Potholders 2011

My potholders arrived in the mail today! They're lovely! Thank you so much to the crocheters (left to right, Becky / I Felt That, Brenda B, Betheany, Betsyknitsy, locteach) and to the organizers of Potholder Swap 2011.

DQS10 Finished

On my end it's finished, anyway. I've still not received my quilt and that is a big part of the swap. But I like most doll quilts so I know that I'll love whatever comes my way. Most of my nervousness in the swap comes from worrying about whether my partner will like her/his quilt that I made. And she did!

This little quilt made it to Dena (here's her blog, complete with the photo I used for the house on this quilt there in the header) and I heard from her today so now I can talk about it freely (the doll quilt swap has secret partners so I couldn't post photos of it before for fear she'd see her house and know it was for her). I'm so excited that she liked it! It was a whole lot of fun to make, with all of the little embroidery details I so enjoy stitching.

Dena also likes to embroider so I just had to include a little embroidery/needle book. With some variegated threads. These swap packages are way too much fun to put together!

And here's the whole thing, with the 2 bits of fabric, some local tea, the needlebook, and the quilt, all smooshed into that plastic envelope to protect it in the mail. I hope the wrinkles iron out.

Now I can't wait for my quilt to come and then it's on to crossing my fingers that I get into round 11!!

Happy Valentines Day!

I hope you have a very happy Valentine's Day! Things are very productive over this way today.

Finished redwork pillow (more information here and an in-progress close-up photo here).

One of my series of holiday cross-stitch pieces. This is the one that started that whole project, actually. I love the little heart at the top made of french knots and that the letters are wonky as they are.

And last but certainly not least, I have the Valentines I've received so far from Crow and Canary's second annual card swap. I love this swap! Here is my post about if from last year (complete with a crocheted heart pattern!).

Bitty Blocks -- February

The theme for the 3.5-inch Bitty Blocks for this month is words/text. It's been interpreted a ton of different ways but here are my takes on it (I'm in 2 groups so I'm to make 2 sets of 12 to swap). The top set has 3 different fabrics printed with words and the bottom set has 1 fabric printed with letters and another that I freezer paper stenciled with the first initial of each of the quilters in the group. I'm excited for the other blocks to start coming in the mail!

Doll Quilt Swap 10: Begun

I've had enough time now to check my (secret) Doll Quilt Swap partner's information and likes / dislikes to develop a plan and actually get started. The deadline on mailing the quilts out is in about 2 months still but I plan to do a fairly complicated embroidery / applique piece for the center so the more I can get done prior to receiving my background piece of linen, the better.

Fabric choices for the Doll Quilt.

Inspiration mosaic for the center embroidered piece. All photos from flickr.

A bit of my scale schematics / sketches for the design and an (unironed / untrimmed) bit of the main border.

Back to the sewing machine!

2010 Crafting Year in Review

For the last few weeks, I'd been seeing all sorts of year in review posts on flickr and blogs. It made me think about what I'd actually finished last year. Mostly what came to mind was house projects or gardening accomplishments. But, in making a mosaic of my crafting from last year, I realized that I'd actually done more that I thought I had. Good reason to do this kind of exercise!

I think I knit that first sweater last year rather than the year before last. I made curtains for my house (and learned about printing by hand in the process), scarves for my etsy shop, pincushions, a doll quilt, stockings, and potholders for various swaps (and improved my applique, paper piecing, machine quilting, pattern developing, and quilt binding skills in the process), and a pillow just for fun from some fabric from one of my favorite illustrators/crafters. There was also a cardigan just for me, and a quilt for my parent's Christmas gift.

I suppose that I did more than I thought I did, craft-wise, last year! (Although I did turn out to have read just as few books as I kind of suspected that I did -- Julie & Julia, The Making of a Marchioness, and Cheerful Weather for the Wedding are really the only books that I finished. I'll have to work on finishing books in 2011 -- I probably started 10 that I never finished!)

Bitty Block Committee

Introducing my latest craze in flickr swapping -- the Bitty Block Committee! This is a swap wherein the participants can sign up by month to make 12-24 blocks in a theme to send to other swappers in exchange for different blocks, all measuring 3.5 inches square (3 inches finished). December's theme was "birds and owls", for which I made the little embroidered robin, 2nd up and over from the bottom left corner, and the stamped rooster, diagonally up and to the left from him. Also, not for the swap, but to try out paper piecing, I did the 2nd bird down from the top right corner, inspired by this wonderful mug rug. The rest of the blocks were made by my fellow swappers and I love all of them! More of the blocks were used for the pillow I showed yesterday and the last few are being saved for another project to be done in future. Perhaps after the DQS10 is over.

Speaking of which, in other swap news, I WAS ACCEPTED INTO DQS10!!!! How exciting is that? I had so much fun with the swap last year, I can't wait to get full tilt into it again this year. Good quilting on the horizon!

Great Steps in Quilting

This week I've had several quilting "breakthroughs". Which I suppose is really the fun in learning something new -- when I learn something new. When it's challenging. It's certainly tough sometimes though.

Everything's still a bit wonky but that's "handmade", right? At least that's what I like to tell myself.

To make those 3 little objects up there (the top one is a Dresden Plate doll quilt I made just because I wanted to try to make a Dresden Plate, and the bottom photo is of 2 potholders for PP5), I purchased and learned how to use a walking foot (how did I ever sew anything without one of these? It's the coolest thing ever!), really learned how to machine quilt in general (using this hugely helpful post), finally managed to make my square corners more pointy (reread Denyse Schmidt Quilts for info on that), and actually finished one of my own quilting projects (I'd finished quilting projects for swaps but not a single one of the projects I'd started for my house). Of course I still have tons of room for improvement but every little bit helps!

A Week of Fingerless Mitts

It seems to be fingerless mitt knitting time. Especially since it's gotten to be a bit chilly up here in the mountains and that makes me think of things like unfinished mitts at the bottom of the project box. These first mitts, however, are a new project. For a new friend. And a new (to me) thing. I've just (finally) joined ravelry and immediately joined a swap (ravelry link). Because I do love a good swap.

It's another secret swap so I can't tell you much more about the mitts at the moment, other than that they're from this pattern and they were a lot of fun to knit. I knit them in almost exactly 10 hours. I can tell you this because I was gallery sitting for a friend here in town last weekend and it was very slow at the gallery so I mostly just knit for the entire time I was there. And these mitts came of it. At least I'm ahead on the swap!

And, because I've apparently become a crazy cat lady, here is the second cat photo for this swap. Can I help it that she likes to be wherever the camera is pointed? Of course not. (And I'm not going to try!)

These ones are the wonderful Endpaper Mitts. I love fair isle knitting! But, somehow, after travelling with us to Europe a year ago and making the move to the new house 7 months ago, the mitts had fallen by the wayside, with all that was left to do being putting the fingers' ribbed trim on one and the thumb trim on both. Geez! So I pulled them out and finished them right up. Too silly!

Now my hands will be warm (and someone else's hands will be warm. . . ) just in time for fall!

I Love the Mail Today!

I couldn't even wait to get somewhere to sit down to open my DQS9 package! Patrick had to hold the box while we walked down Main Street and I pulled out my wonderful presents, one by one. As we were passing one of the shops, I'd just pulled out the beautiful Amy Butler fabric and the shopkeeper stopped me to say that I should make her something with it because it is so pretty. I agree with her about how pretty it is, that's for sure!

Also in my swap package from Valerie were some very cool stamps, mother of pearl buttons (which are perfect for the cowl that I made yesterday -- see below), a Canada tshirt which magically fits me perfectly, and a super-cute little notecard. And, of course, the most lovely quilt!

The Swaps Continue

Continuing on with the Scrappy Pincushion Swap, I've decided to jump on the paper piecing hexagon bandwagon. I used this tutorial and the hexagon "graph paper" generator she links to, set on 0.75". The hexagons were indeed fun to piece. I don't know if I could do a whole quilt of these though. I pulled all of the fabrics from the pile shown on Tuesday. The sides of the pincushion will be an embroidered flower garden.

I've also just joined my first swap (ravelry link) on ravelry, which I've finally joined. My friends have all been after me to sign up for several years but I've only just now decided that I have a bit of time to devote to the infinite browsing everyone says follows signing up. It's not happened yet (honestly, I find the site a little bit difficult to navigate) but I'm still having fun with this swap. More on that to come!

The Sewing Bug

I think my sewing maching may just burst into flames. I don't know if it's been the heat keeping me from wanting to knit or just the excitement of DQS9 but I can't seem to stop sewing things! First I have my completed quilt from the swap. It was for Lael and she seems to be loving it. And her kids seem to love the ducks I crocheted for them. If this isn't encouragement to go on doing swaps, I don't know what is!

So then I moved on to the Scrappy Pincushion Swap. It's another blind swap, like the DQS (where my partner doesn't know who I am so I can't ask him/her questions) and my partner doesn't have much information available as to what she'd like so I've decided to use these cool feed sack scraps that I found in the house we cleaned out a few months ago. At least I think that they're feed sack scraps. There was such an age-range of things in that house that I can't really decide for sure. But I'm sticking with my story for now.

I've also been saving selvedges for a while and, with all of this sewing, have a good selection to make sachets. And I also made one with a scrap from the backing fabric and a bit of cross stitch for my friend who is having a moth problem (they're both stuffed with lavender from the local health food store -- hopefully my lavender plants will produce lavender for me next year!)

And finally, I've started on a doll quilt for myself. Based on this quilt and this quilt from the DQS that I LOVED and this quilt that I saw a photo of some time ago. I've decided that the small size of doll quilts makes them absolutely ideal for my many many quilt ideas. At least I can get many ideas out of my head without completely filling my house with quilts or spending thousands of dollars on quilting fabric!

I'll see you back here in a month when I tear myself away from my sewing machine again!

Valentine Swap

Although I've not been blogging for such a long time, I've been in high gear on swaps. They're just so much fun! This time I'm working on Valentines for the Crow and Canary swap I found through the BPS. I won't put the photos of the finished cards here so as not to ruin the surprise for my swap partners but I will post the directions I worked out to crochet hearts for the valentines (just a small hint won't hurt their surprise -- I hope!)

These instructions could be used with any gague of yarn and its corresponding hook although I used a very small hook (I found it in my house -- left by the previous owner, Elsie -- so I'm not sure about what size it is) and white crochet cotton. The fun though is that it doesn't matter what size the heart turns out to be -- it doesn't have to fit anyone!

ch 5

sc in 2nd ch from hook

skip next 2 ch's

3 dc & next ch

without turning, ch 3

2 dc & last dc made

3 dc & same ch as 1st 3 dc made

without turning, ch2

dc 8 evenly across triangle side

turn, 5 dc in top of 2nd dc from hook

sl st in 2nd dc from hook

5 dc in top of 2nd dc from hook

sl st in last dc space

Vintage Paper Swap

I was only one day late but I got my vintage papers in the mail for Abbey's Vintage Paper Swap. They are on their way to a lovely person in Australia! I hope that she finds more uses for them than I did — a lot of them were from my inadvertent stash of vintage paper things. (Inadvertent because I HAD, at one time, intended to put them to good use. But that didn't happen and didn't happen so they've moved on to a better home!)

There are also a few things in the package from the West 78th Street Greenflea which I had never been to before. This was a Bonus Outcome of this swap since I went there expressly to get some paper. And did I ever find vintage paper! There is a whole booth with nothing but vintage postcards and 2 of the most knowledgeable and friendly flea market vendors I've ever run across. I'll have to be really careful about how often I venture back over there!


I also put to good use a lot of the cute little envelopes that I have from my stationery store days (they were samples, destined for the trash, so what choice did I have but to take them home and hoarde them until I now begin to feel that I may someday put all of my mismatched envelopes (all sans cards, of course) together in one place and die when they fall and crush me!?)

Swapping

On my to do list is to participate in some sort of craft swap. Well, this week I've found not merely one swap but two! They both still have a few days left to sign up so please join in if you feel like it. I'm very excited about them both!

Vintage Paper Swap at Abbey Goes Design Scouting
Art of the Note: Gocco Swap at cloth.paper.string