Bad Ass Bitch Necklace

I recently had the great fortune to partner with kittykill in the Feminism & Diversity Swap.  I knew that I wanted to create a piece that felt like donning armor when putting it on; something with weight to remind her of her own innate strength while fighting for equality.  The result is almost a gorget in size and area covered on the body. 

I made the chain from large individual gunmetal links and Swarovski crystal 'cosmic rings' in jet black.  Each individual element was chosen to reflect intersectional feminist principals, or to reference kittykill specifically.  I'll list a few of them...  The central eye pendant to help us stay woke, and keep an eye on The Man.  The pink crystal hearts represent one of her favorite songs, Rebel Heart by Madonna.  A large claw shaped stone to remind her that sometimes we need to use our teeth and claws to grab and hold onto our rights.  A Mexican coin to represent the 'Bad Hombres' among us, working as allies in our fight for gender equality.  A Queen Bee bottlecap as a reminder of 'who runs the world'.  A resin pendant that reads 'elusive', as reference to the fact that after decades of bold suffragettes and women's libber's alike fighting for equality among the sexes, that equality still eludes us in the pay gap, in stereotyped gender-based marketing campaigns, in how we treat the victims of sexual assault, in what toys are marketed to our children, and so many other issues.

There is an antique key gifted to me as an extra in a Craftster swap, to remind her of the strength found in friendships among women and the communities we create for ourselves.  A 'P', for kittykill's first initial; a wing to soar on; a playing die for luck in the game of life.  I'm really thrilled with how it turned out, and hopefully it will bring her as much joy as I had making it.

Smash the Patriarchy & Frida Kahlo Tea

While crafting for the Feminism & Diversity Swap recently, I chatted with my partner kittykill, and she lamented we live far apart, or else we'd each love to have the other over for tea and crafting.  It inspired me to create a tote for her.  I purchased the frame image from the Silhouette Design Store, then altered the size & shape of it, before adding in the text with a typewriter font.  It was cut out of black glitter htv on my Silhouette.  I was going for the feel of captions to old silent films.  Very happy with how it came out. 

kittykill also mentioned that Frida Kahlo was one of her feminist icons so I knew I had to create something inspired by Frida for her.  I started with a candy pink tee from Target, and did some google image searching to find a simple stencil or icon of Frida, and added a heart around it in my Silhouette Design Studio software.  Once I was finished it felt like it needed a little extra something....  So I added a rose on the back of the neckline.  All the images were cut out of black glitter htv.  As I've been working with my Silhouette, I think I've come to like working with the glitter htv best of all as it seems to stick the best and cut & weed well.

 

Harry Potter LOVE Tees with Glitter Heat Transfer Vinyl

I recently had the most amazing opportunity to meetup with 3 of my favorite Craftsters, down at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  Since I was going to be meeting and hanging out with some pretty amazing crafters, I knew I had to bring handmade gifts to share with them.  I purchased an svg file on Etsy that said LOVE, with the L & O being above the V & E to form a square image.  After a minor setback in which I lost my head and accidentally cut out the transfers backwards, I decided to go back and play with the image in Photoshop to make it one word written out straight across instead of the square placement, mostly to make the image work with the amount of silver glitter htv I had left.  I actually like my re-arranged version more, because it's clearer to read.  I apologize for this picture being a bit dimly lit.  We were in a Steampunk Chocolate Emporium, and it was the only pic I got of all of us in our matching shirts.

Left to right: FiberAlchemist, Abbeeroad, myself, edelC, & her daughter. 

And just for clarity, here's a pic of them lined up, with the text more clearly visible.

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.