Slow Sunday Stitching - December 28, 2025

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season.  I had a fairly quiet one, with just family at my son's house.  We did a taco bar.   I got some practical gifts - a vacuum sealer, a new drill (at my request), and sock yarn (though I think it will be a hat or cowl since it has yak fiber in it). 

I'm sharing the December Temperature Log early since it will be a finish right after midnight on New Year's Eve.  December's specialty stitch is "Octagonal Eyelet".  Our high temps have been fairly warm, so we are not really into the blue part of the spectrum.

And here's a close up:

Look for the Finish on New Year's Day, though it will need to be framed at some point.

Today's Slow Stitching is hemming.  My granddaughter's other grandma bought her a couple pairs of lounge pants that are too long.   I've done one pair already, and here's the second pair in progress.  I do like using my vintage sewing bird when doing hemming or seam felling.  Being able to keep tension on the piece makes it so much easier.

Linking up with the other Slow Sunday Stitching folk.  (See this week's links here.)

A Christmas Stocking disaster - and the resolution

Riley, my son's dog, strikes again.   This is the same dog that ate the edge of Alexis' blanket when it was a puppy.  This time she targeted Carl's Christmas Stocking.   I think she was intrigued by the buttons that embellished the snowman, because she basically ate his head!

There were two of the 'mouth' beads left out of the five that were the mouth and eyes, so at least I can put eyes back on, and the metal carrot button the was the nose is more or less intact.  It's scratched up a bit, but still useable.

The yarn is a standard worsted weight single by Brown Sheep Co - a semi-local mill and is in stock over at the Yarn Barn of KS.  Road Trip!  I'll need one skein of the blue and one of white and just a tiny bit of black for the hat.

The plan is to run a lifeline just at the bottom of the top (name) band in the last row of red, drop off the bottom of the stocking.  Then rip back to just below the "neck" row, reknit the damaged area, kitchner stitch the top back on and then add the snowman's head and hat back on with Swiss Darning, and put back the eyes and nose embellishments.   I've done similar 'sweater surgery' before and it works out fine.  Any knitted item that's made of stocking stitch can be cut apart and reknit in either direction.  Only works for plain knitting, though.

Monday 12/22/2025

Materials acquired.  The gals at the Yarn Barn were so nice; they even found a scrap of black, so I didn't have to buy an entire 190-yard skein for the twenty or so Swiss darning stitches I need for the top hat!   The blue is only off by a dyelot difference, so if I pull back two or three intact rows and knit it up striping the old and new yarns, it should trick the eye into blending the two very close shades.   It's only when there's a stark dividing line that dyelot changes get problematic. 

Lifelines run and starting to pull out the damaged section.  We are at the 'it looks worse before it looks better' stage.

Tuesday 12/23/2025

The top is all pulled back to the lifeline.  I used my interchangeable needle set cable as a lifeline because all I will need to do is put on a needle tip and it will be ready to kitchner.

And the bottom of the stocking is about halfway to the grafting point.   I had to go one row further down than I'd originally intended due to the way mom did the intarsia section originally, but that's fine.  I think I matched my mom's gauge pretty well, and the stripes to disguise the dyelot change seem to be doing their job sufficiently.  You can sort of see that there are stripes, but there's no line of demarcation.  And the Swiss Darning embroidery and the face embellishments will push all the blue into the background in the end.

12/24/2025 Wednesday

Kitchner has started.  It's a long way around this thing comparted to sock toes!

And kitchner is done!  Back seam all put back together, too.   Ready for the swiss darning.

12/26/2025 Friday

The snowman is no longer headless (or hatless).   He does, however, need a good blocking.   We were not able to find the rest of the beads that were chewed off to be able to give him a mouth, so I have some Mill Hill pony beads coming from 123Stitch.   Hopefully they will be here early next week. 

I'll keep updating this post as the repairs continue.  

Slow Sunday Stitching - December 21, 2025

 What a week!  My grandson made it through his finals.  Good grades unless he bombed his public speaking long form speech on the last day, but even if he gets a poor score, he will pass the class. (Speech was NOT his favorite class, and I can't blame him.  I hated it every time I had to take it - high school, college - both degrees - and a couple of rounds of professional development over the years!)  So now on to Christmas!  I can't believe we are only four days out. Where did December go?

Bells play today for the last Sunday in Advent and again on Christmas Eve at the early service.   One of the pieces has a very tricky syncopated section that I only get right about half the time.  I'm praying that the service is on the good side of those odds! 

Crafting has been a bit scant on the ground this week.  Two extra rehearsals in the run up to Christmas services and the end of the school term really cut into my free time.  But I did get the binding for the 80s quilt finished and all ready to go when it gets back from the long arm quilter.   And the design wall looks a bit different this week.

First of all, look at it all mounted on the wall and everything!  Thank you, JC and Carl for plaster anchors and levels and getting it squared away.  Second, you'll notice that all the 'parts of blocks' are now actual blocks except for the 3 inch finished squares.  I ended up with a total of 12 blocks to date.  

I've been thinking about how to approach this back.   The quilt is going to a long arm quilter, so I will need an extra 4 inches on each side of the top dimensions.   The top is 85 inches / 216 cm square.   So the backing will need to be a minimum of 93 inches / 236 cm square.   That's way bigger than my design wall, so I'm going to put it together by the quarter like a huge 4 patch.   

I'm going to set some guidelines for myself:

• No blocks in the outer six inches / 15 cm (so no blocks get chopped off and the binding is easy on the back).  
• Asymmetrical so it doesn't matter where the top lands relative to the back.  
• Bottom left corner - light neutral for name and date label (use that lone rosette to embellish).   
• Use up the bright rose fabrics and the intense plaid first for large sections of backing.
• Three blocks (plus fill in as needed) per quadrant.  May need more.  
• I'm going to try not to worry or overthink too much about the layout.  As Karen Brown says in the tutorial I am using, the only two rules are 'big enough for the quilter' and 'must lay flat'. 

I'm hoping that the back goes together quickly so I can get an appointment with the long arm quilter that I used before.   But I'm not going to make that appointment until I get the back finished and ready to go.  I don't need the stress of an actual deadline on this thing!  Besides, this one will probably hibernate for a couple of weeks until after the holidays now.  The sewing table needs to be clear for gift wrapping and holiday crafting.  This is better than the old house, where the dining room table had to suffice for all of the above plus dinner!

Linking up with the SSS crew (this week's roundup).

Mead Dragon Milestone - the first zero

 

I have my first finished color on the Mead Dragon project!!!   I love that the Pattern Keeper app tracks the remaining stitches by DMC number.   I actually only have three colors with more than 1000 stitches left, but one of the three is over 5,000.   So a long way to go yet, but I just had to mark the milestone!

Binding Strips done for "It was the 80s"

 

Making bias binding, especially scrappy style like this quilt, is always a bit of a pain.  I always struggle with making sure all the joins go in one direction and line up right.  Some of these had to be pieced so not perfect on the join direction within a fabric, but I think I got all the intersections between fabrics correct.

All wound up and ready to go.  I put the solid mid blue on all the ends to be sure there would be a nice transition on every corner.   I'm doing full sewn miter corners - so there are four equal lengths of binding ready to go. 

Slow Sunday Stitching - December 14, 2025 AND starting the pieced back for the 80s quilt

It's been a busy week; this coming week is finals for my homeschooled grandson and then winter break starts Friday.   End of term assignments - ugh.  I thought I was done with those twenty plus years ago when my son finished school!  I am keeping up with the last month of the Daily Temperature Log as we bounce back and forth between an extended Autumn and full-on Winter!   We had our first snow, though it didn't stick around for long.  Then Tuesday, it got up to 62 degrees F / 16.6 C.   

I'm also keeping up with the 100 stitches per day on the Mead Dragon, but the rest of the crafting time this last week went into quilting.   I'm still working on "It was the 80s" (pictures of the finished top here).  The plan was always to do an improv style pieced back for this one to use up all of the blocks from the original sampler quilt.   

So, using the tutorial on making an "After-Quilt" from Karen Brown "Just Get It Done Quilts" (link to her YouTube channel), I laid out the remaining materials and took inventory.  I started with identifiable blocks and components of blocks.

There are eight large blocks (finished size is 12 inches) remaining from the original top, some mini 9-patch blocks (3 inch finished size) and four patches / pinwheels (finished size 5.5 inches).  Plus there's an extra strip of 2.5 squares (2 inches finished) and the chunk I cut off the side of a 12-inch crumb block to replace an area of unassuming plain squares in the original "Solstice" layout from Pat Slone.   When I made the EPP section of the top, I made an extra rosette (and a random extra background hexi for some reason).

design wall is just tacked up, my son needs to mount the frame

As far as materials I can use for the backing, this is the remaining yardage; size is from a full yard WOF down to a scant fat eighth.   I really want all of the bright rose and pink out of the stash, so using all of that up is a priority.   So the plaid and everything in front of it needs used first.

There were lots of extra strips cut for this quilt and there's a stack of all of the mitered sashing from the original quilt, so I divided that up into three piles - strips 3 inches and up, strips approximately 2.5 inches, strips approximately 1.5 inches.   There's a small stack of squares ranging from 2.5 to 4 inches and a couple stacks of half square triangles (mostly the offcuts from the miters on the original sashing and not all the same size!)

And finally, there's a bunch of true scraps.  Strings less than 1.5 inches or wonky, small squares and potato chip rectangles (2 inches and less), little HSTs from 'stitch and flip' corners and some random tiny or odd shaped 'crumbs'.   Plue the rest of the old sashing and a couple of false starts of backings when I thought I might hand quilt this in the 'quilt as you go' style.  

What a mess - but at least it's a somewhat organized mess LOL.   The next step is to take all the bias strips I cut this week and make the binding.   I like to make the binding right after I get the top done to be sure I use up the larger bits of remaining yardage.  In this case, I used up almost all of the blues for a scrappy but color-controlled binding.  You can see up in the yardage picture that there's not a lot of blue yardage left!  

I'm having a lot of fun puttering around with fabric again. Linking up with the SSS crew (this week's roundup) - inspiration and accountability!

Slow Sunday Stitching - December 7 AND 2025 Rotation #7, Slot #3 (Not Counted Thread) Changeover

Let's get the leftover stuff from last week out of the way first.

The November section of the Daily Temperature Log was done in "Norwich Stitch".   This is a specialty stitch that I'd never come across before.  

 It builds up from a 6 x 6 cross in layers to make a sort of basket weave effect.   Very interesting texture and easy to do.   Plus the stitches were arranged in a regular grid last month, which made it an easy to memorize and execute section.

And the entire thing prior to starting the December section - which is large Octagonal Eyelets.  You'll see that section (and a finish) on New Years Day!

I did post the Mead Dragon last Sunday when I finished working on it, but here it is again with a link to the stats post for November.  She's coming along.  Currently (after another week of work) at just over 85%.

In addition to the daily stitch on the Temp Log and at least 100 stitches on the Mead Dragon, I have been working away at the vintage needlepoint from Germany.  I got the materials to extend the sky and figured out places and a technique of 'speckling' the two colors to keep from having a harsh line between them.   You can see that the new yarn is just slightly brighter blue, but within the variation of a summer sky.   And since there's no harsh edges, it looks acceptably deliberate.

Working ten hours got me halfway across the sky and clouds that take up approximately the top quarter of the piece.   When this comes up again in the rotation, I'll be working on the cloud areas on the left side and the sky areas around them. 

And the back so you can see the progress: I've been working this piece in hand because I don't have appropriately sized stretcher bars, but I am not loving it.  It's hard on the hands and I can't use my floor stand to stitch two handed.  

also fixed the place where I'd carried a thread across the tower by mistake

Plans for the rest of December until I restart the rotation on New Year's Eve.

• Finish December section of the Daily Temperature Log.   Measure it for a frame.
• Continue the daily progress on the Mead Dragon. (This is slot #4 on the last rotation of the year)
• Frame the Majestic Eagle crewel piece to give to my grandson for Christmas
• Make the Unicorn needlepoint into a box pillow for my granddaughter for Christmas.. (after the Christmas stocking disaster - see below - she decided to have it framed instead, so she got a 'promissory note gift', and it will be framed in the new year.)
• Get the design wall set up in my new sewing room (!!!!!)
• Piece the rest of the blocks for quilt backing "It was the 80's.  
• My son's dog got ahold of Carl's stocking - it needs a MAJOR repair (pictures to come see this post).  Don't worry, the destructive canine was not Della. She only carries around plushies, socks and other fabric things and stashes them in her bedding undamaged.  I think she remembers having puppies. (ETA, repairs done, but waiting for embellishments from 123Stitch.)

Quilts Ahoy.  I'm feeling the urge to sew for the first time in years. Here's the finished top for "It was the 80s".   I haven't worked on it for five years.  But eventually everything gets their turn.

Linking up with the SSS crew where you can see some amazing quilts and needlework!  They keep me motivated.