Sunday, June 28, 2015

Avengers Assemble - A Quilt

To those who know me it's not a big surprice that I'm a big Avengers fan. I love the movies to pieces, Iron Man being my favorite, but I'm also quite fond of Captain America, the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo version), Hawkeye, Black Widow and, not to forget, Thor.
I'm not alone with this.
So, when I got that crazy idea into my head to make an Avengers Quilt, I immediately knew where it would go to. And last Wednesday I finally could hand the quilt over.
 The quilt consists of 145 blue 4 inch patches in various shades of blues. They frame the symbols for the six Avengers (as of the first Avengers movie), plus the Avengers logo itself.
 I worked each of the Avengers as a seperate unit with a different blue background. For the symbols I used different techniques. Some applique (Averngers logo), some paper piecing (Thor's hammer), some reverse applique (Ironman and Hulk), ...
 I quilted the units by first tracing the symbols, then writing the names and the 'secret' identities of each of the characters (i.e. Captain America aka Steve Rogers). I then quited the background with a free motion swirly pattern
 On this background pic of Thor's hammer you can see the tracing I did and the names (though in reverse) and the rest of the quilting.
I had a lot of fun designing this quilt, working out the hows and whats, and sewing it.
It is an unique quilt, and I learned quite a bit making it.
I know it's now at its new home where it will  be loved and appreciated (and hopefully been ued to snuggle up in to watch an Avengers marathon once in a while ...)

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Round

Currently, a couple of larger project are coming to fruitation. After the scrappy sockyarn blanket from last week, here's a table cloth I've made for my mom.
The diameter is roughly 180cm and about 3000m of cotton were used to knit it (Magic No. 8 by Zettl). In the end I had 2345 stitches on the needle, which made for very long rows.
I really enjoy knitting lace, but normally don't have much use for it. Luckily my mom has a nice round bistro table and with a neutral table cloth unterneath, I think it will look great.
I did steam press the edges. It didn't go perfect, a few of the wedges got a bit brown spots (I don't think I singed it, but I'm not sure what else it could be), Maybe turn that side to the wall ...

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Scrappy Knitting

After about half a year I finally finished my scrappy ZigZag sockyarn blanket/afghan.It ended up 180 x 150 cm and it extremely warm and heavy.
I knitted it with leftover and recycled sock yarn, holding two strands together and every couple of rows I switched out one of the two colors.
 After knitting eight stripes I crocheted them together and then made a border all around.
Primary colors were blue and green, with the occasional other color thrown in.I haven't weighted it yet, but I'd guess 2,5 kilos may have ended in there. 

Sunday, June 07, 2015

Flower Power

We went to the Bavarian State Garden Show in Alzenau (which is only about 20min away)
We saw flowers.


Lots and lots of flowers.
 Also some decorations for the garden.
 And, to top it of, an old Beetle, all agreened.

On the way home, we also so the most perculiar insect.
It flew like a hummingbird, but in the end it turned out to be a kind of butterfly/moth. The German name is 'Taubenschwänzchen', though I think the English name is far more fitting: 'Hummingbird hawk-moth'