Crest Pillow

For Christmas, I designed a crest for my boyfriend, and embroidered it onto a throw pillow for him. I'm really proud of how it turned out, and he loved it! He loved his crest, especially after my explanation to him, and he was really jazzed about the soft flannel green-army-man background. He said he even detected a note of "pillow-envy" in his stepmom.

To make this project happen, I designed the crest in Illustrator, pulling together pieces of his personality (ie, raspberry beret because he loves 80s music and because he loves taking French classes). I printed out the final design, and used a thin sharpie to trace it onto a piece of Sulky brand water-soluble stabilizer- it doesn't do much in the way of stabilizing, but it's basically clear plastic that you can draw all over and then completely dissolve in water. It's great!! I basted that onto some plain bleached cotton muslin, and got to embroidering.

I wasn't sure when I started the project if I was going to use any kind of trim or not, but when I asked a friend if the pillow needed a ruffle or not, she reminded me that piping was a thing. I went with the piping, and it turned out way better for him than a ruffle would have.

Glove Darning

About this time last winter, I taught myself how to darn by watching youtube tutorial videos. My first project was a small hole that had ripped in the heel of some otherwise good-condition smartwool socks, which turned out really great, and thankfully, I'm still wearing those $20 socks.

The second project was a spot on a glove thumb where the knitted material had worn out, a little trickier because the surrounding fabric was definitely worn as well. I couldn't find a good color match in normal sock yarn at the store, so I used some beige cotton (I think) yarn that I was given a couple years ago. Not a perfect match, but my then-brand new boyfriend was over the moon he didn't have to throw away his gloves.

This winter I became a glove doctor again, this time for the index finger (wearing out, like the thumb had), as well as re-anchoring the patch on the thumb to the leather, as it was becoming almost totally detached. First I made the new patch, being sure this time to anchor it to some of the stitches attaching the leather pads to the glove, and then I got some brown thread and worked it through the sewing machine holes made with the original glove stitching as well as the weave of the darned patch I made last winter.

Once again, over the moon!

Blue Afghan

This was my first time successfully completing something in a chevron pattern! It was a pretty simple pattern, here, I think in the past I got tripped up by the "dc 3 tog" that creates the valley of the chevron- I just didn't really understand what that was. I had a lot of the plain medium blue color, so I went with that one, and threw in some stripes of baby-weight yarns, using up all of the solid baby blue, and the mixed blue-and-white baby yarns (I have a lot of the white one, just needed to complete the gradient of stripe colors). Ended up pretty decently sized.

Little Yellow Blankie

I made this little yellow blankie with some yellow and multi-color boucle yarn that I bought a while back on clearance. It's so thick and so bright that I was a stumped for a while as to what to do with it (that I hadn't done with similar yarn before- I do not like repeat projects). Eventually I chose this shell pattern, with enough "holes" that it lets some air through, and doesn't get so thick and stiff that it doesn't drape and fold. Finished it off with a single crochet border in a solid dark, complementary purple. At one point I considered making stripes through the project with the purple, but ultimately scrapped the idea because the thicknesses were too different; but, it does make a good border to close off the edges. Because the pattern allows some open space, I got more use out of the yarn that I was able to buy (about 5 skeins) than if I had gone with a solid pattern, which worked out nicely. It's a pretty good sized baby blanket.

Baby Blankie- Blue

New stitch pattern for me! Pretty simple, I picked it up quickly. Laid out, the blanket has two wider stripes of gray on the outside (2 skeins worth), and then slightly less wide stripes of solid blue, gray, and solid blue (1 skein each). I think I would have preferred to have all of the stripes the same width, but free yarn accepters can't be too picky.

Placemats

Another Christmas gift, for a gift exchange that required the gifts be home made. I have since eaten meals off these, and they're nice! It's a nice touch to the table.

Had a little difficulty with the darker yellow ones, as the fabric was warped when it was printed on- the pattern doesn't run with the grain, but it also doesn't really run quite at a single angle either. Somehow I managed to scrap four of those out. The lighter yellow ones were the originally intended fabric, but since it was a thrift-shop pillowcase, I only managed to get three of that pattern. However, the colors are similar enough, and in the same family as the table, that mixing and matching the placemats isn't a problem.

An Accounting Joke

For my coworker's baby girl, due in February. I took care to make a good, solid, and dark stamp of our stamp, scanned it into the computer, reversed it and printed out on to iron-on transfer paper. The transfer paper insists on using a board with a pillowcase over it- I got a little bit of the dark brown transferring through the pillowcase from my table leaf's ancient painting or staining (the underside); I'm *hoping* the yellowing effect will come out in the wash. There was also a fourth onesie, that I only ironed for the recommended 20 seconds... it came out very faded and light, so I tried to put the paper back and continue ironing, but of course that did not work out so well. I'm hoping that stamp can come out entirely in the wash, or at least enough to do something else to the onesie.