Debbie Bliss Paisley Sweater Errata

I have been knitting up a storm:

This is all brand new knitting since the last post.  I started over from the beginning.  Now there are two complete reps of the zig zag panel, and there are exactly four in the piece, so I am halfway.

I am pretty sure there was an error in the instructions for the top of the paisley motif.  The instructions for Row 45 read "P5, C3FP, C2BP, p15."  They should read "P6, C2FP, C2BP, p15."  That's what I did, and this is how it looks:

If you followed the printed instructions you would start the cable too soon, and it wouldn't finish to a clean point.

I think I saw this pattern republished in a Debbie Bliss magazine, and I don't know if they fixed the error in that.

It is a pet peeve of mine that Debbie Bliss never provides charts for her cables or lace.  If she had, this error would have been avoided!

This week I also upgraded to the new Corel Paintshop Pro X4 photo software.  I am finding it easier to use than the X3, and much less buggy.  Plus, the manuals that come with it are better, so I finally figured out how to use the text tool properly.  You will be seeing labels on my photos from now on!  It is a good deal for $40.

Sewing Machine Holiday

Happy Canada Day!  It's July 1st, and it seems like everyone is going on holiday.  It's made me think that I need to take a break too.  I'll still be blogging, but I am going to give my sewing machine a rest.  My sewing area is in one of the warmest parts of the house, so I am going to focus on unplugged crafts for the next while.

I'm looking forward to it!  I'd like to spend some more time on embroidery, for one thing.  I want to finish Cottage Garden, and I have a few other Inspirations kits in my stash to keep me going.  And it would be great to put the last stitches in my cross stitch projects Celtic Spring and Juin, plus I have another really old cross stitch UFO that I am keen to finish.  And now I have a new knitting project too!

I will be glad to take a breather on Sedona Star.  I think that taking a clear break for a few weeks will make me keen to get started again.

Realistically, it will be at least six weeks before a real north wind blows again, and maybe a lot longer.  A change is as good as a break, they say, so I am going to make the most of it!

Sunday Morning Quilts

I know, I couldn't resist, I had to post this review on Sunday morning!  I've been sitting on this book, Sunday Morning Quilts, by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison (C&T Publishing, 2012), for a couple of months now, because I couldn't think of the right thing to say about it.

One of the subheadings on the cover is "16 Modern Scrap Projects," and I've been really hung up on the word "modern."  Or is that "Modern," with a capital "M"?  But you know, a) that stuff doesn't really matter, and b) that's not really what this book is about.  Well, ok, there are 10 pages about what defines a modern quilt, but let's just ignore those for now and go straight to the quilts themselves.

There are a lot of fun, bright quilts in this book, but the word I like best to describe many of them is innovative.

There isn't a half square triangle anywhere in the book.  There IS a lot of out-of-the-box thinking, like the Gumdrops quilt above with it's simple raw-edged applique and strip assembly.  Or the Ticker Tape quilt below, where the applique and quilting are done in the same step.

For me, that is the paradox with this whole "modern quilt" issue.  On the one hand, there are a lot of interesting quilts with new ideas - out of the box - and on the other hand there's 10 pages of definitions, which are just creating a new box.  Personally, I hate boxes, and I certainly don't see any reason for them in quiltmaking.

To duplicate the look of these quilts you do need to have a fairly large stash of modern (there's that word again) fabrics, by which I mean solids or simple, graphic prints in clear colours.  But there is no reason that you couldn't use the techniques with any fabrics you have at hand.  I think the results could be quite interesting!

There's a good section about storing fabrics, especially scraps, with ideas about how to categorize and organize them.  And the machine quilting ideas are very accessible.

These are not heirloom quilts, they are quilts that are meant to be used.  I think that is the idea behind the title, although they never specifically say.  If you leave aside the angst about what's modern and what's not, and skip straight to the quilts, there's lots to see and lots to try in this book.