Saturday 22 February 2014

A goal

I turn 30 this year. I'm not worried about getting older, I'm the odd one who is really excited by it, but having spent all of my 20s raising a child with special needs there's not much to mark off as solely mine. I haven't flourished in my career nor had chance to travel. My time has been sucked into raising him leaving little time to do anything else. This isn't a complaint merely a fact that comes with having such a demanding child. Plans are rarely made simply because I cannot do everything. I need to make a change. So, for the first of this years challenges I intend to knit every pattern in a newly purchased sock book! 


Ok, I admit, as far as 'things to do before you're 30' goals go it's pretty tame yet achievable and it's something I enjoy. Isn't that the whole point of it? 

I have a few more things on my list to tick off as the year unfolds. All, in different ways, important to me. I'm not after that adrenaline rush just a few things to say 'I did that' and erase the overriding sadness that sometimes creeps up that I'm hardly living my life. Merely existing. 

So here goes. 

Sock number 1 of 60! 



Tuesday 18 February 2014

The Quilt

Back in august I started making my quilt. I started slowly, adding new patches as fabrics were found. Old shirts, a worn skirt even ruined pillow cases made it into the finished quilt. 

Each piece was trimmed to waste as little as possible, perfect squares weren't important and to me perfect squares lose that beautiful imperfect feel. I even kept the pockets and button holes on some pieces. Smaller pieces were used to cover holes, worn and stained pieces of fabric. 

I spent a few days exploring how to bind the layers of quilt together. Traditional western methods just didn't appeal. 

I bought a pair of sashiko samplers and sewed. By the time I'd finished my first square I was hooked. It was the perfect way to bind my hand stitched quilt. 



I chose a simple pattern to stitch. Partly because it was a large quilt and would take weeks to finish and because the fabrics on the front were so busy intricate patterns would be lost. 



The simple wave pattern. The backing was an old bedsheet I dyed by hand. 



Fixing the edging in place. This was made from off cuts of the quilt backing. 


The finished quilt. Hand stitched from the patches right through to the binding around the edges.