Busy busy...textile chapter

When my crazed work project preparing for an FDA panel was over in March, a series of events followed that have kept me equally as stressed and busy. However, I did take a week off and kind of went crazy with my sewing machine, finishing a blanket and making a few new pillow covers for our living room.

This one is little HST scraps from the mum quilt:

This is a reverse appliqué sort of experiment with a felted sweater:

Another made with felt from recycled sweaters pieced and embroidered with dahlias:

All 3 of them included Marimekko scraps from Crate and Barrel outlet store:

They all live on our sofa now!

Here is the Star Wars patchwork blanket finished: 

Backing is a SW polar fleece.  The top was pieced improv from a rough sketch I made. Kind of goofy, but I like it...reminds me of my SW pillow case from the 70s (which I still have).

Then I ran across some napkins I'd bought with a matching tablecloth on sale. Except the tablecloth turned out to be round. We have a large rectangular table...doh! But I like the print and the napkins seemed quite large...so I covered two more pillows to go on our old ratty big chair that my family won't part with. They classier it up a bit.

Last textile project I will post was finished more recently - a knitted afghan that I worked on FOREVER!

So much I could say about this, but since it looks pretty cool all finished, I will be kind and just show the photos:

The thing covers our queen bed!

Next post will be about my crazed jewelry making since May - I'm going to try selling some of my work this weekend at the Alameda Art &Wine Street Fair.

I need a little baby for a little fall stroller blanket

Just kidding - I need a little baby of my own like I need another hole in my head!  But I need to think of one that we know who might like a little stroller blanket now that the days are getting crisp.

The photo is an optical illusion - the blanket is only at 22" x 28" but I draped it over this miniature garden bench we have in the backyard (you know, for when we have miniature guests at our numerous barbeques!)  The story of this blanket is that I had all these different partial skeins of cotton-ease and other cotton-y yarns in my scrap stash of yarn. I thought I'd have enough to do a sort of random garter square patchwork - pretty much like what you see here.  I still have a little of a couple of colors left, but did use something that I would have eventually stuffed in a bag and either squirrelled it away where I wouldn't have to look at it or given it to our care provider, who has a magical way of incorporating random bits of crafty stuff into activities for the kids. No kidding - she's magical.

I have a couple of other knitting projects on the needles at the moment and some things queued up - but I'm trying to finish off UFOs and stash yarn only for awhile.

Actually - I'm also going on a fabric diet - my obesity issues with fabric are greater right now than yarn. So I'm quilting away when I have at least 15 minutes at a time on the Christmas quilt:

It would be great to finish in time to enter in the Blogger's Quilt Festival happening right now, but I don't know if I can finish quilting and bind it by next Friday.  If not, I'll find another quilt to enter - I love the BQF at Amy's blog!

Have a great weekend and a fun Halloween!