It's Harvest Time in the Cabbage Patch!

Four women in my family are either pregnant or recently gave birth. Winter was pretty mild, so I have no idea what happened nine months ago to start this little baby boom but the results are starting to appear!

The gender of all these babies has not been revealed, so I've been stitching up blankets and afghans with whatever colors make me happy.  Last night I finished up Baby Boy #1 afghan. 

What a beast!  Afghans for boys are sooooo difficult, because every stitch I like looks ridiculously feminine when paired with boyish colors.  The scallops and swirls and lace I'm drawn to just don't work.  This particular yarn was crocheted into SIX different designs before I settled on this one.  Luckily my husband finds pure joy in frogging a project (frogging = ripping apart in knit/crochet world.  I have no idea why), so while I agonized over crochet internet forums and stitch guides looking for something suitable, he calmly dis-assembled the work in progress and wound the yarn into balls for me.  Gotta love him.

The pattern is a free one from Caron Yarns, called Cerulean Harmony.  I made my border a tiny bit narrower, and I added a picot edging just for fun.  The checkerboard part is true to the pattern as written.  The yarn is Snowflake Wool Blend blend from Hobby Lobby's Yarn Bee brand which is a mix of 56% wool and 44% polyester.  It's snuggly warm because of the wool, but soft and machine washable because of the polyester.  Colors are Limelight and Orangeade.

Oh, and I decided the rest of the babies (should they be boys) will get booties or hats.

T-Shirt Recycling

Ruffles are on everything this spring.  It seems like every major fashion designer has gone ruffle-crazy.  This is good because I love girly clothes, but bad because I covet every ruffled cardigan I see. 

Guess what?

I found a solution that's much easier on the ol' bank account.

Step 1: Find an old t-shirt.  This one has been in the back of my closet for a couple of years.  I rarely wore it because it just didn't fit quite right.

Step 2: I forgot to take pictures of this step - sorry!  Neatly cut off the bottom hem.  Then cut off the bottom 6 inches of your shirt.  Cut the 6 inch piece in half, and in half again, so you have 4 strips that are 1.5 inches wide.  Cut one side seam of each so they are flat pieces, not a tube. 

Step 3: line up the shoulder and edge seams of your shirt, with the front centered.  Draw a curved line from the bottom up to the collar.  Cut on this line, totally removing the collar and opening up the front.

Step 4: Lay out your shirt and make sure it's symetrical.  Trim more if necessary.

Step 5: Sew 3 of the 1.5" strips together, forming a large circle.  If you have a serger, run one edge of this through and hold back while you feed it through so it makes a ruffle.  You can also do this with a regular sewing machine on a zig-zag stitch over the edge.  I only had two cones of red thread for the serger, so I put black through the needles.  It made a cool unplanned accent with the black stripe. 

Step 6:  Pin the ruffle around your shirt, right sides together and raw edges aligning.   Sew around the whole thing with a 1/4" seam allowance.  (Adjust if necessary: if your shirt is larger than the ruffled piece, trim a bit more off the curved front.  If the ruffle is too long, ease it in or shorten it a bit.)

 Step 7:  Topstitch 1/8" from where the ruffle meets the shirt, making sure to catch the raw edges on the backside.  This will keep the ruffle from folding back as well as keeping the raw edges flat.

 

Step 8: Cut the remaining 1.5" strip in half, and sew the short edges together making two small circles.  Ruffle one edge of the circles as you did for the large ruffle.  Cut the hemmed part off the two sleeves, attach the small ruffled circles right sides together, sew, and topstitch as you did before.

Step 9: The perfect sundress topper!  You could add a button or hook to the front if you want.  I can't decide if I should use a black or red button on mine.

 If you make one one of these I would love to see.  Click the email me link at left and send a picture!

Ruffles and Lace

I have a weakness for all things girly.  One of the main reasons I learned to crochet was so I could make those ridiculously lacy shrugs and sweaters.  I finished up the Chloe Cardigan last night, and it is stuffed full of lace and ruffle goodness.

The front edges actually do line up.  They look goofy here because I'm trying to take my own picture, in flourescent lighting no less because it's pouring rain outside and the day is gloomy.  So the pictures don't show off how beautiful this sweater truly is in person, but I didn't want to wait for sunshine to show it to you.

Dontcha just love the sleeve detail that tapers then expands to a bell ruffle?  It's so feminine and sweet.

And, I gotta tell ya, the bamboo yarn is pure delight to wear.  It's insanely soft.  If it came in more colors I'd use this for every sweater and never look back.

Feeling Crochet-y

Sorry about the unplanned blogging hiatus.  It's been a crazy busy couple of weeks and I haven't even turned the sewing machine on for two weeks.  *GASP*  Fear not, however, because I did find a few moments here and there to crochet. 

I finished up this delightful baby afghan, modified from the original large-sized version found in Afghans By The Pound.  This one was really fun, because it looks like ordinary stripes on the back while the front has a fun zig-zag.

I've also been coveting the Chloe Cardigan on the cover of Interweave Crochet's Spring 2010 issue for awhile now.  I'm doing mine in a steel gray shade of Caron Spa yarn (color is called Dark Driftwood).  It has a touch of bamboo in it and is oh-so-soft.  I want to get this completed pronto, before it's too warm to wear it.  In Iowa, it seems like winter is 8 months long but spring only lasts 3 weeks or so and then BLAM - it's hot and sticky summertime.

I also used some leftover scraps to make a Carnation Bouquet square for the charity afghan project (look up there at top for details).  This square uses a surprisingly large amount of yarn, so I don't have enough left of any one color to make a second square.  Bummer.

Something is Brewing

The stars were aligned just perfectly on Friday, or something else crazy like that happened.  Everything came together. 

Friday was day two of our local Spring Shop Hop.  This is where the local quilt shops run specials and all the fabric-a-holics like me wander from shop to shop in a dazed stupor of bliss.

At the first shop I went to, I found a bolt of one of my all-time most favorite fabrics ever.  It's called "Up All Night" from Anna Maria Horner's Garden Party line.   I use it in a lot of my projects because the colors are so vibrant and it's wonderfully symmetrical.  I'm a sucker for geometric things.  And hot pink.  This fabric has both.

Not only did I find the bolt, it was on CLEARANCE!  *gasp*  How did such pure joy not get snatched up the minute it hit the shelf?  I think it was waiting for me.  This fabric is hard to find so I bought the rest of the bolt - a wonderful three yards.

The second thing that happened on Friday was I stopped into Borders bookstore on a whim.  Our Borders is closing, as are many.  The neon signs in the window advertising rock bottom prices drew me in like a cat to an open tuna can. 

Good thing I wandered in, because just inside the door was a delightful rack of quilting magazines.  Most were traditional quilts in traditional fabrics which isn't my cup of tea, but there was one, peeking out from behind the others, practically shining with awesomeness.  

The above doodlings are my ideas taking shape.  Stay tuned.

Purses Need Friends Too

Every lovely purse needs an equally attractive wallet, or the whole bit just isn't any fun dontcha think?

This, my friends, is the wallet that caused all the headaches.  This is the wallet that wouldn't fit into the carefully crafted purse, which lead me to abandoning the bag altogether because of it's shortcomings (literally.  Another inch longer and we all would have been happy).

It's awful cute, though.  So I have forgiven it for the agony it caused.

Therefore, I spent another Sunday creating Perfect Purse #2, which lovingly holds the wallet with room to spare for keys, coupons, kid snacks and other necessities of motherhood.  And peace reins again.

Two full-sized pockets, a zipper pouch for coins, six credit card slots and a snap to secure the whole thing.  A magnetic snap is easier to install and therefore tempting to use, but I don't recommend it because of the close proximity to your credit cards.  Put on your Brave Hat, cut the two holes in your project, and install a real snap.

The funky hexagon fabric was a fat quarter I picked up at a quilt show last fall.  I have no idea who the designer is.  The designer of the yellow is also eluding my brain, but I remember it was from a line called "Monaco" on fabric.com.  The hot pink diamond was a scrap gifted to me from my Mom, who, I should mention, taught me almost everything I know about crafting.  (Thanks Mom - you're super!)  I think she said it came from Hancock Fabrics.

Want to make a wallet like this!  It's insanely easy.  Really.  Check out this tutorial.  Note that hers is made with a vinyl cover which really stiffens it up.  I used cotton fabric instead, so I added an extra layer of extra-stiff sew-in interfacing to the final step, right before you turn it all right side out.  It gives the wallet some heft.

Dishes, Dishes Everywhere

When I was a little girl I loved reading Shel Silverstein's poetry.  Sometimes his delightful little diddy's creep back into my head at random times.

If you have to dry the dishes;
such an awful, boring chore.
If you have to dry the dishes;
'stead of going to the store.
If you have to dry the dishes;
and you drop one on the floor.
Maybe you won't have to
dry the dishes any more.

Fortunately, our dishwasher has one of those drying settings which makes dish-drying a non-issue in our house.  What IS an issue, however, is getting the darn dishes into the dishwasher in the first place.  My children are six and eight.  My husband is 36.  One would think that people of these ages could place dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

Maybe this little reversible sign will help.