A Knights Tour

Two years ago, a user on reddit posted a TIL about the concept of a knights tour and the sheer volume of tours a knight can make on a standard 8×8 chess board.  The thumbnail of which was a knight’s graph image showing the number and move lines for a knight on that same size chess board.  All I could see was a future quilt.

I’ve posted this as a work in progress a couple times since then, but today I just finished the last of the bind off so I’m ready to call it my first 2016 quilt.  There are some minor items that need to be done (quilt tag, a final seam on the hanging loop, the first washing) but overall I am very pleased with how it came out.

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The coloration of the circles within the squares represents the number of possible moves from that square and the quilted lines are the moves.  Final size was ~60″ by 60″ and my plan is to hang this one.  The outer edges look like an argyle quilting, but its worth noting that in some tours that back and forth circuit is clearly visible.

Here’s a few more beauty shots!

I have no plans (as yet) to make any oversize chess pieces.  Next up in quilting… the last few of my wedding quilt blocks!

Sharing and Joining in

Some people that know me would tell you that I am kind of selective about what social media sites I frequent and join.  That has its good and its bad points. On the one hand you avoid the spam style commentary, but then you can sometimes miss other things you might be interested in.

img_20150516_230236Last year was my first year joining Ravelry’s Sock Madness group.  I really enjoyed myself, even if I still have not actually finished my last competition round socks. (I got to the first heel and then made a flub and so I was fixing it and just got burned out…sorry!) So its once again February and I’m signed up to give it another go!  I have quite a bit of sock yarn set aside in prep and its an amazing way to grow my sock drawer.  If you want to KAL with us, the sign ups are open and the competition (which is very friendly) starts in March.

Secondly, someone on a quilting board pointed me to a 365 Day Challenge, based out of Australia in which you make a sampler square every day and at the end of the year you have a 90 inch square quilt.  That’s roughly queen size.  Well I’ve signed up and bought a bunch of fabric and now I just need to get going.  I’m about a month behind, but since I am not going for any of the weekly prizes (See also: Above note about social networks) its just for me.  If you want to join in late, the designer is planning to host 3 months of blocks at a time, so you can still find all the blocks that have been released thus far and do so!

And if you don’t want to join in, that’s fine.. how about I just share some of the things I’ve been working on? I have, naturally, been testing out and enjoying my new sewing machine. And after the latest trip to the quilt shop I managed to pick up some fabrics for other projects.

First up, I decided the plethora of strip remnants from my snowman quilt would make a nice base for a scrappy Dresden style snowflake.

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My original thought was that this flake would be on a green background, but this batik made me feel like frosted windows.  So my flake is all pinned out and needs some hand stitching to tack it down.  I am still debating borders to make it bigger or just leave it as it is (roughly 42 inches square)

Secondly I have been on the prowl for a good match or replacement for the border corner chess boards on my Knights Tour quilt and I finally managed to find just the thing.  So I finally managed to get the borders done and now its down to backing and quilting!

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I also put in some work on my wedding signature quilt and practiced Free Motion Quilting on some small Quilt as you go type blocks.  I guess if you like puns you could say I was sew busy.