What is this yarn?

Either Lily Sugar 'n' Cream or the old Peaches and Creme... cotton... and I can't find it on any color swatches anywhere.


UPDATE: it's Peaches and Creme, Sour Green Apple.  Thanks, Ravelry!

Back soon!

Greetings, all who stop by when I leave you a comment!  You may have noticed I haven't posted in months... I've had a few life changes, one of which has left me a bit too tired and busy to post anything... but I'll be back soon (have more free time now!) and - as you may have noticed - am still reading other blogs, although I'm about a month behind (the max) in my feed reader. 

I did have fun at the Quilt Festival, though!

Giveaway winner!

The winner of the giveaway... via random.org...

Darcy said...
I don't quilt, but I lurve the fabric. And because you told me to.

May 25, 2011 2:37 PM

Hooray Darcy! Fabric coming your way on Saturday!

Giveaway day

Wow, been having so much fun reading your comments and reading other blogs (and subscribing to so many... my poor reader is full!).  A few things I've realized: the hot pink on my blog was painful.  Have toned it down a bit.  And, unless you're super-cool, I won't put you in my blog reader if you don't let your full post be published there.  Just a snippet?  I'll unsubscribe.  (Grograinfabulous is super-cool.)  But so many great people out there, and so many great ideas!  Good luck, all :)

Giveaway! and can this quilt be saved?

 So I'm making this quilt for my sister.  It's supposed to look like this excellent quilt... but I realized I don't have a good color sense.  (My mother's been telling me that for years, and the husband has even very delicately started in... hers is "are you going to go outside wearing that with that?" and his is a diffident "do you normally wear those two things together?")  Looking at it now, I see I should have made the stars out of the colored flower bits that make the stretched hexagons.  There are stars there, just you can barely make them out.

(This is the backing, with a red binding.)

So, does anyone have any hints for how to quilt it (at home - I don't do the "send it to someone else and have their computer quilt it" thing, although I do understand it's faster) so that the stars are emphasized rather than the oblong shapes?  Colors, techniques, anything?  Would using a thick/fluffy polyester batting (rather than thin bamboo/cotton) and putting most of the quilting in the non-star areas help?

(Redoing it is not an option - I don't have any more fabric!)

But now on to what you want... the giveaway!

Whether or not you're willing/able to give me "can this quilt be saved" advice, I have up for offer 2 yards of silk chiffon from Universal Fabrics here in Houston.  I bought it because it's fabulous, but I've got no idea of what to do with it, so I'm leaving it up to you. 

Here's a shot on a chair back so you get the scale:

And a close-up of the hilarious pattern, also showing how sheer it is (it's folded up behind itself at the bottom of the photo):

(I saw a greetings card once with various structured undergarments on it; the inside said, "thanks for your support!")

To win, just post a comment of any kind.  Quilting advice welcome, but not necessary.  A way to contact you (i.e. no "no-reply" profiles) is necessary, of course.

(Random) Drawing on May 26th.

Shipping note: I had some issues last time with the giveaway - I live next door to a post office, but it's open only when I'm at work, so I have to wait for a day off work when the post office is open (i.e. no holidays) to ship internationally (the machine will ship domestically any time).  I had a day free just after the giveaway, but a family emergency kept me from the post office on that one day, and it was over a month until I had a non-holiday weekday off work again.  So, this time, US/Canada only, unless you're willing to wait a while for shipping.  (If you're willing to wait, you can submit from anywhere!)

Giveaway day

(Just a nice picture)

I'll be participating in the Giveaway Day again this year:

So come back next week!

Cross-stitch Ganesha/Puliyar - and lessons learned

The husband's parents moved to Texas from India in the 1960s-1970s.  They are Hindu, and in fact were instrumental in founding the main Hindu temple in Pearland (south of Houston).  When we were living in El Paso, I had a lot more spare time, and so I decided to make something for them.  

Through the magic of the internet, I found a clip-art Ganesha (known to his family - South Indians - as Puliyar) and converted it to a cross-stitch pattern through some free-trial program.  It was a lovely pattern, very clear, with specific DMC/Anchor threads listed, and so I set to work.

Lessons I learned:

1) it's self-torture to work on black cloth, as you can't see the holes.

2) if a pattern calls for 42 inches of floss, and you're using 2 strands together, you really only need 14 inches of six-strand floss.  Yes, I bought enough floss for three projects.

3) there's a reason pattern designers get paid for their work, and it's not just putting clip art through pattern-creating programs.  My pattern had 21 colors, and one showed up for just 2 stitches, and a few others would have one stitch every four inches or so.  It's all gradations of blue/green/gray, so a human rather than a computer creating it would have made it much more stitching-friendly.  (I did take over the 2-stitch color with another color.)

4) a large project on black cloth with 21 colors unintelligently designed will take longer than the 4 months until Christmas I promised myself.  In fact, it will take around 2 years (conveniently, until the mother-in-law's 60th birthday party... which, to be a more effective surprise party, was thrown at a time of year nowhere near her birthday).

But they loved it, and the husband's dear grandmother takes such pride in showing it off to her friends, and they've installed it in a prominent position in their home, so I feel it was all worth it.

 

(sorry for the bad photo, it's reflective and this was taken during a party - that's me in pink in the reflection.)

Not worth it enough to do it again, though, even if I do have enough thread to make three.