Bound and Determined

This weekend is the Pirate Retreat...fewer pirates are coming ashore of late, but two very daring individuals came to work on sewing projects.  Lauri and her son, Mr. L., and Jeanie.

Lauri worked on a couple quilts--one was this "Sounders Baby" quilt.  She added a couple of borders after this, but it's stunning just like this!  I love this pattern, too.  I may have to borrow it from her!  She needs to find some flannel backing for it, and then I will quilt it up for her.  She also handed me a lovely starry blue quilt that I will be working on.  I didn't get a pic of it, but I will try to do that tomorrow.

Jeanie worked on a number of costume alterations for belly dance outfits.  There were a couple of cholis that got some buttons and bling added to them, a jingly bra that got some repairs, and she started to make some adjustments to some tights whose rise was too high.  Not sure how far she got on that last one, and one of the tops was starting to have issues with the grommets pulling out.  Eventually she got back to knitting a scarf that she worked on at the *last* pirate retreat, but after knitting and unknitting several rows, she determined she was too tired to continue and packed it up.  It was SO nice seeing her again!

We went out for happy hour to a restaurant down the street and enjoyed some of their happy hour dinner specials.  I had beef sliders and a salad (amazing!), Jeanie had something with hummus and taro chips, and Lauri had a salad and some kind of wraps.  The food was really good!  Totally worth going back, especially at the happy hour prices.

I worked on four different quilts.  First was a quilt top for the Children's Hospital charity group that I help with in the guild.  This baggie was full of 12" squares that needed sashing, so I added it according to directions.  There was still fabric left over, so I added sashing around the outside, too.  It didn't specifically call for it, but how could I not?

I put the binding on a quilt for the Spanish teacher's baby girl who was born last July.  You may recognize this as a quilt almost identical to Malcolm's (my new baby nephew!!).  I love that it's a unisex design, despite the mix of colors. Yeah, it's a little heavy on the pink, but really, pink is just light red.  Originally, as you may recall, I started making blocks for an Arrowhead pattern quilt, but I made too many blocks, so I decided to make two quilts out of them.  It looks rather dull laying here on the floor; the colors seem somehow muted.  The light may have been bad.  I'll have to hang it up and get a better picture tomorrow.  Still needs a label.

Then I put a binding on another quilt for the same baby--this one made by Cammie.  Got the photo of this one just before Kelly ran off to the Superbowl party.  It's very pretty-in-pink and is covered in hearts.  It's fitting that the baby's name is Valentina!  I bound it in a light purple to match some of the purple background.

Finally, I put a binding on this quilt that's been sitting around for a loooooooooooong time!  I finished the top and quilted it before we moved some 5 years ago, so it's gotta be at least 7-8 years old.  Geesh...now that I think about it, I think I started it before Ben was born...now we're looking at 9 or 10 years?  Ugh.  Glad to have this done!  I bound it in green 1930s reproduction fabric and after a good washing (there's a mysterious stain on one edge) it'll end up on the living room couch as a TV-watching lap throw.  The greens match the slip covers on the furniture.

And finally, I was working on a weaving project the last couple of days.

 This is a simple 6th century Norse threaded in weave.  It goes together really fast, using a skip-hole technique.  25 turns forward, 25 turns back, which forms the M and W motifs.  I only warped up about 2 yards of thread, just as a test run.  When finished, it measured about 1 3/4 yards.  I will probably do this again, although I found that the cards had a mind of their own and wanted to turn this way and that, so I had to stabilize them by sliding a pencil through the holes to keep them aligned.

After I finished that one, I warped up another "Anglo-Saxon" threaded-in weave that looked really spiffy!  Celtic knotwork!  I chose a teal blue (it's a little more green and brighter in real life), and got to work.  It didn't look right.  I unwove it and tried again.  Still no luck.  I tried it tighter, looser, packed down more, packed down less...it still looked like a dog's breakfast.  Then I remembered the wise words of my science teacher in Middle School:  "When all else fails...read the directions."  I scrolled down the page and found that I was supposed to alternate turning the cards.  Turn the odd-numbered cards, throw the shuttle.  Turn the even-numbered cards, throw the shuttle.  Repeat.

Success!  That's what it was supposed to look like!  I don't know if it's *actually* documented...it might have been in a book called Tablet Weaving: History, Techniques, Colours, Patterns by Egon Hansen, but the book is out of print and unavailable anywhere.  Sigh.  Maybe I can find someone who has a copy that will allow me to borrow it and glean some information from it.  All 135 pages.

More sewing tomorrow!  I may try to piece a quilt top from some friendship blocks I've gotten back.