Warm Cool QAL - finished!

I basted my warm / cool quilt earlier this week. This is my first time basting with bent safety pins. It was a lot easier to do than expected - the pins were easy to close, and it was a piece of cake to tape the layers smoothly in place with painters tape. I probably used about 50 more pins than I needed.



But, extra pins or not, the finished product turned out really well.

Summer

We are in the midst of summer in Minnesota. Look what I found in the yard:

 

Tart cherries, strawberries and currants. Yum!

I made another bucket hat for the little man.



He prefers to chew on his hats rather than wear them.



I appliqued a space invaders onesie for him out of the same fabric line.





And I made a couple banners for the house.





I'd like to say we've been spending a lot of time outside, but we haven't. We've been fighting summer colds and trying to stay cool during the heat wave.

Warm Cool QAL - finished top

I've got my Warm Cool quilt top all stitched together!



Remember when I mentioned that taking a picture of the layout before chain-piecing is tremendously helpful? Well. You know what else is tremendously helpful? Sewing the blocks together along the correct edge. Notice the difference between what the quilt top looks like (above) and what I intended it to look like (below).



Doh! After I realized what I'd done, I just ripped apart 2 of the center blocks, swapped 2 triangles around and called it good. I may have also (accidentally) swapped a couple columns around, but it's hard to tell. I feel silly having spent all that time laying out the top, taking a photo, meticulously pairing up and stacking blocks to sew together, only to make a large mistake and still have the top turn out decent. Perhaps I did not need to spend so much time sweating the layout.

Letterpress proofing

I'm in the midst of a 6-week letterpress printing class at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. It is awesome. I am hooked. We're learning how to use Vandercook presses, set lead type and make lino cuts. Our end product will be a broadside print. Here's the lead type, Stymie medium 24pt, I set for my text:

 

And here's the proof:

 

Next week is mistake-fixing and linoleum cutting. Yay!

Vacation

We took a little family vacation to San Francisco over the 4th of July. It was fantastic. We made some quick stops at Dynamo Donuts, Daiso, and In-n-Out Burger before we headed across the Golden Gate Bridge to visit family. I highly recommend all three places. We had a really relaxing time north of the city, took lots of walks, played some croquet and visited Muir Woods. I snapped a few pics with my phone.

 

An old school Land Rover.







Super tall redwoods.







Giant clovers in Muir Woods. Can't really tell the scale in this picture, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Dolly

Pattern: Dolly by Jess Hutchison (ravelry)

Yarn: Cascade 220

Needles: US6