Gnometastic

I finished this project last week and would have shown it then if I hadn’t been trying to think of a catchy title.

Today I have two finished items to show. Firstly the gnome. Here he is enjoying the sunshine.



After a pretty crappy winter we are back to sun and warmth. This was an easy mystery-knit-along to keep up with and I was able to use all left over yarns. I had picked out my colours before the pattern was released but changed my mind about the beard colour when we knit a leaf on the end of the hat. All the knitting was finished by 26 March but it took me a week to sew on the features. I was concerned that the beard was a bit too long and was thinking about reknitting it on a smaller needle. In the end I kept it and am happy with it.

The other finished item are some fingerless mitts which were supposed to be a hat! It had already been cast on twice as a hat but I wasn’t feeling the love and went for mitts. I am glad that I did as I like the finished project. Although having said that, I would put the buttonholes closer to the edge, I would make the edges the same stitch (the buttonhole band is moss stitch and the button band is rib so the gauge is different) and I would have the cable pattern on the back of the mitts rather than close to the buttons. Despite all that I like them. I took them with me when I purchased buttons but still managed to buy slightly too small buttons so I sewed down the inside edge of the button band. After all I couldn’t see myself undoing and doing up the buttons.



The pattern is Zeppelin Mitts and the pattern for the gnome is Gnome-de-Plume.

I’m still working away on the cardigan for my granddaughter. The collar is taking forever but I need to hurry up and finish the whole thing before the weather is too warm.

Baby Quilt

I have finished the quilt for my nephew’s (unborn) baby.) I have not shown any photos of it in progress so before I show the finished project – a few works in progress. I used this pattern. I have made this quilt before for my other nephew’s second baby but I finished that one in a different way and used much different fabric. (Although two of the squares crept into this blanket because I thought I needed two more.)

I do not have any photos of the strips before they were cut but here is the final layout before and after sewing.



As there are so many colours and designs I added a narrow border (1/2 inch finished) before deciding on what I wanted as a wide border. But once I added that narrow border I knew it did not need anything else. You’ll have to make do with a photo of the quilt laid on the backing.



I used the same fabric for the binding so as to not detract from the quilt. Here’s a photo of an uh oh moment. I had plenty of binding so how did this happen?



I trimmed both ends 2 ½ inches from where sewing started and stopped. So I unpicked the start and end of the binding for a few inches and sewed the cut binding back on, good thing I had plenty, and then finished properly. But when I had sewn the binding onto the front I had another hmm moment. This is a baby quilt, how much use and washing will it get? I don’t really want to hand sew the binding I should have machined the binding to the back and then machined from the front. Which I have never done by the way, hence not thinking about it. I used Wash Away Wonder Tape to attach the binding to the back before machining and then gave it a quick rinse in the washing machine to remove the tape. The quilting is simple straight line quilting on the inside of the long pieces of each block and after completing the binding I added straight line quilting on all the outside blocks.

I am really pleased with the finished quilt. All the fabric is from stash including the backing which was enough to join two pieces down the length.