Stitch Stitch Stitch-along…

You could be forgiven for thinking I haven’t been doing anything other than stitching up Doctors for the Doctor Who Stitch-Along because I really just keep talking about that and pretty much nothing else. But I have been up to other things! Just, you know, not much. I spent five hours at the hospital one night! But, oh wait, no crafts there. I worked 7.5 hours overtime last week! But, oh wait, no crafts there. I found out my wasting-my-brain job might be an even bigger waste when the company got bought out by another company and the only thing everyone can agree on is that if they retain us employees, they’ll probably roll back our pay by 20-30%. But again, oh wait, no crafts there. Nope, all of that just generates stress, not crafts.

But to de-stress, I’ve been doing some crafting, and virtually all of has been hand-crafts, that most zen of the crafty things I do. I used to find hand-crafts so boring, but there’s something enjoyable and kind of soothing about turning off your mind and just stitching a hundred granito stitches, one after another, in a couple square inches of fabric.

This is the first of three stitches to be shared by &Stitches for their June Sampler-Along. I’m not sure why they’re only doing three stitches, because the pattern has room for seven stitches (or eight if you closed up the loop, which I know isn’t very visible in my photo) and now I’m going to have to come up with four other options to fill in the holes.

So that’s basically the whole project. The pattern is a circle (or a donut, almost), cut into seven segments, with a hollowed out area in the centre and an empty eighth segment (you might be best to go see it at their site because my lines are so very, very faint – that linen did not want to absorb the pen marks). I’m planning to use the seven threads on the right and that piece of Kokka fabric will be part of… whatever I do to turn it into a mini-quilt (wall-hanging or mug rug, I dunno). The threads are all from Sublime Stitching thread packs, the colours (from the top): Velvet Curtain, Absinthe, Amazonite, Fainting Couch, Tassel, Corset, and Bell Pull.

I’ve only just gotten started on the second area, which houses the sheaf stitch, but I think I’m going to pick it out and start again. It’s just a bit… well, weedy looking. I think I need to use one more strand of thread in the needle, and I’ve got to figure out if I want them all in neat little rows (the granito stitch I didn’t – I wanted it more or less in rows, but with some offness to them, and maybe I should aim for the same thing here). I think the paleness of the pink against the darker “natural” colour of the linen doesn’t really help, but it needs something to help it pop out a little more.

Two stitch-alongs weren’t enough, though. No. The Doctor may be time consuming, but he’s not everything, and the Granito stitch might have given me some moments of calm, but the Wild Olive Summer Stitching Club looked like it was going to be cute enough to warm even the most curmudgeonly of hearts. The pattern is made of hexagons, of which twelve will have cute things stitched on them. Hexies are a thing I’ve never done, so I appreciated the chance to try out a new thing, while working on something kind of low-key and easy.

I haven’t gotten started on my hexies at all yet (haven’t even picked out fabrics yet, except for the three different scraps of linen I’m going to use for the pieces with stitching on them), but I’ve got the first two patterns stitched up:

I’ve decided to do them primarily in back-stitch, since it’s a stitch I pretty well never use. I think it works for this project though, so I’m going to keep it up.

The third pattern will be for a cute little smiling bikini, and hopefully I’ll get started on that soon. It seems like a fair few participants have already got the background hexies finished and I haven’t even chosen fabrics yet! I’m a bit nervous about making the hexies, since I don’t know how, but so many people seem to find them addictive, and hopefully I will too! (Or, anyway, addictive enough to get me through making the quilt top!)

And look at me, I’m wearing a vegetable! (Doctor Who Stitch-a-long Week 5)

Does it offend you?

My only encounter with the Fifth Doctor was when the Tenth Doctor met him – the hat, the coat, the crickety-cricket stuff, the stick of celery… yeah. Brave choice, celery, but fair play to you: not a lot of men can carry off a decorative vegetable…

(Okay. I had to have two videos because I couldn’t not slip in a little extra Tenth Doctor.)

So, the fifth pattern of the Doctor Who Stitch-a-long is Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor, and since I created this pattern and since the only thing I knew about him was the crickety-cricket clothes and the celery, OF COURSE we’ve got celery:

Well, I’ve been reserving the space beneath the first picture of the newest pattern to talk about the designer, but since I designed this one, there isn’t much to say that couldn’t be found by looking around my blog. This is the first pattern I’ve designed and you can find it here at Fandom in Stitches. I’ve discovered that (no surprise) I’m a bit neurotic about these things – I can’t tell you how many variations of the almost exact same thing I went through. (This font? that font? no, this other font? More stripes? fewer stripes? different stitching instructions? Back stitch celery? straight-stitch celery? jagged leaves? round leaves? wheat sheaf passing as celery?…) I still want to fix the celery (thinner stalk, maybe make the leaves look like how I stitched them rather than showing the shape of the leaves), but at a certain point in the design process I just decided that I was done and had to be done or else I’d never stop fiddling with it.

I’ve had this pattern stitched up for quite a while – it’s the first one I stitched up, and I even did it twice. I started out with eyes and a nose in the original pattern, which went by the way-side because they’re hard to do well, and I started with black fabric and was using all rayon floss done in back stitch. It looked pretty awful, so I threw it away, but I wish I hadn’t because I stitched a bunch of sample celery stalks around the edges of it to try to figure out the best stitch method.

I used a promo shot of the Fifth Doctor as the base image for the pattern and I think he’s actually wearing a different vest in that image than he wears through most of the show! Feel free to fiddle around with the look of his vest if you want something more authentic to what Davison seems to have worn. I am happy to have you fiddle with the pattern so that it suits you!

As always, this was mostly stitched with a 2-strand split stitch. I did a French knot for the point of the question mark, and used double rows of chain stitch for the lines on his vest. The leaves are a single strand of dark green and a single strand of light green rayon floss, and are stitched as described below. I am having issues with Flickr right now – it won’t let me upload my close-up pictures – so I’m going to have to use an old shot from my silver on black version to show you the celery. [ETA: The photo above has been changed to show the closer view of the vest and leaves, but I'm leaving in the black version because I think the celery leaves are clearer on it than in the version with green leaves. With most of my photos, you can click through to make them bigger, if you'd like to see it in brutally close-up detail.]

Both in this sample and in the finished product, the leaves are quite a bit different from how they look on the pattern. Essentially each leaf is done with one straight stitch up the middle, then two (or three) stitches on either side of that centre line, always coming up through the hole at the base. I think it probably looks more like wheat than celery, but my attempts at creating a back-stitch leaf were… terrible. I didn’t wind up using the satin stitch for the stalk in my final version, but that’s largely because every flaw in a rayon satin stitch showed up far more than I’d wanted it to show. (This by way of saying: please ignore the bad stitching on that version!) I probably should have changed the pattern to reflect the stitches as I actually made them, but I thought I should leave it up to each person to decide how they want to tackle the celery leaves and so I left it with the basic shape you want to create – how you get there is up to you!

A few details:
Fabrics
Sashing – light blue – Star Charts in Blue from Lizzy House’s Constellations
Sashing – purple – Supernova in Purple from Lizzy House’s Constellations
Background – Essex Linen Blend in Natural
Threads
Blue – DMC 939
Dk Green – DMC Satin Floss S702
Lt Green – DMC Satin Floss S504

Last week I didn’t have a finished image of my Fourth Doctor to show you – well, here it finally is! I did manage to fit in the word (it was actually rather small compared to how I was imagining it in my head! it fit perfectly!) and I went with red split stitch in the end.

If you share your photos at the Fandom in Stitches Flickr group, you’ll be entered to win a monthly prize and I’m also offering a special prize to someone who finishes all twelve patterns by August 12 – Nine Fat Quarters from Lizzy House’s Constellations line of fabric:

This is the Lunar Landing colourway of the line, which has richer, more royal blues than the fabrics I’m using, and doesn’t have the purple tones. You MUST post your pictures at the Fandom in Stitches Flickr group to win, so if you’re stitching along, don’t forget to share with the class!

1. Doctor number four, 2. Doctor the First, 3. Doctor the Second, 4. IMG_4319, 5. IMG_9995, 6. IMG_0399, 7. IMG_3066, 8. The Fourth Doctor Block, 9. IMG_1317s, 10. IMG_1318s, 11. Doctor who block 03, 12. Wk-1, 13. Wk-2, 14. WK-4, 15. Wk-3, 16. DWSAL2crop, 17. 2nd doctor, 18. 3rd doctor, 19. Dr Who Block 2, 20. Dr Who Block 3

(Can I just say how very, very exciting it is to see so many new blocks this week? So exciting!)

Would you like a Jelly Baby? (Doctor Who Stitch-a-Long Week 4)

Most of the people I know who like Doctor Who liked it before I was born, and this doctor, the Fourth Doctor, is THEIR Doctor. (For me, I think it’ll probably always be David Tennant, though, with a very definite fondness for Christopher Eccelston. They could do a Ninth or Tenth Doctor reboot from before Rose or after Rose but before Martha or whatever, just kind of go back in time, but not really because it’s a show full of time travel, and have either of them back for another five years and I’d be a happy camper.)

This fourth pattern of the Stitch-a-long is Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, he of the jelly babies and the long, long scarf and the sort of CRAZY EYES (not shown here because eyes are HARD to stitch!):

This pattern (not quite as pictured here) was created by Kim Kuehn of Geek Stitching. Kim’s designed a pile of embroidery/cross-stitch patterns for various fandoms, including a series based on Pixar films (my favourite is the one for UP). Up above is my not quite complete take on the pattern (more on that in a moment), but you can get the pattern here at Fandom in Stitches, and you can see Kim’s version done right here (or at FiS, where you can click to embiggen it – I had to steal the photo so that I could post it, but you can see a larger version at the source):

I don’t have a finished version of my block, with the sashing attached, because I was 95% done when I suddenly realized that I wasn’t 95% done at all – I’d forgotten to transfer the “Four” when I did my window-as-a-lightbox transfer. Worse than that, I’d centred Four’s body on the block without including the word and I haven’t measured it out yet, but I’m not sure if my block has enough spare room on the right to fit in the word and still have an appropriate border around all the sides. Sigh. That’s a job for today or tomorrow. I guess.

You might notice one other change, and that’s that I added a line to suggest a vest, so that his cravat would have something to be tucked in to. I’m not sure why I felt like it needed that one extra line (and button), but it just felt right to me!

As with the others, this block was stitched primarily in 2-strand split stitch, but I also used chain stitch in the red sections to suggest the knit look of his scarf. The lines on his cravat are all long straight stitches. I think that was just me being lazy – I probably could/should have done it in split stitch and I’m really not sure why I didn’t. The stitch I’ll use for the “four” will depend on which colour I use. I really like that shiny red, so I’m tempted to stitch it out in red (in which case: chain stitch), but it’s a bit intense and doesn’t really need THAT much red in the block, so I should probably go with the blue (so: split stitch).

A few details:
Fabrics
Sashing – light blue – Star Charts in Blue from Lizzy House’s Constellations
Sashing – purple – Supernova in Purple from Lizzy House’s Constellations
Background – Essex Linen Blend in Natural
Threads
Blue – DMC 939
Red – DMC Satin Floss S666

If you share your photos at the Fandom in Stitches Flickr group, you’ll be entered to win a monthly prize and I’m also offering a special prize to someone who finishes all twelve patterns by August 12 – Nine Fat Quarters from Lizzy House’s Constellations line of fabric:

This is the Lunar Landing colourway of the line, which has richer, more royal blues than the fabrics I’m using, and doesn’t have the purple tones. You MUST post your pictures at the Fandom in Stitches Flickr group to win, so if you’re stitching along, don’t forget to share with the class!

There aren’t nearly so many new stitches this week as there have been in the past couple weeks, but Week Three was a slightly more intense pattern than the previous week’s have been, so I’m sure once people are over that hump, more new blocks will be showing up all over again:

1. 941956_10200385443853589_980584398_n, 2. Third Doctor Block, 3. Week one quilt block for dr. Who quilt, 4. Week three dr who wuilt, 5. Doctor who block two, 6. doctor who block one, 7. Doctor 2 with Sashing, 8. Dr Who Block One

-

Also, because this has been my big work in progress for the last little while, and will continue to be for the next several weeks while I try to get ahead on the patterns again… I’m linking up to The Needle and Thread Network and WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced:

Apple Potholders

A while ago I had my 111st post and I’d decided to do a secret giveaway, where anyone who commented would be entered into a draw and the winner was going to win something handmade by me, something probably kind of silly, but hopefully useful, I’d said. The winner was Carly at CitricSugar, and I figure it’s probably time I talk about what I sent her, because the package did arrive earlier this week.

Apple potholder/hot pads!

The pattern for these apples was adapted, kind of, from Ayumi Takahashi’s Patchwork, Please! book which came out earlier this year. I think a lot of you have probably read it – it’s been kind of big on the craft blog scene, which makes sense because it’s a cute book, with lots of fun little projects in it. It’s nice that everything in it is do DOABLE, but also so cute and useful while they’re at it. There are quite a few things in this book that I would like to make, which is more than I can saw for a lot of craft/quilting books. I’d decided a while ago to quit buying craft books and start borrowing them from the library first and this is the only book I’ve bought since then without reading it for free first. By and large I wasn’t disappointed by that choice, though I often find the pattern directions slightly mystifying – for instance, when you sew things right sides together, it usually if not always recommends sewing the entire way around, then unpicking part of the stitches to turn it right side out, which… why? – and I mentioned some time ago being frustrated by not being able to easily print the patterns (trying to get them onto a photocopier so that I could eventually blow up the pattern – by 143%, of all the ridiculous amounts) and how eventually I just ripped a page out of the book:

The pattern I ripped out of the book was NOT the apple pattern, but a pattern for a hexagon potholder. Which I never did make. In the book, the apples are actually bibs, but as I have no use for apple bibs (and didn’t think Carly did either), but still wanted to make this ridiculously cute pattern, I converted them to potholders/hot pads.

I made the green hotpad first, and it’s truest to the book – it’s the same size as the bib, with the leaf made as suggested. You stitch together a front and back with right sides together, then flip it right-side out, and stitch it down. It was hard to do. I think I stitched around the outside of the leaf three times before I got it close enough to the edge to look good and not super jerky (because I was using a quarter inch foot and couldn’t really see where my stitches were going on that tiny space). So for the next two potholders, I decided to do a lazily embroidered leaf, rather than stitching one down:

Not that those leaves are perfect either – I didn’t switch over to a darning foot/FMQ foot, so I had a really hard time making smooth curves with the machine. It was more successful than unsuccessful, but yeah. Not perfect.

For the second and third potholders, I upped the size a little. The green one is big enough to put a small pot on, or a coffee pot or something, but it is a little bit small for a hot pad, so I made the next two a little larger. They only ended up about 1/4-inch bigger all around, but they are a slightly nicer size for a pot holder.

By and large, I really enjoyed making these. I was glad to have an excuse to use some of that apple fabric (in all three shades I own!) and it can be really satisfying to make small things (quicker turn around, and I’m far more likely actually to finish them!) and I love giving things away and I got to practise a new technique.

The new technique being bias binding. I’ve made projects before that should have used bias binding and I very stubbornly tried to do them with straight-grain binding (and naturally it looked like crap), but this time I decided to suck it up, princess and get on with it. It was really not so hard to work with, although I had varying levels of success with the dip in the top of the apple. It was great going around curves, but I couldn’t figure out how to make that dip look good. I think they all came out pretty well despite my lack of experience. I had to smush a lot of fabric up under the binding at that point, but it looks pretty smooth I think.

Inside of each potholder is a layer of Insulbrite and a layer of batting underneath that. They feel impossibly thin and I barely thought they’d actually function as potholders, but I put a hot casserole dish on one of them for a quite a while, and the counter top stayed cool, so it must have reflected the heat back up as it was suppose to.

Anyway, I think it’s as pretty fun thing to make, and a great way to mod the bib pattern, if you haven’t got little kids to put cute apple bibs on. (I do recommend making them larger than the bib size – add about half an inch all around and it should be big enough to use with most pots.)

Time to Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow (Doctor Who Stitch-A-Long Week 3)

I’ve never seen the episodes with these older doctors (I’ve seen the New Who eps only), but I do know that our third pattern features Mr. Reverse the Polarity himself.

So for our Third pattern/block in this Stitch-a-long, we have Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor:

This pattern brings us back to designer Aalia Zaman of Joy of Stitches again (she also designed week one’s pattern), but this particular version was stitched by me. You can find the pattern here at Fandom in Stitches.

On the left you’ll see Aalia’s version of Three, and on the right is the one stitched up by Jennifer Ofenstein, who designed last week’s block and who is our Stitch-a-long Mama (so to speak). (Click through to see these stitches embiggened):

I’ve stitched mine, again, primarily in two-strand split stitch, though there’s a little stem stitch to make the top of Three’s Sonic Screwdriver and his neck ruffle is done in back stitch. I really, really love that purple cloak, and I’m going back and forth on maybe, maybe filling in the cloak with satin stitch, to make that purple really pop out. On the other hand, none of my other patterns have a huge amount of colour, and I don’t want it to be the odd man out, so far as colour goes. Thoughts?

I took a close-up of the neck ruffle so you could see how I did it, at least a little better. I use the Window-As-A-Lightbox method of pattern transfer and I’m using a slightly heavier than quilting cotton cotton-linen blend (with little bits of other darker colours and sometimes thicker threads), so I had a little trouble seeing some of the pattern lines when I was tracing it, and I wound up just kind of winging the neck ruffle by drawing it so it looked approximately like the pattern, and then I changed it a little more as I stitched, so that if I accidentally veered a stitched off a little to the left, then it curled to the left. I quite like how it came out in the end. I thought maybe I should use a single strand of floss when I stitched it, since it’s a fairly small area, but I did it with two anyway (laziness is a powerful force – I didn’t want to have to rethread my needle!) and I think it turned out delicate enough anyway. (Looking at it so close-up, I think my split stitch could stand to have been stitched with three strands, rather than two!)

My last close-up. I made the Three on mine a little bolder looking than Aalia and Jennifer did. I did a split stitch around the outline, then did one line straight through the middle, and then just filled in where necessary around the edges. Did I say I love that purple? Because I really love that purple.

A few details:
Fabrics
Sashing – light blue – Star Charts in Blue from Lizzy House’s Constellations
Sashing – purple – Supernova in Purple from Lizzy House’s Constellations
Background – Essex Linen Blend in Natural
Threads
Blue – DMC 939
Purple – DMC Satin Floss S550

If you share your photos at the Fandom in Stitches Flickr group, you’ll be entered to win a monthly prize and I’m also offering a special prize to someone who finishes all twelve patterns by August 12 – 9 Fat Quarters from Lizzy House’s Constellations line of fabric:

This is the Lunar Landing colourway of the line, which has richer, more royal blues than the fabrics I’m using, and doesn’t have the purple tones. You MUST post your pictures at the Fandom in Stitches Flickr group to win, so if you’re stitching along, don’t forget to share with the class! There’ve been quite a lot of Doctors stitched up in the last couple weeks and I get excited every time I see a new one in the group. It’s fantastic to see how much people are making these blocks their own. Here’s what’s come along since my post last week, each one a little different:

1. DSCN1746, 2. whoblock2, 3. Dr who stitch along, week2, 4. DW SAL 2, 5. Second Doctor block, 6. Second doctor, 7. IMG_1252s, 8. DW SAL 1, 9. First Doctor Block, 10. Doctor who block one, 11. whoblock1, 12. DWSAL 1, 13. DSCN174514. Not available15. Not available

Also, because this has been my big work in progress for the last little while, and will continue to be worked on (though mostly behind the scenes), I’m linking up to:

The Needle and Thread Network

WIP Wednesday at Freshley Pieced

May Bee/Exchange Blocks

Do you ever lose random craft supplies? Like, say, your good 12.5″ square ruler instead of your crappy one? When you only sew/cut fabric in one room of your house and it’s only like… a 90 square foot room and half of the floor is covered in furniture? Because I did that. My bad 12.5″ square ruler is still hanging around, so I can get some stuff done, but the numbers and lines are all faded and it’s got a slight inward curve on the side I tended to cut on the most, so I have to remember to use the opposite corner. Annoying. I really wish I could figure out what the heck I did with the good one because it’s so much nicer! I really, kind of desperately, need to clean my sewing space because it’s a gong show. But I’m really bad at organizing, somehow, and also it just seems like a boring way to spend my time. On the other hand, knowing where to find my things would probably save me time down the line. Or tomorrow, even.

Anyway, I got a few bee blocks done, one for my Simply Solids group, which is this block here:

This block is for Deanna (at Little D and Me). She sent out the pre-cut fabric to make this great big triangle block. I was a little bit scared of putting this one together – so many bias edges! – but then it really just came together fairly easily. Deanna wanted it to be as random as possible, with no patterns to the fabric placement, so when the fabric first arrived, I pulled each layer of fabric out of the bag one at a time and laid it out into the triangle shape in the exact order they were in the bag, only making changes if two of the same colour were beside each other. And it seemed pretty good, but then I when I actually stitched it together yesterday and today I somehow kept managing to flip pieces or to sew the next triangle onto the wrong side, so my unplanned plan went at all out of whack, and all the greens wound up down the left side and across the bottom and all the darkest purple and blues down the right hand side. But it’s probably actually more random this way, even though things somehow seemed to clump up? So says I, anyway.

I really like that bright patch of orange in the middle of all that – I’ll be interested to see how it all ends up in the final quilt, once Deanna has all the blocks!

My second block is for the only May birthday girl in my Livejournal Birthday Blocks group. She requested a Card Trick block in forest greens with a trees/leaves theme on off-white or cream:

We have a few really traditional (and very triangle heavy) blocks in this years LJ group, including this Card Trick block. I’d never done a card trick block before, which surprises me a little because I’ve done A LOT of traditional quilt blocks in my ten years of quilting. I wouldn’t say this is one of my particular favourites, as far as traditional goes, nor one of my favourite colour combos. Every now and then I get the urge to cull my fabric stash and these kinds of prints are the things I tend to pull out to give away, because the colour is pretty muted and they can seem dreary if you don’t find a good way to pull them together, but then I wind up leaving them because you never know when you’re going to need something more neutral like this to tone down or pull back something else that’s a little more crazy. Or you just might need to make something for your Grandma and you know she’ll be all over that sort of thing. And it’s just as well because I might have had to buy a new tenth-of-a-metre of something similar if I didn’t have this hanging around. Anyway, for all my don’t-really-like-it, I really do hope that Suri (the recipient) will like it. And I hope it’ll work well with the quilt she’s planning, since I know she’s been collecting blocks for this quilt for a while.

So guess that’s that! Next up will be a very scary improv block for my Simply Solids group – gorgeous, but scary! I’m not good at improv! – and a birthday block for June, for Miss Aalia, in the brightest most Hufflepuff yellow I can find. (I’m pretty sure I’ve got a few things that’ll work, I just need to choose a block!) I’m hoping to get the birthday block done this weekend, so maybe I’ll have something to show early on next week, and the other… well, I still need to wait for the fabric, but once it gets here, I’m pretty sure I’ll hem and haw over it for a week or two before sitting down to work on it, freaking out about how bad it looks, deciding it doesn’t look that bad really and then questioning every life choice that lead me to quilting in general and bee sewing in specific. And then I’ll probably be happy with it in the end, because one not that improv-y block in a whole quilt can’t possibly stand out that much, right? (Because I’ll confess now: I’ve been looking at photos of waterfalls online and bookmarking ones that look like I might be able to work an improvish pattern out of them…)

See you tomorrow for the Doctor Who Stitch-A-Long! I’m even planning to pre-write my post, so it’ll be up sometime during the day tomorrow! (Still after I get home from work – I want to direct link to the ACTUAL Fandom in Stitches post, so I need to wait until it’s posted, and I don’t like doing that crap on my phone just so I can do it at work.) [ETA: You won't see the DWSAL "tomorrow" because that's Tuesday and the DWSAL happens on Wednesday. So, you know. See you Wednesday!]

Linking up to the Let’s Get Acquainted blog link-up!

Doctor Who Two (Doctor Who Stitch-A-Long Week 2)

Okay, I think I lost a day somewhere, because it’s Thursday, not Wednesday and I was going to post about the Doctor Who Stitch-a-long on Wednesday. But I guess I know where the time went – I stayed at work a half hour late, then went and got my hair cut and coloured (and let my hairdresser talk me into highlights, but I hate them, so…) and then when I got home, my sister was watching Masterchef, and even though I always hate the first episode of competition shows (and especially the ones where people have to compete to get on, but seem to already have been pre-selected, else why would there be cameras in the car with the relatives of one potential participant?) I still let myself get sucked into it. And then it just kept going! It was two episodes and not one! (Maybe it was more than two – I stopped watching halfway through the second episode.) Anyway, I didn’t get my photo taken until this morning, so the post,.. it is late.

For our second pattern/block of this Stitch-a-long, we have Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor:

This pattern was designed by the wonderful and multi-talented Jennifer Ofenstein of SewHooked and Fandom In Stitches. The idea for this stitch-a-long was her’s and the quilt pattern (should you choose to follow it!) is designed by her as well! Jennifer is also a prolific paper-piece designer and has designed a multitude of Harry Potter quilt blocks (amongst many, many others – that owl wall-hanging I did a couple years ago? Her pattern.) In any case, you can find the pattern for the second doctor here at Fandom In Stitches.

So far I think Jennifer and I are the only ones who’ve completed the second pattern, and here is her version:

Jennifer is stitching her patterns in three-strand back stitch. I didn’t link to the photo with her sashing on, but she’s doing a scrappy sashing for her quilt, which I believe is destined for her Who-loving daughter.

I stitched my Second Doctor primarily in 2-strand Split Stitch – my favourite stitch! The bow-tie was done in some combination of split stitch (around the outside) and something like back-stitch for the plaid, though to be honest I don’t think I could tell you how I did it exactly. Some of it was done in long stitches all the way across the space, but others were broke up into smaller stitches so that I could make it a “crooked” looking plaid. I did a back stitch for the dangly bits on his recorder (flute?) (though the recorder itself is done in split stitch). And the fingers, oh those fat sausage fingers that hated me so, I did those in stem stitch.

I have a lot of issues with stem stitch – I always forget which side of the needle to hold the thread on and then it stops looking rope-like and starts looking like it’s going to fall apart – but I think it came together all right anyway. It just felt like I needed something different from the split stitch for getting around the tight curves of his nails and finger tips.

A few details:
Fabrics
Sashing – light blue – Star Charts in Blue from Lizzy House’s Constellations
Sashing – purple – Supernova in Purple from Lizzy House’s Constellations
Background – Essex Linen Blend in Natural

Threads
Blue – DMC 939
Green – DMC Satin Floss S702

If you’re fan of Who, I really do hope you’ll join in! If you share your photos at the Fandom in Stitches Flickr group, you’ll be entered to win a monthly prize (and there may just be a slightly bigger prize at the end for someone who finishes all twelve patterns…). (But that’s just a rumour! Shh!) There are already a handful of First Doctors stitched up and posted, each of them just a little different from the next. I love how much people are making these patterns their own:

1. The first doctor, 2. Will Hartnell, 3. Dr Who Block and Dr. 1, 4. First Doctor Block, 5. The First Doctor, 6. 1st doctor, 7. IMG_1251s8. Not available9. Not available

I finished a thing!

I finished a thing this weekend, despite spending so much time working when I should have been sleeping and sleeping when I should have been sewing. (I have to work two weekends in a row this month! Not fun! I normally get alternating weekends off.)

I’m still not showing what that thing is, but a photo anyway:

It pretty much looks like the last time I showed it, but, you know… it’s done this time!

It’s funny and annoying how often I change my mind when I’m working on things. Originally that pink mini with red binding was going to have binding that matched the pink fabric – I mean, it was the same fabric – but then I hated it when I looked at it from the front side, so I picked it all off and decided to go with a nice red dot, because that nice red dot fabric matched the front really well. And all was fine in the world, until I flipped the fabric over to the back to stitch it down and realized I hated the red dot against the pink back just as much as I’d hated that pink against the red on the front. Ugh. Well, I wasn’t picking it off again, so there it is. I don’t know what I’d have done instead, anyway. It’s not easy to find that sweet spot of mixing pink and red. They’re so close to one another, but they can look awfully awful together.

I wish I had more to show this week: I have two quilt blocks I desperately need to get finished and in the mail soon, but I haven’t got very far with either of them. One is for my Livejournal birthday blocks group – it’s a Card Trick block, in forest greens on cream, and I neither want to make that particular block nor want to make it with that mix of colours. I mean, that’s the way things fall sometimes when you’re working on stuff for other people, but all those half-square triangles are making me cringe in advance (generally I do them well, but I don’t very often WANT to). I really just need to sit down and bang it out, though. The other block is for Deanna at Little D and Me and is also a whole mess of triangles, though very very very different from the triangles in the Card Trick block! (If you go to her blog and scroll down to her April 24th post, you’ll see!) I’m both excited and scared to work on it, but I feel like I need some time to devote to it before I want to start working on it.

I should have had time today – I work six days this week, so I skipped out early from work today (since I could), and was home two hours earlier than usual. But my brother-in-law was home and playing obnoxiously loud music. I am the biggest baby going when it comes to loud music, so I decided I could either go to the library with my laptop and catch up on blogs or sit in the sun in the backyard and catch up on blogs. I went with the sun, and I sat there for two hours, and sunburned my arms. Nice! (Yeah, nice. Nice and painful, that is.)

After that I thought I’d better walk to the library and pick up some stuff that was being held for me and I picked up a couple of craft books while I was there – Sweet and Simple Patchwork Gifts by Hisako Arai and Yoko Sanjo, Jelly Roll Dreams by Pam and Nicky Lintott, and Embroidery for Little Miss Crafty by Helen Dardik.

On the way home, I went down by a pond in my neighbourhood and tried to take pictures of ducks:

They swim away too fast!

Anyway, tomorrow I’m getting my hair cut and coloured, so I probably won’t have time to sew then either! Thursday, I guess! Hopefully I’ll have something worth showing then. In any case, more Doctor Who Stitch-A-Long tomorrow!

Hello, I’m the Doctor! (Doctor Who Stitch-A-Long Week 1)

Doctor Who?

Two minutes later and the word “Doctor” has no meaning any longer. But never mind that! It’s time for the Doctor Who Stitch-A-Long!

For the first pattern/block of the Stitch-a-long, we’re going all the way back to where it all began, William Hartnell’s First Doctor:

This pattern was designed by the lovely Aalia Zaman of Joy of Stitches, but this particular version was stitched by me. You can find the pattern here at Fandom in Stitches.

This is Aalia’s version, on the purple batik, and then Jennifer Ofenstein (of SewHooked and Fandom in Stitches), on the white background:

Jennifer, or Ofenjen as I tend to think of her, has designed the layout for the quilt (as well as several of the upcoming blocks), and that’s what you’ll see with my blocks as you go along. The cutting instructions can be found along with the week one pattern.

For my sashing and borders, I’m going to use these fabrics from Lizzy House’s Constellations line, still available from some retailers on Etsy as well as at Hawthorne Threads (where I bought my yardage):

I’ll be using the top fabric (Asterisk in Black) for my binding, the middle fabric (Supernova in Purple) for my dark sashing/border, and the bottom fabric (Starcharts in Blue) for my light sashing/border. The centre fabric is Essex Linen Blend in Natural, which I bought from Mad About Patchwork.

I am a great big fan of split stitch, so this was worked primarily in two-strand split stitch, though I’m pretty sure I did the tie in itty bitty back stitch. It’s all done in DMC 939, which is a lovely deep, dark blue, except for the shiny bit, which is DMC Satin Floss (a rayon 6-strand thread) in S798 (also two-strand split stitch). It looks a bit shiny because I forgot to lower the temperature on my iron and I sort of… fused some of the threads together a little bit. (Sigh. Rayon.) It didn’t damage the fabric at all (though it looks here as if it bled – it did not), so I may pick it out and redo it (but let’s face it, probably I won’t). I’m a slow stitcher (my Grandma makes fun of me for doing everything in single, complete stitches: thread and needle all the way up, all the way down, all the way up, all the way down), but it took me about 3 hours total to stitch (while watching two movies, so that might account for some of my speed as well, since it wasn’t exactly eyes on the project at every moment).

If you’re fan of Who, I really do hope you’ll join in! If you share your photos at the Fandom in Stitches Flickr group, you’ll be entered to win a monthly prize (and there may just be a slightly bigger prize at the end for someone who finishes all twelve patterns…). (But that’s just a rumour! Shh!)

Giveaways, Bindings, and the Doctor… Doctor Who?

I’m feeling thwarted by Life, the Universe, and Everything right now. Or, anyway, an unbelievable exhaustion that had me coming home from work early on Monday so that I could sleep (seriously, who leaves work because they’re too tired? Who doesn’t drive heavy machinery, anyway…?). So. Tired.

But whatevs, today I’m going finally to:

1. Announce my Giveaway Winners
2. Talk Just a Tiny Bit More about Binding
3. Snicker about still not showing you the stuff I’ve been working on.

Actually, scratch that last one. Tomorrow I’m going to reveal the first bit of what I’ve been working on lately, so no point in gloating any more: the Doctor Who Stitch-a-Long is nearly here! (It’s a guaranteed post from me every Wednesday for the next 12 weeks! I’m not usually so predictable in my posting!)

I hope any of you Whovian Stitchers out there will join us! There will be monthly prizes throughout the course of the Stitch-a-long and a bigger prize at the end to be won by someone who completes all of the patterns.

So right, back to Number 1. Normally when I do a giveaway, I handwrite all the entrants names on squares of paper and put them all in a bucket and draw the winners name that way, but I had 250 people enter my giveaway! That’s a lot of names + locations + prize preferences (+ indentifying info, in the case of multiple Sarahs, Katys, and Patty/Pattis…). So this time I put all the information into Excel, printed out all the names + info, cut them up into thin strips, and drew names that way.

In this photo, the names in the basket are the Canadian/Intl. people, and the ones laying on the table are the Americans. The basket was too small, so I had to find an empty ice cream pail to draw the names, but that was less pretty, so I didn’t take a photo of that…

My first winner, to an International or Canadian entrant, was Kay:

It’s no surprise that she choose the fabric, since that was far (far far) and away the more popular of my two giveaway items! Sew, Mama, Sew is definitely a fabric lover’s paradise, more so than an embroidery lover’s one, anyway! I was a little afraid that my second winner wouldn’t be interested in the crewel kit at all, but luckily she was okay with that.

My second winner, drawn from all my entrants, was Patti:

I didn’t get to the post office on Monday (see: opening paragraph, also: life, the universe, and everything) and then forgot to take the packages with me to work today, but they’ll be off in the mail tomorrow to these lovely ladies.

Because I’m a bit of a nerd, I kept track of a few different things, and here are some interesting (to me) details about the people who entered this giveaway:

There were 330 total who entered, but only 250 left me their location. Of those 250 people, their countries of residence break down like this (barring me accidentally deleting info from my spreadsheet after I printed everything, once I started trying to consolidate data – I had some people down by State or Province, but others by US or Canada, and I’m pretty sure I messed some things up when I was trying to standardize what I’d typed in):
Australia – 19
Canada – 30
England – 3
Germany – 4
UK – 15
USA – 158

And with two entrants only: Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, and Spain. And with one entrant only: Brazil, Finland, France, Indonesia, Israel, New Caledonia, North Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, Sri Lanka, Switzerland. It’s no surprise that an American won the second prize, since more than 60% of the people who entered were American.

Also of note to me where the books people mentioned as being favourites. Fifteen people mentioned author names only, which I won’t reproduce here, but the most popular mentions were Angela Walters and Elizabeth Hartman. (These were people whose names were mentioned unaccompanied by a title.) There were also 88 books mentioned. I won’t list all of those, but these were the ones that had more than one mention:

Sunday Morning Quilts – 12 mentions
Doodle Stitching – 10 (inc. one for The Motif Collection, which is the second book in the series)
Patchwork, Please – 6
Material Obsession – 5
Modern Patchwork (Elizabeth Hartman) – 4
Modern Quilting (Gering & Pederson) – 4
One Yard Wonders – 4
Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters – 3
Improv Sewing – 3
Little Stitches (Aneela Hoey) – 3
Quilts from the House of Tula Pink – 3
Assorted Schnibbles books – 3
Scrap Basket Surprise – 3
Zakka Style – 3
Amy Butler’s Bag Book (sorry, I don’t know the title) – 2
Angela Walter’s FMQ book (see above) – 2
Farmer’s Wife Sampler – 2
Martha Stewart’s Fabric Crafts – 2
Practical Guide to Patchwork (Hartman) – 2
Pretty in Patchwork Holidays – 2

I was a little surprised by some of these – I thought Elizabeth Hartman would have more total mentions, for example, as I know her blog is enormously popular.

Okay. Jibber jabber.

Item the second. Did I say a few days ago that I was going to have some binding done by Monday?

Yeah, okay. Maybe by the weekend. I called this photo Bound, Binding, Unbound because that’s pretty much where they’re at. Green is done, orange is 80% done, and the red… well, it’s sewn onto the front, at least! It seems to be taking me much, much longer than binding regular quilts. I’m finding it a bit awkward trying to deal with such a small piece, it’s somehow harder to get a good grip on it or something.

Anyway, that’s it and that’s all. Tomorrow, the Doctor.