Maple Leaf Forever Scarf and More

 

I introduced the Maple Leaf forever scarf back in November when it was almost finished (see post here). I finished it in the meantime and had sufficient yarn to make a matching toque, but I didn't want to make it using multiple double pointed needles. While I do own some, I have never used them to actually knit in the round and have no desire to, using them only when I need them for a cable or other fancy stitch. Especially when I also own knitting looms. While I can generally hand knit faster than I can "loom", I just didn't want the hassle. There's probably a way to make a toque with a circular needle instead of double pointed needles, but I would have had to find a pattern. And I had made loom-knit toques before. However, when it came down to it, I didn't remember which pattern I'd used. I think I finally found it, but now I don't honestly remember which pattern I used. I believe it was for a slouchy from LoomaHat, but she has a lot of different patterns and videos. I modified it anyway as I incorporated the maple leaf design from the scarf pattern and made it shorter, so it wouldn't be as slouchy. If I had to do it over again, I would move the maple leaf closer to the brim and made the toque even shorter as it's still slouchy, and I don't like slouchy hats. Yes, I know I was using a slouchy pattern, but my previous efforts didn't turn out slouchy at all... Perhaps it was a totally different pattern that I had used before. 
I finished both the scarf and the toque by the middle of November, but I've been so busy getting other projects finished before Christmas that I haven't blogged about it until now. One of the projects was Tartan Delight, another one of Fabric Cafe's 3-yard quilt patterns. 

This one is the It's a Snap pattern from the book Pretty Darn Quick. I had purchased the fabric on one of my quilt shop hops. I love tartan fabric and I think it turned out very nice. The recipient suggested blues and greens, and this was the best match I had in my 1 metre/yard collection. I used a royal blue minky dot for the backing. 

Anise is the pantograph I chose. It was one I received for a pantograph of the month program that I was in briefly, but I haven't used it as it didn't really appeal to me. However, now that I've stitched it out, I do find it rather pretty, though it will likely never be one of my favourites. 
I worked on this one at the Lutheran church sew days, but when I got it home and put it up on my design wall to measure for the borders, I thought, "What is wrong?" It definitely did not look right. I finally figured out that I had gotten all the blocks in the correct order in each row, but then I had stitched the rows together in the wrong order. I think I only ended up with two out of the 6 rows in the right place. I gave the stitch ripper a workout that day. 
Next up was Higher Ground, using the Stepping Up pattern. I had gotten the pattern as one of the freebies that Fabric Cafe shares. They switch out their freebies every couple of months, so it's a case of you snooze, you lose. But I try to keep up with their pattern giveaways, so I don't lose out. 

I was kind of loathe to part with this one because the colours and the fabrics are just really awesome, but the recipients loved it. I had to make a few design changes - a couple were deliberate, based on my fabric available (I didn't have quite enough of the navy blue, so had to rearrange fabric placements, and decided to make the mauve border wider). And I accidentally made one too many of one block and one too few of the other, so my rows are arranged slightly differently than the pattern. But it's still a beautiful quilt, in my opinion. 

I had some mauve minky dot in my stash that I used for the backing and Zoidberg Feathers for the quilting. This is a pantograph that I have used before, but I had to choose something that would work with minky - nothing too dense - and would look good on the quilt top. It's probably one of my favourite designs - it's very pretty and works up relatively quickly. 

As a matter of fact, I decided that it had the right qualities for stitching up fabrics for bag-making, and I used it for quilting the fabrics for a travel bag for my grandson, seen here on the longarm, and a backpack for my daughter. I was really hoping to get these bags finished, plus a couple more quilts, in time for Christmas, but I just ran out of time. As a matter of fact, I didn't even get all 3 of my Christmas trees up and decorated until Christmas Eve. And other Christmas decorating around the house was pretty sparse. Hopefully, I'll get the bags finished soon and you'll hear more about them then.