Another longtime project finished

Back in 2015 (apparently) I started to repurpose a faux suede jacket I'd made and didn't wear.  I decided to try to make it into a the Burda silk motorcycle jacket.  I often like the look of Burda patterns and then regret getting them as I hate tracing and adding seam allowances and then the directions tend not to be as clear as I would like. 

Anyway, 4 years later and I've finished it.  

F insisted that her pom pom pet, Freya, wanted to be in the photos too! 

It's not perfect, but I think I'm more likely to wear it than the boxy jacket it used to be.  The sleeves feel a little tight when I'm putting it on - maybe I should have made the next size up - but I doubt I would have had enough fabric for that looking at the meagre amounts I have left.

I seem to remember quite enjoying looking through my me made clothes and figuring out why I wasn't wearing a particular piece - this jacket slowed me down quite a bit - but I think I should go back to it.  I was wondering about doing Me Made May this year - we're away for about half of May, so I don't think I will, but maybe I could be doing this instead.  Just to note - in the pictures above - the jeans, top and jacket are all made by me.  😊

Knitting update

I'm pretty good at keeping my Ravelry project list up to date.  I was just looking back at it to see how many projects I've completed since before the blog hiatus - and there's one or two:

Thirty five, actually, and there's two completed items (a jumper and a cardigan) that aren't on here as I haven't taken a post blocking picture to put on Ravelry yet. 

Seven of these projects are all related to one larger project that I've finally finished - and that's the City & Guilds level 3 in knitwear design.  It's taken me a while - I was pretty slow at first, but managed to speed up and concentrate on it so that I was able to finish it within the designated C&G time frame. 

I've learnt a lot during the course - knitting techniques, art techniques, design process, knitting confidence - all sorts of things.  Four of the modules had knitted assessment pieces associated with them, so my plan now is to try to publish those four items (seat cushion, summer top, shawl and cardigan).  I'll start by self publishing through Ravelry, just to get a feel for the process and then go from there. 

I'm keen to do this, but am also keen to preserve knitting as a hobby, rather than getting too bogged down in deadlines and stress.

One crossed off.

I've decided to blog again as if there hasn't been a three year blog hiatus - hiatus, what hiatus, I don't know what you're talking about... moving swiftly on...

The beginning of 2019 has been jam full of finishing off some really large projects that have been on the go for longer than my blog hiatus (I thought we agreed we weren't going to mention that), and as I originally set up this blog in order to track my progress and keep me a little accountable to myself - here I am again!

The first project that I'm going to blog about that finally got finished this year is my ten year quilt project - wowsers, that was a long 10 years!

It had a number of stalls and also moved house a number of times (9 house moves in total and between 5 countries!), so I'm really pleased to finally be able to call it finished and have it on the bed.

Here it is being held up by my three trusty helpers.

I quilted it on my home machine using techniques from the book Walk: Mastering Machine Quilting With Your Walking Foot by Jacquie Gering.  I found this a really useful book, and although the quilt is huge (220cm  x  240cm ) I managed to do it on my machine.

I also decided to label my achievement by machine embroidering a bit of information about the quilt itself and some words to remember:

 

 "It is astonishing how long it takes to finish something you are not working on"

As you can see from the picture, the back drifted a bit when I was quilting, but a bit of extra fabric pieced in made it alright and has added to it's imperfect, scrappy nature.

Onwards - what's next for the finished pile?