On my needles -- ribbing edition

I've been knitting a lot lately, but not finishing much, so there hasn't been much to blog about. I thought I would finish a pair of mittens for D, but ran out of yarn (such giant hands!) and had to regroup because I didn't want to schlep out to Woolbearers just then. I had some Cascade Eco Alpaca sitting around being melty-soft, and though it is definitely not sock yarn I started a pair anyway. They'll be comfy to wear around the house or with Birkenstocks, and I promise not to be fussy if they droop a little. I'm knitting them in 3 x 1 ribbing all the way down to try to compensate a bit for the lack of springiness in the alpaca.

Then yesterday I made the trip to Mount Holly to pick up the mitten yarn and also the wool for my father-in-law's new sweater (some really nice Plymouth Merino Worsted Superwash), and spent the rest of the day winding one hank into a ball and trying to make a gauge swatch. I'm really frustrated with how slowly the winding went and how slowly and painstakingly I knit. I know that the knitting will come with time and practice, but the winding! Oh, how I wish I had a swift! My current dream is to make one like this, using tinkertoys of all things! If I can buy some used (the new ones cost practically as much as a swift does) I will do it, I will!

As you can see, I'm having serious storage issues with my knitting needle collection (there's that mitten again.) This is what happened when I went to find my size 7 circs to make the gauge swatch. Clearly something needs to be done. Probably I need to purge the needles I know I'm not ever going to use (like the bendy rubbery ones that came in the big thrift-store lots I've purchased to get the nice big wooden ones), make some sort of caddy for the straights, and maybe come up with some sort of binder/folder system for the circulars. How do you store your knitting needles?

Living Room

Since the cold weather came we've been spending less and less time in the "TV Room," where it's freezing, and more and more time in the Living Room, where it's toasty warm. We read, play, knit, draw, talk, giggle, and fiddle around on our laptops here. The guinea pigs live next door in the dining room (don't ask me to explain how that happened) and we chat with them in their cage, and sometimes set up their play pen in here and let them run around and munch on veggies while we fend off the cats. A lot of living gets done here. And I wanted to mark that, somehow.

Enter Amanda Soule's Handmade Home. Her One-Word Banner project fit the bill just right, I think. The letters are cotton fabric scraps appliqued onto felted wool rectangles, and they're just sewn at intervals onto a length of bias tape. (Ah, the magic of bias tape. Why is there never a sale on bias tape?) As usual, I love that they're red.

While I was working on appliqueing the letters and nearly finished, K walked into the studio; she saw l, y, and a heart. She asked what word I was making, and I asked if she could guess. "Something with love?" she ventured. Yes! Yes! Something with love.

Guinea Pig Crafting

Have I introduced you to the two newest members of our family? Meet Chancellor and Gordon, two Peruvian guinea pigs with a lot of hair and a lot of style!

Despite what the above photo would have you believe, they spend their days on a bed of fleece -- it wicks moisture right through to an absorbent layer beneath, which heretofore has been a towel, but as of today they sleep and play on a mama-made Guinea Pig Mattress. Cuddly fleece on top, absorbent diaper soaker fabric inside and waterproof barrier on the bottom. Nothing but the best for my boys!

I had seen instructions for making this sort of thing in other places online, but none of them seemed to fit my style -- either too much sewing was involved or the directions were too complicated or something -- so I set out to make a fleece mattress that was simpler in design and even simpler to construct. The result pleased me so much that I made another one and wrote a tutorial for it, and here it is for you to use:

Guinea Pig Fleece Mattress Tutorial (PDF)

I invite you to try it out, let me know what worked and what didn't work and what needs improvement, what changes you made and how your piggies liked it. I hope you're as happy with your results as I was with mine!

(For those of you who are not cavy-crazy, if you'd care to read the tutorial and offer constructive criticism, I'd be grateful for that, too.)

Smocks and more

K has a birthday party to go to tomorrow. We needed a present and something special to wear, stat. I found the pattern for this "Swing Swing Smock" in Amy Karol's Bend the Rules Sewing and modified it to fit my six-year-old. Thanks to Amy's zig-zag method of applying bias tape, it was a cinch to make -- took maybe an hour, tops. The fabric is Amy Butler from my stash, and I have a yard of that pocket material waiting to become a Lazy Days Skirt (by Oliver & S) -- but we needed something warm enough for K to wear now.

Out there on the Internet are tutorials galore, and I found one to make a child's skirt from an adult's sweater and another to make a child's leggings from the arms and shoulders left over from the adult's sweater made into the child's skirt. As it happened, I had a brown cashmere sweater that I didn't enjoy wearing very much, that was just the size, shape and softness to make into a skirt-and-leggings set for K.

She was delighted with her new outfit when she came home from school today and it was all I could do to get it off of her at bedtime! I'm just relieved that both pieces fit and were comfortable for her.

For her friend's birthday present we found fabric featuring the characters from Disney's The Princess and the Frog -- K reports that the child is Disney-princess crazy -- and I made another smock. I didn't have an appropriate sweater to make a skirt/legging set so I purchased a t-shirt and leggings at Target that I hope will fit her. I am less enthralled with this outfit than I am with the one for K, but if it suits her classmate's taste (which I hope it does), then I'm happy.

Goodies from the Guild House

After prayer quilting group today, I stayed in the vestry room to watch the cleaning-out of the wardrobe that was once used by the women who sewed vestments and linens and other items needed by the church, including a set of aging and obsolete confirmation veils that we pulled out and wondered what to do with (they went back in the closet.) I took quite a bundle of treasure home with me!

This thread-holder was made by the husband of one of the sewing-guild ladies, and I got to take it along with its collection of antique and modern spools of thread. I love that it's red!

As you will read in a post that is coming soon, I have recently discovered the magic and wonder of bias binding. Today I hit the jackpot with this box full of it! It's not all in perfect condition, but it will certainly do for doll clothes.

Is this green brocade magnificent? There's enough to make a good-sized pillow, front and back, or a pair of pillows if I use a different backing. What would you make with it?

I'm sure I will find something ornate to use that gorgeous gold, green and white trim on. And check out that white damask peeking out in the corner. That's about a yard of 45" material there, enough to make one pretty fancy christening set for someone's baby doll.

If all that weren't enough of a prize for going to work on quilts with the church ladies today, get this -- as we were wrapping up, one of the women came in bearing a quilt that looked astonishingly like the My House quilt on my bed -- I was astonished! After some inquries, I found out that someone had found some four-patch pieces in a bag that had been donated and liked the colors, so had sewn them together into a prayer quilt. Of course! My leftover patches! So someone else will have a My House quilt for comfort and healing. That just completely made my day. I could not be happier.

Oh, I love it!

I just had to pop in and point you to Amanda Soule's latest creation, a gorgeous fleece-backed flannel quilt, made simply of large blocks and tied at the corners, so cozy for her youngest child's new bed. I am entranced by the new collection of prints by Anna Maria Horner, so bright and pretty. If only I didn't have such a backlog of projects, I would certainly copy this one! Go take a look; it will make you smile.

Back in the studio

I took a break over the holidays and mostly worked on knitting mittens -- finished a pair for myself and nearly finished a pair for D, which he may yet get by the time the cold weather is over. But I'm back in the studio with a new sewing machine and plenty of new projects in the works.

Before Christmas I went through my stash of thrifted sheets and readied them for projects galore... They're not just for pajama pants anymore!

I spent most of today working on a long-overdue birthday present for my nephew J, who turned The Big Oh-Three back in November. I had fun making his superhero cape, though by the time I was done it had me singing my high school's alma mater (Crimson and gold, triumphant evermore!) and wondering whether J might look more like Ronald McDonald than a powerful crime-fighter. I think he'll probably enjoy it just the same.

My notions bin has yet to recover from the ransacking it received when I was looking for just the right trim for an improvised doll's dress that K's hand-me-down baby could wear to show-and-tell last Friday. It was constructed and donned with haste and I have not seen it since, or I would show it to you here.

Here are the pre-washed fabrics for the preemie quilt I'm making as a sample for the craftivism group I'm trying to get together at my church. I've been wanting to work with 30's reproduction fabrics for a long time, and I had a good excuse to buy some last week at my quilt store's Fat Quarter Friday -- they will be perfect for a baby, and they mix seamlessly (no pun intended) with some vintage scraps I bought when we were antique-scrounging in Michigan last summer.

So my hands are full and busy, and I must say I am quite happy with the whole deal.

Six!

Happy birthday to my new six-year-old!

Here she is in her self-made birthday crown:

And here she is in her mama-made oilcloth apron:

 (Naturally, I have a matching one.  Painting party, anyone?)

Beach blanket -- take two

I happened upon a gorgeous green chenille bedspread the other week and I knew it was time to try the beach blanket project again.  I'm showing you the back first because I love how D and I managed to cut the center medallion out so nicely.  It's not like anyone will see it, but I love knowing it's there.

The front side is made up of ten squares cut from vintage bedsheets.  I have already made comfy pajama pants from seven of these bedsheets, and I plan to make pajama pants from the remnants of the other three and revel in their flowery goodness!

And it all wraps up into a neat little package at the end. Bring on the beach weather!

Violet Beauregarde, complete

I fixed the hole! Now my sweater is wearable! First I re-knit and grafted the stitches together according to the methods given in this article. Then (though I know some of you will shudder at this) I darned over the graft because I was so worried that I hadn't done a good enough job. It doesn't look bad, especially when I wear the darned part on my back, and when I consider that this is my very first sweater EVER I feel quite successful about the whole thing. I learned many lessons and still came out with something I could wear. In public. Which I'm doing for the first time today, Violet Beauregarde and Barney be darned.

New knitting project

I am in love with this chunky alpaca from Cascade Yarns. It's just the right weight for a sweater -- not too heavy (the purple sweater I made is nice, but a little weighty for general wear, better for chilly winter evenings when I don't have to move around too much) or too stretchy and fluffy (the white yarn from Misti Alpaca that I tried the first time around was, once again, nice, but a little too pouffy.) This yarn is looking like a good substitution for the obscenely expensive yarn called for in the "Unisex Cashmere Knock-Around Pullover" in Weekend Knitting that I've had my eye on since last summer. It's by far the most challenging knitting pattern that I've tried, but I think I may be able to pull it off. I'll keep you posted.

On my wall

My favorite quilt, which D finally hung up in my studio last night.

I made it well over a year ago and it's far from perfect, but I love it! The picture does not do it justice -- come visit me and see it in person! You'll have to wade through piles of vintage bedsheet scraps, but it's totally worth it. Trust me.

Vintage, yellow and roses

What could be nicer to wear to bed? This fabulous pattern from Ducky House uses the hem on a vintage bedsheet to finish a tailor-made pair of pajama pants, and it couldn't be easier.

The pajama pants experimentation continues. I was disappointed, when I tried these on, to find that the too-high-slightly-snug-waist problem had shown up again, but this time I took action. I cut off the waist casing that I had just sewn and sewed one on the now-shorter pants, tried them on and was reasonably satisfied with the results. I'm going to make the waist on the next pair even lower, and I think that will solve the problem altogether.

And yes, for those of you who are wondering, I did iron them before I photographed them, but I doubt if I'll need to do it again as they're made with No-Iron Percale. Definitely a plus.

Cozy

I never would have thought of this myself, but it seems that laptops need cozies. Do a Google search on "laptop cozy" and you find quite a number of choices, whether you want to make your own or buy one ready-made (though of course you want to make your own.) The other day I stumbled upon a magnificent cozy on One Pearl Button, made from a beautiful cabled sweater-vest, and I knew that soon I would be making my own.

My cozy is made from a felted pink sweater, which I loved because of its flowery embroidery on the shoulder. Of course the embroidery was in a completely inconvenient place, so I had to applique it onto the front of the cozy. I was a little nervous but it came out nicely. The sweater was a little on the short side so I added a gusset at the bottom made from one of the sleeves. I lined the whole thing with a cream-colored cashmere (nothing but the best for my laptop) and made an elastic casing at the top.

Now when I'm not using it my laptop is snug as a bug in a rug!

Stacked Coins Doll Quilt

Yesterday's post featured an improvised rail fence quilt taken from mainly reds in my stash. Since I decided to make the blocks first, then determine the layout, there were a number of leftover blocks. Here's what I did with them, influenced by the Stacked Coins Doll Quilt in Remembering Adelia: Quilts that Inspired Her Diary by Kathleen Tracy.

It used up all the leftover blocks and only took a little scrap fabric from my stash to finish. I'm so pleased with both red quilts that I'll be re-creating them in blue and posting instructions for making them here, hopefully in the near future.

I'm thinking of making a doll bed, complete with mattress, sheets and pillows, out of a cardboard box (because those make the best toys, as everyone knows), to give to K at Christmas.

Red Crosses Prayer Quilt

Maybe they're a little more like pinwheels, but I like the idea of thinking of them as red crosses given to someone in need -- of prayer, comfort, warmth, what have you. This quilt came out of a desire to have something to bring to our church's prayer quilting session today, and a strong urge to make something with the pretty red prints in my stash. I took nine prints and made rail fence blocks, intending to arrange them however they would go once they were all complete, and this is the pattern they took.

Like any other blanket, the red quilt attracts cats. Here it is in its full lap-quilt stature. I'll be taking it later today for folks to put the ties in.

A detailed explanation of what a prayer quilt is and information about the Prayers and Squares organization can be found here. The specifics of our church's chapter is on the Outreach and Inreach section of St. Mary's website.

The (doubly) green artsy blanket

As promised, my weekend project:

"It's a cat bed for two cats!" exclaimed K.

It's really a free-form sort-of patchwork felted sweater-blanket -- or, as one seller on Etsy described their version of it, an Artisan Crafted Repurposed Felted Wool Blanket.

It's made from the trunks and sleeves of maybe 12 or 15 felted wool sweaters, zig-zagged together with lapped seams (that just seemed the sturdiest way to do it) and edged on the sides with ribbing cut from another sweater. I considered making it reversible by doubling the sweater pieces, but a) I wasn't sure how to do that, b) I think the backs of the sweaters are softer to the touch and would be nicer to have against your skin anyway, and c) I kind of thought that two layers of sweater would make the blanket too heavy. At about 76" x 87", it covers our queen-sized bed. (I didn't mean for it to get so big, but you know how things go...)

I washed it in cold on my machine's "hand-wash" cycle, and dried it on high (I dry everything on high; it's just a bad habit I have) and it came out soft and fluffy, if a little fuzzy. I plan to go over it with a sweater stone but I need to buy a new one when I go to the fabric store, so for now I'll live with the fuzz.

I love that this blanket is made from repurposed materials (hence the name), and I love that it feels like wearing an extra sweater in bed without the uncomfortable bulk of actually doing so. It will compliment my pillowcase quilt nicely (that's for another post) and making it is a step toward developing more of my own designs. I also love that it is green.

At the moment

Behold, my studio. I have just finished a major creative project, one for which I should have logged hours and expenses as I may decide to sell it. (If I can convince myself to part with the item, similar ones are selling for big bucks on Etsy.) I would show you what I made, but it's currently tumbling through the dryer. (I hope it's okay...) So watch this space; I have so much to tell you about but in time, in time.

Ready for winter

K was home from school again yesterday, so instead of starting on the Playing Again quilt I made my version of the Doily Scarf from Handmade Home. It's done in soft felted wool suiting backed with thrifted vintage cotton (anyone recognize it from another project?) and uses doilies that I purchased at the Reuzit Shop in Lancaster for this specific purpose. It was both great fun and really easy to make and I love its fresh, unusual design. Although this one is red and green I will probably not just wear it at Christmas, and I will likely make at least one more to give as a gift.

For my sick chick

Poor K has been home sick from school for four days now; it's getting kind of old for her though she's been a real trooper about not complaining. Mainly she's sad because she's missing the fun activities her friends are getting to do -- not the least of which is the Halloween parade tomorrow, in which she was to have worn her K-Cat costume and marched with her friends (and her proud Mama.) I hope she'll still get to do that, but hope is getting slender.

So last night I made her this comfort object from Amanda Soule's Handmade Home. With an average temperature of around 100.2, she hardly needs a hot water bottle. But there's something so soothing about having something warm to cuddle, and this sloshy little thing wearing Daddy's old comfy flannel shirt from college, that I wore for years after Daddy "outgrew" it, brought a smile to her face this morning.

Quilt for dawni

Remember the four-patch quilt from last March? When I promised that if you helped me give the quilt a name I would make one of you a miniature quilt as a gift? It's only taken me seven months and a weekend, but I've finished dawni's quilt and here it is, compliments of Miss K:

It is a Friendship Star Quilt, pretty much done as outlined in Kathleen Tracy's Prairie Children and Their Quilts: 14 Little Projects That Honor the Pioneer Spirit, which I think is as much fun to read as it is to quilt from. The fabrics were taken entirely from my stash, which is kind of embarrassing, given the number of them that appear and the ease with which I was able to choose them. I hope dawni enjoys it, whether she uses it as a wall hanging or maybe a doll quilt?

I may be making more quilts from this book soon, but my next project (taking time out here and there for holiday gift-making; I can't believe it's that time of year already) will DEFINITELY be the Playing Along Quilt from Anna Maria Horner's Seams to Me: 24 New Reasons to Love Fabric made with yards and yards of Amy Butler prints snatched up at the Berry Basket Quilt Show last weekend!

Ribbing

In working on the knitted prayer shawl I mentioned in a previous post, I have learned that knitting ribbing is really easy (which is kind of what I'd thought) and that it's also really hard (if you don't understand the directions or pay attention to what you're doing.)

Directions: Cast on 80 sts. Sl. 1st st., k1p1 to end.

How difficult is that? Assuming you've really cast on 80 stitches (which you'll need for the cables later, and which I never even got to), you then need to know which way to slip the first stitch, knitwise or purlwise, and what those things mean anyway. (I sort of understand what they mean, so I slipped what I'm pretty sure was knitwise.) Then you need to know that you skip the first knit stitch and go right to the purl. I had to read on in the directions to work this out. It took me about ten tries. Finally, you need to remember to keep alternating between knit and purl stitches, which in theory is easy but is hard when you're just learning. Don't try to do it and chew gum at the same time.

Now, in Stitch and Bitch they basically say that to do ribbing, you knit the knits and purl the purls. When I tried approaching it this way (in a k2p2 pattern) I had no trouble at all getting it right. Looks like I've been knitting ribbing all my life. Huh.

I only cast on 32 stitches this time so we're looking at more of a scarf than a shawl, but I think I'm ready to move on to cables. Watch this space.

Notes to self

If you're going to be drinking tea while knitting, do not store stashed yarn on the floor in between tea-table and knitting chair, unless you want to spend the wee hours of the morning rinsing out expensive wool and alpaca yarns and hanging them to dry when disaster ensues, and spending who knows how many days wondering if they will dry in usable condition. Not to mention running soggy bath towels through the wash, scrubbing your good white woolen carpet and kicking your sorry behind.

Also, no matter what the picture in the knitting book looks like, cheap acrylic yarn is still that. Go with the good stuff and spend more time knitting and less time frogging.

Saying goodbye

I have had to set my mitten, sweater and other fun projects aside for a few days to work on a prayer shawl for a grieving friend. A week ago her husband came down with the sniffles as she was recovering from a bout with the flu, and early yesterday morning he passed away from complications due to H1N1. He was my age, and they were close to each other in a way that most couples wish they could be. Rodney is at rest and at peace, but my sadness deepens for his wife as the stitches and rows add up and I struggle with the new design.

I have been casual about flu shots in the past but will be scheduling vaccinations for myself and K (D's is already taken care of) this afternoon. Please make sure you get yours too, if you're able.

Berkshire Sweater, revisited

One of the reasons I was so quiet in September was because I could not stop knitting.  I found some irresistible alpaca/acrylic yarn (details on Ravelry) and started right in on a new version of the Weekend Knitting "Berkshire Sweater" I'd begun back in June/July when I first picked up knitting again in earnest.  I finished the sweater and it doesn't look bad for a first effort -- I'll share pictures and stories here at a later date.  Right now I'm concerned because after blocking it I discovered some mistakes, including a gargantuan hole in the middle of the thing, I suspect from two ends of yarn knotted together that I didn't notice in my eagerness to get the thing done.  Here's what the worst two look like:

__

Anyone with thoughts on what I might do to alleviate these problems  (And I did think of adding a big kangaroo pocket, but it didn't seem suitable so close to the underarm.  Sheesh.)  I do like the way the sweater fits, at least for a knock-around Saturday affair, and I loooove the softness of it.

Calling all knitters

So I've been discovering the fun and niftiness of Ravelry.  Come join me there!  My username is jamartin24 -- make friends with me if you're already on or request a signup link if you're not.  I'm slowly but surely getting my stash, needles, projects and ideas organized in my notebook and looking forward to meeting some new folks and expanding my horizons.

Busy day

Found lovely St.-Mary's-Blue patterned flannel in several designs, now have a handful of ideas to try and may actually be able to bring something to the Episcopal Church Women's annual meeting on Sunday where I'll be asking for folks to volunteer to help with the Baptism Blanket project -- I will be getting to work on that shortly.

Purchased lovely deep pink variegated pearl cotton to hand-quilt the yellow-green silk dupioni with a cerise cotton backing. It's all so soft and beautiful, I can't wait to start! I need to buy a hand-quilting frame before I can work on that, though.

Finished knitting the first mitten in a pair of beautiful blackberry wool tweed and was unimpressed with the result, but am so confident halfway through the second one that I'm fairly certain I'll be able to complete mitten #2 and rework mitten #1 into wearable (if not even giftable) pair by the end of the weekend, assuming other projects don't distract me.

Loving being immersed in art and craft -- this is living my dream!

Knittin' Mittens

Project of the day: Super Mittens, Weekend Knitting

Yarn: Cascade Yarns Cascade 128 Tweed, Blackberry, 90% Peruvian highland wool, 10% Donegal (tweed)

Challenge: Learning to knit with double-pointed needles

Thoughts: Pointy sticks everywhere! Like eating a flaming shish kebab!

Dreading: Thumb gusset

On deck: Washed silk quilt; Look-back leggings; Cozy armchair socks

Baptism blanket update

I had just about sold myself on the traditional crocheted-baby-afghan for the baptism blanket design, with a St.-Mary's-Blue satin ribbon woven in as an accent somewhere, which would have been lovely; but two minutes ago when I had to rip half the thing out for the third time I also ripped two fistfuls of hair from my head and swore I would not crochet a third blanket. I'm going to be looking for easy knitting patterns (because I need to use this lovely white wool-acrylic-nylon yarn on something and it may turn out that a knitted blanket is just the thing) and then look at cotton or wool flannel and embroidery, or revisit the white-on-white quilt idea.

Art-on-the-go, take two

I needed a gift for K's friend who just turned six. He was having a "pirate party" and I so wanted to make him a pirate-themed "art-to-go-bag," but there just wasn't fabric to be had that wasn't sooo 5-years-old. So I settled on some "boyish" red-black-and-blue dots and stripes and made him this bag with matching felt pencil roll and art journal, and I found him a Dover Fun With Pirates stencil book to toss in with the mix.

I thought he'd probably like it but according to his mom he loved it! He takes it apart and shows it to everyone and explains what it's for, and even brought it to school for Show and Tell on Friday! I could not be more tickled! I hope to make one for the other kids in his class as they have their birthdays ... here's hoping!

Baptism blankets: fishing for ideas

I'm looking for a little help from the audience here; I really hope you'll all chime in with your comments and/or emails. Here's the story:

I've been asked by the folks at my church to design a "baptism blanket," which would be a special blanket given by our church to the parents of infants and young children who are baptized in the parish. (It would be part of an organization they're trying to resurrect called the Guild of the Christ Child, which in our parish would involve sponsors following the families through the infants' first three years and then helping them enroll in Church School.) The blanket should be about the size of a receiving blanket and labeled with the name of the child and the date of the baptism, but other than that I've been given no guidelines.

Here are some ideas I've had, and the problems I've encountered:

• I have a pattern for an "eyelet bound carriage blanket," but it calls for "blanket fabric" which is impossible to buy by the yard at any local store, and although the book suggests cutting down an actual blanket, it is also impossible to buy a decent blanket for a reasonable amount of money. I have found some white wool flannel online that looks interesting, and if it felts well it will be washable (which is an unwritten requirement), but several people have told me that wool is out because they are allergic to it, because it is itchy, or because it is not washable. I kind of think I'd like to see the fabric before I throw out this option because it is the most "traditional" baby blanket I can think of.
  

• I could make a simple two-layer cotton flannel receiving blanket with a "St. Mary's Blue" binding. (Another suggestion I've heard is that the blanket should include our "signature" royal blue in some aspect.) I would think some embroidery would be appropriate on the front layer to make the blanket look "special" enough. I don't have much experience with embroidery but I feel confident that I can learn to do it; or there will be ladies in the parish who have sewing machines that can do embroidery -- or possibly we could work something out with an applique. I know a woman on the altar guild who will probably have a book on church sewing and embroidery that I can raid for ideas.
  

• I could make a patchwork quilt with all white-on-white prints and a white (or blue, I guess, but I kind of think that would look weird) binding. That has the advantage of being soft and washable.
  

• I could use a crochet pattern that I used in making one of K's baby blankets, that would make a very nice baptism blanket, and just sew a patch to the back for the label -- we'd probably get those printed anyway. Depending on the type of yarn used, both soft and washable. (When I mentioned this option to my friends, they didn't think it would be washable, but I have tossed K's blankets in the wash over and over.)

Thoughts on these ideas? Other ideas? My mind is wide open at this point. I'm going to compile every possible option and make some test blankets, and then see where I am. I'll be sure to keep you posted.

Felted argyle hoodie

I have been saving the green argyle sweater for just the right project. It was just a little felted when I bought it at the thrift store, a little too small for me to wear as it was but just right for a sweater-collage. I think it's been sitting on my shelf for about a month, waiting for the right supporting sweaters to come along and inspire me. Yesterday, finally, I had the time, the inclination, and just the right materials to forge onward.

It's made entirely of felted lambswool sweaters (except the hood, which is cashmere), hand sewn with Persian wool yarn. The body of the sweater took me one day to complete; the hood took me another half-day. In all, I used four sweaters and have a fair number of scraps to be used, probably, in a wool blanket.

The hood was the hardest part to do because I had to draft a pattern, and my initial pattern was entirely too large; I had to un-sew my first hood, cut it down and re-sew it to fit my head. Then sewing it into the V-necked sweater was challenging, and when the hood is up it doesn't look particularly graceful. It doesn't look bad, but it could look better. It is unbelievably cozy and soft, though, so I'm leaving it in place and I will definitely use it.

I love this project because it is such an easy way to obtain a sweater that is just the right size and shape for my body, in a color and pattern that I love. I will be interested to see what other people's reactions are when I wear the sweater in public -- will they like it, or think it's curious, or shake their heads and smile at crafty Jennifer? I'll wear it anyway, because I like it, but we shall see.

Flower power

So I needed some new pajama pants. I liked the ones I had made but it was hard to keep them ironed for everyday wear, and then they didn't fit quite the way I wanted them to. Their official name is "Pajamas for Everyone" in Heather Ross's Weekend Sewing, but they really don't seem to be for people with hips or much of a waist, so I decided to try out a simple alteration.

All I did was extend the waist length by a couple of inches and adjust the legs accordingly, but it did the trick. I now have two very loud pairs of Pajamas for Me, and I expect to make many more as the days get cooler and I start pulling out the pretty flannels I have stashed away in the closet. Hooray for successful experiments!

Blast from the past

Last Saturday we were thrifting at the Re-Uzit Shop in New Holland, PA and I happened upon a wonderful basic sewing tome from the late sixties:

It was in perfect condition; I got it for $2, which I consider a steal when you note the original $7.95 price tag on the jacket. Love the back cover!

The thing looked strangely familiar to me, and I wasn't sure why till I got it to the car and had a chance to browse a bit. I realized when I saw the page below -- my favorite as a child -- that it is the exact same sewing book my mother kept next to her machine all the years I was growing up!

So -- a little bit of alchemy going on in the hills of Pennsylvania. Not bad.