Mom’s getting crafty

I haven’t been the only one busy in the craft studio this fall. Mom has definitely had her share of creative time. Which, if you ask me, is well deserved after she helped me reorganize everything after painting. 

She brought this fabric all the way from Chicago with her to make me a sewing machine cover. She measured everything and figured out her own pattern as she went along and I think it turned out looking great! We added a couple of prints from my stash and some fun notions we found in the big reorg. 

This pretty feather print went really well with the gray and pink Paris print. The second side has a pocket that could fit a pattern, a pair of scissors, some measuring tape, or whatever else it is I’m using at the time. I love the print pairing of that pink floral and the green abstract. 

We perused through buttons and chose a few to add to the front along with the pom pom trim to add some bling. A couple crowns got some sparkles, a moon got a star, and some crossed keys were adorned as well. 

Last but not least, the inside! This fabric is a nice loud orange and pink bohemian print. It absolutely reminds me of the rainbow sherbet flavor I loved as a kid. You know the one with the bright pink, bright orange, and white? It’s a fun addition to the cover and I’m sure some days I might just flip the whole thing inside out and have it on the outside for a while. 

We had a fun time getting this one done, and I think Mom is as pleased as I am. Honestly, she did most of it, I just entered an opinion here and there. :) 

 

it’s julekuler season again

It’s just after my birthday, so you know what that means - julekuler season is upon us! I got this book for my birthday a few years ago and have enjoyed making a few baubles a year since then. This year is no different. These two I started in August when I just couldn’t resist the siren call of this book on the shelf. Now that the tree is up, it’s REALLY time!

I’m still working off the same yarn I’ve used before; I keep it in it’s own little project bag so I’m ready to go whenever the fancy strikes. This year I had a rocking horse to make for a friend who is moving (who also happens to have a black horse... not a coincidence), and I decided to make patterns that I’ve enjoyed previously.

These knit up pretty quick, in a few hours, but I find that the quickest and most fun ones to make don’t have long color runs requiring a lot of twisting. The horse is an exception because well it’s a horse. But other than that I really enjoy the patterns with a lot of... pattern? Whatever the right word is, here’s a few that are done already.

Halloween catch up

Ha! Well predictably since my folks got here I have been spending much less time on the computer. That doesn't mean that I haven't been making things - in fact we've done lots of crafty things (including some festive Halloween masks!) in the last couple months. I'm going to round up the Halloween bits in this one post and then the rest of the things are wips that I can write about as the holidays approach. 

First things first, I finally finished my set of spooky pillows. These were really fun to make and they were good opportunities for playing with some more complex quilting. First the large ones. The one on the left got a geometric square spiral treatment across the whole pillow while the one on the right got some nested diamonds in the big arms of the X's. It definitely takes a lot longer than just straight line quilting but it looks really cool when all is said and done. 

I backed those pillows with this very appropriate print from Ruby Star Society. I'm not sure it was meant to be a Halloween print but it certainly plays the part well. It also works really well with the dusty blue zippers I used. An unexpected color given the holiday, yes, but that bluish purple moon pulls it all together and makes it look like it belongs. I've got just a little bit more of this print and I can already say it's going to be a precious commodity.

The set of smaller pillows look a little more "fall" and a little less "Halloween". They got a lot of different free motion quilting treatments on them. Unfortunately I was lazy and didn't put a back on the quilt sandwich when I did it (i.e. just the block on batting, no third piece of fabric) and I think the texture suffered. Instead of pulling the fabric down from the front, the threads just sunk into the batting from the back to relieve the tension. 

Kind of a bummer, but again fun to practice different shapes and swirls - and to realize how difficult it is!! I had a bear of a time getting my curves to look nice. Somehow I thought doing all those fun wavy lines and circles would be easy. Psh. Once I survived the quilting, these got a heavy gray canvas backing and some bright orange zippers. 

Possibly my favorite Halloween project was this wreath. Mom and I were out at Joann's and couldn't resist the pretty fall picks they had on sale. Well, we picked up a handful of those and a grapevine wreath and had some fun. It didn't take long at all to get this together and I looooove it. It was a nice addition to the decor upstairs

Along with our pack of pillows, our house had Halloween covered.

week twenty six

I really got on a roll last week with the Halloween decor. We have plenty of festive decor already but I LOVE fall, so what’s the harm in a few more pillow covers? In the same vein as the piece I already completed, I took some more inspiration from quilting magazines for many of these blocks. It was really fun to try out some new to me blocks. I especially enjoyed making the pinwheel in the bottom row. 

Four of these blocks were intended to make just one more large pillow cover: the leaf, the pinwheel, the churn dash, and one of the blocks with the orange corner stones that is in the large gray four patch. I wanted it to be scrappy looking but when I put all of them together it just didn’t look right. So I pulled out the two “less Halloween” looking patches and made another couple of blocks - the two with the crow and skull fabrics. Turned out the gray spider ones didn’t look as good with the black bordered ones, so I played around with just some big scraps and the rest of my gray spider fabric to end up with the improvised blocks in the big gray four patch. It was fun! And look how these things multiply! I’ve decided to make the pinwheel and churn dash into covers for smaller pillows I’ve got lying around - they’ll be good throughout fall I think and not just Halloween. 

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the other two blocks. I thought about pillows, but I might just keep them around to think on a bit longer. The black frame was a nice way to showcase that big crow and skull print, but I just love this leaf block. Originally I was going to use the purple background as the leaf but I’m glad I changed my mind and used the cats instead. So cute. 

week twenty five

It has been unbearably hot. Like I’m crabby about it hot. It was so hot today (and the air wasn’t all that great either) we just stayed inside. I’m bummed for Dave that a three day weekend couldn’t be spent out doing fun things, but that’s just California right now. Hot and smoky.

To pass some of the time I pulled out my Halloween fabrics and started playing around. I have a ton of quilts and things saved on Pinterest as inspiration, but this time I pulled out some of the quilting magazines I have on the shelf and started browsing. This pattern came from a quilt in peaches and aquas that I thought would look pretty fun in these festive colors instead. And I didn’t have at all enough to make a whole quilt, so I decided to just try a few blocks. This combination has turned out the perfect size for a pillow cover for one of the gigantic pillows I covered for Independence Day. Serendipity! 

week twenty four

This afternoon I started on some improvisational fabric play. I pulled out my bag of “precuts” that I made out of my scrap jars and went to town. I mostly made a mess at first until I landed on a set of 2.5” squares that I liked together. These are some of my favorite colors all pulled together into that Amy Butler floral print. It pairs very nicely with polka dots and penguins!

I saw a block online a few weeks back that I really liked. I decided to try to recreate what I saw using the pieces I had, no final size in mind. It turns out that you can definitely make a square in a square block using a 2.5” center piece as well as 2.5” squares cut in half for the edges. I read around a bit to see what different tutorials suggested and most had very specific, different sizes to use for the center vs the edge pieces. But I’m lazy. In the end just tried it out to see what would happen. All I had to do was trim a little bit when they were finished. It worked great. They were just a little over 3.25” and when everything was sewn together the block ended up being just shy of 9 inches square. The seams are crisp, the points match up, and it looks fantastic. I’m not sure this would work as well with bigger squares, there might be way more waste. I potentially landed on just the right size starting squares to make it work out ok. Dunno. 

I really liked how the first block turned out, so I decided more were in order. As I worked on my penguins and florals I noticed that the colors were slant rhyme complementary (red/green) and so I decided I would do a couple more blocks in the other complementary pairs. This block below is also from all 2.5” squares and is fashioned after a picture of a pillow I had saved in my Pinterest inspiration boards. I don’t like it as much as I like the first one, but for now I’m going to keep it around. I think I want less of the lighter colors if I’m going to use them together. Between the white and the peach print it feels a bit washed out when sitting with my first block. It is about a half inch smaller in dimension, too, so will be more difficult to put together into the same piece. Still, I stuck with my initial plan of not worrying about finished size to keep the freedom of playing intact. 

This last one turned out super cool. I actually was on the phone with a friend as I played around with squares and colors and layout for this one. I even sewed it while we talked. I started with some simple four patches from 2.5” squares and then from there made the other two blocks starting with large HSTs made from some 5” squares. I wanted more interest, so I started snowballing corners and using waste HSTs from that to do the same to the other side and ended up with two awesome looking blocks. They look hard, but totally weren’t - remember I was on the phone and randomly making decisions while doing this! When I sewed the four together I trimmed up the four patches to match the size of my improvised diagonals and that makes them look less symmetrical. I totally lucked out that the magenta triangles match up well with the two inner squares to make a cohesive shape. And I love it. It surprisingly turned out 9 inches square, the same as my first block. I think I may be making a different orange and blue one... 

What to do with the fruits of my labor? Well, the photo for the first block was part of a tutorial on how to connect blocks that have already been layered and quilted. I think I’d like to that with these blocks, too. They will be fun small pieces for me to work on my quilting skills. I want to play with some shapes other than straight lines and see how I can use different shapes to enhance the block designs rather than just using an all over design like I have before. Then I’ll join them together. I think a 3 block strip for a wall hanging might look pretty nice in my studio. Then it can serve as a reminder that a little bit of unplanned sewing can be satisfying, too. 

julekulers begun

Soooo week 23 post quarantine went by in a flurry of anxiety because of the wildfires. Ick. Not much of anything except reading CalFire updates, worrying, and more worrying was happening until just a couple days ago. We finally found a little bit of comfort the last few days in both the fact that the fires are getting more under control and (for me) in knitting these little guys. 

Julekulers are definitely comfort knitting! They’re quick and fun, and I really enjoy reading the little blurbs about the different patterns. I’m not sure how many of these will get made this year, but I’ve got a good start already. I’ve been mostly browsing through the book looking for patterns I haven’t made yet. I’m finding that I enjoy the ones where there isn’t as much behind the scenes twisting of the yarns. The red and white one had short enough color runs in each row that there was NO twisting. It went much faster and I was much less frustrated by tangled yarn. I would like to try some in chunkier yarn and in leftover colors that aren’t necessarily holiday related, too. I think they would look quite pretty as well. For now I’m sticking with holiday baubles for gifting. Can’t wait until I have a bowlful.