Giant Star Block Wedding Quilt

On June 24th, just a few days before I was set to leave for vacation in Florida, my husband came home with an invitation to a wedding.  A wedding that would take place just 5 days after I got back!  Because a big wedding gift was not in our monthly budget, and because I believe in giving handmade gifts for such monumental occasions, I decided to see what I had in my stash to make a quilt.  I found 6 yards of a pretty cream calico.  Since I would have to make it quickly, I picked a simple pattern called the Giant Star Block Quilt from the blog In Color Order.  Best part, it only required me to pick up 8 fat quarters from my local quilt shop.  I cut the pieces and binding before leaving, and I'm so glad I did, because I came home from vacation (in summer, in FL) with a cold! 

I was sidelined for a few days before I could dive back in, but got back into it on Friday, where I got the blocks pieced, and the rows together.  Then yesterday I spent every single minute of my day stitching my butt off, to get it ready to take to the reception which started at 7:00pm last night.  With a little help from my amazing husband doing a bit of pinning the quilt sandwich, trimming googly threads, and pressing my binding, we, mostly managed to finish it on time.  I actually finished at 7:13, we pulled out of the driveway at 7:15, and got there at 7:30, with no one the wiser that we were late! 

Burrow Inspired Scrappy Crochet Pillow Trio

I've recently partnered up with the amazing pottermouth in Round 2 of the I Want to Live in the Burrow Swap.  She asked that I craft for her daughter, who has just gotten her own place.  pottermouth had made her a Ron Weasley Blanket, and mentioned she might like a throw pillow to go with it.  I found some of the yarns she had used, so it would feel like Mrs. Weasley had made both from her yarn stash and started in on scrappy a granny square pillow.

In looking for pillow forms to fill it with, I found that nothing I needed (blank pillow forms, fabric, or zippers) was on sale at the craft store, and I was plum out of coupons, so I actually went to Tuesday Morning, and picked up some random pillows to cover.  This one was a deep metallic plum purple, and I love how you get glimpses of it through the yarn, especially as Mrs. Weasley would be likely to reuse and refurbish in her crafting.  I love how scrappy and kitchy it feels.

After finishing the granny square, I had so much yarn left, that I decided to start a Mandala Pillow too, mostly as an excuse to try out this mandala pattern!  The pattern itself came from the book Boho Crochet. 

This pillow was a cute seafoam green, with some embroidery on one side. I stitched the mandala onto the front of the cover, so that it can be taken off and washed as needed.

For the final project in this series, I was inspired by all the rainbow flags all over my Facebook feed in June, and decided to make a rainbow pillow to round out the set. 

I didn't follow a specific pillow pattern for this one, but I did use attic24's tutorial on making granny stripe afghans.  I thought I'd do the entire back in ivory, with ivory joining the two sides, but halfway through I realized I didn't have enough yarn, so I added a blue stripe across the back, and used more blue to join them.  It wasn't what I planned, but I really like the juxtaposition of the rainbow against a sky blue and fluffy white.

HTV Shirts for Wizarding World

Next week I'm heading off to Wizarding World of Harry Potter with the amazing Abbeeroad, the fantastic FiberAlchemist, and the ever lovely edelC.  Clearly, this means that I need fun new clothes to wear on my adventure.  So this is my Wizengamot shirt.  The image was from a google image search, imported into Silhouette Design Studio.  It came out even better than I imagined it could!

Meanwhile I picked up the most adorable pair of pj pants from Torrid, that have tiny owls on them.  They were several inches too long, so I went ahead an hemmed them.  Afterwards I decided that I clearly I needed to make a top to match!  I made a Hogwarts Letter tee, with silver glitter htv, and deep red flocked htv.  Getting the flocked material and the glitter vinyl to work together was a minor trick.  I cut the envelope from silver glitter htv, and the seal from dark red flocked htv.  Then I cut a space in the backing plastic so I could nestle the seal into the letter, and iron them both at the same time. The flocked material seems to need longer with the iron, but all seemed to work out with a little extra effort.  I'm pretty excited with how adorable it is! 

Dandelion Art Quilt

This was made for Thimbles71 in the most recent incarnation of the Mini Art Quilt Swap (Round 8).  Thimbles mentioned liking black & white color palettes, and listed "flowers, poppies, dandelions, etc" as one of her themes.  The quilt measures 12.5" x 12.5".  The background is a fat quarter I found at my local quilt shop, with grey text & equations written out on it.  The stems are made from ribbon, and the leaves are appliqued from scraps of previous quilts.  I used free motion quilting to stipple the background, and to do the stalks between the seeds and the fluff, before adding seed beads for the seeds, and tied bits of embroidery floss for the fluff.  The phrase, [i]"Some see a weed, others a wish"[/i] was made of charms from my stash, mostly letters, with a magic wand standing in for the I in wish.  I forgot to get a shot of the back, but it is a bright green modern plaid that I just couldn't resist, and a rod pocket made of the yellow binding fabric, for a pop of color.

Little Miss Jennie Sat on Her Tuffet

Yesterday I had the good fortune to take a class on tuffet making, and this is the result!  I took the class at Quilting Squares Quilt Shop in Franklin, TN.  The owner of the shop went and got 'tuffet-certified' from the makers of the pattern Tuffet Source, and sells their pattern and supplies.  It's an ingenious project, that uses iron-on interfacing that has the pattern printed onto it, for you to stitch to, much like the paper used in paper-piecing quilt blocks.  You can purchase the pattern & kits from their website, with the foam, batting, board, feet, etc., at different levels of finished for different prices.  (Ie, if you want to do some extra manhandling of the materials, you can get them a bit cheaper, or if you want to skip part of the mess and fuss, you can get a more finished version of the kit.) 

Funny story: When I called to sign up for the class, I was told that it was a 2-part class (5 hours each) and that I had already missed part 1.  I said thanks, and that I'd look forward to it being taught again.  An hour later they called back to say that if I was willing to make version 2, (which had fewer pieces in it), and if I cut my rectangular strips at home over the weekend, I could probably catch up to the rest of my classmates who had started the week before.  And that doing so, would save me $50, because they wouldn't charge me for the lesson that I missed. 

So I picked out some fabric and headed to class yesterday.  Most of the students had their entire fabric cover completed, but needed to assemble the actual tuffet.  I started my project at 10:00 am, and everyone else had finished by 12:30, leaving me alone with the instructor, in a class that was supposed to run until 3:00pm.  She had to put together a new tuffet of her own anyways, so she told me to stay as long as I wanted.  Not having to wait for the iron, and having less wedges to stitch meant that I flew through!  I did make one mistake that necessitated me going home for my extra scrap fabric, but all told I worked from 10:00-4:00, with a 40 minute run home.  Not bad for heading home with a finished piece of furniture!

The large wedges are a Tim Holtz fabric called [url=http://www.joann.com/tim-holtz-premium-cotton-fabric-transportation-tickets/15175524.html#q=tim+holt&prefn1=prod_type&prefv1=Product&start=16]Transportation Tickets[/url] from Joann's.  The red and black are generic fabrics from their wall.  For bottom, I used a Tim Holtz's Game Pieces in taupe, that came as part of a 12" set of his assorted fabric designs that I found in the clearance section of Joann's on the same trip.  I think I'm going to use the other prints from it to make a coordinating quilt for the back of the couch.

After stapling on the cover & the contrast fabric to cover bottom, I hid the raw edges with black braid.  (Forgot to get a pic of that step!) And here it is finished, and set beside the fireplace.  (Don't worry, I plan to move it in the event we ever need to light a fire here in TN!)  I had a great deal of fun putting it together, and was amused at the teacher, who said she shouldn't bother charging me a class fee, because she didn't need to teach me how to sew, unlike the other students.  Guess all those years of costuming and corsetry were perfect for making tiny, fiddly, curvy seams!   :D

Note: Version #1 uses all wedges the width of the black on my tuffet.  In mine the red covers 2 wedge spaces, and the print covers 4, so it comes to 64 wedges if you do that version.  There were some really stunning versions done that way in class, but I kinda like #2, because you can see the detail on more of the prints.

Warm & Cozy Blanket Sweater

I recently participated in the Warm & Cozy swap, with the lovely LadybugsAndBumblebees (henceforth referred to as Lb&Bbs) as my partner.  She had the Light Frost Blanket Sweater on her Pinterest, and I was intrigued by it so I decided to give it a go.  I picked up some bulky yarn in a colorway Lb&Bbs liked and got to hooking.  I noticed a picture in her profile that showed us to be similar in size and shape, so I felt pretty safe making a garment for her, without benefit of a fitting.

The pattern is very simple, and does go together quickly and easily.  (Basically it's a rectangle that has its corners folded together to make a wonky diamond shape.)  Sadly, I really didn't like the pattern once it was done.  When reading the blog post, the author indicated that the sweater is 'probably a small', and that if you are bigger than her, you could 'add 10 stitches' to bring it up to a size large.  Since the pattern was so new, at the time I started it there were no other projects of it on Ravelry, not even the author's own!  (Now there are 4.)  Hence, there were no other notes to reference about size.  Yeah, adding 10 stitches did NOT make this a large.  Once my rectangle was complete, I basted the edges together as indicated and tried it on.  Nope.  It basically fit like a wad of yarn across your back, with partial arm holes.  Actually, it was kind of like having a blanket hold your arms behind you, so that when you look in the mirror, your own body shame can sucker-punch you in the gut.  Not good.   >:(

While I'm not the most experienced crocheter in the world, my experience in theatrical costuming paid off.  I could easily tell that the outer circumference of the garment needed to be much bigger in order to fit around my shoulders, and my butt.  But, that the back of the garment didn't really need to be any different.  So, I hooked up two wedges, 36 stitches wide at the base, and 3 stitches wide at the top, 15 rows tall.  I inserted these into the seams, and tried it back on.  Now it was closer to being a sweater!  The gussets alleviated the tension around the shoulders and hem, but it was still a bit short, and the neckline was an odd height.  Too tall compared to the original design, but not tall enough to turn down into a shawl collar.  So, I added 5 or 6 rows around the circumference, that incorporated the body and the gussets, increasing by 12 stitches in each row.  That was enough to let the hem fall to just below the bum, and the collar to turn down.  This made it a cross between the original design, and something like a circle sweater. 

(In this picture you can see the gussets, which are inserted between the bottom of the bust, and the side of the hip.)

And while it was a rocky crafting process, in the end I'm pleased with how it came out, especially since Lb&Bbs seems very happy with it.  :D

*Note: I'm not trying to be down on the author of the pattern.  The sweater she designed looks great on her body shape, which happens to be tall and thin.  I try very hard to be body positive, but no matter how positive someone is, there are just some things that look great on one body, that don't look good on another, and vice versa.  (I'm fairly my curves rock a fitted sweater in a way she doesn't!)  My point in explaining what didn't work for me in this pattern, is to help anyone else who wants to give it a try, not to bash the author.  :) 

Beaded Wire Shawl Pin

I recently participated in the Warm & Cozy swap, with the lovely LadybugsAndBumblebees as my partner.  As my main project for the swap, I crocheted a blanket sweater for her.  But since it didn't have any sort of closure, I decided to try my hand at making a shawl pin to go with it.  This was created from 14 gauge wire, and wrapped with some thinner copper and bronze wire, and finished with deep teal AB beads. 

Important to note:  Dogs do NOT like the sound of you hammering wire on your work desk, as they try to nap underneath it!   :D