Jen Arnall-Culliford Knitwear

FO: Gran's quilt

I'm back! Hopefully back to regular posting, and keeping on top of both work and life. Hurrah!

Today's post is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, Gran. I posted about her this time last year, and this year is a particularly special birthday. I'm not sure it's polite to share a lady's age, but I hope Gran won't mind if I tell you that she turned 90 today. She is definitely responsible for much of my love of crafts. I have strong memories of completing a book of sewing techniques while on holiday at her house when I was in primary school. The page for the mitred corner is still with me to this day!

I have been working on a quilt for Gran's birthday ever since my last weekend at The Sunday House, just over a month ago. But what with extended stays in London, I was working to get it finished right up to the wire. I sewed a label with a message, and didn't finish the writing until 11pm the night before the party. The mitred corners on the scrappy binding aren't too bad!

I am delighted with the finished quilt. The fabrics are a mixture of 12 fat quarters from Sara Morgan's Savannah range and a set of 5 fat quarters from Fabric Central that lovely Sarah sent to me at Christmas time. I topped them up with a metre of the pink flowers, also from Savannah and a dark pink and cream spot from Millie Moon.

Each block uses three contrasting fabrics. This is my favourite block in the whole quilt - I love how the birds are perfectly framed in the block. I didn't cut it specially to be that way, it was just luck.

On Anne's advice, I added a thin fillet of the dark turquoise-green around the edge of the central panel, and I love how it looks!

This is my utter favourite part of the quilt though... I've never made a label for a quilt before, and now I wish I had labelled all of them! I printed out what I wanted to say, and then traced it onto a piece of calico. I used one strand of embroidery thread to back stitch tiny stitches around the words. It took around 7 hours to sew all of the wording. On the morning of the party, I attached the label with Bondaweb and then sewed it on with more embroidery thread and small blanket stitches. Many thanks to Julie for her suggestion on how best to do this.

And there it is, all finished with an hour to spare before the lunch birthday party.

Gran seemed delighted with the gift, and she enjoyed opening it up and reading the label a number of times over the course of the afternoon. In the end it was very hard to part with, but I know that Gran will enjoy it every day. She deserves every minute I spent on it, and more. Happy birthday Gran!

Life + Work = Not enough time

The unusual blog silence is a result of family stuff keeping me away from home again. I'm slowly catching up with work, but it's not leaving much time to write blog posts.

I was delighted to be nominated for a Versatile Blogger award by A Pile of Sheep. Thank you so much! But I'm not sure when I'll get to the requisite onward post.

In the meantime, Still Light is continuing to make slow but steady progress, and I've got a secret work project on the needles as well. All in all, not a lot to chat about! Hopefully after the weekend I might have some finished quilt photos to share, so do stop by next week!

Guest post: Spring Explosion

One of the great delights of this time of year is the sudden profusion of new growth in the garden. The dry and warm weather of a few weeks ago has really kick-started the whole thing,  although I am now shivering in two jumpers as the icy rain pours down outside.

With Jen spending so much time in London, I thought it worthwhile hijacking her blog to record some of these fleeting moments.

When we first laid out the garden, we made sure that there was plenty of potential for height by planting various shrubs and trees.  The buds of the Euonymus latifolius are just starting to burst and you can just about see the developing bracts that will give a colourful display in the summer.

With everything a bit early this year, I almost missed out on admiring the sight and smell of Viburnum x bodnantense. This is about the last of the blossom. 

Within a week, all that will remain will be a sogy brown mess, to be replaced by apple blossom.

This is our Bramley's Seedling, which is still young enough that the blossom is almost the most exciting thing about it.  We'll probably only get five or six fruit from it as leaving more would risk damaging the spindly branches.

Also waiting for their big moment are the three Eremurus himalaicus (horse-tailed lily).  These  flowering spikes will grow to almost 6ft with hundreds of tiny white flowers by early May.  They are pretty amazing plants all round as they start off as bulbs that resemble starfish, much like asparagus.

We do have some shorter plants too.  I found this tiny (Blue Flower) at risk of being overwhelmed by the rampant Stipa tennuissima and Hemerocallis (and the weeds).  In common with many of our spring plants, these are too easily overlooked.

The front garden is probably at its best at this time of year. The Camelia is in full bloom and the three small Helleborus plants we put in a few years ago have really filled out the space and self-seeded everywhere.

While it's a pleasure to admire the plants that should be in the garden, the spring explosion does have a massive down side. The weeds we didn't catch last year have had a growth spurt of their own, most notably a creeping grass that plagues one half of the garden.  The fight against the invaders is probably a story best told another time though......

 Jim

WIPs: Slow progress

The good news is that I am making progress on some knitting. I have taken the advice from Principles of Knitting, and I'm holding the yarn in my left hand and teaching it to knit. Still Light is the perfect project to learn a new knitting style as there are acres and acres of stocking stitch to just pootle my way through. Repetition is the only way with learning a new skill. It's amazing that after three weeks it's finally starting to feel fairly natural.

I've now embarked on the second part of this endeavour, which is to learn to purl with the yarn held in my left hand. I watched this excellent tutorial by Rox, and now it's just a case of more and more practice.

 

I've now split the sleeves from the body of my Still Light dress, so it should give the impression of going a bit faster now as there are many fewer stitches in each round. It is going to be a while until I can wear it though!

I've spent much of the last week or so keeping my Gran company in London, so it has been lovely to just knit round and round on this.

Principles of Knitting and some sage advice

In the absence of knitting and while trying to avoid yarn purchasing, I've been trying to keep my fabric collection from raging out of control. This has mostly been a futile endeavour, so I've turned my attention to expanding my book collection. There has been a lot of chat online about the republished Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt, so I asked my wonderful local bookshop, Hunting Raven, to see if they could track a copy down for me.

They were successful, and I've been enjoying reading it ever since. It's a weighty tome, with more than 700 pages and covers all aspects of hand knitting. I've not finished reading, so I'm not aiming to write a full review here, but the first chapter in particular seemed apt...

Chapter 1 covers knitting methods, describing in great detail the different ways to hold and tension yarn and the direction of work, etc... I was unsurprisingly struck by Hiatt's assertion at the end of the first column of text that, "I strongly recommend that every knitter consider learning at least two methods; three is even better." She points out that only working in one way leaves us open to injury or fatigue, and that the possibilities opened by having two or three methods available to you are highly valuable.

Oh how I wish I had read this advice 6 months ago!

I'm grappling with learning to hold the yarn in my left hand. It's fairly slow progress at the moment, but perseverance and a strong desire to be able to knit will doubtless see me through! I've been using my mouse with my left hand for nearly 3 weeks now, and it is starting to feel quite natural, so I'm sure the same will be true of knitting.

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy reading all about knitting, and hopefully will pick up some more excellent advice from this book. I'll aim for a more detailed review once I've reached the end!

Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt
Published by Touchstone (Simon and Schuster)
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3517-1
RRP: $45.00 (US)/ $49.99 (Can)/ My copy was £33.99 (UK) 

FO: Snowball quilt

It won't be a surprise to you all, that since I'm not really able to knit at the moment, I've been filling my empty evenings with some sewing instead!

And as a result, I've finished my snowball quilt. I'm delighted with how it has turned out, and as an extra bonus I learnt a couple of new techniques on this quilt. I love to learn new techniques!

I did my first fillet. This is a narrow flap of fabric that I've used here between the binding and the main border. It just adds a touch of je ne sais quoi, I feel!

This is also the first time that I've tied a quilt rather than sewing the layers together. Tying is a really simply way of joining the front, batting and back of the quilt together. You can have the tied ends showing on the right or wrong sides of the quilt, and you can use all sorts of different materials to do the tying. I used embroidery threads, and tied at the corners of each of the blocks, with the ends on the wrong side. Once it was all tied, I trimmed the ends to about 2cm long, as you can see above.

Tying was a great solution for this quilt, as it's 160cm (64") square, so would have been a beast to man-handle through my sewing machine! I just sewed round the wide border, and of course sewed on the binding with the machine and finished it by hand.

The back features every single last scrap of Malt and Sky Trees that Hulu Crafts had in stock, with the remains of my It's a Hoot layer cake sewn together to fill the last corner. I've barely got any leftover scraps from this quilt - I used almost the entire layer cake, 2.5m of aqua houndstooth from the Sophie range by Moda, 1/2m of off-white solid and 2.25m of the backing fabric. I love it when the fabric all gets used up. I'm not a fan of scraps and never feel I want to use up the leftovers. I would rather move on to the next new thing!

All in all, a very satisfying project.

New design in Simply Knitting 92

I blogged about the blanket I designed for my nephew some months ago, and I'm pleased to announce that the pattern for the blanket has been published in the latest issue of Simply Knitting.

The blanket uses 5 skeins of Shilasdair Luxury 4ply in shade indigo, although you could easily use another 4ply yarn of your choice. The team at Simply Knitting did an interview with me about the design over on their blog here: Simply Knitting interview. So do head over there and read more about how I come up with ideas for my designs.

The blanket features a simple garter stitch centre with a wave-like lace border edging. It's not too complex and would make a nice project for a fairly new knitter who wants to try some lace.

You can find the Ravelry entry for the design here: Cosy Cuddles

This issue of Simply Knitting is on sale at newsagents in the UK at the moment, and also features a completely brilliant knitted super-hero from the inimitable Alan Dart, a lovely versatile lace wrap from Sarah Hatton and the hilarious Veuf Tricot on the perils of living with a knitter.

Work is fun!

I am lucky enough to have a brilliant set of regular clients who keep me out of mischief with new and exciting projects. I don't think it's a secret that I love working with all of them - you only have to look back at posts about patterns in Simply Knitting and The Knitter and finished book projects for Fyberspates, Susan Crawford, Jamieson and Smith or Sarah Hatton to see that I am just loving my freelance life!

Today I'm delighted to add a new logo to my "I'm working with..." list, and it belongs to Kate Davies. To say that I was excited to receive an email from her asking if I was available back in November is something of an understatement! I'm not sure I calmed back down again for at least a day or two! I then went on to technical edit Boreal for her, and we've just finished work on Betty Mouat and the BMC (Betty Mouat Cowl).

Betty Mouat © Kate Davies (used with kind permission)

Betty posed some interesting technical editing conundrums. Not least of which, that to begin with there were 154 different possible size combinations, and 3 shades of yarn to contend with (that meant a total of 462 figures for the yarn requirements)! After some deliberation, Kate decided that not all of the possible combinations of under- and full-bust measurements would either be required, or would give sensible shaped garments. For example, the smallest under-bust measurement (24.5"/62cm) going to the largest full-bust (50"/127cm) seemed unlikely to be a combination in great demand! We narrowed the options down so that they cover a range from cup size AA to KK, thus reducing somewhat the number of yarn quantity calculations required, and general potential for errors.

 
The BMC © Kate Davies (used with kind permission)

Both Betty Mouat and the BMC use Fleegle's no-purl garter stitch in the round method. This is a really nifty technique whereby you work alternating RS and WS rounds using two balls of yarn. You can see more on Fleegle's blog, or by watching the Betty Mouat tutorials on Kate's website. Mel did a fabulous job of filming these techniques - I find her voice so reassuring and confidence building. I can't wait to try this out!

We ended up charting the stitch pattern in such a way that you can read the chart either for standard knitting in the round, with all rows read right to left and alternate rows purled, or alternating right to left and left to right so that you can also read it for the no-purl garter stitch version. Hopefully much easier to do than to explain!

© Kate Davies (used with kind permission)

I absolutely love the colour combination she's used in the cowl, and as soon as my finger is up to it, this will be going on my needles. It just sings of summer days at the beach, and ice cream, and rainbows, and all good things!

Kate is absolutely brilliant to work with, and I am really looking forward to more projects with her as the year goes on.

If you are interested in either of the patterns shown here, then they are both available as part of Kate's Textisles magazine issue 2. This issue focuses on swimming attire and includes 3 articles by Kate and 1 on the rise and fall of the hand-knitted swimming costume by the fabulous Susan Crawford. I love it when people I work with come together in a project like that! The articles are all completely fascinating, and any of the components of this issue would be more than worth the £3.95 price tag on their own.

A Quilt for Gran

Finding the right gift for a 90 year old is pretty tricky. I've spent weeks thinking about what my Gran would like most on her birthday, and other than the desire to see all the family around her, I can't think of anything that I could purchase. At least not anything that would be really meaningful.

Given this feeling, I thought that I would make her something. Over the years my Gran has been a highly accomplished knitter, seamstress and embroiderer, but as far as I am aware, she's not really done much quilting, so it seemed like a nice plan to make a quilt to mark her 90th.

When I was in London in January, I picked up a fat quarter bundle at Ray Stitch that included 12 FQs from the Savannah range by Sara Morgan. The colours were perfect for Gran - the dusty raspberry pink and turquoise-green are colours I really associate with her, and her home.

As an afterthought, I chucked this bundle into my bag for the weekend at The Sunday House, along with a smaller FQ bundle that my lovely swap partner Sarah had sent to me for Christmas. I figured that while I had such a wealth of quilting expertise at my fingertips, I should ask for suggestions for a design to use...

We settled on a simple design that Anne calls Battenburg (after the cake!). To start with, I cut all of my fabric into the largest possible squares. As I had a mix of UK and US fat quarters, I cut to 8.5". You can see the cut squares above - I fanned them out so that Sarah could see how well her fabrics went with Savannah!

The were then sorted into sets of 3 well contrasted designs, and the groups of 3 were cut and pieced in one set. The aim of doing it this way (rather than chain piecing the lot) was to avoid incorrectly mixing the pieces. They are currently well organised to give good contrasts.

By the end of Sunday, I had a good stack of blocks sewn together, and I think I have about 5 more hours of piecing to do before all the blocks are complete. Although it's not a complicated design, each set of 3 blocks is taking around 25 minutes to piece together, so it adds up.

I've ordered some more of the pink flowers to use as borders, and I'm going to make a very skinny fillet in the deep turquoise green to frame the central panel. Now I just need to get back to my production line and get this bad-boy done. :-)

Weekend delights at The Sunday House

I thought that you might like to get a peek at the other delights involved in my weekend quilting at The Sunday House. It was a joy from start to finish.

Based in a converted Methodist chapel in Cornwall, The Sunday House quilting weekends are such a treat. Anne Baxter is the quilting tutor, and Corinna Knowles produces the most amazing feasts to fuel the crazy dawn to dusk sewing activities.

Ceiling detail - inspiration at every turn.

I'm not sure how best to describe the food. There are always plenty of tasty and unusual vegetable dishes alongside delicious main pieces - stew or quiche or soup. It's probably easiest to just show you some pictures...

This was a pear, walnut, parma ham and crouton salad with a blue cheesey dressing. I'm trying not to add Masterchef-style descriptions of it being packed with flavour, but it really was!

The main meal on Sunday was particularly spectacular, and I couldn't help but try a bit of everything. Working clockwise round my plate, starting at midday, you can see:
Roast baby potatoes
Mushroom risotto covered in parmesan
Apple, celery and walnut salad
Carrots with cumin
Smoked fish and pea puree quiche
Cauliflour cheese and bacon quiche (this is to die for!)
Pasta salad with pine nuts and herbs of some sort
Mixed bean salad

I'm feeling full just thinking about it again...

And here's a taste of what everyone else was up to while I was on my snowball/Gran quilt mission. Above is Julie's snowball quilt top. It really reminds me of French Parterre gardens, don't you think? So pretty! And quite unlike mine. Click on this and the following pictures to see a larger version in a pop-up window.

Val made this incredible string stars quilt top. The amount of work that went into the careful piecing of the stars and those scrappy borders was astonishing to behold. One day I'd like to have a go at something like that. I don't think my skills are up to it just yet though...

Di produced this completely stunning Milky Way quilt, which is all layered up here, ready for quilting. She's used some beautiful Tilda fabrics (not unlike ones I used in Jeni's quilt some time back). This is another large quilt, and just gorgeous!

Finally, Denise worked on a Glad Tidings quilt, which is just awaiting applique stars in the centre of each block.

Aren't they all amazing? And hopefully they give you a flavour of the variety of designs that were worked on over the weekend, as well as what a contrast the fabric choices make. Tomorrow, I'll share the first pictures of Gran's quilt with you. I think it's pretty safe to say that she won't be surfing and reading my blog, so I can share the secret with you.