Sunday, March 02, 2014

End of February State of the Studio Report

I wish I could say the studio shows as much progress at the end of February as it did the end of January, but it just isn't so. 
Tilted Stars is still in the rocker, although if you look closely you can see that a package of quilt binding has been thrown on top of it. I've got what I need to finish it, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Hexagons are still on the design wall, although I have made progress on that top in the last couple of days. 
Otherwise, there hasn't been a lot of quilty activity going on this past month. 

There were two reasons for that. The first was that I was in our local community theater's production of Les Miserables. It was a fabulous production, and I loved almost all of it, but it was a huge drain on both time and energy. And there were costumes to be sewn.  Which is why my cutting table looked like this earlier this week. All that has now been cleared away, but for a few days at least, all of that was on every flat surface in the studio.  

And then there were the Ravellenic Games, a fiber event that occurs simultaneously with the Olympic Games. I decided my challenge for this year would be to finish an afghan that had been taking up space in a corner of the yarn room for years - 5 or 6 at least. So while I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I got out what came to be known as The Beast. At the beginning of the games it looked like this:
 and smelled quite strongly of cat pee. At the end of the Games, it looked like this, and smelled of fabric softener:
 Needless to say, it was two weeks worth of rather monogamous knitting that got The Beast finished and cleaned up good enough for company. There was no time for quilting (or much else) if I was going to get my gold medal.

But now that's done, and the musical is done, so it's time to get back to sewing.


This morning I was able to spend a little time with the hexagon quilt, and when I left for the theater, I had the top ready for its final assembly. All the green triangles are attached to a hexagon, so now there are just a few seams to assemble the rows, then sew the rows together. A couple of simple borders, and it will be a top.
Once that is done, I can finish the binding on Tilted Stars, so it can be sent on its way to its new owner. By then it will be high time to get going on Spring Meadow, which is back from being basted and ready to be quilted.

Now excuse me while I get back to sock knitting. I still have 10 pairs to finish by the end of June.