Crocheted Granny Circle Harry Potter Ornaments

 I have had this idea in mind for a few years now.  I saw the pattern in the book Boho Crochet, and they just seemed like something Molly Weasley would make out of her leftover scraps of yarn.  So this year I finally hooked some up, but instead of the scrappy multi-color motif of the books, I went with Hogwarts House colors.  They were all crocheted from acrylic yarn in my stash; mostly Caron Simply Soft, and some Lion Brand Heartland (the gold & silver).  If you don't have the book, here is a free pattern for the same design.

Gryffindor

Hufflepuff

Slytherin

Ravenclaw

A side view, of the stitching.

Hogwarts United

On one side the center is red, on the other side the center is blue.

I'm so pleased with how they came out!

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.

Scrappy Quilt-As-You-Go Basket & Scissor Sheath

I recently organized a Hooker's Only Swap on Craftster.  My partner was the very talented StudioANF.  She requested a rectangular basket for keeping a few skeins of yarn in.  This one was made with this pattern from the Bernina Blog, but instead of making the fabric sandwiches, then quilting, I did 2 large quilt-as-you-go panels, then cut the basket pieces out of them.

The basket holds about 4 skeins of average yarn, in this case Caron Simply Soft.  The color scheme came out of one of her Pinterest boards, which was filled with fabrics she liked.  I noticed that most of them were turquoise or teal, with bits of flamingo pink thrown in.  So I dug through my stash for anything that fit. 

I have to say that I'm thrilled with how the basket came out, and I'm glad my first attempt didn't work out, because this is much cuter. 

Studio also had a pair of scissors on her wishlist, which I picked up for her.  Since I made my quilted panels pretty big, I had a little leftover, and made a scissor sheath to match.  It is cut out as a heart, then folded in half, with one of the tops folded down and sewn in place, with some buttons as embellishment.  Tomorrow I'll share the stitch marker and yarn cutter necklace I made her to go with it.

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.

Scrappy Star Rug

Despite planning for it, I always seem to underestimate just how much time I need to spend crafting to fill my shop for the holidays.  Even though I had put aside time in my schedule for personal crafting and blogging, it all once again got commandeered for the cause.  And even after the holidays are over, I usually spend much of January trying to remake items that sold out over Christmas, with the result being that I don't get to work on much fun crafting between October and February.

So this weekend, with winter storm Jonas terrorizing the East Coast, I decided to finish a project that had been previously put on hold.  The result is my new Scrappy Star Rug!  I began this one as practice for making my Scrappy Rag Rug for noodle-bug last June.  Unfortunately, with only 1 round left to go, I had to put it on hold in order to make noodle's rug.  The pattern is also from ATERGcrochet on Etsy, and is much smaller, with only 11 Rounds, rather than the 32 called for in the round rug pattern.  Finished, mine measures 30" across.  I decided to use only upcycled tee shirt yarn when making this one and learned quickly that I prefer the un-seamed yarn available commercially.  The seams always want to pop up where you least want them, and make feeding the yarn a bit of a pain.

Yesterday morning I sat down and finished the last round, and was very proud of myself for completing a work in progress.  Then I looked down at what was supposed to be a happy little rug, and decided I was dissatisfied with it.  The body is mainly emerald green, with a round of charcoal and a round of black at the outside edge.  Overall, it was simply too dark, and frankly too boring.  So, while binge watching That 70's Show on Netflix all afternoon, I decided to add some of the looped rows called for in the round rug pattern, which had done so much to brighten up noodle's rug too. I dug through my stash and found a few balls of teal, turquoise, purple and red yarn that I made from some of my Old Navy tees that had become worn out.  Old Navy jersey makes for a very soft and stretchy yarn, which would not have worked well for the body of the rug, but is perfect for the rows of contrasting loops.  Now I can finally say that I'm not only finished with the project, but happy with it too.  And now it's off to a new home with a friend.  So long little rug!

Her Craftiness Knows No Bounds (Mostly)

While everything that I've shared thus far has been a jewelry project, beads and charms are not my only medium.  Far from it.  I've been asked many times "What crafts do you do?" I tend to answer with a cheeky "I've never met a craft that I didn't like," because I don't want to bother listing all the crafts that I enjoy.  (Except perhaps knitting.  She and I did not get along.)  The truth is that between being raised by a very DIY mom, being naturally interested in traditional crafts, and my education in costume design & construction (not to mention props and scene painting), I've learned a great many techniques that I pull from every day, and I am constantly adding to my mental list of new things to try.

Baby quilt made for my niece Mia, in 2011.

I learned to quilt as a small child, and had my first sewing machine in grade school.  I taught myself to sew clothing and costumes by using Simplicity patterns throughout high school.  By the time I was studying costume design in college, I wanted a craft to do at the end of the day to help me unwind, and so I picked up crochet.  Over the years I've taken classes in cake decorating, basket making, corsetry, painting, and floral design.  On my own I've made forays into altered art, shrines, paper crafting, soap making, canning, and just about anything else that strikes my fancy on a given day.  Why all this background?  So that you won't be surprised as new projects show up here, including all of these media and more.

Shakespeare Shrine made for pinkleo in the Shrine Swap on Craftster, 2013

My latest side project is for a swap on Craftster.  I'm both organizing and participating in the One Awesome Harry Potter Thing Swap, which requires participants to create a single awesome Harry Potter inspired project for their partner.  Each project must be a large in terms of time spent (minimum 3 hours), and it is assumed to will spend much more than that on your project.   I was lucky enough to snag my friend noodle-bug as my partner and am both thrilled and terrified to be swapping with her.  She is fantastically talented, and I'm afraid of disappointing her.

Rag Rug made for Abbeeroad in the IYP Swap - Round 26 on Craftster 

Both of us dream of living in the Burrow, the home of the Weasley family in Harry Potter.  With that in mind I decided to create a scrappy rug for noodle's home, reminiscent of something that Mrs. Weasley would make for one of her children.  I had previously created an Upcycled Rag Rug out of cotton yarn crocheted around a core of tee shirt yarn, for Abbeeroad in the Invite Your Partner Swap last year, and while I greatly enjoyed the technique, I decided that for this project I wanted to try crocheting the actual tee shirt (or zpaghetti) yarn itself.

I picked up this beautiful rug pattern from ATERG Crochet on Etsy, then headed out to Joann's to pick up some tee shirt yarn.  Only to discover that no one in the US carries it anymore!  I remember seeing it in all the craft stores a year or two ago, and there are plenty of books out with patterns to make with it, and yet there seems to be no yarn to be had!  For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it is a super bulky yarn, made from the remnants of cotton jersey.  The pattern calls for six 130 yard cones of yarn (4 of various colors, and 2 cones of neutral).  I quickly discovered that while you can order individual spools from Lion Brand for $9 each, you are unable to choose colors in any way, and just have to like whatever they happen to choose to send you!  Thanks Lion Brand.

Brescia print from Ganxxet on Etsy

While I did want a scrappy feel to the rug, not knowing what I was going to get was a bit too scrappy for me, so I started searching the net.  There is very little of it for sale on either Etsy or eBay in the US, but I did find one vendor on Etsy with a decent selection and fair prices.  Ganxxet has 80+ colors, including some really neat prints and stripes. I picked up this adorable print called Brescia, which is a white background with a black, blue and pink print that looks like scribbles of headphones, wings, flowers, hands, and tiny Union Jacks.  It reminded me very much of something Tonks might wear. Sold!  The seller was very helpful, checking a color match for me with the shade of pink that I picked out to go with it, and she shipped it really fast.

After I came to the realization that I just couldn't afford to buy more yarn, I decided to make my own with this tutorial, in coordinating shades of blue and black.  I picked up some classic rib knit from Joanns, which was on sale for 50% off.  I bought 2.5 yards of black and 1 yard of blue, which came to just $15, and spent a couple of hours slicing, stretching and rolling it.  The very slight rib in the knit became more pronounced when it was turned into yarn, but I like the variation in texture that it offered.

The entire pattern is 32 rounds and should measure 4' across when completed.  I've finished 18 rounds, and it is currently 30" wide.  Since I've officially run out of the Brescia print, and am nearly out of the blue, I'm unsure if I'm going to do the entire 32 rounds, or if I might stop around 25 or so.  As of right now, I'm worried about it being able to fit in a flat rate box to ship to the UK.  After another round or so I'm going to have to start making box checks each time I complete a row to be sure it will fit!