Journey Prayer Flag

This prayer flag was created for seeuudee in the recent Prayer Flag Swap on Lettuce Craft.  The lovely seeuudee enjoys all these steampunk, and one of her themes was Journey.  Since it was made in the early days of the pandemic when everyone was strictly hunkered down, everything physical is from stash. 

I'm pretty sure the fabric was hand dyed, and came from someone in a swap on the now defunct Craftster.  The gears are jewelry charms that I painted white and distressed with a reliefing block.  The lace is from a ren faire costume made a lifetime ago.  The embroidery designs are digital downloads from Urban Threads. I loved using this project as an excuse to play with my new-to-me embroidery machine. 

And finally the beads are Swarovski crystal from promotional packs Fire Mountain Gems sent me.  They are too tiny and not the right shape for the types of jewelry I usually make, so they've been in my stash waiting for a special project.  I like how the clear AB heart picks up on the pink, blue and purple in the flag.

Scrappy Have a Heart Quilt Top

After making 2 quilt tops for Edel in the Go Bananas Swap, I was still on a quilting high.  I still had tons of fabric stash to bust, so I decided to make one more quilt top.  A Youtube video I watched a couple weeks ago suggested managing your scrap fabric by cutting everything into 4 different sizes: 5" wide strips, 5" squares, 2.5" wide strips, and 2.5" squares.  Since I already had a bunch of 2.5" strips leftover from previous quilt designs, I started with that.

I looked through a ton of strip quilt designs, and found one that could work well with my very scrappy rainbow bundle of strips.  The pattern is called Have a Heart by J. Michelle Watts.  The rainbow includes fabrics from countless wedding and baby quilts made for friends and family over the years.  The ivory background is from a linen-cotton sheet.

Here it is laying on a queen bed.  It's not quite as big as a queen quilt, but easily could be with the addition of a border or two.  I haven't figured out where it's going yet, so I haven't decided if I should add some more borders, but for now it feels 'done'.

I'm really happy with how it came out, but after 3 quilt tops, I think it's time to clean up the fabrics in my studio, and play with some other crafts today.

Stash Busting Amelia Shawls

I saw this light, simple shawl pattern, that uses just one cake of Lion Brand Shawl-in-a-Cake and knew I had to give it a try. It's called the Amelia Shawl, from Moogly.  I had several cakes in my stash, so I pulled out one and got to hooking.  The colorway is Moonstone. 

I actually had more yarn left as I was winding down, so I did an extra row of V-stitch, and an extra row of single crochet around the edging. It’s a super fast pattern. I somehow only took one picture of the shawl being blocked. Special thanks goes to StudioANF on Lettuce Craft, who snapped real pics of both shawls for me.

I liked how the first one came out, and had more cakes of yarn, so I decided to make a second one out of Lotus Blossom. I must have been using a looser tension, because I didn’t have extra yarn with this one, but I wanted it to match the first one, so I used a pinch of a second cake to do the same extra row of V-stitch and single crochet edging. Maybe 10-20 yards of a second cake? I love how the pattern shows off the gradation of color in the yarn.

Love One Another Prayer Flags

Before joining the Prayer Flag swap for the first time, I decided to make some practice flags for a few friends I was supposed to see in March.  Sadly our get together was cancelled, but I was able to send them their flags.  I made 8 of the same one. 

They were machine sewn onto the backing fabric, which was a dictionary page with definitions of the word Love on it.  The text was stamped onto muslin, then gone over with a sharpie since I was out of fabric markers and didn't want to order one during the pandemic.  The wooden heart buttons were also sewn on with my machine.  (Goodness I love my Viking!)  The fibers along the bottom are a mix of yarns and lace in my stash and some skeins pottermouth brought me on her way through in early March.  Each had the recipient name on the back, along with the song lyric that was stuck in my head while working on them. 

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now.