worn out

I'm all worn out again. Hubby left on Fri morning so we were busy shopping at Circle Craft on Wed. I went back to the craft fair on Fri to buy a few more things sans hubby.

I was a good girl and didn't buy any yarn from Indigo Moon. But that's because this arrived on Tues:


I have 10 skeins of this lovely Koigu KPPPM.

I did buy myself a lovely gravy/sauce boat from Quasimodo Pottery (to go with all the Quasimodo that I already own). I really love their stuff.

And there's been knitting.


I finished the sleeves and the left band is done. I've got about half of the right band knit and then there's the finishing. For a top-down raglan that's knit in one piece, there are a lot of ends to weave in.

Most of this weekend was spent helping out at my lqs. They were holding a big garage sale to sell off all store fixtures as well as regular stock. It was pretty busy on Sat but a lot quieter on Sun. I tried very hard to restrain myself but I bought a lot of fabric.

My best purchase was 2 embroidered quilt tops - $10 each.



No one knows where they came from or what they were doing in the back office. They had been sitting out all day and no one was interested in them so I had to take them home with me.

I suspect all the embroidery was done by one person. In the larger quilt top (5 blocks across and 9 blocks down), most of the embroidery has been done on a pale green muslin. A few of the blocks are made of a natural muslin. After the blocks were sewn together, someone embroidered over the seams.

The second quilt top (4 blocks across and 9 blocks down) is a bit of a mystery. Most of the blocks are natural muslin but there are a few that are pale green. And if you look closely, you can see that the seams have been embroidered between the pale green squares but nowhere else. It's as if some of the blocks were taken from the other quilt top to make this one. This second quilt top follows the same block layout as the first one but the flower blocks aren't as carefully oriented. The flowers are sideways.

I am trying to figure out what to do with it all. Overall, the individual blocks are in good shape. One of the colours ran in the poppy block and it transferred to the second quilt top. I may or may not reuse those 2 blocks. There is one block that was pieced from 2 smaller bits of fabric and then the flower embroidered over the seam. The seam allowance was a little skimpy and the block is coming apart. I don't know if it can be rescued successfully.

There are a few other issues that I need to deal with. The tops were washed in a washing machine because the long tails from the embroidery threads have tangled with the frayed edges of the blocks. There are huge clumps on the back. I will need to clean that up and ensure that the embroidery thread tails are properly secured. I know that I will completely disassemble the smaller quilt top because it bugs me that the flowers are sideways.


Anyways, this will be a project that will keep me busy for awhile. I bought an ergonomic stitch ripper to help with all that stitch ripping.