Patchwork Progress

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Work in progress, Quilts, patchwork8 Comments

My knitting may be growing a little slowly at the moment, but my patchwork is going well. My floral patchwork quilt is now quilted…

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I’ve sewn on the binding…

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… and even hand sewn a quarter of it down…

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I’ve also finished all the pinwheel’s on the baby quilt and added a boarder made from scraps of left over jungle fabric…

Pinwheel baby quilt

It was tight. This was all I had left when I finished…

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Hopefully I’ll have completed the floral quilt by next week.

Hope your projects are coming together well.

Until next time,

Bekki x

Knitting catch up

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Aran Knitting, Knitting12 Comments

I realise I haven’t mentioned knitting in quite a while. Last time I showed you, I’d finished the back and knitted this much of a sleeve of my Heartfelt cardigan.

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Normally I knit two sleeves together, but for practical reasons I’m not on this one. This prompted me to ask if other people knitted both sleeves together. I was amazed from the comments how many different orders a sweater/cardigan can be knitted in. More amazingly everyone had perfectly good and logical reasons why they did things in their  order.

This made me ask if I’d be happier knitting a cardigan/sweater in a different order. I came up with a resounding NO, particularly, because I now realise I also like to knit the front(s) last, because they’re the most interesting and quickest bit – which is just how I eat a meal; from least favourite food to the most favourite!

Anyway, I’ll shut up now and show you I’ve now finished both sleeves.

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Hurrah!

Until next time,

Bekki x

Sunday Sevens 2019 #12

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Sunday Sevens31 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Sevens, a post where I share seven – or more – photos of my week away from the blog.

Last Sunday was absolutely freezing. Not only was it only 4 degrees, there was a bitter wind that made it feel even colder. However, wrapped up warm, we still had a lovely walk in Belever Forest – such a beautiful place untouched by modern development…

 

I spotted a stone circle I’ve never seen before…

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… and Lovely husband hugged his favourite tree…

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Sunday evening we decided to warm ourselves by going out for a curry…

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Another meal out Monday: lunch with the friends at Church Lane in Tavistock…

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Wednesday was Lovely Husband’s birthday. I made him a cake – which I always find a challenge in an aga with no baking oven. There just isn’t a shelf that’s the right temperature. It spent most of the time on a shelf that was a little too cold then a short time on one that was too hot.

Thursday evening was knitting group at Lydford House Hotel, where one of the hotel guests visiting from Australia joined us with her embroidery…

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After a cold and windy start to the week, the temperature had risen by Friday to 20.5 degrees. So Friday’s walk with Harry in Abbeyford Woods was absolutely perfect…

 

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Of course the minutes us Brits see the slightest shaft of sunshine we bring out the BBQ…

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Sitting out in the garden in the sunshine is also a great time to do a bit of bird spotting…

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The hot weather also meant we could give Harry a full wash…

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Followed by the first haircut I’ve given him…

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With such a smart doggie we just had to take him out to mark the occasion at our local.

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Hope you’ve had a great week, it’s truly been a lovely one here.

Bekki x

The Quick and Easy Pinwheel Block Method

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn patchwork, Quilts14 Comments

Last week, when I shared the new decisions I needed to make on my baby quilt , you lot most decisively told me I should make pinwheel blocks between the jungle fabric squares. I completely agreed, but also cringed at the thought of all the extra work. After all 10 pinwheels require cutting and sewing 80 half square triangles. (In future to be referred to as HSTs)

Or do they?

Somewhere in the back of my brain I remembered there’s a quick way to make a square that consists of two HSTs.

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An HST Square

I rummaged around in my grey matter then cut out 10 red and 10 mustard 6″ squares.

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The technical bit…

At the start I had looked for a formula for how big the squares should be, but I couldn’t find one – Please tell me if you know of one. So I calculated for a pinwheel that measured 6″ once sewn into the quilt I needed 6″ squares and a small amount of trimming. (FYO: A pinwheel that measures  12″ once sewn into a quilt would need 10″ squares and a small amount of trimming.)

I placed one red square and one mustard square wrong sides together and sewed a 1/4″ seam around the edge…

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I then cut each in half from one corner to the other…

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…then in quarters by cutting across the other diagonal…

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This created four HST squares from each pair of larger squares…

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I pressed each HST square with the seam towards the darker fabric…

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I then trimmed the HST squares to make them 3.5 inches square exactly.

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I rather liked that I needed to trim, because it meant my squares were unquestionably the right size.

Then I pieced the squares together in pairs – being careful to make sure they were all pieced identically, so the final result would be identical pinwheels..

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More seam pressing…

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…then the pairs were pieced together in pairs…

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Followed by more pressing.

Et Voila! A pinwheel block…

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So pleased I remembered this method.

Hope you’re having a great crafty week.

Until next time,

Bekki x

 

Scrap Happy – New Home Cross Stitch Chart

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Cross Stitch, Scrap Happy16 Comments

I always save the left over embroidery threads from cross stitch kits, but until now have never found use for them. But I finally used some…

Recently a friend’s daughter and her boyfriend bought their first house. When I looked for a card to send her none felt good enough, so I decided to make my own with a bit of left over aida and some of the aforesaid left over embroidery thread.

‘Cheapskate’ I hear you say?  Well, I guess it didn’t cost a bean, but it took a lot more time, effort and love than buying a card. Plus once I’d finished it, I decided to pop it in a small frame, that I did pay for, as I felt there’d just been too much effort put into it to glue it to a card that would only be enjoyed for a week or two.

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If you fancy stitching your own house cross stitch for a card or to be framed, here’s the chart I made up for mine…

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I’m joining in this month with Kate & Gun’s monthly Scrap Happy Day where you too can use your scraps of fabric, yarn, paper, wood, anything to make something useful or lovely or both and show it off to the world.  You don’t have to join in every month, only when you have something to show.  Here’s a list of the other Scrap Happy participants should you want to visit their blogs:

Kate , Gun, Titti, Heléne, Eva, Sue, Nanette, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Debbierose, Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan, Karen,
Moira, Sandra, Linda, Chris, Nancy, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean, Johanna,
Joanne, Jon, Hayley, Dawn, Gwen, Connie, and Pauline

Bekki

Sunday Sevens (almost)

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Sunday Sevens21 Comments

This week has been a not very interesting week, but managed to scrape together a few photos of my week beyond the blog…

Last Sunday as we so often do, we went to the beach. It was quite warm but overcast. Harry, of course had a great time. He found lots of other dogs to play with, but here’s a pic of him just on his own…

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On Tuesday I had great time playing hide and seek with Harry amongst the gorse bushes on Fernworthy Moor…

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Wednesday, of course is pub quiz. We lost as usual, but this week our team was just me and my lovely next door neighbour and we scored two more points than one team who had a eight! So not too shabby. No pic, but the question with the most ridiculous answer was:

Last month Armando sold for one and a half million, the highest ever paid for one of these. What is Armando?

Answer at the end of the post.

This year’s lambs have been arriving for a while now, but our next door neighbours don’t lamb until late, so this was the first week they appeared in the field we can see from our house…

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The weather has been chilly but dry and bright for most of the week.  It’s amazing how quickly things start to dry out. This was particularly noticeable on the stepping stones at Fatherford…

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Last week I told you how pleased I was to see two baby bunnies appear in our garden after months of seeing no rabbits at all. Sadly I found one of the babies dead on the lawn on Wednesday morning, but pleased to see three more appear on Saturday…

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And yes, that is only five pics, but it really hasn’t been a very interesting week.

Hope you’ve had a good one.

Until next time,

Bekki x

Answer to quiz question: Armando is a pigeon.

 

 

Back in the Jungle

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn patchwork20 Comments

Last week I asked your opinions on the colours to use with a some jungle fabric I wanted to make a baby quilt out of.

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It was all but unanimous that I should use red, gold and green.

I set about pressing my fabric before I cut it, only to find the jungle fabric had been folded for so long it had developed white lines bang in the centre of each fat quarter.

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I now couldn’t cut sufficient pieces of the right size for the pattern I wanted, so I decided (after much anguished thought) to make a smaller quilt of 5×4 6″ squares where every other square was jungle fabric. I could have made the quilt bigger with more other fabric, but I wanted the jungle print to dominate.

Still not convinced I wanted to add more than red and gold to the mix, I cut out some red and gold squares and arranged them with the jungle print on the green fabric…

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I then tried chucking in some black and white polka dot to reflect the zebra colours and a bit of red and white polka dot for the hell of it…

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Now I know you almost all voted for red, gold and green (and I do think including green looks better in the photos) but in real life the gold and red only are winning my vote…

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However, what I’m thinking would look even better (even though this was supposed to be a mega simple quilt) is having red and gold pinwheels rather than squares.

So that’s where I’m up to a week later, still staring at the fabric and wondering what the heck the quilt is going to end up like.

And while I’m staring, I’ve got a quick question, what colour thread would you used to piece these colours together?

Hope you’ve had a more successful crafting week.

Until next time,

Bekki