Back to Quilting

I realized a few days ago that I haven’t shared much of quilting on here lately.  Quilting has taken a bit of a back burner lately, with Christmas projects and all.  Also, working on a quilt that somehow isn’t going as smoothly as I’d like – lots of frogging and frustration.

But I did sit down to finish the binding on two.  This first one is a gift for a baby due late December:

And this one is a gift for a friend now in a care facility, hoping to get to see him before Christmas:

There’s a pile more in the basket waiting for binding, and they won’t take long so there should be more pictures to share in a few days.

In the meantime I’ve also taken up some knitting.  I saw this little afghan at a quilt show recently:

It looked so easy!  Yeah right!  It was like reading a whole new language – Sl1K????   psso????  Umm….guess I need some lessons or something!

But the book had another afghan that looked really easy, and is in fact (after a few stumbling tries).  So I’ve been picking away at this:

Knitting hasn’t been my favorite needlework craft – ever!  But now I’ve tackled continental style, and it’s going quite nicely, as long as I don’t miscount LOL!

Then Sunday in church, they announced that the mitten tree will go up soon.  Here is where they collect mittens and toques and scarves to give to the needy for Christmas.  Oh, I can make a scarf!  Might even be able to get through a toque or two.  So I’m going to put down my afghan and ‘whip up’ (if only) some small items for the mitten tree – but no mittens, at least not this year, maybe next.  And next year, maybe I’ll take another look at that ‘easy’ afghan and see if I can learn the lingo.  Knitting projects are so much easier to carry along to keep the hands busy than cross-stitch, which is my first needlework love.  I do have projects lined up, but I’ll concentrate on the Christmas needs first and get back to those later.  In the meantime, no idle hands so less eating, which is a good thing!

I actually started this post yesterday, with the plan to get back to the quilt that has had me screaming in frustration.  I did get to it, and got the unfinished block done, plus two more.  One more to go and I have enough to finish the quilt, but I’m almost out of background fabric, so have to see if I can find some today, or at least a coordinate so I can do some sashing.  Sure would be nice to get this done up before Christmas. 

I am linking up with Needlework Tuesday – head on over to see what others are working on:

Happy Christmas crafting!               Blessings, Peg