Learning to Knit

So, I've always wanted to learn how to knit.  I know how to crochet but have never learned to knit.  Well, things changed and my aunt KK showed me how to knit a couple of weeks ago.  I picked it up fairly quickly, I think, and dove into making my first project, what else, a scarf. 

This is my progress so far.  Not too bad for my first knitted project.  The beginning was a bit rough, but I worked through it and I think I have the hang of things down now.

See, not so pretty in some areas. 

But, I like to think that I've improved as I've continued to knit.  Don't 'cha thing?

I've only been doing a knit stitch for this scarf.  The next one I try I'll use knit and pearl together. 

Quilting Eva

As you probably noticed in my post yesterday, I have a quilt on my machine being quilted.  It's my Eva "package" quilt as I've been calling it since I think the pattern looks like packages all wrapped up in ribbon.  Here are a few closeups of the quilting so far.

The pattern I'm doing is swirls and flowers.  If you look closely you can see some of the flowers. 

I'm about a 1/4 of the way through quilting this and I've already gone through 3 bobbins.  This isn't a large quilt either, it's just a lap quilt. And for those wondering, I decided to use a King Tut thread by Superior Thread for this quilt and I'm liking the way things are coming out.

I was battling a cold all last week, so I didn't get much work done, but I hope to spend some time working on completing this top this week and next.  Hopefully it works up fast.

My Quilting Room

As promised, here are some pictures of the finished bookshelf with my fabric in it. 

Here it is in the middle of being filled with fabric.  

 And here it is with most of my fabric in it.

 And here it is with pretty much all of the fabric that I want to put in the new bookshelf inside it. 

Doesn't it look great?  The top right two shelves were designed to hold all of my fat quarters, bundles and loose ones.  This pictures is before I added all of the loose fat quarters and had to move things around to fit them.

I have organized my fabric by color in each section and I have a separate one for my batiks and my hand dyed fabric.  I also have cut up some cardboard and wrapped fabric that is all fabric from a particular line. 

And for kicks, here are a few pictures of the rest of my quilting room...

As you can see by this layout I have a "triangle" set up where I can go from my ironing board, my cutting table, and my machine very easily.  I had set up my room differently before but I really like the usability of being able to easily go from one area to the next.  If I want to quickly iron or cut something in the middle of sewing it literally takes me just a couple of seconds.  I would highly recommend this layout. 

My DH made me this cutting table using a cheap desk we got at Target and he added a board large enough to fit my 1 yard cutting mat with some additional space on either side.  He also installed the pegboard and cork board above the cutting table so that I can store my rulers, patterns, notions, etc.

And here's the rest of the room.  I have one whole wall dedicated to my design wall and a TV that my DH got me for Christmas a couple of years ago.  I also have my thread rack up on the wall near my sewing machine.

My UFO Collection

Have you ever stopped to check out your UFO collection?  Yeah, I did that recently and realized I have quite a few.  Here are some of them and what I plan to do with them (schedule, if I have one, etc.)

This quilt was one of the first ones that I featured on this blog.  I still need to have this quilt quilted.  I might send this one out.  Basically, I'm not sure yet when I plan to have this finished.

Yet another quilt top that needs to be quilted.  I started to piece the back to get this quilted, but again, I'm not sure when I'm going to finish this one. 

This quilt also needs quilting.  I don't even know how I want to quilt it, so it will likely stay unfinished for a while.

This quilt is partially quilted.  I had issues with the tension with my old sewing machine, but I've yet to take it back out now that I have had my Bernina for the past year. 

 

These two are blocks from the McCall's Mystery quilt.  I hated how the quilt ended up, so I stopped making the blocks and put this one aside.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it now.  I'll have to find something else to do.

I still need to quilt this quilt as well.  I really love this quilt.  I've been waiting for my machine quilting stills to improve before I dig into this one. 

 

I made all of these hexagons from a 2.5" charm pack that I won but I haven't finished piecing them together.  Who knows when I'll get back to this.

I just have to get the binding on this quilt.  I plan to give this as a wedding present this year, so this will be finished by the end of the year.

I still need to quilt this quilt as well.  I'm thinking of doing something simple because there are so many small pieces, so hopefully this is one that will be completed this year.

I'm actually in the middle of quilting this top, so I should have this quilt finished once I get my sewing room back in shape. 

I still haven't received all of the BOMs for this quilt, so it is still in progress.  I would love to have it completed by next Christmas, but I don't know if that will actually happen.

These are the blocks I got back from the NEMQG bee.  I now need to figure out what to do with them all.  Hmm...

I made this block when I was learning to hand applique.  I now need to figure out how I want to finish it.  Hmm...

I need to figure out what I want to do next with this block.  Do I want to add a border, just quilt it.  I don't know.  I'm leaning towards a small border, but we'll see. 

My goal is to have the Fiesta! quilt top completed by mid-June so that I can send it off to the quilter then.  I just added myself to her schedule for August/September, so I should have some time. 

I have three more blocks that have been released for this BOM to catch up on and make all of the setting blocks.  I don't think I'll have this top finished by the end of the year, but we'll see.

This is a block I made that Carol Doak released to celebrate 4500 members in her Yahoon group.  It's now over 7000 members and I've yet to do anything with it.  I am so stumped with this one.  I don't know if I will ever finish it. 

Phew, that's a lot.  ::Sigh::

Fiesta! - More Blocks

Last week I made a two more Fiesta! blocks.  My goal is to finish up this quilt by the beginning of the summer so that I can send it off to be quilted.  This is one that I'm really liking so far and would like someone else to quilt it for me. 

Every time I make one of these I love it more and more.  They take a bit of time to make, about 2 hours or so for each block, but it's totally going to be worth it in the end. 

Here's the stack of blocks so far.  I think I have finished between 12-15 blocks total.