On the studio floor

Preparing to knit Owls with Cascade 128 Superwash.  It's all about the process!

Planning a Vintage Linens Quilt

This is what happens when the vintage linens pile gets a little too large in my fabric closet.  I had in mind a yellow-and-orange quilt, but the green insisted on coming for the ride. 

 

My plan was to do a strip-style quilt like the one in Patchwork Style.   Somehow, though, I couldn't visualize a vintage-linens version of that.  I checked out another Make Good:  Crafts + Life book, Natural Patchwork, but nothing there moved me either.

Fiddling with the yellow-and-orange linens didn't help.  I remembered that Anna Maria Horner had some free quilt patterns up on her blog, and I went to take a look.

 The Folk Dance Quilt was intriguing, and I wondered if I could pull it off with the linens I had.  I printed it off and began yanking things off the shelves and swapping them around.

This would give me the chance to use patterns I had thought would never see the light of day!

Playing with colors and patterns is so much fun!  I can't wait to see how they look in the zig-zag patchwork.

Having done all this, I am thinking rather guiltily of the *ahem* four unfinished quilts (plus two wool blankets) on my shelves -- so I hastily remind myself that it is the process for me, not the product, which is most satisfying -- and also that I try to spend some part of every day on a work-in-progress, and so do in fits and starts get things completed.

What a joy to start a new quilt! and with my beloved (and overflowing stack of) vintage linens!  What a joy!

Stash sorting snafu

Someone please tell me how this happens!  I began this project with the best of intentions for organizing my stash, and now high holy heck has broken loose. Now I'm playing a sort of game of Yarn Tetris, fitting hanks and skeins into projects of sweaters and vests and ponchos (because I can never plan a small project, though I do long for them from time to time.)  This is what I'm looking at right now -- I'll talk to you when I've dug my way out a bit more: