Baby Sun Hats

Wow, where did the summer go? School has started and it's been over a month since we returned from our big Canadian trip. JJ turned 7-months old recently, and is really on the go - trying to clamber over anything and everything and desperately trying to crawl.

Back in the summer I made these little sun hats to protect her little bald head from a sun burn. I had grand plans of making one for all the little babies I know, but sadly that never happened...it took me much longer than I expected. Maybe next year. I've got patterns that go up to toddler sizes. I think it's a Simplicity one, I'll have to look it up.



I've been knitting too. I've actually knitted a few things but haven't gotten around to photographing them, so my blog has been painfully slow for some time now. I finished my hot-pink Ishbel, the Swallowtail shawl, and started the Tulip Cardigan for JJ. I've got some Christmas knitting on my mind too...maybe a little ambitious, but I'm going to try this year.

Hope you're all enjoying the cooler weather!

Baby Lily's Quilt

I can finally blog about a little project that has been completed since early July! It's another version of the stacked coins baby quilt, this time using a pattern from Oh Fransson (which is actually featured in Sew Mama Sew). This past summer I have been doing more quilting, and I read Elizabeth Hartman's blog quite often - she's great with colours, and her designs are modern and fun.

Baby Lily was born on June 21, and I wanted to give her something handmade that would be useful (I'm sure she received a ton of clothes, bibs and stuffed toys) so a personalized baby quilt fit the bill. It turned out a little bit smaller than I expected, so I added an extra two rows of off-white sashing to increase the size somewhat. It's just the right size for the park, or using in the stroller. At the time, I didn't know if Baby Lily would be a boy or a girl, so I chose rainbow colours to keep it sort of neutral but not too boring. I love the animal fabric! Lorah said her nursery had a safari/animal theme going on so it seemed like a perfect fit.

I used stippling again to quilt the whole thing. This time, I made my designs much bigger so that there wouldn't be as much thread going onto it - the last one I made felt really heavy, probably because it was so densely quilted.

Some acrylic paint and stamps to put the name and date on...

Here's the back, with just a narrow strip of coins. This is my second baby quilt, and I'm still figuring out how to get the pieces lined up straight. Is it just practice? I thought I had cut and sewn so carefully, but still things turned out wonky and I had to rip out stitches and try again and again. I even pinned! The sashing is hard to get straight. Maybe next time I have to line it up square by square instead of just judging by the ends of each strip.

I did finish a third quilt, the Red Triangles, but I forgot to take a picture of the finished project, and now it's found a new home at my mom's house. I can show you the quilt top at some point...I do have a pic of that.

We just got home from our Canada trip - JJ had a great time visiting everyone. She grew up a lot during the vacation - learned how to sit up, eat from a spoon, and even took a dip in the river!

Fedora...or Bucket Hat

I've been able to start doing some sewing again now that JJ is becoming a better napper, and I'm getting rather skilled at doing things one-handed. With summer approaching, I started making little baby sunhats to keep them well-shaded. This one turned out just right, which also means that JJ will probably outgrow it within two weeks! They grow so fast it's unbelievable.

The hat is just quilting cotton with medium-weight interfacing and a muslin hat linimg underneath. I was able to finish it over two days. Cute!

More Quilting! This time, a Flock of Red

Last week I started another crib-sized quilt, the Flock of Triangles quilt, which is a Denise Schmidt pattern based on a traditional quilting pattern called Flying Geese. I just googled it and found a free pattern for it online - right here. I bought the book last year and this is actually the first time I've made something out of it.

Pretty!!

I was inspired after seeing a blue and white version at a friend's house, and, remembering that it was in my pattern book, I decided to try one myself. The only rules were that it had to be made from fabric that currently exists in my stash. I could have gone with green and white, but the red looked more fun. Plus it's pretty much the perfect month for lots of red, with Valentine's day, Chinese New Year and the Vancouver Olympics.

This time, I actually cut out ALL the pieces for the quilt top at once. I see why quilters suggest you do that - now I'm committed to sewing all those suckers together! Unlike with the snowball quilt, I cut and sewed bit by bit, and got bored 2/3 the way through and ended up abandoning the plan for a queen-size quilt for a wee-sized one.

So, I cut out the pieces over a few days, and then laid out all the triangles in the order I was going to sew them. Stitching the triangles together is a little tricky because they're sewn on the bias instead of the grain, which makes them stretchy and a little fussy to iron. And, you line up the pieces to sew within a 1/4" seam, which does NOT mean just lining up point to point...I found this out after stitching a whole row of triangles and had to go back and rip the damn thing out. The even-feed foot has been a huge help, and after about 9 rows I'm finally getting the hang of it.

Here's my progress so far - only 3 more rows to go! Then I have to figure out what to do about the quilt backing. I only planned for the quilt top, and not the bottom. It might require a dangerous trip to the craft store...uh oh.

Owls & Friends (and DIY curtains)

Just thought I'd show you what J.J.'s nursery looks like.

The room was already painted a light beige, and we decided to keep it that way and add colour to the room with other pieces, like a striped rug and polka dotted curtains. Eventually, we sort of just ended up with what you could call an owl theme. They must be really popular right now because there are owls on everything in the stores. Hopefully JJ likes owls, and isn't scared of them!

There's a pretty tree growing beside her crib with songbirds and owls, and there are owl sheets on her little mattress...

Here's Mr. Green Owl sitting on his branch, shocked eyes looking over the dresser (please excuse the bottle of beer...and no, I wasn't drinking it)

Mr. Hedgehog peeking up from beside the closet...

I have to say, it was a lot of fun to put up the decals! As a kid, it would have been so much fun to cover your bedroom walls with stickers...especially since stickers are usually reserved for putting on paper or in sticker albums. The wall decals actually came from Target. They were on clearance a few weeks ago and I thought it would be fun to add some animal friends to the nursery. They are supposedly easy to remove and even re-use, so we'll see...

Here's the crafty part of this post: here are the curtains that took me, oh, about 4 months to get around to making. I bought the fabric ages ago, and as usual, there were more interesting things to work on than curtains! I was originally going to make Roman shades because of the way one window frame is flush with the wall, but D was able to install a curtain rod that worked with the width of my curtain.

They were very simple to make since I only did one panel per window instead of two. Each panel is approximately 1.5 yards of 45" upholstery-weight cream fabric, with 1/2 yard of the same weight polka dotted fabric attached to the bottom. Then I did a 1/2" hem along the length (I left on the selvages so I wouldn't have to fold under). Because I was a little short on yardage, I decided to serge the raw top and bottom edges to keep as much length as possible. Then I turned up a 1" hem on the bottom, and did a binding on the top with some leftover cream fabric. I made the curtain rod loops also with leftovers, each one cut to 5" long and about 3" wide and sewed them onto the backs (just eyeballing the distances between loops).

Now if only J.J. would make her appearance so she could start enjoying her little nursery! There are only 4 days left until my due date, and STILL no signs of her coming. It'll be slightly depressing when my response to "when are you due?" becomes, "Oh, 3 days ago". Although I am told this is entirely possible and actually not uncommon for first babies!

Anyhow, I didn't really have anywhere else to put this, but here's a pair of socks I've been knitting...just some basic, cuff-down, 64 stitch socks. It's by Socks that Rock in the Knitters without Borders colourway...so far making some crazy tiger stripes. The wool is incredibly sock and squidgy!

Happy Valentine's Day, and Happy Lunar New Year!

The Snowball Crib Quilt

Thought J.J. arrived in my blogging absence, didn't you?

Nope. She's waiting until she's good and ready. In the meantime, I've actually been quite productive with crafting, and just haven't had a chance to post much. Knitting and quilting have been keeping me occupied while waiting for my due date (which is February 18, in case you were curious).

The big news of today is...I'm finally done with the Snowball Quilt!! Does anyone even remember this thing? It's been through a lot. Packed and moved, sat all over by the cat...I had planned this as my first large quilting project, and began sewing precisely one year ago. Originally I had ambitiously wanted to make it a queen-sized quilt with a two-coloured border, but I got so sick of cutting out the pieces that I decided to truncate it into a lap quilt. Turns out that it makes a nice crib-sized quilt too, so it's going to be for J.J.'s room.

The octagon design is traditional quilt pattern called the snowball. I first decided I wanted to use this pattern after seeing an amazing Kaffe Fassett quilt of a similar design (although I selected quite different colours). To assemble each snowball, you need one 5" square and four 1.5" squares. You place a small square in each corner of the large square and sew along the diagonal of the small square. Marking this with a pen probably helps, but if you're lazy like me, you can just eyeball it. Then you iron out the small squares to get the nice octagon shape, and trim the excess off the corners. You end up with many, many little scrap triangles...whether they can be used is up to you...if you're willing to work with such tiny pieces go for it! I have mine stashed in an envelope in case the urge ever strikes me. So far it hasn't.

The actual quilting was done on the machine, in rows, stitch-in-the-ditch. You can see some hand-quilted circles in the octagons, which I was working on whenever watching an episode of Lost and needing something to do. I think the Fassett quilt had circles that were machine-stitched, but I chickened out of doing this since I don't have much practice doing curves. Hand-quilting looks beautiful, but is painstaking work. Especially stitching circles. Over several weeks I only managed to do about 20 circles, and there are about 80 in this quilt. I am considering this quilt done, although I may go back and add a circle or two here and there if I feel like it!

The backing was cut 1.5" larger than the quilt top so that I could cheat a little on the binding. Mine's a fake binding...it's just folded over and sewn down using a blind hem stitch. From the front, you can't really tell though, since the thread matches the border pretty well.

All the fabrics I used came from Joann's, which has a decent selection if you are persistent in your hunting. Next time though, I think I'm going to try some online fabric shops that sell more interesting fabrics that I learned about through these nifty quilting blogs:

Oh Fransson!
Bison Girl

Now I'm working on a Flock of Triangles quilt in red and white! I saw one in deep blue and white and it looked gorgeous...but I'm on a craft diet and not allowing myself to buy new stash until I've used up a good deal of what I've already got.

Stacked Coins Baby Quilt

Ta-da!! The Stacked Coins Baby Quilt is done! Yay! I love how it turned out! This is a really simple, straightforward pattern for a beginner quilter and the size is also perfect for a not-too-daunting project.

First time at doing mitered corners!

I was able to finish it over four days, working on it about half a day each time. The binding was a bit fussy to do because I finished it by hand, but it looks clean and tidy that way. I also got better at the free-motion quilting as I went along, although it took much longer than I would have guessed. Plus it ate up nearly a spool of thread! I like the look of the squiggly bits over top of the rectangular design...I think straight lines would have looked a bit boring.

Here's the quilt sandwich pre-quilting:

Here it is after. I took this picture last night in bad lighting, sorry:

All you really need is about 1.5 yards of fabric in at least 2 colours for the sashing and backing, plus a few fat quarters to make your coin strips with them. There are 22 coins in each strip, each coin cut to 2.5" x 5" and sewn with 1/4" seams. Now, I think of myself as a decent sewer...I can sew tidy, even seams, install invisible zippers, you know, all round proficient enough. But my coin strips didn't line up AT ALL with the sashing when I was done. Even if you're off by a millimeter it adds up when you iron things out and try to get them lined up. Not a big deal, but it's not perfect. Some chop chopping solved that problem (but I guess I can't do that for more complicated quilting designs). For quilts to turn out beautifully, you have to be ultra precise...when all the corners and seams match up, it looks amazing.

I bet this will fluff up nicely in the wash!

The Box Bag

Wow! Maybe I should have resolved to "Update blog more often" for New Years because I'd totally be kicking ass on that already. Would that be cheating?

I've been spending some time getting re-acquainted with my sewing machine and over the holidays, I made a few knitting bags (I forgot to take pictures) and also attempted a box bag using a few different online tutorials, but mostly based on this one. They're great for stashing unfinished projects in, and make cute presents (if you can finish them in a timely fashion, that is. Easier said than done). Here's my box bag, looking a little rumpled from all the turning inside out and outside in:

A box bag is not at all difficult to make. The directions in the tutorial are easy to follow. Folding and sewing the corners is maybe the trickiest part, but with a little practice, you can get your seams looking nice and neat, too. However, I discovered that nearly all the online tutorials leaves you with unfinished seams inside. And most of the ones you buy are just finished with a serged edge, so that it doesn't unravel. This is all fine and dandy unless you are a neat freak about sewing (I sometimes am guilty of this) and think you can cleverly solve this problem. But I did eventually figure it out:

Ahh, nice clean enclosed seams...so happy....

Now I can tell you that I spent WAY too much time figuring out how to get my inside seams looking pretty. Unfortunately I did not take pictures and will not be writing a tutorial on how to do this given how big a pain it was and how many times I had to rip out the seams and try again. And it involved some hand sewing around the zipper part. To sum it up quickly, you basically have to sew the box corners of the lining and main fabric separately, then turn the whole thing inside out and close up the seam that is perpendicular to the zipper on the end with the handle. Blah! I'm just going to serge the edges next time.

I finally started quilting...

Indeed I did! I finally overcame the quilting inertia... I'm following the basic idea for the snowball quilt in Kaffe Fassett's Kaleidoscope of Quilts

Are you thinking the same thing as me? It's bright, eh? I'm hoping it will look less kindergarten-decorationish when it's all sewn up. It took me the longest time to choose a pattern because there are just sooo many to look at...of course, it was my own fault for looking at so many books at once, but I like having lots of options.

The cutting was done over two days, which could have gone faster if I just focused on doing that instead of arranging the squares as I went along...a difficult task, I have learned. And then I ended up spending ages rearranging them all over again. When you stare at so many colours for a long time, your eyes start playing weird tricks on you and you lose your sense of design (I do, anyway), so D had to help me finish up as Gatsby sat on the squares, getting them all hairy.

So, each octagon is made by sewing four small squares diagonally from corner to corner, then folding it over and trimming the excess bits. That means LOTS of little bits. Maybe I can use them for something...? It would mean teeny teeny work though...

I've finished three of these strips so far, each one 13 octagons in length...another twelves strips await. I'll probably add a big border around it so that it will be a queen-size quilt. I'm hoping to finish before next Wednesday since we'll be having people over that night, and I've got to be all cleaned up. I'm staying home all day today, so I should get a lot done. After that, I'll have to think about how to actually quilt this thing. Likely by hand.

Pleated Smock Dress

Three for three this week! More sewing this time.

This little dress was made from Simplicity pattern 3808, which claims to be a top but I think it could be a dress. The fabric is just quilting cotton from the stash I've managed to accumulate over the past year, and I think it's just a little bit girly and not dripping with pink sugariness. It's got tucks in the front, pockets, and a scalloped hem...in fact, I'd like to wear this myself, if it were in a bigger size.

Who's it for? Not me...but I do know several little girls whose mommies might dress them in this.

I woke up this morning feeling completely wired, thinking it must be time to get up and that I'm just feeling refreshed from a good night's sleep. Noo, it's still the middle of the night. I've been up, doing dishes, tidying up, looking at knitting magazines, cutting quilt pieces and blogging. It's about 6am now. Ech. I blame the cup of coffee I had at knit night.

Hmm, I wonder if I'll be able to manage four for four this week...

New Clothes for Queenie

Another excuse for not blogging as much is that I was working on some pretty boring stuff that I didn't think was particularly blog-worthy, but because I'm feeling pretty pleased with the results, I'm going to share it with you, in case you had some home furnishing craft urges too.

...I made a bed skirt. Because it was outrageously expensive to buy one.

We got a new bed for Christmas, but it's just on metal rails. One day my dream is to own real bedroom furniture not made of pressed wood, but since that's expensive stuff, it'll be some time before that happens. But while I'm waiting, I figured the least I could do was give the bed a skirt to make it look a little nicer. After some research, I realized I'd need a skirt length of 17", which just doesn't seem to exist. I found some 18" skirts, but they were usually full of ruffles and eyelets... I just wanted something plain. Plus, I would have had to hem an 18" skirt, and I wasn't about to fork over $175 to do another 2 hours of work myself.

Being thrifty is kind of fun, especially when you've got lots of time to spare and like crafts. I went to TJ Maxx and bought a luxury King-sized sheet, got a DIY book from the library, and set about making this box-pleated skirt. The book was Simple Soft Furnishings by Katrin Cargill, and I did the skirt without the cording in the pattern (a major pattern errata: it told me to add 22" to one piece of fabric when it should have been 2". Stupid typo).

My box pleats turned out quite neatly if I say so myself! But not without significant whining and fussing, and bit of cursing...I had to do it over a few times, but that's because I'm a semi-perfectionist. The plus side is that I've now totally got the box pleat down, in case I ever need the technique again...maybe a table cloth? A chair cover?

Anyhow, I'm liking the skirt. I think it makes my bed more appealing. Gatsby and D agree too. Maybe I should have chosen a more exciting fabric...the book used a cute gingham fabric. I never really thought about making clothes for my bed before...my eyes have been opened!

Total cost: $9.99 plus tax, and a full day of fussing. If I ever make a second one, I'm sure it would take less time.

So, what are you going to make for your bedroom?

Super Cutie-pie Zoobies

Holy moly! Craft mania today in the Knitticrafty household. I can't believe it, I actually sat down and attached all the heads on these little animals!! Now I just need to paint some faces on them..wait and see what becomes of this little zoo.

(Oct 17, 08 - I forgot to mention that the pattern for these animals comes from the book Play Quilts by Kristen Kolstad Addison)

I'm going to bed super early tonight, as I am expected to crawl to work at 6am tomorrow. I think I am pretty sure I don't see bread and breakfast pastry baker in my future...anyhow, enjoy the animals.

PIF: Clutch Purse Wristets

Pay It Forward is finally done! I really did procrastinate until the last minute on this one. Since speedy knitting is not my forte, I decided to copy Zarafa and make sewn projects for everyone.

Recognize the bird trinket?

I went online hunting for free patterns and tutorials on making wristlets and clutches, and managed to collect quite a bunch of them! There's a great thread on Craftster with huge list of free tutorials, just type in "tutorial". For mine, I ended up combining features I liked out of each pattern and sort of made it up as I went along.

The green one went to Zarafa, the red one to Lorah, and the black one was intended for another recipient but unfortunately I never heard anything when I tried to contact her. So, I ended up gifting it to someone else (Nuttnbunny, if you're reading this, please get in touch with me if you want to receive something.

These were a lot of fun to make - it'd been a long time since I'd done any sewing, and I'm glad I got back into it. There were lots of little mistakes as I went along, and I learned something about working with different decorating fabrics. See the green fabric? I thought it would be easy to sew because it was nice and thick, but it ended up being incredibly slippery and frayed like mad. What I should have done was either cut the pattern pieces extra big, or iron on some interfacing to hold the whole thing in place. The red and black fabrics (both from Ikea) were easier to work with, more of a canvas with a fine grain.

The flower and the bird were cut from other fabrics and appliqued. There are many ways to do applique, and I tried two different ways for the bird and the flower. For the flower, I ironed lightweight interfacing on the back and cut it out just like that (it stops the fraying), and pinned it to the black material and sewed it on with a close zigzag stitch. The bird, on the otherhand, used a double-sided fusible webbing which I will explain below.

How to Make Your Own Appliqued (or not) Wristlet Clutch Purse

1. First, choose a pattern from the list below as well as Craftster threads for your inspiration:

Gathered Clutch with Zip
Amy Butler's Clutch with Antique Pin Closure
Foldover Clutch Purse
U-handblog Wristlet Clutch
Butterick Wristlet

2. Cut out all your pattern pieces, including interfacing and lining, and a wrist strap if you're using one. Make sure you've got all the snaps and buttons and things you need.

3. Pick your image to applique. You can cut out something from an existing piece of fabric, or find a picture online (google images is great). I typed in 'bird' and found this little guy. You'll probably need to enlarge the image, which you can do in something as basic as Paint, and then print it out (econo mode is just fine - why waste the ink). If you're picky about which was the image goes, remember to do a mirror image of it. I just forgot so my bird was flipped in the final product. Now, trace the shape with a pen.

4. Next, trace the image onto one side of the double-sided fusible web (It comes with two pieces of translucent paper stuck to either side). Cut around the bird roughly so you're working with a small shape and not the whole sheet. Remove one paper side of the webbing and stick it to your fabric. You may or may not need to iron at this point, just make sure to read the instructions carefully. Mine was just a straight paste-on while you're positioning it. Now you can cut the bird out with some sharp fabric scissors.

Cut out bird with fusible webbing on the other side

5. You're ready to iron your applique on! Position your bird just so, and iron according to the package instructions. Next, thread your machine with your applique thread colour, and set it so that it's stitching very close together on a zig-zag mode (you can practice this on some scrap first if you're worried about messing up). Working slowly, stitch all the way around all the edges.

6. Now you're ready to go back to the pattern directions and attach things like the magnetic snap, the wrist strap, and turn the whole thing out!

Ta da! You're all done. Now run around town, parading your handiwork with pride. Ok, so that wasn't much of a tutorial, but at least I tried to explain how to do the applique part. Have fun!

Raiding of the Remnants Bin

Uh oh. I rediscovered the remnants bin at the craft store! I justified buying a bagful of ends with the fact that they will be turned into something fun and useful, so I'm in the middle of trying to figure out what to make with my newly acquired materials. I promise not to stash it into my ever-growing pile of fabric. :)

Other than cakes, there hasn't been too much happening on the craft front that I can blog about yet. I've been making stuff in jewelry class, and knitting a thing or two. Oh! I forgot to mention that I received my lovely Pay It Forward gift from Z.Knits, which you should have a look at...it is ultra fun and cute, and I love using it. Hmm. I'd better get on with my PIF gifts too. I think I've already missed the 6 month deadline.

But it's hard to do stuff when it's so darn hot out. Is it just me or does it feel like the temperature has been 95F plus forever?? It makes me want to do nothing except hide in the air conditioning. Or a cold pool. This past weekend was a hot and sluggish, and my main goal was to stay as cool as possible. We had some friends over for supper on Friday night, and Saturday morning I went to decorate wedding cakes again, although none were fully completed while I was there, so I don't have the end results to show you. Too bad, because I made the cutest little fondant cut-out dress for a bridal shower cake! I've been promised I will receive some pics of once they were all done, so I'll post that whenever it happens. Saturday afternoon we went for a nice swim followed by a late showing of Batman: the Dark Knight (really good), and on Sunday I worked all day at the bakery. In the evening, D made the most spectacular exploding mess when he accidentally dropped a large bowl full of saag paneer, which sprayed 3 metres in all directions, including on the ceiling. Needless to say, our home will be smelling like delicious curry for the next week, or two.

And there you have it, my weekend update. Hope you had a nice weekend too! Happy crafting.

Adventures in Dressmaking

Hi all, Happy Saturday! Thank you everyone for your bday wishes, and the wonderful gifts. I'm having a great weekend so far. Columbus is beautifully sunny this morning, and D and I have already been out and about for a lovely brunch at Tasi, a cute little cafe in the Short North.

D had the house-smoked salmon bagel with cream cheese, tomato and red onion, and I had their version of huevos rancheros (my first time ever) with poached eggs - super yummy and fresh. We sat at this huge wooden bench with other diners and enjoyed a lazy and relaxing meal.




I was struggling to come up with a way to make this post craft-related, and finally found a photo of a dress I made last summer to wear to a friends wedding. It's a simple, loose-fitting baby doll style dress with ruffled hem made in a turquoise-y Dupioni raw silk (about 2 yards). Let me tell you, this was fantastically comfortable and buffet-friendly.

The dress is based on this McCall's (M5377) pattern, except that I shortened the hem a lot and made 3 rosette pins (not photographed very clearly, sorry) to gather parts of the dress when I realized it was too tent-like. I also left out the zipper when I realized I could just slip it on over my head.

Lately I have been quite addicted to Project Runway and have been fantasizing about studying fashion at Parsons...how fun would that be?? Unfortunately, I haven't faced sewing in a while and haven't made any clothes. Nor have I photographed any of my old projects. I'd better get on with it.