Well Dressed, Well Accessorized, and Well Cuddled

 

On New Year's Eve 2021, when I was making plans for the coming year (and with me, making plans means making to do lists), I was looking over my gift list and realized I needed to plan a Christmas 2022 gift for my expected grandnephew, and despite (or perhaps because of) the effects of a tumbler and a half of homemade Bailey's, that evening seemed like the perfect time to plan a sweater for the little guy. What better pandemic-style solo New Year's Eve could I have?

I browsed patterns on Ravelry, and selected the one you see depicted above, the Everyday Pullover Sweater, designed by Raya Budrevich. I've made it before (for my grandnephew Bug's second birthday), and I remembered it as a quick and easy knit that I'd been satisfied with. Then I checked my stash to see what yarn I might have that would work for this project. I found some chocolate brown worsted (the ball band for which was long gone), and most of a skein of Red Heart Soft in Leaf. I thought the two colours worked together and there would be enough of both to get the job done.   

And here's the finished product, which I knitted in a size 12 months in January 2022. Sawyer will turn ten months old in December 2022, so my hope is he'll be able to wear the sweater as soon as he gets it on Christmas Day and have some growing room so that it will fit all the rest of the winter. 

I like the combination of the dark brown with this green. 

This sweater took 30 grams of brown yarn, and 110 grams of green yarn, with a net stash decrease of -140 grams. 

  

As for the remainder of Sawyer's Christmas gift, I thought I'd make him a teddy bear using a pattern I've had on hand for many years and have used I don't know how many times. I can make a toy rabbit and a teddy with these patterns in something like two and a half hours using whatever fabric I have on hand. Back when I had an office job, I used to make these stuffed toys as shower gifts for my co-workers' babies and everyone made an undue amount of fuss about them. One of my co-workers, a woman in her early sixties, even asked me if she could commission a bear or bunny from me because she wanted one for herself, and I promised her I would make her one for her retirement party. 

I added "teddy bear" to my 2022 sewing list, but it turned out that I had no need to make a bear for Sawyer, as I had one on hand that I'd made some years ago and forgotten about -- I usually make two at a time, as I find it more time efficient. This brown stretch velvet bear, with his cream satin neck ribbon, will do perfectly well for Sawyer.

It amuses me that the sweater and the bear coordinate so well. Sawyer will spend his very first Christmas well dressed, well accessorized, and well cuddled. 

A "Welcome to the World" Gift

On my birthday in August 2021, when my parents and sister came to my house for a birthday lunch, my favourite gift of any that I received was the news that my nephew Luke and his wife were expecting their first child in February 2022. Of course, my immediate response was to start planning what I was going to make for my impending grandniece or grandnephew. By the end of that day I had decided I would make the baby a baby blanket, a pair of booties, and a framed counted cross stitch motif with the baby's name on it out of a kit I had on hand. I selected suitable patterns for both a baby boy and a baby girl, and messaged Luke with my congratulations and a request that he let me know if he and his wife were having a grandniece or grandnephew in advance, as I'd be making something for the baby and would need some lead time. In due course, he dutifully let me know that they were expecting a boy. 

The pattern you see above is the one I'd selected for a boy, the ABC Baby Blanket, designed by Jenny Williams. It's an attractive, easy, quick knit. It could even be an excellent stash buster if one knitted the squares in different colours, but I wanted a solid colour for my version. 

The yarn I chose was Lion Brand's Wool Ease in the Stillwater shade, which is what I would describe a light sea green. It's 20% wool, 80% acrylic, which gives it both the nice feel of wool and makes it easy care and (I hope!) durable, which is just what one wants in a baby blanket, especially if this particular baby has inherited his father's trick stomach. 

This project knitted up quickly and without issue. As I worked, I thought back to the baby blanket I had made for Luke when he was born in September 1987, just a month after my fourteenth birthday. In those days I didn't have much access to patterns or yarn. I never even knew Vogue Knitting magazine existed at that point -- that revelation would come when I saw it on the newsstand in a convenience store when my mother and I stopped to get milk one evening the following spring. The baby blanket that I made for Luke wasn't made according to a pattern at all. I knitted a number of garter stitch squares in pastel blue and white baby yarn, and sewed them together. I'd never make something so basic now. I don't think I even wove in the ends, and I know the squares weren't properly seamed together. I was, after all, only thirteen. But that hackwork baby blanket became Luke's blankie and he was very, very attached to it. Over the next several years Blankie became very much the worse for the wear. It was no longer the fresh blue and white it had been when new, but rather grayish, with a number of "you don't even want to know what made that" stains and discolourations, and was fraying and raveling in a number of places. It got to the point that it was such a repulsive object that I could never see it without wanting to scream, "KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!" and stuff it in the wood stove at my brother's farmhouse. 

Then one mid-winter day when Lukie was four, he took his blanket outdoors with him when he went out to play, left it outside, and didn't realize it was missing until bedtime. Luke became agitated and wanted a search to be made, but trying to find a grayish blanket after nightfall on a farm in mid-winter in Southwestern Ontario is an exercise in futility if I ever heard of one. The blanket could have been anywhere in quite a large, unlit area, there were piles of snow everywhere, and it had snowed that afternoon. My brother tried to take the tough love approach, saying to him firmly at eight o'clock, "No Luke, you took your blanket outside when you shouldn't have and you lost it, and you're just going to have to go to bed without it and we'll have a look for it tomorrow." This stern parental reasoning was apparently lost on Luke, as when ten o'clock arrived he was still screaming. Sympathy, substitutes, bribes, and threats were also of no avail. My brother and his wife were, as my sister-in-law has put it, "out there like a pair of fools with flashlights and shovels until well past eleven" in a desperate effort to find the blanket, while Luke stood at the storm door, alternately and repeatedly screaming, "FIND IT!!!!! FIND IT!!!!!" and sobbing loudly. They couldn't find it. Luke ultimately passed out from sheer exhaustion at about midnight, after he'd been carrying on non-stop for four hours straight.  

I have thought of that first baby blanket I ever made and of that incident every time I have knitted a baby blanket since, and hoped I wasn't kickstarting a similar chain of events for the new baby's poor parents. And now I've come full circle, and have knit a baby blanket for Luke's son. I wouldn't wish an evening like that on any parent, but I suppose if it should happen my brother and his wife's reaction will be something along the lines of, "PAYBACK SOMETHING SOMETHING, LUKIE."   

The finished blanket. It's much nicer than the one I made for Luke, with a better design, better yarn, and better workmanship, and I am pleased with it, but I can't help feeling that perhaps it should have been scarlet or some other eye-catching colour, lest it get left outside at night. 

I purchased all new yarn for this blanket, and had 55 grams leftover, so that's a stash increase of 55 grams. 

When I first began searching Ravelry for patterns for a baby blanket and booties for my nephew's child, I thought something hockey-related would be a fun idea. Luke loves hockey as much as most Canadian men do, which is to say to an extent that is beyond all reason. During a hockey game in late 2007, when Luke was 20 years old, he got hit in the face with a puck, and it smashed four of his teeth. Luke proceeded to remain on the ice, playing and spitting out fragments of teeth, until the game was over. Surely my needlework skills could produce a softer, gentler tribute to his love of hockey than his dental work. I initially even toyed with the idea of making a Maple Leafs baby blanket in tribute to Luke's favourite team, but I would have had to design one myself, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing, and besides, this baby is an Albertan. I don't want him to be a social outcast or a laughingstock among all his baby friends. 

Among the hockey-related patterns to be found on Ravelry were a few designs for hockey skate booties. There were both knitted and crocheted examples of that design concept, but though I don't enjoy crocheting, there was no denying that the crocheted version was much cuter. Generally speaking, crocheting is stiffer than knitting, but while knitting tends to be the better choice for clothing because it drapes better, crocheting often takes the lead when it comes to shaped objects like toys, and one wants the object to hold its shape. The sample knitted hockey skate booties looked so limp and floppy compared to the crocheted ones. I set my teeth, resigned myself to crocheting my grandnephew's booties, and went with the Newborn Hockey Skate Booties, designed by Jamie Louise. When I checked my yarn stash, I was pleased to discover that I had black, gray, and white worsted yarns on hand that were suitable for this project. I no longer have the ball bands for any of the three yarns I used, but they were run-of-the-mill acrylic worsteds. I did have to buy a 3.75mm crochet hook, but now I'll have that size hook in my crochet hook collection for the next time I need one. You can see the resulting booties above, and I think they turned out well, and that Luke will get a kick out of them. 

These booties, which were made entirely out of stash yarn, weighed in at 50 grams when finished, so that's a stash decrease of -50 grams. 

    

 

Several years back, I happened to come across some counted cross stitch kits in Dollarama for $3.50 each, which is a very good deal for that sort of kit -- one could easily pay ten times as much for a comparable kit from a regular retail outlet. With money so tight, I try very hard not to buy things for the indefinite future, as I need to focus on fulfilling my many immediate needs, and I didn't even know of any impending babies at the time. However, these kits (which were all the same pattern) were so very cute and the price was such a great bargain that I made an exception and bought three kits. After all, I was very likely to use them all eventually. Then, when I got to cash register, the kits rang in at $3 a kit, which put the total expense after tax at $10.17. 

On the day I heard that there was a new baby on the way, I thought almost immediately of those three gifts, and went to the attic to get one of them out of the chest of drawers where they were stored, pleased that my investment had been justified, or at least 33.33333% justified. I started the kit that very night. I think it took me about two months' of needlework time to finish it, although I worked at it in fits and starts between August and January. By the end of January, I'd finished all of the cross stitch but the little section that was to contain the baby's name, and I'd also bought a thrift shop frame for it, and researched how to frame needlework. 

Sawyer was born in mid-February, and I got right to work on the name section, finishing it in a matter of days. Then it was time to frame it. I'd never done any framing to speak of before. Professional framing used to be one of my few extravagances, but I can no longer afford such a thing, and it was time to learn to do it myself. I paged through a book on framing that I'd bought at a thrift shop some years back, and looked at online tutorials and videos until I felt I had some idea of what I was doing. 

The simple wooden frame I bought at Value Village for this cross-stitch piece was the right width but something like 2.75" too wide, so I removed the bottom edge, cut down the sides using my handsaw and mitre box, and glued and nailed the frame back together. I then cut a piece of foam core board to fit the frame, and mounted the cross stitch on that using sequin pins. Then it was pop the foam core board into the frame, turn down the little metal tabs at the back, stick on a backing of brown craft paper, and add a hanging wire to the back. It turned out pretty well for a first attempt at framing. The needlework isn't perfectly straight, but it's straighter than either of the two professionally framed pieces of needlework I have in my house. And I like the way the tone of the wood accords with the colours in the cross stitch. It should make a nice addition to Sawyer's room for the first three or four years of his life.

There was originally glass in this frame, but I elected not to cut that glass down for the new frame size. This present had to be shipped to Alberta, and I was concerned that the glass might break on the way, and worse, damage the needlework. Not including the glass would also help keep the shipping cost of this gift down. 

I haven't gotten to meet Sawyer in person yet, and don't know when I will. My nephew and his wife and their son live in Alberta, and I can't afford to travel there. They will be visiting Ontario every few years, pandemic conditions allowing, but they'll mainly be visiting Luke's immediate family, who live two hours from me in a region where public transit doesn't go (I don't own a car), and they will have so many people to see during their time in Ontario that they won't be coming to Toronto just to see me. It isn't likely I'll ever see Sawyer more often than once every two or three years. But if I can make things for Sawyer's birthday or Christmas gifts that he routinely uses and enjoys, I can hope to have a little place in his life, and perhaps even help instill the kind of lifelong appreciation for handmade things in him that people who grow up having things made especially for them by loving family members tend to have.   

Anyway, this gift has been wrapped and packaged and posted and is currently on its way to Alberta, where I hope it will prove a suitable welcome to the world gift for what, judging from his pictures, looks to be a cuddly, happy little guy.  

A Calculated Project

 

I bought the calculator you see above at the age of 22, circa 1995 or 1996, for something in the neighbourhood of ten or twelve dollars. Twenty-six years later, while the calculator was still in perfect shape and working order, its black plastic vinyl cover had become cracked and torn. I'd been meaning to make a new cover for it for awhile, but when in December 2021 I began to take my calculator with me to the grocery store every week and pre-total my groceries before checking out as a way to make sure I stayed under my grocery budget, I decided it was time to get moving on that project. I wanted my calculator to look nice if I was going to be taking it out in public, and the old cover was very close to falling completely apart. 

I did consider just using the calculator sans cover, but then I reflected that there was probably a reason that the calculator still looked perfect while the original cover was in such bad shape. Notice how the number pads are still clearly legible, and the screen is unscratched? No, the calculator needed protection from wear and tear, and must have a new cover. 

This wasn't a project I was going to find some handy tutorial online for -- I was going to have to figure it out on my own. I gathered some supplies: brown vinyl (left over from when I made a handbag), lining fabric, coordinating thread for both fabrics, glue, thread elastic, a button from my button tin (it was one I had cut off a worn-out blouse I was throwing out), and the old cover, which I could employ as a pattern.  

I laid the old cover on the fabrics and used it as a guideline to how big the new piece should be -- the pieces needed to be the size of the old cover plus a good margin that I'd be folding inwards. The piece of fabric you see in this photo was supposed to be the lining piece of the cover, but I ended up not using it for reasons that will soon be explained.

I cut the old black covers apart and pulled out the cardboard pieces that had given them their shape. Though I had planned to use the cardboard pieces as pattern pieces for new ones, they were in such pristine condition that I simply reused them for the new cover. Leaving room for the flexible spine of the cover, I placed the cardboard forms on the piece of vinyl I had cut, and folded in and glued the edges of the vinyl. 

I used bulldog clips to secure the cover's inner edges until they could dry. One can't pin vinyl as it will leave holes, and it would be very difficult to pin it over cardboard anyway. 

The old cover had no fastener, and had always annoyed me by constantly flapping open. And it had always seemed so awkward to me that the spine was on the right side -- it seemed to me it should be on the left, as with a book. I decided that my cover would be oriented to flip open like a book and would also close securely. I considered a tab with a snap fastener, but eventually decided a button and an elastic loop would be my best bet. 

Vinyl doesn't hold hand stitching well -- the stitches just seem to tear out. I really should have affixed a square of interfacing to the underside of the cover piece before I glued it on to hold the button. Since I hadn't thought of that in time, I sewed the button in place by pushing my needle clear through the vinyl and the cardboard form and the vinyl on the other side and then back again, about twenty times. I had to use a thimble for this effort -- something I rarely do -- as it would have been too painful to push the needle through the cardboard with bare fingers.  

I crocheted a chain from the black thread elastic in order to make the button loop. It took me a few tries to figure out how to attach the elastic loop to the cover. Sewing didn't work as my stitches just tore out of the vinyl, and I couldn't think of a practical way to glue something so small and finicky. In the end I cut two squares of interfacing and used them to create a sort of glue sandwich that I could use to secure the ends of the elastic loop. Once that had dried, I glued the back of the interfacing square to the cover, after first testing its position to be sure it was situated properly to fasten the button.   

As indicated above, I'd originally planned to line the cover with a piece of satin lining. But when it proved so hard to stitch anything to the vinyl, and promised to be a time-consuming, pain in the ass, and very probably not at all successful job to sew the lining in, and I thought glue would seep through the satin lining and look bad, I opted to go for a vinyl lining. This was a much easier task, as I just had to cut a piece the right size and glue it in place. After I'd cut the piece of vinyl lining to the right size, I pinked the edges for a more finished look. 

The finished project from the inside. The calculator is secured to the back flap of the cover by three strips of double-sided Scotch tape. I hope it holds, but if it doesn't, I will probably just try some stronger double-sided tape. In the old cover, the calculator was held in place by a strip of tape, and that held it in place for 26 years. 

The finished calculator in all its buttoned glory. I'm pretty pleased with the result of my work on it. I don't know how long this cover will last -- I expect it to be less durable than the old one -- but now that I know exactly how to make a new one (and have documented the process, lest I forget), it'll be pretty easy for me to make another if necessary. 

I certainly like this cover better than the old one, it will coordinate well with the daily wear, convertible bag I always take to the grocery store, and this is a project that didn't cost me a penny. Can't beat that.

I Heart Olivia

When it came time to pick a design for my niece Olivia's Christmas sweater, I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern.

I narrowed my choices down to two patterns, then decided on the above design, which is I Can Sing a Rainbow, by Jenni Bennett. The other pattern was a classic design, but I thought screw it, I was going with the fun one. The time will come when I'll be making nothing but classic styles for Olivia. At present she's 5 years old, and this is my window for making her cute, whimsical designs because at this age she can relate to them rather than thinking that they're uncool. This pattern only ran to a size six, so this was my last chance to make it for her. 

As for yarn choice, my first step was to go through my stash of DK yarn and pick out the heart colours. This is a great design for using up a lot of little odds and ends of yarn. It only take 10 grams of each colour. I found seven that looked pretty together, and made a yarn sampler that I could take to the store to use as a convenient aid in selecting the main colour for the sweater. I liked the idea of a neutral background colour, and decided I wanted an olive. It was a bit hard to find that, but in the end I went with Sandnesgarn Alpakka in shade 9554, which is a sort of olive khaki. I bought six skeins, or 300 grams. 

And here's the completed sweater. I'm a little meh on the results. I wasn't thrilled with my arrangement of colours in the heart, but I wasn't going to ravel it all out and do it again, either. It will do, and I'm confident Olivia and her mother will both like it, which is what matters.  

It only took 200 grams of the olive yarn to knit this sweater, so I shall have 2 skeins to return for store credit at Romni Wools. (I always think of whatever extra yarn I've purchased for a current project as a down payment on my next project.) 

I had just 10 grams left over of the newly purchased olive yarn, and I used approximately 10 grams of each of the rainbow coloured stash yarn (or 70 grams), so that's a net stash decrease of -60 grams.   

A Gem of a Hat and Scarf Set

A few years ago, I decided I wanted a scarf and hat set in green. I have a pair of spring green leather gloves I'd picked up at Winners for $20 years before, and I wanted a set that would coordinate with them. That spring green would also look nice with my dark brown wool coat. 

I say I decided this a few years ago because it took me some time to find just the right shade of green yarn in the DK weight I needed for the pattern I'd picked out. Greens can be tricky to coordinate. If they're just least bit off, they look terrible. I took one of the green gloves with me whenever I went yarn shopping, and struck out many times. Eventually, this past spring, I found what I wanted: 400 grams of 220 Superwash Merino in Peridot. (220 Superwash Merino is technically a worsted, but it really isn't a worsted -- it's between a DK and a worsted.) The green was several shades darker than the green of the gloves, but the right tone, and the gloves won't be right next to the hat and scarf when I've got them on, so I thought it would do. 

It makes me smile that the yarn shade is called Peridot. I was born in August, and peridot is my birthstone. I used to hate peridot and wish I'd been born in any other month so that I could have a birthstone I liked, but one day in my early thirties I clued in to the fact that the peridot green actually suits me and that I had several pieces of clothing in that colour in my wardrobe already. Since then I've acquired a little collection of peridot jewelry that I love, and I have always had a few pieces of spring green clothing and accessories in my wardrobe. And then I ended up working on and completing this project in August, so it was doubly appropriate.  

For the hat pattern, I chose the Armley Beret, designed by Woolly Wormhead. It's an attractive design, and I thought the little tapering cables around the brim looked like little trees, which would accord well thematically with the green I wanted to use for the yarn. As for the scarf, there was no pattern, but that's never stopped me before when I was making a set. It's generally so easy to improvise a design for a scarf that will go with a hat design.

Here's the finished hat and and scarf. I'm pleased with both. The hat knitted up quickly and without any problems that I recall. 

The one modification I made to the hat pattern was to trim it with a tassel rather than a pom pom, as I'm more of a tassel type. 

And here's the hat and scarf with the gloves. They don't look as though they go very well in this photo, but that's just the lighting -- the combination looks better in person than it does here. Better that than the other way around, I suppose.

  

As for the scarf, I toyed with the idea of doing repeats of the tapered cable motif for the entire length of the scarf, but that would have meant having to repeatedly adjust the number of stitches and I didn't want the hassle. I wasn't sure it would look all that good anyway. Instead, I worked three continuous lines of the bottom cable, and for the edging I used the 2 x 2 twisted cable that was used on the hat opening. I had a ridiculous amount of trouble getting the edging right, so I'll just write here for my own future reference that when picking up stitches for cable edging along a scarf, picking up *three out of every four loops* gives one just the right number of stitches so that the edging will be neither too full nor too taut to sit right. The scarf is just over 6' long and 7 inches wide. 

I've resolved that this set must be my last new hat and scarf set for some time. Besides this new peridot set, I have a cream set, an old rose set, a plum set, a variegated set, a brown and orange fair isle set, a mohair tam, a peacock design wool tam, and an old rose scarf, all of my making, plus some other assorted, purchased scarves. All of these items are in excellent condition, and good grief, I only have one head and neck to wear them on. I have hats and scarves to go with every one of my coats and with every possible outfit, and it would be a senseless extravagance for me to spend any more money on others until I've worn out some of the ones I already have. 

I'm sure the crazy knitter part of my brain will try to make a case for yet another set pretty soon (i.e, "I don't have a red set!" or "I found this irresistible pattern that I MUST make!"), but the logical, budget-conscious part of my brain intends to be very stern and a hard sell on the matter. 

An All Generations Sweater

My grandnephew Bug is due to turn 8 in July. In late 2020, when I was planning my projects for this coming year, I searched Ravelry for a suitable sweater pattern for him.

I ended up selecting the one depicted above, the imaginatively named "Boy's Sweater, No. 7", designed by Gretchen Baum. This pattern was originally published in 1948. It amuses me to think that Bug's great-grandfather (born 1938), grandfather (born 1963), and father (born 1981), could all have worn a sweater made from it, without ever looking the least bit out of date. Such is the staying power of classic knitwear design.

The pattern called for a dark green and white colour scheme, but when I was shopping for the yarn in March 2021, I selected 250 grams of a tweedy charcoal (Drops Merino Extra Fine Mix, shade 03, Anthrazit) and 50 grams of a cream (Drops Karisma Uni Colour, shade 01, Off White) for my version. 

   

Here's the the finished item. I'm pleased with the look of it. It's a handsome sweater for a handsome boy. I used a DK for this project although, according to its Ravelry page, it calls for a sport weight. I think it might actually be intended for fingering. As a result I used more yarn than the pattern called for. Thankfully Romni Wools had the three extra 50g skeins I needed in stock. The knit was also stiffer in its feel than I would have liked, though wet blocking helped somewhat. I can't say I regret my choice of yarn, though, as the resulting sweater turned out a modern size 8/9 (I checked the measurements against another recent pattern), rather than the narrower 1948 size 8/9 of the pattern. That should give Bug a little room to grow in, because he's on the small side for his age.

 And, because a wool sweater is not an exciting gift for an boy turning eight in July, I added a few dollar store trinkets: a scavenger game that can be played in one's house, and two Hot Wheels miniature cars. 

This project used 2 grams of cream Drops Karisma that I had left over from another project, and there were 10 grams of cream and 15 grams of charcoal left over from the new yarn that I bought for this project, so that's a net stash increase of 23 grams. 

The Lovely Orchard Quilt

Last year, when I had a lot of Thinsulate to use up, I made a Coronvirus quilt. When I finished that queen-sized quilt, I estimated that I had enough pieces of Thinsulate left to make a 4' x 6' quilt, and I decided I'd make that second throw-sized quilt up for my friend Lindsie's daughter -- my honorary niece, Olivia -- as I thought she would enjoy having her own special little quilt that was made for her by her Auntie Beth. And after all, she has outgrown the last blanket I made for her. 

In April 2021, after I finished Olivia's dress and purse for her 5th birthday, I decided I might as well get the quilt out of the way too, so I got out the Thinsulate and my fabric. The fabric I chose for this project was the one you see in the photo above. It's called Lovely Orchard, and was designed by Suling Wang for Camelot Cottons, and I was very taken with it at first sight. This quilt will probably last at least ten years, so I didn't want to use a cutesy, juvenile fabric for it, but rather to choose something that would both appeal to Olivia now and that she could grow up to. This simple, pretty print seemed to fit the bill. I like that the fabric is probably going to prove very much to Lindsie's taste too -- she has contemporary taste and especially loves the Japanese aesthetic, which this print is similar to. I'd hate to saddle her with something she considers an eyesore and that will be in her house for years to come.  

The finished quilt. It turned out very well and I am pleased with it. The 42" x 79" size was not quite what I had expected at the outset, but it will do. It can be used as a blanket on Olivia's single bed.

Making the coronavirus quilt felt like a herculean effort and it took me ten months to take the project from start to finish last year, though of course I wasn't working at it at all regularly during those months, but only in starts and fits. That wasn't at all my experience this time. Olivia's quilt took me just thirteen days start to finish, and I worked at it an average of two hours a day. On day one, I pieced the leftover pieces of Thinsulate together, cut two lengths of the print, and pinned the layers together. On days two to eight, I stitched the body of the quilt in vertical lines a half-inch apart. On day nine, I prepared the binding and squared the quilt by trimming the edges evenly. On day ten, I machine stitched the binding in place, flipped it over and pinned it to be hand-sewn on the other side of the quilt, and began the hand sewing. On days eleven through thirteen, I did the remaining hand sewing.  

The whole process was so straightforward and unproblematic that it amazed me. When I was making the first quilt, I struggled a lot with having to laboriously rip out lines of quilting because the fabric had puckered or folded on the underside. That never happened while I was stitching the body of this quilt -- not even once. Of course, this was an easier project because it was far less work. The coronavirus quilt had a finished size of 78" x 83.5", its quilting lines were 3/8" apart, and I put in over 240 vertical lines of stitching into its body. This quilt has a finished size of 42" x 79", its quilting lines are 1/2" apart (or a hair less), and I think there were 92 vertical lines of stitching in it. This second quilted blanket required not only well under half the actual sewing of the first, but was also far lighter, which made it considerably easier for me to physically control the fabric as I ran it through the machine. But I think the experience I gained in working on the first one contributed just as much to making this second project go so much more smoothly and efficiently. I knew exactly how to hold the quilt so that it wouldn't pucker on the underside, and there was no months' long stall of the project while I put off the task of binding the finished body because I was intimidated by the prospect of  learning how to make binding and put it on. 

When I finished the coronovirus quilt, while I knew I would be making the second smaller quilted blanket for Olivia in order to get that Thinsulate used up, I thought I would probably never make a third. Now I find I'm open to making another quilted blanket at some point. I've had that coronavirus quilt on my bed since last October, and I have been so grateful for it all through Toronto's 2020/2021 winter weather. One of my physical quirks is that I am extraordinarily cold resistant during the day -- strangers sometimes approach me on the street, look significantly at what I'm wearing, or rather not wearing, and say, "Aren't you cold?!" -- but that seems to change radically as soon as I get into bed at night, when I turn into some kind of freak icicle-human hybrid. Before this past year, during the winter, I would have on my bed a top sheet, a quilt, two wool blankets, a fleece blanket, and a duvet in a velvet cover... and it still wasn't enough to keep me from shivering miserably. During the coldest months I would have to spread on top of my duvet not only the afghan from the foot of my bed but also the afghan from the guest room and the faux fur throw and woven throw from the living room couch. This year I had on my bed the top sheet, the old quilt, the new coronavirus quilt, two wool blankets, and the duvet, and sometimes the afghan from the foot of my bed, and that was sufficient. The fleece blanket remained on a shelf in the linen closet and the guest room afghan and living room throws stayed in their places. In other words, that one lightweight Thinsulate quilt took the place of four other layers.       

Now that I know I am confident I can turn out a quilted blanket in such good time, and that a Thinsulate blanket is an excellent thing to have, I am open to making more in future, should I have need for another quilt for my household, or want to make one for a gift. Twenty-six hours of work does not seem to me like an unreasonable amount of effort to put into such a practical item that will last a decade or more. 

I'd originally planned to give Olivia the quilt as part of her Christmas 2021 present, but when I finished it in time for her 5th birthday, which is today, I decided it would become part of her birthday present instead. Of course the rest of her birthday present was more geared to the tastes and interests of a 5-year-old girl than this quilt is. Childless old maid as I may be, I'm not so out of touch as to think a child her age is going to find a quilt an exciting birthday present.   

I have something like 1.3 metres of the Lovely Orchard fabric left, and I've tucked it carefully away in my remnant fabric drawer. I don't have a plan for its use yet, but knowing me I am sure inspiration will strike at some point. And I'm looking forward to working with such a charming print again. As for the Thinsulate... I have just two small pieces left, and they've been tucked away in my drawer of interfacings and linings. Maybe I'll make a pair of mittens out of them sometime.