knitting again

After all the crafting in Wellesley last week, I'm back in the groove. I started these felted slippers (which would have been done for my mom for Christmas if I had gotten home on time) on the plane back to Paris yesterday, and finished the tops and straps today, so now I just have to knit the bottoms. I'm not sure how the felting in my strange French washing machine is going to go. I might have to put that step off until I'm home in June, which will make Mom's Christmas present 7 months late...

fo: four-patch baby quilt

I went ahead and finished off this baby girl quilt this weekend, along with my pinwheel quilt. Finished measurements: 33" square. Width of print fabric strips: 4". Width of sashing strips: 3.5". I backed it with just about 1 yard of pink fleece and bound it with pink polka dot flannel. Both quilts have gone off in the mail to their recipients (for babies coming in March and April!)

star blocks

In the midst of my quilting this week, I started to make some star blocks with some scrap fabric. I actually love how these blocks look individually, but I don't like them together. I initially thought I might make a quilt top with lots of different star blocks in reds and blues, but after seeing these two together I scrapped that idea. I don't know if I'll use these blocks for anything, but I'm happy that I'm learning how to make some slightly more complicated quilt blocks.

fo: pinwheel baby quilt

I started this quilt yesterday and finished it at 11pm tonight. That might be a record for a quilt for me. I learned how to make pinwheel squares and sewed all nine of those yesterday. I used 4 inch squares to make my triangles and ended up with finished blocks of about 7.5 inches. Today I added the sashing and pieced together the whole top (using 3" strips of sashing.) I backed it with baby blue fleece instead of a batting and backing, and instead of quilting it all over I simply stitched in the ditch. Then I bound it (sewing the binding by hand onto the back of the quilt is the most tedious part) and it was all done! The finished dimensions are just about 30" square.