there are three colours of geese: light, medium and dark. This step should go a little faster since there will be only two seams to make for each group of geese.

I think my June guild meeting goal is still achievable but I’ll have to make sure I don’t fall behind.

 

An update on current projects, some are relatively new while others have been on the go for months.



The picture above is of the smaller pieces so far cut for our quilt. The orange pile of triangles make flying geese with the smaller dark blue triangles and fly toward the bright orange squares. All of the geese and squares are cut but due to shear numbers I’m cutting the little blue triangles in batches as I need them.

This is one of the projects which has been going for months ... in fact this has been on the go since last July when we first moved into our current place. My goal is to have the entire quilt top finished and ready for show-and-tell at the June Guild meeting.

... then I’ll have a basting party and get everyone to help me put the sandwich together. Yes ... there will be cookies provided :)

The pattern is from Batik Beauties by Laurie J. Shefrin and is called Mystique of Bali.


We added another row of squares to the bottom and side to make it considerably larger so that it will fit on our bed when finished) the original is a wall or lap quilt). Rob worked out a template in Photoshop so we could play with colours until we found something we liked. After that we just had to redo the math to figure out how much fabric I was going to need.


Picking the actual fabrics was a lot of fun. The batiks have such wonderfully saturated colour and there were many to choose from. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to make up this quilt so we decided to get all of the quilt top fabrics at once so that we didn’t risk not being able to match a fabric when I needed it.

These are the colours we ended up with. The blue grey is the background throughout the quilt. The textured black is the narrow border and the striped teal is the large border.


Progress so far ... I have one hundred and ninety geese finished and only sixty left to go (and they go pretty quickly when I sit down to it). The geese are the smallest pieces of the quilt so progress seems slowest while I am working on them.




I’m happy to say that my mesh triangle could now pass for a shoulder shawl and not a kerchief. I’ve still got a long way to go though - another one and a half balls of yarn before I start the top border pattern.

... and I was worried my smaller gauge wouldn’t produce a large shawl!



I worked up the swatch for my pattern last weekend and, to my great surprise, it was perfect. **This never happens.** Seventeen stitches to four inches - what a funny number.


I’ve been working on it a little each evening this week and I now have just over four inches of hat finished. I’ll be able to start the decreases for the crown soon and when I’m done that I can try it on! This is the first thing I’ve done in seed stitch and I really like the way it looks.


I love the feel of this yarn. It is Mission Falls 1824 Merino. If feels beautifully soft and squashy and is even washable!



I started renovating the coffee table on Labour Day weekend ... it’s still on the go. It turns out the paint takes longer to dry than I had anticipated and I don’t like painting in the dark - it’s to difficult to see where you’ve missed.


Once I’m finished painting (I’ve got about two coats left) I’ve got some fancy shelf brackets to secure the legs to the table top. The table is a bit rickety and I am hoping the shelf brackets will give it more stability along with looking interesting.