All The Hexagons Are Ready

   Here they are.

    All the hexagons I will need to finish my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top.  I have two flowers for the 5th row put together already.  I need three more flowers then I will add the green path to each and add them one by one to the quilt top.

    It takes me approximately two hours and ten minutes to make each flower including the green path.  Then it probably takes another hour and a half to sew each flower onto the quilt top.  No wonder its taking me so long to finish this quilt.

Christmas Cookies and A Christmas Decoration Fail

    I made gingerbread men today.  I used the Ree Drummond (Pioneer Woman) recipe I found on line.

    This is the first time I have ever made gingerbread cookies and it will probably be the last.  It was tough mixing all that flour into the liquid mixture because I did it manually.  The recipe calls for a stand mixer, but I don't have a stand mixer and I didn't want to borrow my daughter's mixer just for these cookies, because I wanted them to be a surprise.

     These took a long time for me to make, between mixing the dough and letting it rest for two hours or more, then rolling it and cutting it out, I spent a good 3 hours hands on making these cookies and I didn't really enjoy it. 

      I didn't decorate my men.  I'm not supposed to eat a lot of sugar and these will be sweet enough without any extra icing or candies on them.

     In the future, I'll stick with sugar cookies or butter cookies put in a cookie press..

 

    I don't have a picture of my Christmas Tree decoration fail, but I will describe it for you.  I drew a Christmas tree shape and I cut out two pieces of fabric.  The idea being that I would sew the two pieces together and stuff them lightly with some polyfil, put a dowel stick in the bottom and put it in a small tin pail with some floral foam to keep it up right.  My pattern for my Christmas tree was not right and the finished tree looked awful.  I scrapped this project.  I'm looking for other Christmas decorations to sew.

    Here's a picture of some of my Christmas decorations.

Scrappy String Block Quilt Top Done With Time Stats

   I know a lot of folks don't keep track of how long it takes to do something, but I've always been interested in how long it takes me to do a task.  I like to look at the clock when I start and I like to check it when I'm done.  I don't know why, I just do.  I do this with sewing all the time.  I love knowing how long it takes me to sew something, I kind of figure that into how keen I am to make something by hand.

   Time statistics for the scrappy string block quilt top:

     Sewing 49 quilt blocks - 13 minutes each - about 10.5 hours
     Trimming each block - 3 minutes each - about 2.5 hours
     Removing the paper towel foundation - 49 blocks - 4.5 hours
     Sewing the blocks into rows - 1 hour
     Sewing the rows into quilt - 1.5 hours

     Total - 20 hours


   Here is the finished scrappy string block quilt top:

Sample Socks Are Knitted.

   These socks are not perfect, but that's mostly because they are made from 100% cotton yarn and the cotton yarn was a bear to knit.  But cotton yarn is a nice cheap way to make a sample pair of socks (these would fit a small child).  I really love making socks two at a time with magic loop.  I love being able to finish both socks at the same time.  So clever and casting the toes on first and getting that section grafted in the beginning is awesome.

    These are my second pair of sample socks.  I made a pair of these a few years ago when I first bought my "Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks" book by Melissa Morgan Oakes.  The instructions in the book were great.  Easy to understand with lots of information on how to do increases, short rows, and knitting wrapped stitches.

      When I made these socks the first time, a few years ago I wasn't ready to commit to making a real pair of socks I could wear.  I'm ready to try my hand at real socks now.

     Here are the socks right before I cast off.

    Here they are with the ends woven in and the some of the major ladders stitched up.  I put the yellow sock on top because the heel on that sock came out better than the orange sock.  I lost my train of thought on the orange sock and didn't pick up my wraps on the orange sock and I'm surprised there aren't great big holes in the heel.  You can still see the wraps on the stitches in the heel cup of the orange sock.  Sloppy.

   These were really good practice.  I'm going to make some notes about how many stitches I need to get good fit on a sock for myself and I'll be casting those on in a couple of weeks.  I have some sewing and some other knitting to do in the meantime.

Practice Sock Knitting And A Doily Update

   So I finally started my practice socks.  I'm making the practice socks from the Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Sock book by Melissa Morgan-Oakes.

    Sock knitting fascinates me because knitters who make socks make it sound so super simple.  There are several ways to knit socks, you can make them cuff down one at a time or cuff down two at a time or toe up one at a time or toe up two at a time.  The possibilities seem endless to me.  When I found out you can knit them two at a time on one needle, I wanted to learn.

  The practice socks in this book are great because you get to practice all the different techniques you have to learn to knit socks.  This is my progress so far, this is the cast-on and where I start the increases for the toes.  I had to re-knit the cast-on several times to get it right.  I'm using Peaches and Creme cotton yarn with size 8 (5.0 mm) Knit Picks Harmony wood needles with a 40" cable for these practice socks.  I'm not in a hurry to get these done.  I may have to re-do them several times before I finally finish them.

    My crochet doily project that I started at Christmas has been frogged.  The pattern that I bought was not written very well and I had some trouble on round 5.  I tried to contact the designer to ask her about the directions in the pattern through several different channels but I never heard back from her.  I figured out the problem with round 5 and fixed it, then I got to round 12 and the instructions were really vague and I knew that I wouldn't be able to work around it, so I took my work apart to reuse the thread and I'm deleting the pattern from my library.  By the way, that pattern was the Gossamer Doily by Priscilla's Crochet (Priscilla Hewitt).  It was a really pretty doily.  I paid $1.00 for it but that was $1.00 wasted.

    So I bought a new doily pattern from the Leisure Arts website yesterday.  It's called Daydream Doily by Ocie Jordan.  I hope to start that pattern in a few days.

Evening Sewing

 

      Tonight I made some more hanging dishtowels for me and dear daughter.  I resisted the temptation to use Christmas fabric on these.  Instead I wanted to make something we could use all winter long.  The green fabric has tiny metallic embellishments on it.  I think these will be pretty enough to give those dark winter days a little lift.

    The fabric cost me about $3.00 (I only needed 10" x WOF), I bought two regular size dishtowels at Tuesday Morning for $4.99 and the buttons were $.20 each.  So I made four hanging dishtowels for less than $10.00.  They took me about  2  1/2 hours to make from start to finish.

Time Spent with My Embroidery Machine

      Wow, I just spent 6 hours with my embroidery machine learning, learning, and learning some more.  In that time I made two items that I deem good enough to give away.  I made this super cute dish towel for someone I love.  I can't say who, but they will adore it.  My family loves St. Patrick's Day.  My mother was 100% Irish and St. Patrick's Day was very special to her.  By the way, I ruined two other dish towels getting this one done.  The other two dish towels each have one good stitched out design on them and I will cut them up and sew them together for me.

     I learned a lot about my embroidery machine today.  I learned how to change the needle (I broke two), I learned how not to break the needle, and I learned how to insert the bobbin correctly.  I also learned how to go back and restitch when the thread breaks and I learned how to change colors on a design in my design software on my computer.  So all that time was not wasted.

Here's another design I stitched out today.  It was almost too easy except for the one time the 

thread broke (I have no idea why).  This beautiful Napoleanic bee in a laurel wreath will be going on tote bag I'm making for a birthday present for one of my bosses.  

How Long Does It Take To Sew . . .

seven 66.5" rows together?  It takes me about an hour.  I did it tonight and now the Christmas quilt top is all ready.  I will now finish piecing the back with the rest of the silver fabric I have.

   Here's my Christmas quilt top with pretty holiday birds, holly, and pine cones.  I couldn't resist putting one piece of red plaid flannel in the Christmas quilt.  This top is forty-nine 10" squares and it went together really, really quickly (it went together a lot quicker than the back is going together).