Red Afghan

Mid-January, I made a trip to Hancock Fabrics. I had just moved, and naturally had to stake out my new fabric store. I got lucky. Christmas items were on sale, which included this lovely rich red yarn with a bit of gold running through it (there was also a really nice forest green, but only one skein, and a bright cherry red, that I wasn't sold on). Lion Brand Yarn, at $1/skein- quite a deal. Naturally I bought all the skeins they had left of it (about 6). Enough for an afghan.

The color reminded me of Hannah, who is a big fan a good, deep red. As I have too many afghans already, I decided to give the eventual product to her (see image).

Nothing too fancy stylistically about the afghan, it's just a plain single crochet the whole way through, nice and easy, relaxing. It took me a while to finish it, because there's been so much else going on in my life, and then a while to get to her, due to conflicting schedules and my need to wash/dry it before getting it to her.

Paperback Sculpture/ Mobile

I've been lazy. Since mid-January I have: moved, resettled, started a new job, not known when I was going to work (which leads to 12 hour sleepathons). Anyways, long story short, projects have either fallen by the wayside, or taken much much longer to complete. I've been pretty lazy about using my freetime productively (except in the area of cooking. Girl's gotta eat.). However, I've got some projects burning around my home, hopefully soon to be completed, and for now, I've got the start of one.

I made this little book mobile out of a free copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (the world will not hurt for one less paperback copy of Harry Potter) and some 'jewels' I got from a friend. It's the test run for what will hopefully become several of these hanging from my ceiling.

I spent several hours watching netflix and folding pages back (quite the sacrifice, there), and then ripped off the covers. After folding all the pages, the binding started to curl, but not all the way around- in the future, I'll have to find books where the binding is better destroyed before I pick it up. I worried that if I artificially destroyed the binding, I would end up tearing the book in half. Ultimately, I used wood glue (I moved, this is what I have) to glue the two edges together, but it's still not perfect- there's a noticeable gap in the folded pages where I attached the front and back of the book.

After that, I punched a hole in the spine with a needle to thread fishing line through for hanging. I then ran some more fishing line through to hang the jewels (this allows me to dictate how far from the book they hang- if I had hung them on the same line, the book would have fallen further down and the spine would have ended up on top of the jewels, if not covering them).

As I said, I hope to have a couple more of these to hang, so that there's a jumble of them against the wall and corner. This one's hanging a little higher than I expected (I always forget how high my ceilings are), but I can adjust that on future ones.

QUILT!

After moving, I realized that I had way more fabric than someone who tends to move a lot should have. In fact, most of it is still sitting in boxes against the wall, as I have less space to spread out my projects now. And I'd been thinking about making a quilt for a while anyways...


So, I found a couple large pieces of fabric that worked together (grasshopper&pink pattern, the green, and the green flannel), then snatched an old pilly blanket from the linen closet at my parents (it was always kind of itchy and a little uncomfortable, and since I upgraded to a full-size bed, I've had ZERO use for it), and an old light green twin sheet for the backing.

I designed an 8-pointed star pattern for the front of the blanket, primarily utilizing the grasshopper pattern and the plain green cotton quilting fabric for the triangles, and using some spare muslin for the star in the center. Due to my faulty measuring (the triangles should have been about another .5" in each direction...) the top piece ended up being a little smaller than I had planned, and so I had to arrange for some extra edging around the outside. I found some green flannel that I had purchased a couple years ago for a project that never materialized, and put it to work!

Then I used cream colored yarn to tie all three layers together at the corners of the triangles, and trimmed all the edges to be about the same, trimming the center piece about .5" more. I turned the edges in around the center piece, and sewed through all thicknesses to create a finished edge.

It was lots of fun! I think it's one of my best-looking quilts yet. I'm still working out some kinks (edging, measuring, pattern complexity), but I think I'm doing alright considering I learned the vast majority of what I know about quilting through reading and doing. However, the name of the game was to get rid of fabric... so I'm looking for a good home for this twin-sized quilt.

Mitts

Fleece mittens! Black 'outside', with green and multicolored frogs on the palms. Copied a pattern off a pair of mittens I bought years ago... the ones I made ended up tighter and warmer though, probably because I didn't add any seam allowance (I wanted them a little tighter). But, I only had to cut out three pieces per mitt, which is always a plus, and the whole process took maybe an hour, hour and a half.

Yeah, the picture is goofy. But I didn't feel like getting out my real camera, and I didn't feel like showing off my messy bedroom.

a pepperoni pizza!

inspired by: http://www.modcloth.com/store/ModCloth/Womens/Accessories/Pins+Keychains/Extra+Pepperoni+Brooch

It will become a brooch! I just have to find my pin backs, so that I can attach one.

Emory Pillowcase

A good friend is currently in the process of getting ready to move to Atlanta for grad school, a pretty daunting venture: new city, new state, new school, new friends, new experience... For obvious reasons I can't follow along, and so I've been working on a going-away gift for her. There are a couple of purchased items that will be included in the final package, but the piece that I put the most time/effort/thought into is this pillowcase that I embroidered the edge of.

She's going into the Public Health program (Rollins School of Public Health) at Emory University, which is a really good school for that, and it was her number one choice, so she's pretty excited about that. She's already got a fleece blanket school swag item that she purchased down there when she visited (post-acceptance), and she's interested in more, so I decided to try embroidering the school logotype onto the edge of a plain white pillowcase.

The pillowcase is an item purchased at a secondhand store, and washed before I began embroidering. I printed out some source material from the internet, since I wanted this to be a straightforward copying of the logo, and then freehanded from there. I did the outline of the crest first, to get some sense for how and where the overall design was going to layout across the edging, and then worked on the insignia within as the final stitches. While not the worst/most intricate coat of arms I've ever seen, it was definitely the most daunting part of this design.

Completed in DMC #791.

Simplicity #2886

I was at JoAnn's a couple weeks ago, and saw this pattern displayed on the mannequin (and I was doing so well! I hadn't picked up anything that wasn't on my list!), and I had to have it, so I went to look for it. I think it was the pockets that really sold me. Luckily the only one left in stock was in my size.

And about two or three days ago now, I woke up really wanting to spend my day making a dress. This pattern was still fresh in my head, so I chose it, and then started thinking about fabric. I definitely wanted something lighter, since it's summer right now, and such is my summer palette, and I had these old curtains lying around from last summer when I came into a large quantity of fabric & notions... It worked out well, since the curtains provided more fabric than I needed, and they were lined, so I didn't have to go out of my way to pick out lining or even separately cut the lining. I also happened to have the right size zipper on hand, and I used it.

I was surprised by the simplicity of the pattern, I had expected it to require more than 7 pattern pieces, but it didn't! The cutting when very quickly! And I actually followed the instructions for once, which was a good idea, since they had me putting the zipper on the side, and cleverly putting together the bodice part (while not particularly any more difficult, I had never done a side zipper before). Even the pleats weren't so bad, not nearly as frustrating as tucks (for the layman/woman: tucks require you to fold, and then individually sew a length of about an inch or two, while pleats only require you to fold, and then sew into the seam, which requires less individual attention). The only thing that is frustrating, is that side zipper. It looks nice, because the back of the neck is pretty high for a sundress, but it sits in my skin weird. Not really 'scratchy', but definitely itchy on occasion.