Recent Craft Endeavours

Lately I have been bitten by the knitting bug.  In order to get over it quickly I have been knitting little things.  Things like these.....

and these.....

I have also been doing a bit of dress making.  Not for me or anyone I know, but baby burial items.  I found some moire taffeta and some satin in my stash of fabrics and I made these two dresses.....

The funny looking thing at the top of the above pic is a small bonnet.  The bootees can be seen better in the first pic.

I have about 8 flannelette  burial gowns too and I am knitting bonnets and bootees to go with them.  I also need to make some bloomers - luckily I also found some silk lining fabric that will suffice.

There is an Australian chapter of Angel Baby Gowns and I intend the satin items to go to them - if they ever answer my numerous emails.  If they don't that's their loss as I know a midwife who would take them.

MSNP Syndrome has kicked in with a vengeance

this weekend.

It made me start not 1 but 3 new projects!

The first one is a quilt I will donate to a local scouting performing group.

So far I have put together 8 blocks - I need 125 to make the quilt.

The next one was a house quilt I found on the web.  I figured I could make a smaller version of this......

... starting with this little block...

It's from the blog - building houses from scraps - a dutch blog but has English translations too.  The owner of the blog has lots of pics of quilts people made during 2012 as they made 1 house per day for the quilts.  They are all amazing.  There's even one from a lady in Australia.

Mine measures 4.5 inches unfinished, is rather wonky - hand pieced.  I may try doing it by machine.  I think the door is too high and that it would look better with 1 larger window rather than 2.  I also need to mix up the fabrics a bit more.

It only needs 143 friends and just possibly a larger embroidered friend too.  I have figured out that if I use 8 different colours I need 18 in each colour way.  I will have black sashing and red cornerstones like the one above.  The black will be the only fabric I buy - the rest will come from the stash.

And then there's these guys.....

They belong to a Dear Jane type of quilt - 198 blocks in total both pieced and appliqued.  Also a stash buster...

Am I crazy?

At least the last 2 projects are things that I can work on as the mood takes me.  They are all only small blocks so shouldn't take too long to make. 

My Convergence Quilt

I have just finished the top for my first ever Ricky Timms Convergence Quilt and I'm not sure I like it.  It's probably the fabric choices that have me unsold.

So 2 days ago I took 4 fabrics.....

cut them up according to the plan and sewed them together.....

then cut some more and sewed some more.........

Didn't take too long to do.  At this point it looks ok.  Then this afternoon I added the borders and got this.......

I made a mistake with the first bit of border sewing and couldn't use those bits of fabric.  So I had to improvise to get it looking how I wanted it to look.  A bit more judicious piecing and I end up with a quilt about 45" square (not really square, but you get the idea).

Maybe the borders are too wide?  But if I cut them narrower it won't be a usable quilt - more of a table topper/hanging.

I wonder if I could cut the borders narrower and then add another narrow navy border and then put the off cuts back on.  Anyone got any thoughts?

Busy Knitting

Over that past few weeks I have been busy knitting beanies.  10 of them in fact.  They are all destined for the Alice Springs Beanie Festival.  Hopefully they will sell.


First there was a pink multi acrylic knitted in a brick pattern.....

And then a blue multi knitted with some fluffy acrylic....

I used the blue multi again and added in some other blues getting paler each time and ended in white.  It's rather long for a beanie....

And then there was the grey/cream/silver yarn I had.....

All of these were from yarn I already had in my stash.  Most of my stash is single balls, so making a beanie makes good use of them.  I did make another similar to the one above, but I haven't taken it's photo.

Then there was this one.  It's really soft and folds up quite small.  I have since added  a knitted flower to one side tot his one.

What do you think of this one?  I call it Yup Yup....

These next 2 were made with the only ball of yarn I purchased.  It's a wool/nylon mix, quite soft but no the easiest to knit with.  The yarn kept on splitting....

And then there was the one that took me 3 nights to make!!  Again acrylic from the stash - who buys fluoro orange yarn??

Me apparently....

 

 

I finally got around to putting together the Cali Mum's Mystery Quilt too.  Not too sure on the second border though.

 

Oh and I also made up April's Small Quilt Talk challenge quilt.  I have now quilted it and just have to put the binding on.

 

Can I just say I hate prairie points laid like this.  They don't want to sit flat especially in the corners.

 

Craft Rooms Thoughts

I am lucky enough to have a spare bedroom all to myself for all of my crafting stuff - well except for any scrapbooking or card making, that's stored elsewhere.  I appreciate the fact that whenever I like I can disappear into my girl-cave, shut the door and generally not be bothered - sometimes for hours on end.

It's only a small room - 9 foot by 10 foot and it has an inbuilt wardrobe.  There is 1 small window on a short wall.  I have squeezed in a large desk, a bookcase and a LARGE set of industrial shelves (they must be 8 feet long and nearly go tot he ceiling).  This space is also where I iron ad I tend to use the ironing board as an extra bench.  I am sure I have talked about it before.

When we put in the shelves I did do a bit of a clean up.  I labelled tubs with their contents.  I got rid of some bags of fabrics and bits and pieces.  Things looked tidy for a little while.

But now it is back in a mess again!  There is basically only enough space to walk to the desk and back out again - barely enough room to swing a cat as they say.  I can't get into the wardrobe with all the items laying on the floor in front of the doors.

I was sewing a knitting needle roll yesterday - a quick simple project - and a set of drawers on the desk was getting in the way.

So now I think it is time I go thru it all properly and get rid of stuff.  There are a lot of projects and kits I have purchased over the years that are half buried and not being made up.  There are tubs and tubs of fabrics, paints, cross stitch paraphernalia, etc.

So what to do with it all?

I have done a quick count of the things I have listed on the blog - 57.  That's a lot.  To make it worse, I have even bought a few more kits/boms since making that list.  There must be 70 different things!!

I am heading towards getting rid of everything that is not already packaged up - and I mean everything!!  Perhaps try to recoup some of the money I have spent on them by having a garage sale.

Considering I have diverse interests in all things craft that's a large garage sale.

What do you guys think I should do?

Another Flimsy

done!!

This one went together really quickly.  I did stuff up the layout a bit - that's what happens when you put the blocks aside for a week or so.  Whilst it doesn't look like the pattern I think it still looks good.

As you can see it is folded in half.  I am going to quilt straight lines in the middle of the pink bars going all the way across to the border and then do some straight lines around the border in a rectangle.  It will then be donated to a cali club for Mother's day.


I have also finished the flimsy for the Mystery Quilt I have been getting some mums at Cali to do.

I can't show you that as I don't know if any of them know of my blog.  It is nearly at an end anyway, so I guess I can reveal it in a week or two.  Maybe when I have actually quilted it?

It's a Mystery

Ooh ooh ooh, a mystery, aah aah ahh.

Oh stop singing!!

In case I haven't mentioned it before I am running a Mystery Quilt along with some friends.  There's only a couple of us doing it but I am having fun.  We started with a focus fabric - which is actually the outer most border and then use coordinating plains or near plains for the centre bits.

This is my focus fabric.  It's a Japanese styled print with greys, reds, oranges, browns and golds in it.

 

I decided to select 4 other prints and 4 plains as well as a motley print for the background - this is them all together.

 

I had the ladies cut and bag up their fabrics just to keep it a bit organised.

 

 

After the fourth set of instructions this is what we have..... a four patch four patch.

 

The fifth set gets us to make some half square triangles....

 

And then we have to add a triangle to the larger square we cut out....

So far so good.  I am trying to stay 1 step ahead of the others even though I know I could easily have it finished in a day.  As I do each step I take note how long it takes me and add that to the instructions.  These ladies are new to quilting/patchwork so I have made most of the steps really short - under 1 hour each.  The hardest part will be the final quilting of their quilts.