Saturday, March 28, 2020
While I'm at home...
Like all good quilters everywhere during this pandemic, I am sewing.
I have three main projects going right now. Downstairs I am hand quilting. This is so filthy right now because it drags on the floor and has cats sleeping under it when stitches aren't being added. Hopefully it will all wash out white and clean and fluffy. I am past the halfway point on this now!
I also do tatting a bit because I've been teaching a young woman this past month (I haven't heard from her this week but maybe she is sheltering down.) Interestingly, her father, who knows Tetsu, wanted his daughter to meet me because I am a knitter. Well, Tetsu explained I'm not so much a knitter as a quilter. That was okay. The father thought his daughter would be interested in the quilting too, so he brought her over. She was interested but seemed to think it was beyond her and while fishing around for something to talk about while we drank coffee, I showed her tatting. I gave her basic instructions on using a tatting shuttle and offered to lend her my book and a shuttle and since then she every-so-often comes over for another tatting lesson. There are like 4 things to learn in tatting and the rest is basically practice and being able to count (my downfall) so when M-san comes over I assign "homework" and tell her when she's mastered it to give me another call. It turns out that she LOVES tatting and as I've taught her about all I can I suggested patchwork next, but she is engrossed in tatting right now. Our last bit of homework was to make a tatting edge for something (a handkerchief? A blouse collar?) and I continue to tat when watching our church worship service online or watching the morning news... (Quilting gets done in the evening.)
And my last project has been sewing the Log Cabin quilt from my scrap bin. Funny how that scrap bin never empties... I will be working on the border this week but the main part of this in now finished.
I look at this and wonder how I'm ever going to carry a big quilt to the Tokyo Quilt Festival next year to show Carin and Julie and Cynthia. Well, I still have a long way to go on this and the future is so up in the air...
Happy sewing!
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Your Log Cabin quilt is stunning Tanya. I love the stars. Keep safe.
ReplyDeleteWow! Your Log Cabin is GREAT. What a great design, what a great size, what a great job you are doing. It's a great challenge, and we'll find a way to show and tell in January, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteQueenie
My mum taught me to tat when I was 8/9. Still got the shuttles but have too much family and other families embroidered linens to have the urge to do it now. Quilting absorbs me now. Interesting I have heard more about tatting in last few years than decades before that. Irene Northern Ireland
ReplyDeleteYour quilt is amazing! I love it!
ReplyDeleteI learned how to tat when I was a kid but it seemed to take too long to get anything finished. I probably have the shuttle somewhere.
Right now, I can't seem to focus long enough on anything like sewing. My mind is too unsettled with all that's going on. I've been reading at night to fall asleep, but that's about my only distraction.
ReplyDeleteI took up needle tatting years ago and got pretty good at it. As you said, it's amazing what you can turn out with a few simple motions and keeping count. I had trouble with that too. So easy to miss one stitch. I'm not great at keeping my place while reading the pattern instructions, either. All those abbreviations throw me off.
That quilt is gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteLoving both your quilts!
ReplyDeleteI'm not so good at mixing my scraps up - too much need for 'order' in my brain, I guess. Maybe not the right value sorting? I don't know.
Thanks for sharing - might be the push I need to go work on tie-ing a quilt I started when Younger Son was 2 or 3...he's 16 now (oops!).
--Jean Marie
I don't think I've ever seen that variation of a log cabin quilt. I've wanted to make another log cabin and I'm going to try something like yours. I hope you don't mind. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI've looked online for this pattern but can't seem to find a Log Cabin Star Quilt that looks like yours. I love yours!! Do you have a link or something to help us find it? Maybe you could mention it in your next Blog post so any others that are interested will also be able to find it. Thanks and this is much appreciated!!! Stay Healthy!!
ReplyDeleteLong ago, when I made a log cabin quilt, I didn't like any of the traditional arrangements and ended up with a log jam. Now that I see this, I think I could revisit those scrappy blocks. Cynthia has made several log cabin quilts, the latest for a coming granddaughter. I am still working on a floral quilt and my feedsack quilt is sitting basted and waiting. But .... now I hear that log cabin calling. How long will this lock-down last???
ReplyDeleteThe log cabin is my favorite of all quilt patterns. Yours is so pretty. Love the tatting and wish I knew how to do that. I am absorbed, during this lock down period, with learning how to eat with chopsticks like a pro. Haha. I notice improvement every day. It is keeping meal time interesting anyway.
ReplyDelete