Soccer Quilt 2.0

La has been playing soccer a long time.  El has grown up going to soccer practices and games for her sister.  I think before she was born, we used to bring camp chairs to the game, but once I was going to games with two littles on my own, I needed an easy to carry, good for crawly babies solution.  So I made a soccer quilt. It's not precious - it was made out of scraps and yardage that I had on hand and a pillow case from Big Lots.  The scraps were mainly from this sea-themed quilt that I finished in April of 2008.


The following September (El was 10 mos. and walking), I finished this soccer quilt and we've used it tons.  It's not much to look at, but it's held up really well.
Front:


Back:


It worked fine for a long time - basically, until El started playing on a team too.  For one thing, odds are good that the Pre-K games are before the dew is gone on the grass.  Two layers of cotton is no match for Saturday morning dew.  For the second thing, my husband (the coach) would have the players waiting to get back in the game sit all together on or near the quilt.  This would (understandably) kind of weird the kids out - they're not big on sitting with strangers.  They would sit on the wet grass right in front of the quilt.  [Sitting together in one place to wait has a couple of things going for it - it lets him know who is ready for a turn and he can easily see who is available to be a sub at any given time.  In Pre-K soccer, there can be a lot of politely declining the chance to play by the players.]

I finally decided this season that we really needed a second soccer quilt, so for some of the games, we brought one of the other quilts from the house - so the team could sit together on one quilt and La and I could sit on another.  One of the other things is that La is getting big, so our old soccer quilt really is turning into a 2 person quilt.

I cut a bunch of 12" wide pieces of varying lengths of fabric that was literally lying around.  I got bored with this pretty quickly and the end of the school year started and the project kind of stalled out.  I picked up an indoor/outdoor table cloth at TJMaxx/Homegoods to use for the back.

I think it's 60" x 108" - one of the larger sizes.  I considered also shower curtains and laminated cotton for the back.  I also considered just picking up another table cloth for the front or just using the table cloth as is.

There were a bunch of miscellaneous prints with not huge yardage that were usable (e.g. not earmarked for anything else) for this too.  (From top to bottom:  La's pillowcase fabric from her birthday party, soccer balls from El's pre-k teacher, comic book cover remnant, purple cupcake print from La's birthday party).  Also in the pile of prints were rainbow stars on black - it's 3 widths (selvage to selvage), 16", just to make it the same size as the table cloth.




It was assembled pretty quickly and then I used a pillowcase binding (no quilting, no batting) to put it together.  Since I tend to not lay stuff out and pin it together, this is what I did to keep it pretty true while sewing:  I started with the squarest corner and the shortest edge, sewing the (blue, stars) line.  Took it out of the machine and sewed the (blue, cupcake) line.  [see - this is why a CS degree and/or lots of math is handy - figuring out a notation for describing how to assemble a quilt.  I was also considering a line segment notation.  Stay in school, kids.] For line three, I flipped the quilt upside down (backing on top) and sewed the stars line.  The (cupcake, stars) line was left open.  Once the quilt was right side out, I top stitched it in zig zag, in pretty much the same order.  I closed the bottom by folding over the cotton side and tucking it around the backing, zig-zagging the length of it to close it.

 

This quilt concept would have been pretty striking with any of the following:  coordinating prints, a range of solids or liberal use of one solid.  However, it's starting to grow on me.  It was a fun exercise.

Tuesday Ten: 10 Things I felt grateful for last week.

I typed in the headline thinking this is going to be really hard.  Stood up, walked away and thought of two important things.

1.  I'm grateful that I found a good daycare - it's not completely without issues or its ups and downs, but in the long run, they like my kids and they work to make sure that the environment is consistent and fair and nice.

2.  I'm grateful for my health insurance (and that I have a good pediatrician's office and a great children's hospital), but through all of that, I was grateful that I was in a situation where the NP says, "I'll call in to the doctor at the hospital and let him know you're coming.  You can stop at home to get a book, but don't take forever." and we can just go do it and only worry about the health part.

3.  It was nice, also, that I could just email my manager and it was no big deal (he has kids the same age, which helps, but he's good people anyway).

4.  Also, I'm grateful that sometimes when it looks like something scary, it turns out to be just a stupid virus.  And that my daughter is strong enough that after a day of bad sitcoms and she's pretty much her old self again.

5.  On the same series....while I was watching the ultrasound of my daughter's abdomen, I realized that a lot of medicine is like putting together a puzzle while wearing a blindfold.  It's amazing that doctors know as much as they know.  I'm amazed.  and thankful.

6.  I'm grateful to the people who are willing to give me a clue, in their professional opinion.  If I'm able to hear them, these can be the things that save my (and others') butt.

7.  Back to preschool.  I'm thankful that the adults didn't have lengthy speeches worked up for the commencement exercises (so that I was able to keep it together for the ceremony) and that they worked up a really clever program modeling the Pete the Cat stories w.r.t. VPK and graduation.  They were rockin' their graduation shoes.

8.  I am grateful that I was finally able to order tires for my car.  This is relatively mundane, I know.  But I need them and I found a tire place that I really like.  It was a much bigger project to find the tires than with the old Accord.

9.  I'm grateful that when I (finally) created a FB page for the blog and shared it out to people I know in real life, no one said anything rude - that I know of.  :-)  That was actually more than a week ago.

10.  (last but definitely not least) I'm grateful to the girls and adults in my Girl Scout troop.  The girls are bright and fun and get along with each other, each bringing something interesting and different to the troop.  The adult leaders are everything I could hope they would be and more.  The other parents are also really excellent - a good blend of being supportive and helpful and arriving on time to pick people up (I'm having trouble describing it - but they're good.)

Some of the things are deliberately oblique.  They are not directly my story, but they should be on the list, at least in my head.

State of the Knits

It's been a crazy couple of weeks.  La finished school.  I went camping with the Junior troop.  The girls' soccer season ended.  La was sick.  El graduated from Pre-K.  It's been enough that I actually forgot that I was reading a book and trying to finish it.  I remembered it at the end of last week when things finally calmed down.

This is the project that has been my soccer knitting.  And keeping people company knitting.  And leader meeting knitting.  It is Sonnenblume.  I'm drawn to leaf motifs.  So, the beginning part has pretty much been a steady stockinette - 4 easy to find increases (except when the soccer is exciting) and purling back.  It has, however, gotten to the point where the rows are long (243 stitches) and it's time for the actual lace chart.  It is a little overwhelming - I need a chance to try it when no one is going to jump into my lap and also I'm not exhausted.  So I got it to the right number of stitches and put in a life line.  It's ready whenever I am.



I have two skeins of something nice wound up and ready to go, but didn't really want to make another pair of stockinette socks right now - I have kind of a lot and didn't really feel like making socks for someone else.

One is this Ruby Sapphire Treadsoft in the Chiasa colorway.  I probably bought it in 2007 and the etsy shop doesn't seem to be there anymore.    The colors in real life are like a purple iris with a super-verdant stem.  The repeats are probably just right for nicely striped socks.  But I didn't want to make socks.  I found this chevron scarf/wrap, shown in a very colorful sock yarn.  Vittorio.  Dude.  I paid for the pattern.  (I am notoriously cheap about this stuff - I'm never sure what the written pattern is going to be like, if I'll be able to follow the directions or not, how it's constructed, etc, and I'm usually just as happy to wing it.  This is not to say anything about designers being paid a fair rate for their IP and time, because they really deserve to be.  It is more about me being unwilling to take the gamble.)

The pattern is written out line by line.  There are charts, but there are two edgings and the charts for each part are separate (and don't seem to have a least common denominator) - the large saw tooth, small saw tooth and the center.  I have the pattern on my kindle, so the line by line method works better.  Except if you cast on while watching Chuck.  And don't have a good way to remember which line you're on.  And the kindle keeps going to sleep in the middle of a row.  So.  I cast on and started like three times.  And gave up until Saturday morning.

This is like 39 rows in.  I am having trouble printing the PDF, so I'm still using the kindle and developed an "index card method" to save the row I'm on.  Take enough math classes and "boxing your answer" becomes a reflex.  You can see the chevrons starting and some of the edgings.



You may be starting to notice a spring green and purple theme going on here.  This is the other skein that is wound and waiting to go.  It's Cascade Heritage Silk.  I picked a pattern for it.  I bought the K*TOG: Oklahoma Tornado Relief e-book.  It was mentioned in the Knitter's Review email this week.  It has some neat stuff in it.  This is going to be Targetty.  It was from looking at the K*tog stuff that I found the chevron pattern above - she has another pattern in the K*Tog collection.



Still this didn't solve my having something plain to knit problem.  So tonight I cast on a hat with some other green yarn.  There is no shortage of green yarn at my house.

In closing, here is this picture of a slug.  The girls saw it outside the front door before school recently and the 5 year old took a picture of it with my camera.  And let me know afterwards.  Speaking of slugs, Epic is a good movie.  You should go see it.

Photographing your Geranium Dresses

I recently made two (more) Geranium dresses.  It is like the sweetest and most versatile dress pattern ever.  I may have mentioned that before.

I let El pick out some material (out of the selection on hand) and she picked a pretty wild floral print.  She said for the next one she wanted the little flutter sleeve option.  I was having trouble imagining a whole dress in the print she picked so, I used some very lightweight denim in my stash for the bodice.  It is, however, lined in the print.

One of El's teachers has been giving me 2-3 yard cuts of fabric all year.  Her daughter is in high school and she's been uncovering material from when the daughter was El's age (and had similar interests).  So far, I've made pajama pants for El and have plans for using some in the next soccer quilt.  But the latest fabric said jumper.  It is a pin-wale corduroy with a crazy quilt print all over it.  Another one of El's teachers had a baby in February.  I had been thinking the baby needed a geranium dress and this kind of put me over the edge.  I may have made it a little big for the fall so that she can wear a long sleeve onesie underneath it.

I'm really pleased with how the dresses both came out.  I am not pleased with how the photos came out.  Here is a quick and dirty what-not-to-do with photographing pretty, handmade dresses.

1.  Layer the prints.  More is better.  Especially if the value of the background and foreground are similar.  The  goal was to show the lining of the bodice.  Also, making sure there is no clutter in the frame is good.


2.  A busy print on top of a busy print on top of patchwork.  For the Win.  Trying to showing the scale of the two dresses against each other.


3.  This one actually shows what I want it to show and could have been fixed with some cropping.  Thanks to the not-wild bodice.  I wanted to show the buttons El picked and how they are not the same as each other.  It also shows the print with the denim with the shoulder ruffles pretty nicely.


4.  Field of flowers on a field of green.  Taking a little time to put down a solid colored sheet, blanket or piece of paper would have made this almost work.  The scale and perspective is marginal too.



5.  Once I did color correction on this, it's not so bad.  It shows the voile I used for the lining of the small dress.


6.  I took this one to show the buttons, but you can kind of see at least one on the picture before.


7.  Scale and perspective is OK.  Green (patchwork quilt) and purple (crazy quilt) not so much.


Lesson:  Throw the dress in the front hedges just before dusk and you will probably end up with something passable.