Last week on Art With a Needle

Greatly energized by some mystical force, I've been sewing madly this week on a project that isn't exactly clear in my mind, but I feel I have to sew for a while before it's clear what's going to happen.  I'm making a bunch of small quilts, about 27 inches square, which will each be quilted and bound individually.  Then at some point I plan to assemble them into a larger piece, either a four-patch or a nine-patch, joined together either by hand stitching or with ties through grommets.

I have two of the tops finished and am maybe halfway through a third one.  I'm having such fun on the piecing that I am postponing quilting until I run out of enthusiasm.

Last week Shasta left a comment on my post about working with leftover yarn bits on my endless mile-of-crochet project.  She asked, "Are you using one piece of yarn until it is gone or are you mixing the colors as you go along?"

If it's a small bit of yarn I'll use the whole thing.  If it's more like a half-skein, I might divide it up, use part in one place and the rest in another.  I do try to achieve some kind of color scheme in each "cake" of crochet, so would probably not put random colors together.  Since I plan to display these with the sides of the rolled-up "cakes" visible, I like to have some pleasant variety of color in that side view, so no cakes made of a single color.

Here's my favorite miniature of the week.  A couple of months ago, right after an episode of very high water on the Ohio River, my son and I went on a scavenging expedition to the river banks.  I searched for tiny bits of stuff that would fit into the 1 1/2 x 2 inch bags of my miniature project, including this bit of driftwood.  Add a simple gold wire wrap, and it became a daily art.