Applique

My knitting time has been sadly lacking lately as I spend more and more time on campus trying to get through all the end-of-term marking and papers that are coming my way.  I usually get most of my knitting done while watching TV and since I haven’t been home, I haven’t been watching TV.  What knitting I am doing is for Christmas (priorities!) and thus Secret Knitting.  It will make to the blog in due time, but for now it is hush hush.  Since I have moved on from reading papers to actually writing, I’m not even working much on my vanilla socks these days!  Although, I did finish the first sock today.  When the big ball of fire in the sky returns tomorrow, I’ll be sure to get some pictures.  It gets dark far too early these days.

A challenge has rushed over the Coldsheeping board over on Ravelry as some of the members have become inspired to knit down as many WIPs as they can before the end of the year.  There is a little healthy competition going on, but since I managed to finish a chunk of my own WIPs before this mini-slog was proposed I am staying out of the race.  However, it has inspired me to dig around in my non-knitting projects and work a little bit on the ones that have been languishing since before my move.

One of those projects is a large bed-sized scrap quilt that I started a long time ago.  I believe I have a total of ONE complete block (out of 30 or so of varying sizes).  I also managed to cut out the pieces for two applique blocks (and start one of them) before this project fell out of favour.  When I dug the half-started block out I steamed it flat (it was a little wrinkled) and pinned it to a standing embroidery frame that I inherited a few years ago.  My Grandpa made it for my Grandma so it is somewhat precious to me, and I’m glad to be finally putting it to good use.

The frame can be a little awkward with a piece this small but it keeps the background fabric nice and taut which is a tremendous help keeping everything in place.  Here you can see I’ve already appliqued the green motifs, the blue “stems” and 3 of the purple petals.  The other petals are just pinned on.  Each flower has 5 petals and there are the flower centres and a circle in the middle to do as well, so this one block is going to take awhile.  I really enjoy the needle-turn applique, even if it can be a bit fiddly.  Here is a closer look:

It’s weird, when knitting projects take too long I get bored and want to move on.  I’m definitely more of a product knitter, although I will seek out projects with new techniques just to learn them.  With quilting I’m more process-oriented; I like the feel of hand applique and hand quilting, although I will machine sew for durability and because hand sewing straight seams can be super tedious.  I find hand sewing (and knitting) peaceful in a way that machine sewing is not.  Plus I’m on the computer all day, so stepping away from the machines is a nice break.

This quilt is going to take a long time.  I need a lot of light to work on it and that is hard to come by these days.  As long as it doesn’t sit untended for weeks or months at a time then I’m ok with it being a slow process.  Slow Quilting, like Slow Food, can be totally worth it.