Knitting, Spinning & Flying Birds Quilt Update 3

Blogging is a bit sporadic at the moment as I am doing admin for our Wedding celebration event, I am in countdown mode for our trip to the UK and I am coming to the end of two of courses: Intermediate Photography and Introduction to Photoshop. I have assignments and projects due very shortly and no, I am not ready to hand them all in!

That said, I am trying to make a little time, now and then, for other things. For example, on my needles is some of my Autumn in Spring handspun twinned with some Cascade Superwash:

This is destined to become a little tank top for a little boy who will be in the 9 - 12 months bracket this autumn. Mind you, at the rate that I am knitting (albeit that this yarn is aran weight) it might take me that long to knit this up as I am still only on the swatch!

Also, on my wheel is some merino fibre from the Yarn Sprout:

The merino is much more tricksy to spin than the fibre I was working with before. It is very soft, it has a much shorter staple, seems to need quite a bit of twist and it doesn't seem to 'grab' as much. So when it breaks, it is not all that easy to join new fibre back in. I have made more progress since this shot was taken and I think that I am about halfway through now?

Being fed through my sewing machine is my Flying Birds quilt:

I think that it is going to be there for some time yet! We started to put borders onto our quilts last Thursday but we did not get any further. (Actually, it took me another whole afternoon to finish putting my borders on!) As a result, our class homework is to create all of the appliqué shapes that we need in time for our next class. Here is a close up of the fabrics:

Okay - onwards, upwards and all that. No time to rest. As...

...just because it seems that the last thing I need right now is any other sort of task, project, WIP or UFO, I have found myself signed up for a two day quilt workshop.

Apparently, I will cut, piece, baste, quilt and finish an entire quilt in two days (Friday and Saturday). If I were to point out to you that it took me an entire day to iron all of the fabrics for this project (some 32 or so fat quarters worth of fabric), how likely do you think it is that I will actually manage this feat?!

Nope, me either.