Z is for....

ZZZZZZ...... I finally caught some Z's the last two days. With school starting, and it being so far away, I spend most of my day driving to and from school or running errands in the other county. I have been getting about 4 to 5 hours of sleep per night. I made that up yesterday, and I will get some more tonight. I also did a little bit of tatting.

This is copy of a piece of tatted lace I saw at an antique store on Friday. I bought the spool of thread (at the same store). I just love the size of that wood spool of thread. Anyone who knows what size a shuttle is knows that that is very big spool of thread for $3.00, and I decided I would tat the pattern I saw instead of buying the lace. For some reason, I kept making mistakes on my rings and chains; I think it is from lack of sleep. Hopefully, the rest will look much neater.

The pattern is as follows:

Rings are : 4ds, picot 4 ds, 4picot ( with 1 ds between each of them), 4 ds, picot, 4 ds. close ring joins on first and last picot
chain: 4 ds, 4 picots (with 1 ds between each of them) 4 ds

I will add this piece to the 25 motif challenge; this will be item 10 for the challenge.

DO NOT USE THIS PATTERN TO MAKE THINGS TO SELL FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY!!!!

Y is for ....

Yoyos.....819 yoyos to be exact!

This project was completed yesterday. It just sort of kept growing till I ran out of yoyos in this size. So, it has 819 yoyos, total, and I have 9 yoyos left that wouldn't work into this very easily.

Finished measurements are 21 1/4 x 41 1/4 inches.

X is for ...

X-tra yoyos made into a yoyo runner. Started on Sept 2; finished on September 3. You can also see one of my hex afghans underway, next to the bench in the yellow basket. I also made the braided rug you see in the bottom of the photo.

I had a bag of yoyos from swaps, and ones I made that were just collecting, and it seemed like they were spawning in that bag. They were not being used, so yesterday I decided I would make a runner out of them to use who knows where. I may add to it at a later time, or I may not. There is a diamond pattern in this mini quilt that is a cluster of four different hues in the same color family. These are laid out more as I would hexagons and not yoyos, but it makes a pretty close solid piece of cloth. I'm wishing I had done this with my daughter's blanket. Instead of having each yoyo only touch four other yoyos, here they touch six others. It would have made a stronger blanket for a kid, but since that started out as a table topper, I didn't know it would end up a blanket.

I had a hay fever sinus headache yesterday; that is what started this project. I wanted something to do that was quick and that wouldn't involve being outside at all.

September block of the month tutorial

Join block of the month

1. Cut 9 squares 4 1/4 inches square.
2. Lay-out for placement; flip middle column on top of left column.
3. Stack with bottom-most row on bottom of stack; take to machine to sew. Sew these in the continuous chain method that was demonstrated in the block of the month tutorial for Aug.
4. Take your chain back to your layout table and open up. Lay right-most column on top of middle column and chain stitch. Again, do not cut any of your chain stitching. Press seams in opposite directions from row to row so they will nest when sewing the next set of seams.
5. Take this piece of half-sewn cloth to the machine and sew the next two seams and press again.
6. Take back to cutting board; true up and cut in half, both directions.
7. Play with placement of blocks.
8. Once you find the lay out you want, flip right sides together like in step number 2.
   
9. Sew last two seams, press in between the sewing of the first and second seam.
   
10. Press and true up again to 10 1/2 inches.
11. Done!