Another FO to share - Nine-Patch Doorstop...but that's not why I'm so excited!

It is a little silly that I'm dancing around the kitchen trying to finish dinner, but I'm just so happy at the moment! I'm multi-tasking, as usual (not necessarily recommended behavior), so I check my email while I'm stirring vegetables (not exactly at the same time - it's a back and forth thing).  And what do I find? An email telling me I won a giveaway of Heather Ross fabrics from Fussy Cut!!  whoo hoo!!  You should check out this cool blog - very inspirational projects and quilts (and very cute children).

LOOK LOOK! Here they are!

Oh, you didn't get a close enough look?  Here they are again!

(could you die?)  Not only am I lucky to win a pack of fabric at all, but these fabrics are the more or less the exact same ones that I've all but used up this year on a couple of gifted quilts. One for cute little Angela (see this post)  and one for cute bigger Megan (here). 

These are probably the happiest fabrics I've ever had myself - although I do not have yet an extensive or long sewing or quilting or stashing history. I know there are some really happy prints out there, even some that I've used, but these ones from the Heather Ross Lightning Bugs and Other Mysteries collection are some of my all time favorites.  I picked them out for those two quilts specifically because I wanted to stitch into them all the prayers and happy thoughts that would be humanly possible.  And I love how both of them turned out.  Since then, all I've had are some little scraps left - I made my mom some nesting doll fabric buttons for Christmas with fussy cuts (did I photograph those? no. this is the subject of a whole post where I catalog all the projects I've gifted before thinking to take a picture...), and most recently I used two little fussy cuts in this next project.  And I think it's perfect that the giveaway was from the Fussy Cut blog, since that's all I've had left until now. But now I may be able to work some of these into a bigger project that stays closer to home.  Or not - I am now a big believer in the power of gifting your more happy and beautiful creations for the power of good. (i'm not sure what happens when you gift dark and ugly creations, but it's probably a bad idea...)

Okay, now for the latest project I finished. Do you see the little dog patch and the camper-van?  Those are from my itty-bitty Heather Ross scraps! This is the Nine-Patch Doorstop, made using the exact directions and measurements found in this tutorial on Oh Fransson!  Now, some of you dear readers may already know this, but the author of this blog is incredibly talented - apparently this one is the first tutorial she made, and it was flawless.  For Christmas, I got a copy of her recently published book "The Practical Guide to Patchwork" - I really love the instruction style and the projects are gorgeous.

Anyway, this was a present, officially, for Mr. Wonderful. Whenever the weather is even remotely nice, we like to open all the doors and windows and get fresh air moving through the house. When the air moves quickly between our front door and our back/basement door, the hallway door SLAMS so loudly that it feels like it shakes our little house! Probably almost a year ago, Mr. Wonderful was surveying some project I'd put together and asked if I could make a doorstop. I had already thought of this and downloaded the tutorial, but hadn't done anything about it. And then I still didn't do anything about it for a long time. Then this week I realized I was itching to do a small project and that I'd bought the special materials I didn't already have (specifically 5 pounds of beans and fusible fleece).  Probably this project took me 3 hours to complete (? plus or minus) including picking and arranging the little patches for the front.

yes, it's full of beans (and some lentils) with a zipper on the bottom in case you need to empty it out for cleaning. so clever!

The beans serve an obvious purpose - weight and shape - and I'm not sure I put 5 pounds in because I confess I'd only bought 4 pounds and added what lentils we had left in our cabinet. It may need a little more stuffing...

Here's the back: this is another Wee Woodland piece taken from a Layer Cake I bought quite awhile ago - another purchase that I've forgotten the original intent for and so I've been pilfering pieces for a number of projects (like mom's pillow in my last post, and my zippered pouch linings before Christmas.  oh well. It's not like I'm lacking in fabric selection down there in my crafty corner.  The backing shows the straight line quilting I used - I did the same thing for the front as well. I was looking for some instant gratification, so took the easy route rather than anything complex.

And finally - here is the Nine-Patch Doorstop in it's native environment - when the weather turns warmer we will be able to give her a good functional test!

Happy Martin Luther King day to everyone! This is the first year my company has given us this day off as a holiday - yay!

Pillow Palooza!

So, I have been wanting to make some pillows and/or pillow covers for awhile. I still have 2 pillow forms to use for a couple of new patchwork pillow creations...but in the meantime I wanted to show the ones I've done so far.  Like I mentioned in my last post, the machine embroidery and applique designs are from Meringue Designs (love her!) - so I can't take credit for the results from that stitching except to congratulate myself on my good taste!  There are nice ideas to steal get inspiration from on the website too - you should check it out!

This first one is from the "vine applique" stitch pattern - I had to shrink down the large one a bit to fit in the hoop I wanted to use (likely this is because I haven't really figured out how to manipulate the stitch patterns since I do have a larger hoop but couldn't get it to work in a timely fashion - i.e. to fit my patience level!).  So overall the pillow is probably about 9" x 16".  I filled it with some recycled stuffing from some cushions rejected from a chair we had (weird shape!).  What I really like is that I did a completely improvised log cabin like pieced back from scraps that is just as fun as the front!

Is it the front...

or the back?

Next is the pillow I made for my mom's birthday - the flower is again appliquéd using a stitch design from Meringue Designs. Then I combined that piece on linen with some Wee Woodlands, and I think that is Amy Butler on the left half.  The middle band and the backing are some raw silk that I had in my stash and couldn't remember what I'd bought it for originally. hmmm. is that a good thing or a bad thing?  Anyway, she likes it, so I guess it's a good thing in the end! You can see a bit of the backing above behind the vine pillow front/back. I love the contrast in textures on this pillow - something I need to remember for future projects.

I showed a preview of the bird pillows in my last post - Wild Thing chose the thread colors for me, and I love the backing fabric which I won on a Sew Mama Sew! giveaway months ago. It seemed like a perfect complement to the stitch pattern. Very modern.

Two birds - but they won't necessarily sit next to each other on the furniture in this matchy-matchy way. 

This is the back fabric for both the bird pillows - though the first one I made (blue bird) has buttons on the back, and the second one has a zipper on the bottom. I like to be able to have enough stuffing without a gap poking out in the back. I'll have to perfect my zipper skills though...

Fun! I still have some pillow covers to replace in the living room and a couple of unused pillow forms in my crafty stash/hoarded goods.  This has been very rewarding and something I've meant to do for ages (well, there were supposed to be a few pillow Christmas gifts, but oh well.)  So more to come on my list of project to-do's!

A knitted FO! - the Heather Hoodie for Teen Wonder...

Yay - I finally got Teen Wonder to put on the hoodie vest I finished for Christmas for some photos. If they are cropped a little much, it was to spare her the embarrassment of her mother posting a picture of her PJs on a public blog. The vest actually fits perfectly and looks really fun on her, so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

The pattern is "Heather Hoodie" from KnitScenes Fall 2009 issue. I saw this online and then had to track down the issue somewhere because I knew I wanted to make it for the Teen Wonder right away.  On Ravelry, we looked through the versions others had made, and TW fell in love with a deep purple with red buttons - so that's what I made for her.  The hood is absolutely, disproportionately humongous! I offered to TW to make it smaller, but she opted for the full size. It's useful for the grim reaper look if that's what she's feeling like on any given day.

This is not the best picture of my girl - she's very tall, but I've cut off her legs in the pictures as I mentioned...and her face is overexposed.  The color of the actual vest is closer to the bottom photo sans girl.  I was too impatient to wait for some perfect day when she wears it with an actual outfit and the weather is decent... (what a bad mom!)

I do really like this pattern - the cabling was not too tricky for a novice, and the bulky yarn knits up fairly quickly. But I can't get over the hood! If I ever knit another one up for myself, I'll definitely modify (plus it was a boring lifetime to knit after finishing the rest of the garment!

Below photo was just after blocking - the color is more true for the yarn, but the buttons are a bit more orange in this photo...

I guess that's the last handmade Christmas gift to show...I did piece together a quilt top for a Christmas throw during my vacation/recuperation week after Christmas, but I guess I'll save that for another time (next holidays?). I have too many other things to do, crafty or otherwise, to actually quilt it yet. I was going to send it out for quilting at my local quiltshop because I've been so happy with that in the past, but the quilter has a knee injury and isn't taking any projects right now. Since it isn't a rush, maybe I'll get to the quilting myself before next holidays (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! that's a good one!). Either way, there's no rush.

I do have another post to do on pillows...here's a little sneak peek for anyone out there who's looking.

 These are a pair of pillows I made using machine embroidery stitching patterns from Meringue Designs - a seller who was on etsy only, but recently opened a website at http://www.meringuedesigns.net/ . I highly recommend this vendor! Very modern designs and reasonably priced too! Anyway, the pair of bird pillows are for our living room, but I have two other pillows in addition and one of them is a gift, so I'll post photos on that later this week...

Happy Monday to everyone out there - if it's still Sunday for you I still hope your new week is happy, or at least stress free and productive which is the most I usually hope for any given work week!

His and his Man Cowls

For Mr. Wonderful and Wild Thing, I knit these Man Cowls from This Boy Knits blog.  I used a Cascade 220 Superwash Quattro yarn - just over 1 skein for the Man Cowl and then another half or more for the Man-child Cowl.  If I were to do it again, I'd cast on 10 fewer stitches for the grown up version - otherwise these turned out great.  For the boy version, I cast on 65 stitches and did the repeats in sets of 8 stitches rather than 10 so that the spiral would be more to scale.

They've both been wearing these everyday since Christmas! Makes my heart all warm and mushy...

yes - my son also wears the sweater I knit for him!! yay!

(This photo does not do Mr. Wonderful justice at all - or the Man Cowl for that matter...)

The Finn Hat - not really a tutorial...

So, I mentioned in my last post that Wild Thing wanted a Finn Hat for Christmas. Okay - seems like something that should be reasonably easy to achieve, although risky since I'm a novice and don't know what I'm doing.  First thing any novice does? I checked the internet for an existing tutorial of course!

There is actually an officially sanctioned Finn Hat tutorial out there, and it looks pretty nifty too. But 1) I couldn't get the .pdf pattern to print out on my printer to scale for some reason and 2) we were looking for the more square version of Finn's hat that goes to his shoulders like a bag over his head with ears sort of. So... I measured Wild Thing's head in all directions and sketched out the look:

Then I drafted a pattern (took several attempts...)

cut the pattern out...and cut 2 pieces from basic white polar fleece...

Marked the face cutout on the front piece and cut out

At this point I forgot to take photos - I stitched front and back together right sides facing, clipped corners of the ears and turned.  At this point I hadn't decided whether to line the hat yet. I guess I was hoping I could get away with just one layer and raw edges of the fleece.  But the face opening was too big and the hat seemed floppy even on my adult sized head. So, I decided to make a lining.  

For this I made another hat just like the first to be the outside and used this first one for the lining.  I cut a smaller face opening for this new outer layer, so that I could turn and stitch the edge to the lining to finish the edges and hopefully make the opening a little smaller.  So below you can see my new opening markings inside the cutout for the front of the hat.

After stitching the second (outer) hat, I put the inner hat inside the outer hat with right sides together and stitched the bottom closed - just like you would do with a lined tote bag or zipper pouch. The face holes provide the opening for turning the whole thing right side out. One nice aside - I didn't need to put any stuffing in the ears with the extra lining ears tucked inside the outer ears.  Once it was all turned and tucked, I finger-pressed and top-stitched the bottom for a more finished look. 

The trickiest part of this project was the face opening for which the front edge had to be turned over the raw edges and stitched in place to the back (hence the smaller opening in the front). 

I used a lot of pins.  

A narrow zigzag stitch seems to work best at a very slow speed.  It also works better if you turn it inside out and stitch from the back, otherwise it is tricky to cover the raw edges consistently.  I know all of this especially because I made a second hat yesterday with a smaller overall face opening since Wild Thing was asking if I could make the opening smaller (not complaining though, just asking). Teen Wonder wanted a Finn Hat too, so she got to have the first draft with the bigger face hole. 

Here is the FO on the table (first try)

And here is how difficult it is to get a Wild Thing to model a Finn Hat!

Overall, a pretty successful project judging by the reaction of the recipient.  I think there are still some dimensional issues that need to be addressed if this were to be a real "tutorial" or pattern - the ears are a little to tall on this version, and a little too square on my second try.  Also it bulges out just below the ears instead of lying nice and flat...though no one else seems to notice besides me.  So I won't personally be making any more Finn hats in the foreseeable future.  If perchance someone out there is interested in the dimensions on my pattern, just leave me a comment and I'll jot them down for you.

Ho! Ho! Ho! - why having a crafty stash is so important...

Merry Christmas everyone!

Just a quick post to illustrate why stashing is such a life-saver during the holiday last minute, I can't stand the idea of going out shopping, wouldn't a project be fun times.

First, Wild Thing wasn't wild about shopping for his grandparents since we usually make something for them every year. But we had only gotten through the teacher/caregiver set of gifts before my fateful trip. So we needed a plan B fast!  I have boxes of various crafty things - not only fabric, not only yarn, not only thread and interfacing and all that jazz...but also glues, paints, glitter, wire, foil of many colors, beads and beading supplies, ribbon, shiny bits of confetti like things - snowflakes, stars, pointsettas, etc.  Also I had on hand some clear glass ornaments. So... I set Wild Thing loose with empty glass ornaments and ribbons, beads, shiny confetti like things...and he quickly whipped out half a dozen beauties. There were only 2 left unwrapped before I thought to take a photo, but you get the idea:

Example #2: Quick patchwork scarf gift - I had leftover fleece from the Finn Hat project (more on that later), and happen to have a bunch of little pre-cut Moda prints in their "candy bar" size (2.5" x 5").  So I stitched 31 of these in Bliss prints together in a long strip, pressed the seams, and stitched it to the fleece, wrong sides together, leaving one short end open. Turn, press, and topstitch the opening closed and around the entire periphery and voila!  A sweet scarf!  The Bliss prints have a holiday sort of color combination, but aren't Christmas-y, so it's pretty versatile. I hope the recipient will like it!  This took me maybe an hour to put together, but only because I already had everything sitting right there on my cutting table and the machine all threaded with white thread and ready to go!

(modeled by Wild Thing - but he is not the recipient of this one!)
Stash on!

Yikes! Blogs can suffer when life gets in the way...

I actually do have some crafty things to post about, but need to photo the couple of gifts I've managed to finish up in the past few weeks.  Since December started I've been crazy busy, not least with a serious bout of a stomach flu thing that started while I was overseas for a business trip. After a week in a Swiss hospital/clinic I had to be transported home via a private air ambulance service or I would probably still be stuck in Europe! It's a long story, but suffice to say I am on back home now and on the mend.  Sadly, along with other casualties of lost time (like Christmas shopping, cookie making, caroling with the kids, holiday parties...) has been my lofty plans for quilts and other handmade gifts this year. So I'll have another post or two to make when I finish some of the unfinished projects later.

As a side note: On the plus side, I'm about halfway back down to my WW Lifetime goal weight. I've been putting off actually losing any weight for a few years (and slowly gaining more each year) with the excuse of being too busy to diet. I like to eat too.  So, not eating much for a week and now eating only the same 5 foods until my tummy recovers sort of forced that issue. Not a recommended way to get back to goal weight. It's my own personal holiday weight-loss plan - don't try this at home!  Too bad a high percent is probably muscle mass too, but what would a New Year be without some good old-fashioned resolutions?

Preview list of FOs to post in next few days: Heather Hoodie Vest for Teen Wonder (knit), also knit - Man Cowl for Mr. Wonderful + Man-child version for Wild Thing (so match-y!), and for Wild Thing a Finn Hat. This last one is not really not an FO yet - taking a little longer since it's made up and I had to draft a pattern for it. There is actually a pattern and tutorial for a Finn Hat online.  You can even buy them on Etsy already made.  It's cute, but it's different from what I envisioned in my head so I'm trying my own version.  After the pattern drafting, my planned version is much simpler to whip-up - but of course I haven't seen the result yet so it could be a disaster first attempt only that I'll need to refine after Christmas. If successful, maybe I'll try a semi-tutorial...but let's see.

Since most of you probably don't know what the heck a "Finn Hat" is - Finn is a character in a hi-larious cartoon called Adventure Time (along with Jake the Dog) and he always wears this hat.

Well - in the event that I don't actually manage to post tomorrow I won't have time until after Christmas so happy happy holidays to you all (my five or so readers)! I hope you feel as blessed as I do!