Sewing

Purchase Fair Isle Star Pattern

Recently I sorted a bunch of my orphan quilt blocks and the fair isle star was among them. I always wanted to make a fabric basket using one of my paper piecing blocks. Since the day I made the fair isle star quilt pattern, I knew that’s the block I wanted to use for a fabric basket to store some of my knitting supplies. It couldn’t be more perfect. I love it so much! I also learned how to make perfect corners with this project. I am writing up a tutorial on that which I am hoping to share with you next week.

I find knitting scarfs to be the perfect way to learn new techniques for a novice knitter like me. Since the knitting pattern uses exclusively SSK and K2TOG, I have mastered them with this scarf. I even learned how to figure out the stitching order of the next row based on what the stitches looked like in the previous row. You can’t believe how excited I got when I figured that out!! I was making a lot of mistakes before then, but after that it became super easy to knit this scarf with the help of a few stitch markers.

During my search for a generally easy pattern, I came across the Sock of Kindness pattern on Flickr. I fell in love with the pattern and I thought this yarn would complement it very well. It’s a sock weight yarn I got last year during our visit to Bergen, Norway (it’s a beautiful city, by the way). I love the transition of the warm and cool colours along with the simple addition of the design in the scarf. I used 4.00mm (US 6) knitting needles and 40 stitches to make this scarf. Now I am on the hunt for my next knitting project; I love keeping my hands busy!

Until next time,
-Soma

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Fairy Door Quilt Pattern

A few weeks ago I made a 10″ magic fairy door and I used the block to make a 14″ pillowcase. The quilting process started having a mind of its own and I was happy to oblige.

My original idea was to hand quilt everything. There was one problem – my stitches are still in the medium size range and the leaves looked horrible and clunky instead of small and delicate. I have done free motion quilting only once and that was probably a couple of years ago. So I took a deep breath, removed the little hand quilting I had done and started free motion quilting the vines and the leaves. As usual, my fear proved unjustified. Since I can adjust the speed of the pedal of my machine, it went rather smoothly. I am happy with the way the quilting turned out, even with the smattering of imperfections here and there.

Fairy Door Quilted

Once the machine quilting was done, I started hand quilting the door. I think the hand quilting makes the door stand out from the surrounding vines and leaves. Toward the end, I started stitching along the border with my walking foot. Then another idea came to my head – alternate the border with machine and hand quilting and alternate the thread colour as well.

Fairy Door Quilted Pillow

This is the first time I also decided to bind my pillowcase. It’s a woodland fairy door, so what else would I use but a brown binding to go with the light mossy green border. The finished pillow now resides in my husband’s room. Hopefully he will not be subject to naughty fairy shenanigans!

Happy Sewing,
-Soma

A Basket Full Of Knitting

Magic Fairy Door Pillowcase