Other Woolly Work

I knit earlier in the morning, but the bulk of the days work was other woolly pursuits.

Today, I worked on a wool throw project that was planned long before the curtains and is really needed now that the nights are getting colder.  My plan is to use my very large stash of  quilt batts to make a throw to cover my bed for really chilly nights.  I don't want to drown in it.  I just want it to cover the top of the bed with me in it.  I am hoping for about 48 inches wide  and about as long as my bed is.  

For this project, I pulled out 5 wool batts (each batt is about 50 inches long and about 20 inches wide.) and sewed them together.  Nothing fancy, just simple tacking to hold them together until everything is sandwiched inside the duvet.  The edges of the batts are thinner than the centers to make layering them possible.

I have a duvet set from Ikea that coordinates with my dandelion curtains and that is what I will use for the cover of this throw.  This one.   Here are the puffy, pouffy batts all tacked together and the light floral duvet cover just before sandwiching.

I tacked the batts to one side of the fabric in a few places.  I was a little worried about their stability. The only thing holding them together, other than my very large basting, is wool's natural ability to hang on to itself when carded.  I wouldn't call them fragile exactly, but they aren't exactly sturdy either.  I didn't want to tear holes anywhere, and I didn't want the batts to separate.

That all sounds like it should take hardly any time at all, but when I looked up, it was 4:30 and time to make dinner.

After dinner, I used the roll trick to get the duvet cover on. Worked like a charm, and my batts stayed exactly in place.

And here we are with the complete looking duvet.  But there is much more work ahead.

There is an edge that needs to be cut off and sewn up by hand.  The duvet said it was a 'full/queen' but to me, it looks like it errs on the large side.  I wasn't sure how my batts would fit, or how easy it would be to get it all together, so I left it to do later, rather than sewing on the machine before tucking the batts inside. And then,

this lovely, light pouffy throw will never survive being used as is.  The wool would be lumpy in no time, so just like quilts of old, it awaits tying.  I will get it set up tomorrow morning, and it will probably need Wednesday and possibly even the day after that to get it all done.  I have a feeling that it will need tying every 6 inches in all directions to stay put.  That is a fair bit of quilting.

No matter how long it takes, it will be much quicker than doing all the shapes and fans of my pretty blue quilt.  That pretty blue quilt awaits many more hours of stitching. It may take forever.  This cover cannot wait that long.

My feet are cold and October and points winter are not that far away.