Binding the Quilt – The Best Part of Quilt Making

This weekend, I’ve been working on attaching the binding to my quilt. This is my favourite part of quilt making.

 

First I machine sew strips of fabric to the edge of the quilt.

 

 

 

 

Then I fold the binding over and hand stitch the binding in place. 

 

 

 

 

The result is a nice, neat edge for the quilt.

 

 

 

 

What makes this my favourite part of quilt making is that I get to snuggle up on the couch, under the quilt while I sew the binding in place.  Cici has discovered this is her favourite part of quilt making too, and she has been snuggled up with me for much of the weekend.

 

 

 

 

Jacob also couldn’t resist joining us on the couch, but he is a teenager so we are not allowed to take his picture.

 

 

 

 

Here are some extra pictures of Cici enjoying the quilt this weekend.

 

 

 

Big Projects (and a bit of a vent about KnitPicks)

I’ve got a couple of big projects on the go right now, which doesn’t make for interesting blogging fodder. Sure I could post a nice step by step tutorial of my projects which would give me regular posting material, but sadly I’ve got a lazy streak that prevents me from taking that approach.

In the past few weeks, I’ve made some good progress on my quilt. I’m just about ready to put on the final border that will finish the top. Here are the border pieces working themselves together.

Here is the rest of the quilt top in its current state.

When I’m not sewing, I’ve usually got my butt on the couch watching TV and knitting (that’s the lazy I spoke of.) I’m working on a lace cardigan that is coming along nicely, albeit slower than a pair of mittens or socks.  It is difficult to find a good way to photograph lace in progress.

And now on to KnitPicks…

If you’ve been reading my blog you will know that I am a huge fan of KnitPicks. I love their website, love their catalogue, love their prices, consider their quality acceptable, and respect that they give independent designers a professional sales outlet. All that said, my KnitPicks shopping days are now behind me. Here is my vent, to tell you why.

On February 2, my credit card was used fraudulently. If you know me well, you will know I’m obsessed with our finances, and check my bank statements on a daily basis. I was checking our accounts one night when I noticed that someone had been doing some shopping down in Florida. While I wished it was me, I knew I was stuck in Ontario, in the midst of a Canadian winter. My husband immediately called the bank, and they identified that the fraud occurred on my card, not his. (Darn – he’s been enjoying that part of the story way too much!). The bank asked if I do any shopping online. I said, “only KnitPicks and they couldn’t be the problem.” So, my credit card was cancelled and I waited a week or so for a new one to arrive. We’ve had to cover the charges on our card, for purchases we didn’t make. I’m certain the bank will reimburse us, but we haven’t seen the money from them yet, so as of now we are out $564.

Since then, we’ve been wondering where my card might have been left vulnerable… until this weekend. Thanks to the wonders of social media, I discovered that KnitPicks unwittingly disclosed their customers’ personal info including names, credit card numbers, home addresses and phone numbers. They discovered this error on January 25, when they filed the necessary paperwork, but did nothing to notify their customers. They claim they do not store customers’ credit card info, but clearly they did store the info and left it vulnerable.

I have no way of knowing if the KnitPicks breach was responsible for my case of fraud, but judging from what I’ve learned this weekend, it seems highly likely. Social media has been alive with discussions of the KnitPicks situation. Twitter, Facebook and Ravelry, have hundreds of knitters stepping up to say the cards they used at KnitPicks had to be cancelled due to fraud. In all cases it was a similar pattern of small charges being made that added up to several hundred dollars.

The folks on social media all shared the same thoughts that it was appalling that KnitPicks did nothing to notify their customers and continued to stay silent in the midst of all the social media conversations. Eventually the President spoke up last night and posted ablog addressing the matter. Well, he addressed the matter for US customers, but did not make any mention of customers from Canada, or other countries. This, of course, caused more stirrings, so eventually he updated the blog post to say that letters of notice will be sent to Canadian customers.

While I understand that fraudsters can attack any company and KnitPicks is one of the victims of this fraud, I can’t stand loyal to a company that handled the situation the way they did. They stored my information unsecured; when they discovered this, they stood silent. If they would have told me about my card being compromised on Jan. 25, I would have cancelled it and it wouldn’t have been useable on Feb. 2. The fact that they are just now getting around to producing a communication to their Canadian customers is just rubbing salt into the wound.

I’m sure KnitPicks has learned from this lesson and will be secure in the future, but after this experience it seems stupid to willingly give my money to such an irresponsible company. Sadly, I will shop KnitPicks no more.

(Meredith – this means more in-person yarn shopping is in our future!)

Finshed Pillow and First False Deadline of 2013

I’ve fallen ill to startitis lately, and I now have too many projects on the go. I was determined to finish something this weekend, so yesterday I slept in (priorities!) and then I hopped out of bed and finished the pillow I was embroidering. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

First False Deadline of 2013

Being a sucker for a possible prize, I decided I NEED to make a new pair of mittens by the end of January, to participate in a little contest on Ravelry. I get bonus entries if the mittens are lined, and of an “ethnic” nature. All of that collided into starting these mittens.

I plan to line then, and the pattern is influenced by traditional Latvian patterns, so I think I can get all the bonus entries I’m striving for. Mostly, I just wanted to make a pair of lined mittens for myself, and I figure it is better to do that before the winter ends. (Although given the wonderful double-digit temps this weekend, winter may already be over!)

I was also desperate to use the Oregon Heather Palette I had in my stash. I photographed the mitten start outside, hoping the natural light would help me catch the beautiful colours in this yarn. It is an incredible combination of blues, reds and yellows against a sandy brown base. So beautiful, when the sun brings out the colours. Here’s a close-up of the yarn.

What’s Next?

Now I should be sitting down to knit, but I’m off to the grocery store to buy some avocados. I’m easily influenced, and @DinaPugliese posted on Twitter that she is having guacamole with the Golden Globes tonight, and now I NEED guacamole too!

Back to Basics - Embroidery

As noted in my last post, I need to sew a pillow for our couch. The requirements were simple – removable cover for washability; something that looks good on the brown leather couch; and preferably fake suede, since that is the material the last pillow was made from, that we have loved to death.

As part of the New Year’s shopping adventures, Cathy and I hit Fabricland which was a fine place to find a cheap piece of fake suede. I picked out a nice camel coloured piece and expected to have a pillow that looked plain but functional.

The more I thought about it that was just too plain. I contemplated adding some tucks for visual interest, but that didn’t quite do it for me. After giving it more thought, and being thwarted by not having enough yarn to start a specific knitting project, I came up with a plan… embroidery. Embroidery is probably the first needlework my mother taught me how to do. It is quick and easy to learn. It can be used for a simple embellishment, or to create a grand, artistic masterpiece. (In this instance, I’m going for simple embellishment.)

After a quick trip to Mary Maxim yesterday, and I was equipped with a $.49 bit of embroidery floss that is helping me turn this…

Into this…

Here is a close-up of the detail. A simple chain stitch applied in a swirling pattern.

 Tonight I’m taking my new stock pot out for a run, and making a pot of beef barley soup. I hope it is good, because I doubled the recipe, just to justify using the stock pot!

Big Plans for 2013

Happy New Year!

 

The first days of January are always so wonderful. A vast, full year of potential lies ahead. For me the potential holds the following:
 

More blogging

I won’t promise to achieve this immediately, but I do know my blog has dwindled lately, and I miss it. My day job (the one that pays!) has been very greedy with my time lately, which is why the blogging has slowed. I have a plan in place to help correct this situation, but it doesn’t take effect for another few weeks, so you won’t see an immediate change, but I hope there will be more frequent posting in the future.

 

More pictures

I’ve just bought myself a wonderful new camera. It isn’t state of the art (in fact, it is last year’s model), but it is a wonderfully compact Nikon Coolpix S6200 that will live in my purse so I’m more frequently ready to take a picture or two, to share with you.

I didn’t actually use it much over Christmas, because we were either talking or eating, but I did take a moment to snap the following picture while I was eating my lunch today. The view of the decorations from my food court table, at First Canadian Place, was quite stunning. This picture doesn’t quite do the holiday décor justice, but I’ll share it as just one example of pictures to come.

 

 

More cooking

We spent the weekend with our great friends in Niagara Falls. We were there long enough to enjoy some spectacular food and drink. In addition to hanging out in their kitchen we had some time to kill during the day. What are two women most apt to do with time on their hands? Shopping!

We stumbled upon a Stokes store that was having a great sale and so I bought some great new toys. I’m not much of a cook, but I do love a good kitchen gadget. I recently decided that my hand mashed potatoes were not good enough, and that I NEEDED a potato ricer to improve things. So, into the store we went and I bought a potato ricer, micro plane grater, stainless steel measuring cups and a 14L stock pot.

The cooking fun begins tonight with some mashed potatoes, but there will need to be future recipes that involve a large quantity of soup or stew in the stock pot, and something with lemon zest so I can try out my new grater.

For the sake of a gratuitous picture… I give you Cici and her New Year’s friend. Sally played hostess to Cici and the two dogs played, and played, and played. Cici is still exhausted.

More sewing

The weekend shopping spree also saw the purchase of quilt batting, to stuff the quilt I’m making. And, I bought a new pillow form and some fabric for a new pillow for our couch, to replace the current one which Cici has claimed as her dog bed.

More knitting

And finally, I have great plans for more knitting. I’m afraid to look into my stash, as I know I will be overwhelmed, but there is plenty of yarn to keep me busy.

I’ve started my first 2013 knitting project, with plans to complete a lace cardigan in 2013.

I’ve already distracted myself from that project, and decided I need to complete a new pair of mittens before the end of January.

The “I make mittens” group on Ravelry, has been highly active in 2012. Mary Elizabeth, one of the moderators, proactively sought me out this weekend, and had me count up the mittens I made in 2012. I came up with six pairs, which means I now want to knit at least 7 pairs in 2013. Must get started now!

I’m sure I’ll knit some socks, and I’ve got yarn that would make a good hat, and of course there is the Leftover Blanket which would be great to finish in 2013.

So much yarn, so little time!

More time with friends!

I have had some good times with friends in 2012. You know who you are - if you were laughing with me, and not at me. J I hope there will be more coffees, lunches, dinners and drinks in our future!

I’ve also made some online friends for the first time in my life. My introverted, cautious side has held me back from calling people friends, if I haven’t met them face to face, but all that changed in 2012. Sharing a common love of all things Walt Disney World, I’ve been able to virtually meet some great people, that I truly call my friends. Again, you know who you are, if we’ve shared some laughter and support together in 2012. I wish you more laughter and only good times ahead for 2013! (And of course, I wish you many trips to Disney, which some of you are well on your way to accomplishing!)

Soooo…. That should be enough to keep my busy this year!

Blog Catch Up (and a dog party!)

I’ve been a bad blogger lately, and have not found the time to keep up with this thing. My day job has been keeping my busy lately, so I’m home around 7 most nights. By the time we eat and clean up, there isn’t much time left for this blog. I’ve got some plans in place to remedy this in the New Year, so if we all just hang on for a bit longer, this blog may come back to its former life by the end of January.

For now I give you a small sampling of what I’ve been up to in the past week, or so.

We had a pot luck lunch at work this week so last weekend was all about making some broccoli salad and peppermint cookies. The broccoli salad was well received, and the peppermint cookies pleased me, as they always do.

Cici loves the smell of peppermint cookies, so while I iced and sprinkled she worked on perfecting her begging pose.

I’ve been working on the Leftover Blanket lately. It is a great project for a cold winter night. Cici is quite fond of the smell of the real wool, so she usually come in for a snuggle as I knit.  One evening when I turned my back on it for a brief moment, I came back to this…

Admitting that in addition to lacking the time to blog, I also lack the time to bake, I solved my need for Christmas baking, by picking up an order from Gracie’s Christmas Cookies. It has been a challenge to keep certain hands out, to allow for some cookies to still be around on Christmas Eve.

I squeezed in some quality sewing time yesterday, which allowed me to make good progress on my quilt. I now have 48 12” squares ready to be joined together. I predict the quilt will be finished in the first half of 2013.

And finally, yesterday Cici invited some friends over. It was dog party central in our house.

There was begging in the kitchen,

Monitoring of the outside world,

Hanging out in the living room,

And much holding of the dachshund, against his best wishes. Cici is too big to hold like this, so we were all over this little guy.

Only eight days until Christmas! Love this time of year!

 

My To Do List

I just looked over at the top of my sewing dresser and realized it is my current to do list.

On the left side there are three stacks of fabric squares that need to be sewn into quilt squares. This is intimidating as the fabric is precisely stacked in the order it will be sewn together.  I need about 12 hours of sewing time to get that stage done, and if anyone knocks those piles of fabric over before I find that 12 hours, my stacking system will have failed me and I’ll have to crawl into a ball and cry. 

Under the fabric is a book I want to finish. I started reading “The Wonder Boys” back when I was on jury duty. Since then I’ve been distracted by other books on my Kindle. I need to carve out some time to finish this book and get it back to its rightful owner.

On the right, is the current mitten project which I want to finish by the end of November.  I’m almost done the first mitten so it should be easy enough to knit the second one within the next two weeks.

And under the yarn, although it is the least time consuming, is the most dauntingly stack of paperwork that I need to figure out and take care of sooner, rather than later. I changed jobs recently and that always comes with a stack of benefits papers to sign and process. Hopefully I’ll get that taken care of this weekend (but first I need to go buy some stamps.)

The saddest part of this picture is that I have a pounding headache tonight, which means that this picture will look exactly the same, this time tomorrow. (But the happy part is that this time tomorrow is the weekend!)

Quilt Triangles Become Quilt Squares

With the centre blocks all trimmed, it is time to sew all the quilt triangles into little quilt squares.

 

 

 

 

 

After the squares are sewn and pressed, I trim them down to neat little 3½” squares. Once again, I’m strangely compelled by this mundane trimming activity. A couple of years ago, I won the cute little Omnigrid square ruler as a door prize at a quilt demonstration. It is exactly 3½”, making it perfect for this project.

 

 

Meanwhile, when the ADD kicks into gear, I’ve been working on the Leftover Blanket. I was disappointed when I realized I wouldn’t be able to finish it before winter arrives, but this weekend I realized, it is going to be wonderful to settle down under the blanket, while I work on it.

 

 

 

 

Tonight’s plan is to plant myself on the couch, watch TV and knit. I’ll start with a dash of comedy with Big Bang and Two Broke Girls reruns, then I’ll give the debate a chance, and when I’m bored with the debate I will watch Parenthood. Parenthood was so sad two weeks ago and I can’t believe they didn’t give us an episode last week. They better give us some emotional relief this week! 

And the Quilt Sewing Begins

I started sewing the quilt together last weekend, but them my gainful employment got in the way and all progress has ground to a halt.

I sewed triangles onto each corner of the centre blocks and resulted in four piles of quilt blocks. Now I must trim each block to a nice, neat square, like the pile on the right. (It is the organizer in me that likes to make a quilt – I actually enjoy trimming each square so they are perfectly neat.)

I had hoped to be able to trim all the squares this week and be able to show you only the neatly trimmed pieces, but I've given up on that dream. I didn’t have to work late tonight, but by the time I took the train home, came in, changed to comfy clothes, bathed the dog (just because it was time), and fed the kid (well took the kid out to eat at Chipotle), it is now 8:25 pm, and I’m just getting around to posting this blog.  This working for a living thing is highly overrated.

As soon as this post is up, I’m gonna get my butt on the couch and watch some Young and the Restless, Big Bang Theory and Grays.

In other news...

Here is a gratuitous picture of Cici sulking after her bath. Her paws are all better now and she is back to her good old self.

A Whole Lot of Fabric Cutting

I have spent much of my spare time over the last couple of weeks cutting fabric for my quilt. As mentioned in my last post, this quilt involves cutting a bunch of different fabrics into many pieces.

Here is the result of my labour so far – 1,334 pieces of fabric.

The next step is to sew and trim, and then sew and trim some more, and then sew and trim some more, until the pieces are joined into one big quilt top.

Let the sewing begin!

A Quilt Begins

I’ve been using my spare time over the past couple of weeks to start turning this pile of fabric into a quilt.

This quilt actually began about 7 years ago when Meredith brought me these two fabrics from Alaska.

I love that the fabrics come from a shop called the Rushin’ Tailor in Skagway, Alaska, and that they have fish and moose on them. I knew immediately that they needed a quilt to belong to.

I spent a couple of years gathering fabric, but the task of making the quilt was too daunting so the fabric was stashed away and ignored. And now, after several years, I’m ready to face the challenge and make the quilt. I’m not giving myself any deadlines (although I’m tempted by year-end), but I do hope it doesn’t take me another 7 years to finish this project.

At this stage I’m in the midst of cutting the fabric. I’ve grouped all the pieces into colour groups and must now cut it into 42 rectangles, 412 squares and 880 triangles.

During the cutting stage of any quilt, I always fall in love with my Omnigrid rulers and my Olfa rotary cutter and mat. I can’t imagine cutting the fabric without them. They are the perfect tools to help me cut the fabric into strips, and then the strips into squares and triangles.

They help me turn this…

Into this…

Which ends up in a big pile like this…

I love working with all these different fabrics. Since I bought the fabric 5-7 years ago, I’ve long since forgotten what it looks like. I feel like I’m rediscovering every piece as I cut it. This is my favourite fabric so far.