Family slippers

Here they are.

Pleasing pile of alpaca

Half of them at least.

Imagine this picture with 7 pairs. *sigh

And you have to trust me that the other half were delivered because I handed them over, and then remembered to photograph them.

In a bad case of Absolutely not Learning My Lesson About Furry Yarn, I tried to make myself a pair in this.

Moda Vera Flurry. Feels nice around my toes, nasty on the hook.

 Once again, couldn't read the stitches and failed to count them accurately so I have no hope in hades of  replicating the one sad little slipperish shaped object that is slumped in a heap at the bottom of my crochet bag.

Sulky flurry rodent.

Turns out i can(dle)

Look what I made.

waxed faffage

Making christening candles is far out of my handmaking comfort zone, and frankly not anything I am the least bit interested in repeating (I don't think. However...)

It seems to me a bit odd and frankly a little grim to burn a picture of your loved one. But convention is as convention does, and I was darned if I was going to pay some other sucker to make the silly thing.

Basically, I went through a range of contortions and tricks to get the photo onto tissue paper, position it on the candle, wrap it in waxed paper, and apply heat. Easier said than done, much ink and wax everywhere.

How this actually works is that the surface of the wax melts, soaks into the tissue and then hardens again. There is no ink transfer as such, and the waxed paper is only there hold the tissue evenly and smoothly against the candle.

I wish one of the many many DIY tutorials I read had explained this, because I spent  a great deal of time searching for waxed paper, and eventually gave in and bought greaseproof on the the offchance.

I know the two are different, and can't often be substituted, but in this case they can. Just so you know...

I'm not entriely convinced it won't go up in a ball of flame if it burns down to the tissue (assuming the ribbon and sticky diamantes don't do the job), but I doubt I'll ever find out (see above: squeamishness as incinerating face of small child).

Simple little blanket

Well, not as simple as it could have been. The rick rack was frankly a bit of a faff, and is discouragingly wonky.

Simple little flannel blanket. Hah!

Discouragingly wonky

 But Boygoblin likes it, (more to do with the diggers than the handiwork, truth be told) and it keeps his splint safe, so, job done.

The racing boot. And a definite vehicle theme.

Too cute to survive

Because really, who can resist a teeny tiny pincushion that has a tendency to roll away, and is extremely attractive to toddlers?

Boygoblin called this "Mummy's yellow car".
Deeply unfair, because it is eerily similar to "'Goblin's yellow car."

Thats a strip of printed jersey rolled, handsewn and popped in the tray.

Babycrack. Right. there.

Too cute to live, and Boygoblin has car back now.

You know those slippers...

Well, there is progress being made, but these, these, have taken up more time that all of them put together.

Little doll slippers. Made of scraps of merino. And yes, that is knitters elastic you see worked into the top stitches... 

... and treble crochet detail in thee instep. don't tell the cousins...

He looked cold, ok? With his little bare plastic feet and shortie onesie...

So yes. there was a cardie too.

Note co-ordinating edging and toddler-easy popper fastening.

There now, doesn't that look nice?

 And honestly, Andy does sort of stick his arms out - his pose above has almost nothing to do with the construction of the garment. Almost. Nothing.

Oh, and worth noting that Andy came with socks and shoes, but they were lost within days. This had nothing to do with the construction of the socks, and everything to do with the apparently funnel-shaped feet on our favourite doll. Did i learn from this? Why no, I didn't even notice it. so, all round a good investment of time... (as in, its only a matter of...)

Domestic creativity

Radio silence, because this is what has taken up much of my creative, as well as physical and mental energy.

Many, many packing boxes. Note they are all unpacked.

On the upside, the boxes revealed this:

I'm in here

Which contains this:

See?

and this:

And here?

This came through while we were on the move, so I'd not had a chance to properly dwell on it before.

Nothing like seeing your name in print to tide you over some creative doldrums.

And the best thing is, there's another in the pipeline. 

Happy belated birthday

BoyGoblin turned two not long after The Big Move, and so it was time for another birthday badge. You can see last year's here (and there's a pdf tutorial too).

This year it was all about steam trains.

This works the same as the last one, with a magnet sewn into the frontspiece, and into a large plain felt circle worn inside the clothing. 

A big hard-to-swallow felt circle for the back, with the magnet double-sewn in.

You can see that I had to use oblong magnets this year - round ones work better.

The ribbon really lifts it

The ribbon was a real find - from a bargain store, of all places!

Pun-tastic!

This was a cat-warming gift for a friend

Our should that be a housewarming gift for a cat? Not sure.

How is it that he looks smiley when I didn't give him a mouth?

It’s a simple little handsewn feltie, stuffed with crinkly plastic, and long jumpy legs of ribbon.

Looong legs

His toes and back ridges are embroidered in variegated thread (which I hardly ever see the point of, but it works well here.) and he has little yellow French-knot warts.

Warts never looked so good

He’s dangling on a piece of elastic, and jumps quite nicely I think…

Jumping!

Reggie seems to like him in any case...

Revising a rewritten fond memory

So, you know when I said I had cracked it – a crochet motif that would make up into a cosy and lacy blanket?


These feel to me like currency when I stack them like this.

Turns out I hadn’t. When I laid them out, they didn’t pass muster. too small and bitty looking, but more importantly, DearWife thought they were too solid.


What seemed to be a promising start, wasnt...

Now, though, I think I’ve cracked it. I added a round of well-spaced trebles and chains. Fiddly, and it’ll be a ‘mare to sew together (I hate working into chains, but forgot that until it was too late) but I think it works.

I think they'll come together nicely.



The end of the rainbow...

I finally finished it. Goodness me.



Juicy colours, made with love, sweat and tears.

I can’t tell you how painful the freemotion quilting was. I’m clearly not a natural (hence the deliberately off-centre swirls) and I had all sorts of issues with my tension (both the thread, and my shoulders.)

Charming wobbly spirals - the much contested limit of my freemotion prowess.

There are four big pockets in the back,  that will loosely hold cars, crayons, whatever.

These are the pockets...



... and these would be the Whatevers. DearWife was not impressed.

It all rolls up neatly.


Oh, and I appliqued some shapes on the back too. Templates via Word, sanity via Bondaweb.



I wonder how long it will take me to sew on a strap?

Like a yummy car-filled sushi roll

 I think the Cath Kidston ribbon I got for my birthday makes perfect binding. Lucky I procrastinated over finishing then, eh?

By far the biggest challenge was met by DearWife, who completed her mission to find a car to match each panel. Pink was a particular challenge.

I can hear the engines revving, can't you?

  This one's going on the plane with us. 

Updating a fond memory or two

DearWife remembers a couple of old-fashioned granny blankets she grew up with, and asked me to make one for the BoyGoblin.

I had an old-fashioned granny blanket when I grew up too, and remember the gaps in the crochet making me feel cold and catching my toes.  DearWife remembers wrapping her fingers through the holes in her blanket and feeling cosy.

So, my challenge was to update the granny afghan, making it solid and cosy and lacy and cosy. It’s going to a hot climate too, so it needed to be fairly lightweight. Oh, and not scratchy – we’re all sensitive to wool over here.

And, of course, I still have a thing for hexes.

Lacy centre and solid border

And I think I might have cracked it. And Best of all, I can make 2 or 3 or these a day on the train to work.

Lovely yarn

I’ve picked a set of grey foamy greens from Red Heart’s Bamboo Ewe. Not easy to get hold of over here, but a delight to work with, and quite reasonably priced.

I wanted blue greys, like the colour of a dark twilight sky, with a red or yellow highlight, but you can see here how the oceany greens won me over.

The yellow yarn is for some the sky-themed motifs that will be appliquéd on the bottom corner when I’m done.

Here are the prototypes – the plane is just how I imagined it (just need to extract the pattern now) but the balloon needs work.

The pink protoype yarn was binned last night -
its horrible to work with

My studio assistant has the final word...

A calendar quilt of kittens

Goodness me, what have I done?

In 2010, World of Cross Stitching magazine gave away a diary featuring twelve little designs of Nelson and Tibbs. I like a portable project for  my commute to work, and I thought these would be ideal. So far so good.

By mid-March I had finished the twelve, and as by that time we found we were pregnant, I thought that taken as a set they would look good as a wall hanging for the nursery. Again, so far so good.

The next bit is a bit hazy, but I suspect it has something to do with the excellent and beguiling Fatquartershop and resulted in a package arriving containing a jelly roll, 3 yards of backing fabric, and a pattern book.

The pattern was perfect. Almost. I set about altering it so that the central squares could accommodate the cross-stitch panels – they needed to be bigger.

And then my head exploded, as I realised that that meant the inner framing needed to be longer as well, which meant I had just enough fabric. Just. But only if I juggled everything around a little and made not even one little mistake.

Combine that with the embroidered panels and the fact that I had only been using a sewing machine for a week and my rotary cutter was still in its packaging. No pressure.

After a couple of sessions of stitching and unpicking, and slightly more than one little mistake, I very sensibly and calmly put Nelson and Tibbs (temporarily) into the “Work in progress” pile.

Now that the baby is nearly 18months old, and far, far more interested in diggers than kittens, I thought now would be a great time to dust the pair off and get the quilt finished.

The thing is enormous – laying it out took up most of our double bed.

Certainly too big to hang on a wall!

And its been a rescue job at every stage. My seam allowances have been just a fraction over ¼ inch, which, given that every alternate block is made of 5 jelly strips (that’s four seams) has meant I’ve had to trim all the blocks down by ¼ inch. Which is just as well because the piecing on the first embroidered blocks was so dodgy that even working to the smaller size, it required considerable fudging and ingenuity to get it all together.



 Trimming and finessing



Fudging the seam allowances

But now its nearly there. I have a back, a front, and a juicy roll of binding, and am wiating for delivery of my batting. Oh, and a free motion quilting foot.

Juicy binding

Scrap happy

With BoyGoblin now fully mobile and into everything,  everything’s a choke hazard!

To give myself a fighting chance of keeping the sewing room at least a couple of steps away from being a deathtrap, I’ve made a scrap basket to catch quilting trimmings and stray threads.

Fresh spring florals

It hangs on the back of my chair, where the horrible old tesco bag used to sit.

The mouth of the bag is kept open by an embroidery hoop, an idea I cribbed from a laundry bag pattern.    The bag is quilted, which also helps add structure and stiffness. Happily, this also means the bag will sit up on the cutting table quite happily as well.

Pretty and perky

Pleasingly, it’s also made from scraps and oddments. The feature fabric is trimmings from a “Me and My Sister Favourites” jellyroll from Moda, left over from a long running WIP (technically not yet left over, as the blocks haven’t been yet been joined up, but they have been pieced and the border, binding and backing put aside, so I’m quietly (foolishly) confident).

Sneaky peek at work in progress

The buckle, ribbon, and sequins were all fossicked up from various jars of findings.

Dainty buckle

The flowers were simply cut freehand, backed with iron-on interfacing and sewn in place by hand. They are secured in the centre with the embellishments and the petals are left loose.

Juicy blooms

Delicate daisies