I like #317

 Welcome to another week of things to like.  It's been very very busy at work, I have an internal grant deadline tomorrow so it's been all work all the time.  I did get a chance to post this week about a quilt I finished in the summer, check it out here and here.

One super fun thing this week is I listened to the latest Thursday Murder Club book.  I love that series, and it was great to have as a companion on the drive to work.  I highly recommend it.

Brett and Cash came over this week, so we had fun doggy times and yummy octoberfest beer.  It's my favorite variety of beer and we have fun every year trying different ones.  These are the two we tried this week.  

The pups had fun playing and we found some of Spooky's lost balls.

And the flowers, having survived the really hot time of the summer (it's still pretty warm here-most days in the low 90s this week) are having a blast.  I decided to try to arrange them in this compote pedestal bowl from my grandmother.  It's one of those things I never used much but I thought the flowers looked great in it.

Hope everyone is having a good week!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

Seed Heads 2-Finished

 Earlier this week I started sharing about a new pom pom piece, and today I'm back to share the final piece.  The final piece, called Seed Pods #2, is 54" x 35" x 3".  It hangs from a regular pocket but I had to use a thicker than usual slat and also stitch a pocket for half a pool noodle along the bottom of the quilt so that it didn't flop weirdly because of the depth of the pom poms.  The pom poms stick out half on the back and half on the front.  They aren't stitched in, just pushed through the small holes I cut in the quilt.  They are quite secure and can be adjusted if needed.

The piece used only five colors of yarn to make the gradient, yellow, purple, teal, grey and pink.  Making the pom pom gradient was the next part!  It's called Seed Heads 2 because it reminds me of dandelion seed heads.

Seed Heads 2, c. 2023 Shannon Conley

This was a super fun color blending project, and I look forward to thinking of other things to do with all this wonderful yarn!

New Pom Pom Quilt

 I have tons and tons of this fuzzy pastel acrylic yarn that my friend Georgia gave me (Hi Georgia!!), and it's not really that great for knitting and couching so I've been thinking what to do with it. Earlier this year, I made a little pom-pom quilt for the SAQA Auction (going on now!  Go bid and get cool art!)

I had a really fun time making this gradient of pom-poms with some of the yarn, and thought I'd try to make a bigger version.

I did a bunch of graphing out my pom poms and colors on graph paper, with instructions for each one on how many strands of each color it should have.  It was really delightful to watch the gradients come into being as I made the pom poms.  While making them, they each had a little tag corresponding to their place in the grid, but I took all the tags off as I put them in the quilt.

My grid was 7 x 9 so there were 63 pom poms.  Even after making them all I don't really think I made a dent in the yarn, so clearly additional yarn-based projects will be forthcoming.

I liked the brown background from the auction piece, but I didn't have any more of that dupioni silk fabric, but I pulled this piece of weird, kind of fuzzy chenille-like brown fabric that was in a box of stuff destashed to me by my sister's mother-in-law (Hi Mary Alice!).  I marked my grid, quilted and faced the quilt, and then cut out all the little circles to stick in the pom poms.  The texture of the fabric went really well with the pom poms actually.

Come back later this week to see the finished quilt!

I Like #316

 Welcome to another week of things to like. 

 This week I blogged about a recent quilt finish here and here.  Click through to see more.

The pups are doing well, it's nice that the weather is so great right now.  It's started to rain some and the temperatures have come down so we've gotten out and walked some in addition to our usual snuggles.

The flowers in the garden still give me lots of joy.  Every day when I get home I go out and walk through the small space, even if it's dark.  The tomatoes are slowing down some but the jalapenos are still going strong!

The neighborhood has started putting up Halloween decorations and it's kind of fun to see them all!

And we had a fun toad in the garden this week!  I try to keep the dogs away though.

Hope you're having a good week, head to LeeAnna's for more!

Vining: Finished

 Earlier this week I shared about a smocked quilt I'd made as a demo for The Quilt Show that I hadn't really liked in the end.  After taking out the smocking stitches and overpainting, I re-smocked, and here's the finished piece!

The final piece is 42" x 24" x 3".  The original squared up finished quilt was 55" high by 41" wide to give an idea how much is sucked up by the smocking.  I used a 2.75" grid for this one and I think it worked out fine.  

Vining, c. Shannon Conley, 2023 

Here are a few deatails.  I always love the undulating folds in these pieces.

I'm very pleased with the way this one worked out, and I'm definitely glad I took it apart and overpainted, I like the colors much more now.

New Smocked Quilt

 Earlier this year I flew out to Arizona to film an episode of The Quilt Show.  I was demonstrating my smocking technique, and painted a piece of white dotted fabric green to use in my demo. 

I quilted it up in all different colors, which for me is always a really fun part of the process.

Here are a couple of close ups of the quilting.

I finished the edges with couched yarn and did up most of the smocking, leaving some to illustrate on the show. Below is the smocking on the back.

However, when I got home, I didn't really care for it. Even though it looked like there were a bunch of different colors of green in the original painted piece, once smocked it just liked a really boring even green.

So I undid all the smocking stitches on the back and overpainted with some purple, yellow, and dark blue/teal to give some more color variety.

Come back later this week to see the final piece!

I Like #315

 Welcome to another week of things to like!  This past week was our annual vision research workshop which was fun and inspiring at work, which was very good. Now back to craziness but we persevere!  

I finally got around to blogging this week about a recent knit I finished, click here to see more!

Today is the first day of the annual SAQA Auction,  it's always tons of fun and a great way to get cool art and support a wonderful organization.  The prices start out at $1000 (today) and then drop to $100 over the course of the next few weeks.  Click here to learn more!  My piece is this little pom-pom color gradient that was sort of a test piece for a larger quilt.

I'm also not sure if I even mentioned it or not, but my piece Hwy 70: Portales-Roswell is traveling for the next three years in the SAQA global exhibition Primal Forces: Wind, which is currently at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, so if you are in that part of the country, definitely go by and see it.

The weather finally broke here and this week we've had rain and wonderfully cooler temperatures.  I expect it will warm up again, but hopefully not back into the 100s.  In any case, the tomatoes aren't as happy but the flowers are loving it.

And of course the pups are as snuggly as ever.  Spooky is really enjoying playing ball lately.

I hope you're having some things to like!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more!

Finished Knit: Zaftig Tee

 Last year at the summer fiber festival up in Kellyville I ordered several skeins of yard from a local dyer.  It was a merino silk blend and so soft and lovely and drapey.  

I decided to knit the Zaftig tee out of it, a lightweight summer sweater.  It took me all year, but I finished it at the last minute in time to wear it to the fiber festival this year. 

Here are Melody and I enjoying the fiber festival!

Here's the finished sweater blocking out.  After wearing it the first time the neckline felt too floppy so I added a single crochet edge to the neckline just to gather it in a tiny bit.

I don't have any good pictures of me wearing it, but here's a dorky bathroom mirror selfie.

Overall I'm pleased with how this turned out.  I love the yarn and the lace panel int he front.  The neckline is still a little floppy for me, but not annoying enough to do something else about.