An Old Finish for Friday

Just over 8 years ago, I made a quilt for my best friend and her husband's 10th anniversary. It was before I had a blog or instagram so it never got a proper photo shoot. I recently did some repairs on it and before I returned it, I took some pictures. Well, lots of pictures.

Here it is before I returned it. It's queen size and hard to hold up by myself.

Here are some pictures of what needed repaired. Several fabrics near the top of the quilt had torn.

And the binding at the top was also coming apart. I took all of the binding off and replaced it.

I cut the torn fabrics out.

I measured each space, cut fabric to fit, ironed down 1/4 inch on each side and hand-stitched them in place. I quilted over the new fabrics and put the new binding on.

Another finished pic. 

Here are some of the new fabrics along the bottom.

There were still some little rips, from fabrics wearing out and from cat claws. I put a safety pin in each little hole to mark them. Ended up needing 14 circles to cover them. I hand-stitched them in place, too and then free-motioned quilted over them. I tried to keep the new quilting similar to the old quilting.

I tried to get a picture of the quilting but it was kind of tricky. Hopefully you can see 3 lines of quilting. The smaller leaves (the two outside lines) were quilted 8 years ago, the bigger leaves, in the middle, are the new quilting. 

Used a bright blue for the binding.

And the back.

There were lots of catches on the back. It made me want to make them a new quilt

Quilting from the back. Old small leaves, new bigger ones.

Close up of one the circles with the quilting going over it.

Spread out on our bed. It's a bit big for our full size bed but fits their queen size much better.

It was hard letting this quilt go again, but they really love it, so I guess I'll let them keep it. Maybe I need to make a batik quilt for us. Especially since my husband really liked this quilt.

WIP Wednesday - A little bit of everything

I think it's been a few weeks since I've done a WIP Wednesday post. I've been working on a few things but haven't made enough progress on any one project to justify a blog post. This week I started several projects so here we go.

The Duvessa KAL started last Friday. Despite my best intentions I didn't get a chance to cast on until Sunday morning. I try to knit a few rows everyday. Hoping I finish by the time the KAL ends on May 5th.

And Shannon's Tops, Tanks and Tees KAL started on Monday. I decided to cast on a Seaboard tank at  almost midnight Monday. Only have 5 rows done. And it's lace weight yarn. Don't see myself finishing this up either but Shannon's ravelry group is so active it's fun to read along. Even if I rarely comment. This KAL goes until May 8th, but her KAL's often have extensions.

My first Super Stitchers Club kit arrived last week and immediately distracted me from everything else I needed/wanted to do. Megan had been showing sneak peeks of the design and had wrote a tutorial for turning it into 4 coasters on her blog. The white floss was sent along with the kit so it looked like traditional Sashiko, but I wanted something more colorful and picked the floss above from my stash.

I had the yellow and most of the green done the day it arrived. I finished the green and started the pink while watching tv, very late one night. 

Colours aren't as bright as I had hoped. Might take out the yellow for a brighter yellow. We'll see.

Been working on more crocheted button flowers for my mom. She has asked for 42 more of each (grey buttons with yellow flower, yellow buttons with grey flowers). I'm almost out of floss, so I need to go get some more. Had to order grey buttons on etsy as they are surprisingly hard to find. They should arrive next week. I'd like to have this project done by Mother's Day.

And I've made some progress on the BOM that Sarah Fielke is doing this year. All the flowers are now stitched to the background and the second border is sewn on. The green ring is only glued down so I still need to stitch it down and add some leaves this month. And then put the center circle on. I'm not really happy with how my flowers ended up. My pieced circle is bigger than most since I had to add 4 wedges to make it lie flat, which took up precious flower space. Tempted to redo it but think I will wait. Once the other borders are added, I'm sure I'll grow to like it. Or at least I hope so.

What have you been up to?

A Knitted Finish - The Cocoa Cardigan

Finished knitting my Cocoa Cardigan about two weeks ago. I love it and have worn it a lot. I probably could have gone down a size as it feels a little bulky when sitting but standing it's perfect. I like the extra space to move around and I'm not constantly readjusting it.

I had to alter the cardigan a little bit after finishing. I picked up the required number of stitches for my button/ buttonhole bands but there were too many stitches, causing it to be really wavy. I ripped out the buttonhole band and redid with the number of stitches for the smallest size. It was only 7 fewer stitches but it made a big difference. I didn't redo the button band so it is still a bit wavy. Might redo it someday but it's good enough for now. ( Ugh, I didn't know the bottom button was undone until I loaded the pictures to the blog. It stays done up when I wear it, I just forgot to do it for the pictures.)

There is slight waist shaping but it's definitely not fitted.

A closer look at the yoke. I forgot to ask my daughter to take a picture of the collar edge which I had to fix. The neck opening was too wide (for me). Luckily, I have some serious crochet skills and knew how to make it smaller. I did one round of single crochets all the way around the collar, decreasing every once in a while. I really didn't keep track. The second round I was more consistent. I did 6 single crochets, then a decrease. I did a third round of slip stitches to give it a finished look. It's not really noticeable but did the trick to make the neck opening the right size for me.

Each cuff has four buttons. I really doubted this part of the design and almost ripped back and knit ribbing instead (no buttons) but I've come to really like the cuffs. I can pull them up easily to wash my hands or check my watch for the time.  Glad I kept to the original design.

Yarn used is Cascade Venzina Worsted in the Denim colourway. I originally bought mine on clearance at The Yarn Underground in Idaho but they don't seem to sell yarn online. You can find it on Craftsy, here or elsewhere.

And this lovely yarn arrived this week - Walla Walla by Into the Whirled. It will be made into a Duvessa. A KAL for the shawlette starts today. Time for me to go cast-on.