Saturday, September 26, 2009

Travel Projects

I travel alot for work and that translates to hours of idle time. I love to snag a window seat and work on a project - occasionally looking out at the clouds, the patchwork picture of the ground, or the blaze of the sunset.

My current hand-piecing project is Texas Stars. A vendor at Houston had this quilt on display - the white connecting space was quilted in a tumbling block spinning around the star. That was my nudge to dust off the Ardco templates (purchased a few years ago at Paducah) and make up packets to throw in the laptop bag.

My other time-filler is knitting. My grandma taught me to knit years ago. I just finished this woolen mitten last night on the plane from San Francisco to Chicago (the stitches will bloom after a soapy bath). Trouble with mittens and socks is that we have two appendages (if we're lucky!) and finishing the first gets you only half done. Hopefully, I'll be casting on for the right mitten pronto to complete the set in time for the cold midwest winter. The pattern, Magic Mirror by Kristel Nyberg, is available
here from the free, on-line knit magazine Knotions. There are a couple hiccups in the pattern - I'd be happy to help out if anyone is interested in giving it a go, just drop me an email.

4 comments:

antique quilter said...

love the mitten
oh and red, just my color!
The star blocks look great.
love the fabric combos
did you get to take a picture of the quilt you were inspired by?
Kathie

Lori said...

The Texas star quilt looks like a great take a long project. I like it a lot!
I wish I knew how to knit. Cute mitten!

Rose Marie said...

I'm making this pattern too and for the white diamonds, I made a large hexagon template instead. Love your stars!

Karen said...

The Texas Star is a good one for hand piecing. I have wanted to make a quilt with this block for ages but just have never done it.