Christmas Crafting

Christmas dresses for the girls.
Pattern: Antonine by Citronille
Fabric: Frou-frou

Two tunics and obi belts I made for myself, and a decadent Christmas eve dessert.

 

Christmas hats: the Holiday Lights Tam which I started for myself about 6 years ago and which, when I finally finished it, came out far too small for my head, and a purple earflap cap for Maisie.

 

A Christmas present commission for my friend's husband.

Easy unisex cowl by Jenifer Rank

Yarn: Manos del Uruguay silk blend

Needles: 6

Summer Stitches

I haven't been keeping up with posting all of my finished objects this summer, so I'm going to do it in one fell swoop here.

First, on the knitting front: I finished my Pas de Valse cardigan.  It needs to be blocked in order to be long and loose and drapey enough on me, but here is my sister modeling it:

 

Then there is Eloise's cardigan:

I decided to sew myself some drapey, cowl neck jersey tees and tunics, based on a Gap t-shirt that I love. These versions were inspired by the gap shirt but also informed by the tutorial at one Avian Daemon.

None of them fit exactly as I had hoped, but I think they'll all be wearable.

In addition, I've been wanting to make a 3rd spring ruffle top by Rae since I made the first ones three years ago.  

 Then, there's a little project for my nieces, an adorable bunny rabbit made from a kit from Posy. 

And finally, Michele and I made this cake of le petit prince for my dad's birthday.

Circular Needle Holder

I have been wanting an organization system for the mess that is my stockpile of circular needles.  The needle roll I made a couple years ago is not very effective: my needles were constantly exploding out of it and/or getting hopelessly tangled with each other.  So I followed instructions (more or less) on some blog, which I can no longer find.  Honestly, the needles still look rather like a mess. But at least they are organized from smallest to biggest and it is possible to extract the needles one at a time.....

Patchwork lampshade

 I spent a long time looking at images of patchwork lampshades on the net before I figured out how I wanted to do mine.  I basically sewed 1 1/2 inch wide strips together to make a large rectangle of fabric, and then adhered the fabric to the lampshade material (cutting the material in the proper form to make the shade was the worst part), cut off the excess fabric, and glued the edges down on the inside of the lampshade with craft glue.  You can see my sloppy fabric edges on the inside when the lamp is lit, but oh well.

fo: Henry's Baby Quilt

I made this for a friend's new baby, using mostly scraps and a backing fabric that I got to coordinate.  It's an unusual color palate for me but I like it! 

It looks sort of silly on the twin bed, but for once I had a desire to photograph a quilt on an actual bed, even if it's a baby quilt.  It measures 42 inches square, and I used 5 inch squares of fabric. 

This was my first time doing a simple nine-patch quilt.  It took me three days and probably about 15 hours (which is really way longer than it should, but I spend more time unjamming and re-threading my machine than actually sewing!)

fo: Maisie's Quilt

Finished size: 46" x 46"
Star and little girl blocks finished size: 14"
Three of the little girl blocks were based on/inspired by embroidery designs by Anneela Hoey and her "girl on a swing mini quilt tutorial" found here.
The ballerina is my own and I can't find the image of the girl jumping rope that I used.

I quilted the stars with straight lines on the diagonal, beginning by stitching in the ditch and sort of winging it from there.

I quilted the little girls with Oh Fransson's loopy flowers free-motion design.  I still need quite a lot of work on this one.

  I pieced the back with 9.5 inch squares.

fo: Arthur's Baby Quilt

This is a welcome gift for the new, adorable son of my crafing inspiration and wonderful friend, Jenny. I had a lot of fun making these pinwheel blocks. However, I machine bound the quilt (front and back) and it came out looking extremely shoddy. But I didn't have time to redo it! Other than the messy binding job, I'm happy with how this quilt turned out.

Finished size: 34" x 44"
Pinwheel blocks made from 24 print and 24 white 5" squares cut in half for triangles. The white border is made from 3" wide strips.

fo: four-patch baby quilt

I went ahead and finished off this baby girl quilt this weekend, along with my pinwheel quilt. Finished measurements: 33" square. Width of print fabric strips: 4". Width of sashing strips: 3.5". I backed it with just about 1 yard of pink fleece and bound it with pink polka dot flannel. Both quilts have gone off in the mail to their recipients (for babies coming in March and April!)

star blocks

In the midst of my quilting this week, I started to make some star blocks with some scrap fabric. I actually love how these blocks look individually, but I don't like them together. I initially thought I might make a quilt top with lots of different star blocks in reds and blues, but after seeing these two together I scrapped that idea. I don't know if I'll use these blocks for anything, but I'm happy that I'm learning how to make some slightly more complicated quilt blocks.

fo: pinwheel baby quilt

I started this quilt yesterday and finished it at 11pm tonight. That might be a record for a quilt for me. I learned how to make pinwheel squares and sewed all nine of those yesterday. I used 4 inch squares to make my triangles and ended up with finished blocks of about 7.5 inches. Today I added the sashing and pieced together the whole top (using 3" strips of sashing.) I backed it with baby blue fleece instead of a batting and backing, and instead of quilting it all over I simply stitched in the ditch. Then I bound it (sewing the binding by hand onto the back of the quilt is the most tedious part) and it was all done! The finished dimensions are just about 30" square.

new baby quilt top

After finishing Myya's baby blanket, I was still feeling inspired by all the pink and green fabrics, so I started to make a quilt top.Since I had a piece of eleven strips of fabric sewn together leftover, I decided to try some strip-piece quilting. (It was kind of like this only shorter, only 12" high.) I deconstructed this into six pieces of two fabric strips sewn together (I had to add one more strip.) Each piece was about 8" wide (my original fabric strips were 4" wide) and 12" long.I chopped each piece into 3 so they were 4" wide. That left me with 12 sets of 3 rectangles of paired fabrics.I matched them up in 4-patch squares and sewed them into blocks. Then I cut 6 strips of white sashing, 8" long by 3.5" wide, to go in between the blocks in columns. After sewing my 3 columns of blocks, I cut 4 strips of sashing 3.5" wide by 28" long, and then 2 strips for the ends, 3.5" wide by 34" long.

A funny thing, as I sewed the pieces into columns and then the columns into the square quilt top, some of the blocks migrated--they got turned upside down and even moved out of their original place. So in the finished product, the very bright pink squares are not distributed throughout the quilt as much as I would like. It looks very lopsided to me. Ah well.

fo: Myya's baby blanket

I was inspired by artsy-crafty babe to make this little baby blanket, since there's no time for a quilt (the baby arrived in November, and I'm only home with access to my machine for a week!) But I'm not sure I like my finished results as much as I liked hers.I picked eleven colorful fabrics and cut a 4" strip of each, the entire 42" width of the fabric. Then I sewed the strips together, making a piece about 38" long and 42" high. I trimmed about 12" off the top so the height of the piece was 30".
I backed it with a soft pink polka dot flannel and topstitched around the whole thing, and voilà, finished!This blanket is so bright and busy that it hurts my eyes to look at it. Good thing babies like bright colors...

fo: sweater tote

I had been wanting to make this felted sweater tote from AlterKnits for years. I kept this old sweater hanging around for that express purpose. I felted it earlier this year, and on Sunday, in the middle of my weekend-long cleaning out session, I decided to just make it and be done with it already. It went directly from the sewing machine to the donate-to-goodwill pile. It was too floppy and cumbersome, and besides, it was so itchy that it was uncomfortable to hold the handles, even. Well, I'm glad to have the sweater out of the back of my closet.

fo: patchworky baby quilt

So I finally finished up this quilt! I made the quilt top back in June and it's been languishing for months. Honestly, I did not feel up to quilting it at all...but I finally got it done--no real choice about it, as I was planning to see the intended recipients on my last trip to Boston. I actually showed up to their home with it incomplete--had to finish hand-sewing the binding while we visited. But they didn't mind.

Pattern: None, just cut a bunch of 5" squares to go with some scraps of that size that I already had in my scrap basked. 24 colored, 25 white. The backing is a single piece of the print that is a lime green background with blue and white pinwheels on them (the square on the far right of the 3rd row up from the bottom.)
Finished size: approximately 33" square

fo: circular needle roll

I've been needing a storage system for my circular needles for years. I finally decided to make myself a needle roll. I couldn't find a pattern I liked online, but I generally based it on a needle roll I already have for shorter straight needles (I use it for my double points.) I used a vintage pillowcase I bought for 49 cents for the inside fabric, folding over one edge to make the pocket type flap and stitching elastic to it to hold the needles. Then I backed it with the cherry fabric, which was in my stash. After I finished it, I tweaked it by adding another flap of fabric (which velcros down) to keep the 16 inch circular needle more stable. It even sort of goes with my other existing needle roll (which was a gift from Jenny)!