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?

quilt update (again)

 Last week was the kid's ski week holiday here in Bern, so we headed off to Flims for skiing.  The rest of the family is either learning or loves skiing, but I've tried and failed and am happy at the moment to call myself a non-skier.  While we're in Switzerland and drive to skiing this means I can take things to keep me busy - this year I decided to take my sewing machine and work on my quilt.

I posted a bit about my quilt last year, but before that was in 2008 with the optimistic comment that I wouldn't allow it to become a 15 year project!  Well here we are in year 16 (I started it in 2000) and it's still not finished.  It is growing - but it is starting to feel like a grindstone around my neck.

 Here's some progress set up on the dining room table.  

I worked at it quite hard while we were away.  The kids were in ski school, so apart from the inevitable chalet maid duties one acquires as the non-skier I was able to concentrate on my quilt until the call for drinks and a little apres ski as the kids were finishing up. 

I managed to finish a strip of the quilt - it's constructed like a big log cabin and I'm now onto the outer edges - so this is nearly the full width of the finished quilt.  I'd already completed about half of this strip last year and was able to finish off the upper half during the week. 

This is the quilt after I sewed that strip onto the rest of it (it's on the far right hand side).  That's the best I could do as a washing line shot on a narrow balcony!  I've just got a fairly narrow strip that's the full length of the quilt and then I can get on with finally putting it all together.  My goal is to get the narrow strip done this year and be quilting it next year.  That should be doable? right?  time will tell!

Happy new year

Dear blog,

I'm sorry I've been neglecting you lately, but I'll try to be a bit better... 

I thought I'd start the new year not with a look back on what I made last year and not with resolutions, but with a to do list.

So, in no particular order:

1. Finish quilt top

2. Sew pair of jeans

3. Sew knickers

4. Knit gloves for me

5. Keep going with city & guilds (I'm just about to start module 6)

6. Laugh more

7. Socks for F

8. Sleeveless jumper for D

9. Green jumper for R
10. Brown jacket

I'm sure that will do for now. 

Finally a picture of my Christmas knitting... 5 repeats of artesian. I should be able to knit one more repeat of chart A and have enough yarn to knit chart B.