A little Scrappy UFO

 

In the closet with the rest of my UFO's I found these 8.5" square strip blocks. And get this, I even had left myself a little drawing of what these were for, LOL.  Seriously I need to do this more often as I pulled out several other UFO's that had no notes, that is frustrating. 

  

The plan was to snowball the corners with 2.5" squares. I even had the background fabric stored with these blocks!

I was able to quickly cut my background squares with the Accuquilt multiple 2.5" square die. At six layers thick I cut 54 squares in one pass.  After that I finished a couple blocks to see how they would look.

The next day I whipped through the green and gold and here is what I have so far. Oh how good it feels to work on a scrappy UFO!

The machine knitting of hats continued through out the week, here are the results of that.

Linking with Oh Scrap, Design Wall Monday, Sew and Tell Monday and This and That

Warm Fuzzy Moments

This weekend our son and DIL finally made it down for Christmas.  We had a great weekend as our daughter, SIL and the grandkids were all here for a while on Saturday too. There was some snow tubing happening and the kids opened their presents. Then we had the grandsons overnight, which allowed time for some card games. Our son brought his new game Uzzle, that was fun. 

The warm fuzzy moments came when my DIL and I were having a conversation and she mentioned she started going with a few of her church people down to Minneapolis and serving food at a shelter and a reservation. They also handed out some items that others had donated.  Some of these people live in tents in the middle of a cold winter here in Minnesota and are struggling to keep warm. I told her to hold her thought, I ran to my family room and gathered up 23 stocking hats that I just machine knitted this week and asked if she could use them to take there.  OMG she just teared up she was so happy that I would give them to her for this purpose, she almost made me cry.  I didn't know for sure where I would donate them here and I am just thrilled to let her take them. And then I sent 4 lap/baby quilts with her to hand out also, I made them for donation so it worked out great for us both!  I told her next time we see each other I would have more to give her. I gave her the 23 hats I had hand sewn up the back seam and were ready to go. I have another 20 to hand sew yet, and they will become hers too.  Here is what I sent home with her. There is also 3 other hats I knit long ago and a baby afghan.

Here is one of the quilts I sent with her. I'll show the rest later on. 

This pattern is called Positivity and is in the book Cut and Shuffle Quilts by Jan Ochterbeck from The Colorful Fabriholic. I pieced it over a year ago I think and there it sat in the 'to be quilted' UFO pile.  Now it will be put to good use for someone less fortunate.  I freehanded double loops with a fun green/yellow variegated Signature thread.

I am just thrilled to be able to hand all of these items over to our DIL so she can hand them out. She will be going down there again soon so they will come in handy.  I love warm fuzzy moments like this:)  

Today I spent taking down the tree and putting ornaments away and vacuuming.  I didn't put the snowmen away yet, I'll leave them a couple weeks and then I will get out my few Valentine decorations. 

Linking with:

Design Wall Monday

Sew and Tell Monday

WIP's of a different kind

 I felt the need for a little break from quilting😵 after all the hustle and bustle of the last few months. My quilting does give me thrills, goosebumps and all that but doing something different for a little while will help me rejuvenate!!  So I uncovered one of my knitting machines. There might have been some quilting covering it up, I could always plea that I was keeping it warm, LOL.  This machine has a motor attachment so once I have set the right number of needles and e-wrap the yarn on it I can set it for a number of rows. The carriage is then carried back and forth across the bed of needles by the motor. Once those rows have knitted I hang the cast on row onto the needles to form a tube which doubles the layers that go around your ears. Next comes a many rows of single layer to form the top of the hat.  I take the stitches off the machine using a double eye needle. Pull it up and then I have to hand stitch the back seam.  It takes about 25 minutes from start to finish on the machine and another 20 to hand sew it. 

I have over 20 hats knitted now, these are the only ones sewn up.  In these hats I used three strands of a 2/24 weight yarn which is a skinny yarn.  This makes for a nice feeling hat that should keep some youngsters warm.  I used three different colors to make the variegated effect.  After I have a nice pile done I will donate these. 

Don't forget AccuQuilt still has several sales going on until the end of the year.  25% off Bundles, Ready Set Go, Cubes and Dies.  As an Affiliate I get a small commission if you click my link and make a purchase, it's no extra cost to you. 

Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss, Midweek Makers