A shawlette finished/ Fiore di Mare Shawlette by Tiziana Samuri

Over the last month or so I've been knitting a lovely shawlette designed by Tizianz. It's called Fiore di Mare. Those who know me won't be surprised that the inspiration for the flower shape, and the crescent shape of the shawl come from "old" shawls.As with quilts, I'm drawn to the antique ones.
I used Yarn Addict Anni's hand dyed yarn called Fairytale sock yarn. It's a lovely mix of  wool, silk and cashmere. The pattern is available from Tiziana's Ravelry shop.

If you enjoy knitting or crochet, it's definitely worth joining Ravelry. It's free. It's an international data base of thousands of free patterns, pay-for-patterns and more. There are forums for any kind of thing you could possibly be interested in. I've discovered a world of yarns and patterns I didn't know existed and made some great friends. One really cool feature is this..if I have some yarn and don't know what to do with it, I can search a data base for all the projects others have made with that particular yarn. They're shown with links to the patterns. In about 10 minutes I can see what I want to make. Amazing!

Free quilt project

I just discovered that a quilt I designed for Quilter's Companion Magazine is up on their website for free. The photo is lovely. I'd like to  say the photo is taken in my dining room...but those who know me would know it's not:)
The quilt is called "Down by the Old Mill Stream". The pinwheels and the flowers somehow made me think of a river with rambling flowers on the banks and a big paddle wheel powering a mill. Mukm and Dad used to sing the old song "Down by the Old Mill Stream" and I couldn't get it out of my head as I designed the quilt.
So if you want a free pattern go over to Universal's complete craft website

This is a computer generated image of the quilt, but you can see a much better styled one by following the link.
best wishes
Colleen

Ceryle is progressing with her Celtic designs quilt

It's great to see Ceryle making huge progress with her hand stitched Celtic Design quilt. It's a kit (block of the month) she bought from "The Quilt Basket" at Victor Harbor a little while ago:) The outer blocks are now all finished and Ceryle is working on the centre design. She's changing the original and designing her own celtic curves for this large block. The colour arrangement is very clever. Being a busy Mum of 2 boys means Ceryle doesn't get much time to work on her project at home, but she sure can achieve a lot at class!
The photos show some of the blocks, and Ceryle's Mum, Anthea working on her quilt, along with Alexander who loves being "in" on what's going on:)

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Winter Leaves pattern available now

As promised, I'm making the pattern for this handknitted rectangular shawl available free download now
Hope you enjoy it :)

Winter Leaves Shawl complete

I'm very pleased with how this project turned out. Actually it was quite a fast knit.

I've used the same borders as Anusla used on her "Frozen Leaves" shawl and I designed it to be knit straight through from bottom to top. That means no provisional (temporary) cast on and no kitchener stitch grafting. Yay! It doesn't matter to me that the leaves are all going in the same direction. When the shawl is being worn the leaves grow up on one side and down on the other. I know this bothers some people, but in the interest of easy knitting I'm happy. In fact, it's more true to nature anyway. As I look out my window at the vines, the leaves are looking in all directions:)

I'm almost finished making the pattern which will be offered free on Ravelry and here if I can work out how to do it.

I'm looking for some test knitters. Please let me know if you're interested. You can use lace or fingering yarn, and make it wider if you like.

The next 2 photos show how I blocked the shawl. I wasn't sure how I would block the curved leaf edges along the length. I started by threading the blocking wires through the very outermost tips of the leaves on both sides so I could stretch the width out evenly. I pinned the rods in place then threaded 2 more rods through the ends, catching them in the points made but the yo's in the borders. My intension was to use mega lots of pins to shape the leaf edges in curves but common sense prevailed and I just carefully took out the side rods replacing them with a single pin in each leaf. If I had left the side rods there, it would have made bumps in the edges...not good. I had trouble getting the edges looking good at each end (borders), so the rods you can see along the long edges in the photos are woven into the lace holes at the very ends to keep them straight. They are just resting on top of the shawl along the rest of the edges. Clear as mud??

download now

best wishes
Colleen

To Everything There is a Season Quilt by Renata!

I'm very excited. Renata (a lovely long-time student and friend) has finished her magnificent quilt! Renata used my pattern and certainly made it her own. Her use of striking contrast makes it a happy sort of quilt.

The applique is fused and Renata finished the edges with machine blanket stitch.
As you can see it's quite a huge quilt, well and truely suitable for a queen size bed. Now Renata is more than capable of quilting, but made the decision to have it professionally machine quilted by Tracey Browning of Constantine Quilts. Wow, the quilting just adds another dimension. There are some close-up photos showing the quilting and also Renata's great applique.

Thanks Renata for sharing this with us:)