A new start (or the Ullared sweater part 2)

I've finally started my Ullared sweater (see part one here).  In making the rib edging I realized the dark gray and the light gray looks really nice together, so I changed the color scheme.  The first border is dark gray and white, the rest of the sweater will be light and dark gray.

It's a monumental project, but this is a start! 

Spinning along

For christmas my sweet mother gave me a whole bunch of alpacka wool.  The wool got washed and neatly put away, but the other day I found it and couldn't help myself from getting out the wheel. 

The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt

I've bought a new book, which in itself is not astonishing news..  But I wanted to share this one with you, since I'm a little in love with it.

It's Laurie Aaron Hird's The Farmer's Wife sampler Quilt.  It is full of wonderful letters from farmer's wives about why they would want their own daughter's to marry a farmer.  For a scrappy quilt lover like myself, the quilt blocks and the quilt is just.... sigh.... wonderful...

I couldn't help myself, so I made some of the blocks just for fun.  I haven't worked much with templates so this was a new adventure, the accompanying CD has all the templates.

Of course I had to hand sew since Laurie hand pieced her quilt, and I just love the look of hand piecing.  There is something very sweet about the not-quite-perfect in (at least my) hand piecing.

Here is block nr 7

A garden beauty

Just wanted to share this beauty with you.

Making a design wall

I have finally gotten my design wall up.

It is made to fit one of the walls in my sewing room completely lengthwise and from the roof to 8" above my work table.  It basically covers the whole wall, which is great!

My husband made the framework and I covered it with 2 layers of fleece (cheap fleece from IKEA) and then a beautifully taupe colored thicker fleece totaling 3 layers which makes pinning easy and gives you a luxurious feel.

I am sure you can figure out how to do it from the pictures:

Back of design wall showing framework

Framework

Framework

Tacking on the basic fleece, first on the sides..

Then on the back

in two layers

Front of design wall with basic fleece

Third layer of fleece is tacked on the same way as the other layers

Finished design wall

The design wall is fastened to the wall with the same kind of brackets as we used to make the frame.  It could also be screwed to the wall right through the framework.