Charlie the felted lamb

This is "Charlie" my felted lamb. He's my latest felted project. He is made from Shetland wool (from my own sweet sheep) that was hand-spun. The yarn used for the face, ears, and hooves was hand-dyed to match the coloring of the real Charlie.....the sweet sheep from whom the wool for this project came from. This "Charlie" is approximately 8" high......9" long.....and 14 1/2" around (he's a tubby little thing!!). He has button eyes and a velvet bow/collar.....and a small bit of needle-sculpting for his nose and mouth (which is hard to see in the picture, but looks real cute).

Here is a picture of the real Charlie. His wool is a lovely oatmeal color and very soft to the touch. Charlie's horns never did grow in like they should have. He's still a sweet thing and loves being loved on.

Intarsia bag finished

Here is it!! The intarsia bag (or tote as I've been calling it) is finally finished. It started out with good intentions of closely following the pattern. But, I only managed to get through a quarter of it before I found it just too fiddly. So off I went in my own direction........and above is the end result. The bag is approximately 9" high (excluding the handles), 10" or so wide, and about 2" deep. It is made from hand-spun, hand-dyed polypay x yarn. Yes, it does tend to flare out a bit at the top. Don't quite understand that, but it does give the bag charm. A piece of acid-free foam core board was used in the bottom of the bag to give it a nice solid bottom (reason it can stand on its own). The bag is lined with the same fabric that is used for the handles and has a velcro closure. I think it will make a wonderful little spindle bag. It's just the right size for carrying a spindle with a bit of fiber. Will I tackle intarsia knitting again?? Probably, but not anytime soon. This was a wonderful learning experience though.

Another first for me.....fair isle knitting. I've always wanted to try my hand at fair isle knitting, but have found it to be so incredibly intimidating. I've got books on it (all of which I've read), plenty of patterns to choose from....even have yarn set aside for a couple of fair isle projects. It took a simple pattern offered by the Philosopher's Wool website to give me the push I needed to actually give it a try. Here is the end result. I was able to knit this little bag up in a few hours using the two-handed method of stranding. I found it incredibly easy to do once I got going. The yarn I used isn't hand-spun. It's yarn I had purchased from Knitpicks quite some time ago (most likely for a project that will never get made). I was real pleased to see that the little bag lay nice and flat after I had finished knitting. This means that I got the tension right on my stranding. Yea!! Now to get a handle made for it and then get it felted. Then it's off to tackle an even larger fair isle project.

Carolina Crossroads - completed top

Here it is!!! My Carolina Crossroads completed top. Wish I could have gotten a picture of the whole top, but just don't have the room. The quilt measures 81" square.

The first border is 2 1/2" finished. The second one is 1 1/2" finished. I pieced together the rest of my 2" red strips so I would have a nice scrappy border. Plus I think it brings the red out from the quilt center. The final border is 3 1/2" finished. I think I may go with the blue border fabric for the binding. I was toying with the idea of putting a red binding on. Then toyed with the idea of using a scrappy red binding. With looking at the quilt, I'm thinking that a binding from the blue border fabric would be best. The blue seems to frame the quilt center very nicely.....and I think a red binding would just end up being too distracting. And this from a person who prefers a contrasting binding on her quilts. Go figure!! :)

I have a beautiful multi-tonal red fabric that I will be using for the backing. It will bring out all the reds used in the quilt front. I even bought two different shades of red thread so that my bobbin thread will match my backing. I will be using a variegated blue thread for the machine quilting. Right now I'm thinking I will quilt the entire quilt center with a 1" grid. At least that's what the quilt has been "telling" me it wants done. Not sure if I will extend it out into the border.....or if I will do something a bit different. I hope to start machine quilting it in the next day or two. Have another small project that I would like to finish up before I start on the machine quilting.

Carolina Crossroads - quilt center

Here it is!! A picture of my completed quilt center for my Carolina Crossroads mystery quilt. Yea!!! Wasn't quite sure I would ever get this far. There are soooo many seams to match! But I did and now can't wait to put borders on it. The quilt center measures 65" square. Have an idea of what I would like to do for borders. It things come out right my completed quilt should measure somewhere around 80" square. I've also been toying with quilting ideas. It's best to let the quilt "talk" to you when it comes to machine quilting......at least in my humble opinion anyway. This quilt has definitely been doing quite a bit of talking!!

The intarsia bag is finished. At least the outside of it anyway. I still need to line it and make handles for it. Wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do for handles, but am leaning towards fabric handles. I think if I make them from the same fabric used for the lining it should look really cute.

I've started on the third sheep from my sheep mobile.....Timmy's momma. She is looking really cute and has tons of personality already. I hope to finish her up this week. I also started on a felted lamb. This is being made from Shetland yarn......that I spun up myself......that is from one of my own sweet sheep. The felted lamb is coming along rather nicely. The knitting part should be finished up and ready for felting in a couple of days.