Interdisciplinary

Hey, it was a long weekend! I used part of it to take a break from knitting—secret knitting, public knitting, planning knitting, writing about knitting—and indulge my patchwork fascination.



These are 13" blocks made out of reproductions of old Liberty prints (the fabric is Regent Street Lawn from Moda). I really like the look of plain old nine patches, but also wanted to play with pinwheels, so here we are.



Since the objective is to improve the pointiness of my points, I am cutting out all the triangles before piecing them together, no shortcuts allowed. Fortunately the fabrics are all busy enough that you really can't tell where the points don't line up nicely.

These ones will be alternated with corresponding blocks in the other nine patch configuration, except the alternate blocks will have some other pieced components. I'm leaning toward Broken Dishes.

And this is a movie-watching project:



Tumbling blocks are like slightly more elaborate hexagons! I printed off 1.75" diamonds from this generator, and here I am, going to town. The three fabrics in there are all from the same collection as the kitchen stuff, but these are going to end up in the living room. I have two throw pillows with sad polyester shells that need recovering with something attractive.

Through the Looking-Glass

I had big plans for Valentine's Day and a fragment of a mitten with hearts on it, but they were totally derailed by this fabric.

My kitchen is full of motley and boring accessories: one burned oven mitt, two ugly matching potholders, black-and-white tea towels from Fortino's that don't absorb water so much as spread it around in a thin, even layer. I had aspired to replace them someday with colourful quilted items, maybe green ones or blue or orange, something cheerful. Then last week we went to a quilting store and I saw the William Morris fabrics and all was lost.

This is the damage so far:



Five potholders! Three tea towels with birds on them! The potholders are assembled from four-patch units made out of charm squares. I used the whole package (of 40); the potholders are pieced on both sides, so they don't really have fronts and backs. The tea towels are just rectangles with hems.



One oven mitt and one coordinating half-apron with a big contrasting ruffle at the front and big vintage buttons at either side! The oven mitt is from the template on this page; the half-apron is from 101 One Yard Wonders.



One knee-length apron with fun gathered detailing over the bust and rows of birds adorning top and bottom! The tutorial I used is here.

Not pictured: One tiny quilted cozy for my tiny French press, awaiting binding; six more tea-towel-sized rectangles cut out, pressed, awaiting hemming.

Guys, I have had to make myself knit this week. All I want to do is make another cup of coffee and hem more rectangles and sew more ruffled aprons. The palette is rather subdued and sedate compared to the cheery colours I had wanted, but somehow I don't care anymore. My priorities have clearly changed because look at the birds:



I wasn't a person who was terrifically interested in quilting before, though my grandmother's quilts were plenty inspiring and as a child I was sometimes deputized to press bits of fabric for her, or make yo-yos out of scraps. This, though, this is a lot of fun. I am having an inappropriate amount of fun.