Eleven Stitches

Co-Worker Gifts

I really love making things for my co-workers.  We're always busy at school, and conversations are either quick or interrupted.  But we do get to know each other, and it's fun for me to figure out what to make for a friend, and which colors to use. 

Here's some mittens, made out of a pattern that's in my head for "how to make basic mittens".  I used the leftover yarn for a sweater I haven't shown you yet (wince) and some pretty green Rowan Lima I bought when I was in San Francisco.  The stripe pattern on the first mitten was made up as I went, and then I copied it for the second mitten.  I really wanted to make mittens for this co-worker last year, but I had just had surgery and the thought of it was too much at the time. 

I work with two people I haven't made Dresden Bags for yet, and I was excited to make them again.  I just love making these.  This purple and grey one is difficult to give away-- I love the colors together.  There's one corduroy petal at the very top because I ran out of purples, and I love it.

I really love making these!  One of the girls who got these said she was excited to have one because she felt like she'd been left out of a "secret club" by not having one before :) 

This is the Wicker Cafe Cowl.  I completely used up my skein of Knit Picks Andean Treasure (100% alpaca), and as you can see I was still a little short.  Fortunately I have a few balls of this yarn, so I was able to add a contrasting color for the very end.  This was a great pattern and a enjoyable knit.

And finally, something I made for a co-worker, but not as a gift.  My friend asked for a custom order.  Her daughter is really good at gymnastics (Like, really good.  I'll let you know if she's in the Olympics when she's old enough to qualify!), and she asked me to make a leotard for her American Girl Doll to match her daughter's team leotard. I found Simplicity 4364 to give me a basic leotard pattern, and then modified the front to have diagonal stripes to mimic her leotard.  I added on a felt star and some pink elastic details.  My friend is really excited about the gift, and I'm looking forward to hearing about how her daughter reacts.

Now that co-worker gift making is over, I'm well into family gift-making.  Fingers crossed that I get it all done in time!

Dresdens

It was so nice to reorganize my sewing room, and to have all of my fabrics stacked together by color.  About this time, a friend of mine linked to a Dresden Plate tutorial, and I had an idea.  I thought I'd make single-color Dresden Plates using only fabric from my stash, with preference to using up my scraps. I used this ruler to make the wedges.  The wedges are 6 inches long, and that makes the block sixteen inches.

I started with red. 

And then orange. (Orange is one of my favorites.)

And at some point, I just couldn't stop.  I sewed before work, in the evenings, and for a good part of the weekends.

I rounded it of to an even dozen with a combination plate, using the ten colors twice and a neutral as the center circle.

All laid out together they look like this.

And the cats are happy with it.

And I *think* that it's enough for me.  I really do love making this block, though. Maybe I'll need to make a second quilt?

The After School Quilt

The past fews weeks I've been devoting almost all of my crafting time to a quilt.  Our school's auction was yesterday, and the children in the after school program (where I'm the teacher) helped make a quilt to donate. I've used this method on the previous two quilts I've made with the children, and it seems to work pretty well.

This year I only used solid colored fabric, all of it from Kona Solids.  I chose the six rainbow colors plus black. My co-teachers and I cut out shapes from fused fabric, and the children made collages with them.  It's really amazing to see what they decide to do.  To have something a little different, I also added colored squares along the border, and the children sewed a button into the middle of each of those squares.

Unfortunately, I didn't take very many pictures of the quilt this year, but I did manage to get a picture when it was on display at the auction.  Some people told me last night that they thought it was the best one yet, and looking back at the other quilts, I think I agree.  It ended up raising almost $1000 for the school, and I'm very pleased.

April, May

I have to say that recently my creative energy has been devoted to quilting instead of knitting.  I know it goes in cycles-- I'm sure the warm weather has something to do with it-- so I'm enjoying the change instead of stressing out about it.

It's a good thing I want to quilt, because I had a lot of catching up to do!  I got behind on my One Shiny Bee blocks when I was finishing up my internship requirements.  I churned out March, April, and May blocks pretty quickly.

April  The inspiration for this month was wonky stars.  I had never made wonky stars before, and it was fun.  I used scraps to eke out a third block.  I have to do something for sending my blocks so late!

May The May inspiration was circles.  This was a challenge for me.  I had never (successfully) pieced circles before.  However, there was a link in our group discussion to a great tutorial, and it was so easy and effective.

The first block is machine applique, the second and third blocks are a mixture of piecing and hand applique.

 

   

And that brings me to June for my One Shiny Bee blocks!  I'm finishing up the second block for June now, and I'll be able to show them both to you soon.

Quilts for My School

A week ago I was really busy quilting, but it wasn't for me.  I was working on two quilts for my school's fund raising auction. 

Unfortunately, I did not get very many pictures of the first quilt.  This one is from my during-the-day classroom, with a kite theme.  I worked on this one with the other two teachers in my classroom, and the children helped sew the buttons onto their individual kites.

The second quilt is from my After School program.  This is using the same idea as the quilt I did last year, but this time I cut out the shapes because the younger children are not as adept with the scissors yet.  Even so, the children exceeded my expectations on what they created.

 

Two days before the auction, we hung up the quilt outside so we all could admire it.  The children set up chairs right in front of the quilt, and spent quite a bit of time just looking at it.

The quilts ended up raising over a thousand dollars for the school!  The After School quilt ended up being in a bidding war, and they had to go to a second sheet of paper for the silent auction bidding.  I was so excited.  I think it's so wonderful that something I love to do ends up being so valuable to the place I work.  Yay.

March Blocks

March was a few months ago now, but with burning my fingers and then internship homework, I got a little behind on my One Shiny Bee blocks.  Today I was finally able to devote some time to personal quilting, and this is what I came up with.

The person who sent out fabric and inspiration this month asked for pinwheels.  I took the inspiration for the first two blocks from this series of tutorials.

I love this block, and the combination of the pink/red and green. 

Flying geese are such a fun quilting motif, and I like how they integrate into a pinwheel here.  I added in my own blue solid fabric since it matched so well with the blue fabric included in my packet.

I wanted to include a third block to make up for the fact that I'm 3 months (wince) late.  This was improvisationally pieced from my leftover pieces of fabric.

It was such a thrill to be back in my sewing room and making something for fun.  I'm looking forward to being back at sewing again this summer!

The Remaining Events: Also Gold

It was fun to tie crocheting and hand-quilting into the Olympic mix this time around.  Especially since the amount I quilted and crocheted depended on how Team USA did!

My afghan is still in progress, but it is nine rounds bigger now.  It was fun to think about the Olympian while I was crocheting his or her round.

 

I wasn't sure what to do during the hockey game!  Should I get started on the round just in case?  These are long rounds, now!  In the end I was sad for USA, but happy for Canada and happy that I didn't have to crochet any more.

I probably should have made the hand-quilting a little more challenging.  But my country got a record-setting 37 medals, so I did have to join a lot of edges.   Here is where I am with it right now.  Not all of these were joined in the past two weeks.

I might have this quilt hanging around for the next Olympics!

All in all, it was a very satisfying Olympics for me.  They're fun to watch, and I was able to fit in so much crafting as well!  I'm adding this button to the side bar, because I earned it!

 

February Quilt Blocks

My Flickr friends Chawne, Jocelyn, and I started a Virtual Quilting Bee this year.  We have 13 participants, and each month we make 2 blocks for one particular person.  That person picks the fabrics, the design inspiration, and all of us make our own versions. The month that everyone makes blocks for me isn't until December, so I've got some time to decide what I want!

Jocelyn is looking for a sampler-like quilt, and she asked for one traditional block and one improvised block.  Here's what I came up with.

 

The improvised block features some hexagon trees.  The hexagons I used are tiny; they're only 3/4 inch per side! 

The traditional block is from the book, 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars.  This happens to be the Connecticut star, chosen simply because I like it.

 

I did actually run out of the blue on the last point in the star, and I thought it would be fun to pop a little pink into the block.

If you're curious what everyone else is making, you can see photos in our Flickr pool, One Shiny Bee.  I think this will be a fun project for 2010!

Mini Quilt Tuesday

I'm a little late for mini-quilt Monday, but these -alongs are supposed to be low stress.  First of all, I have some micro-mini quilts.

 

They measure 2 inches by 3 inches!  One of my assignments for teacher training is to come up with three small objects to represent each of the 26 sounds in the alphabet.  "q" objects are a little harder to come by, so I'm making enough to trade with all of my classmates.  They're fun to make, and I was using just tiny snippets of fabric. I used fusible webbing to stick the snippets onto a 2x3 "backing" piece, and then quilted across the layers and satin stitched the edges.

Here's a slightly bigger mini-quilt.

 

I wanted to play with putting orange, pink, and turquoise together.  I like it!  I think I might like this more without the white breaking up the color, because I just love riots of color.  But this quilt is still quite good at making me smile.

And finally, here's a non-mini quilt-in-progress.

 

I finally laid out all of my hexagons a few weeks ago.  I like the way this came together!  I'm currently attaching column 3 to column 4, and it's a little slow going.   I'm enjoying the process, however, and some day I'll have a pretty quilt to show for it.

Ready for Seaming

Thanks for the well wishes and the links to keep me entertained!  I'm feeling much better now, but I'm still quite weak. I've been moving and doing more things around the house each day, and I'm hoping to be able to go to work on Monday.

With all of this required leisure time, I've been completing some crafty tasks.  Betty is all knitted now, and ready for seaming.

I've finished all the hexagons.  I had to get a bigger box to hold all of them.

I've got a plan for how I would like to arrange them, and I might start laying them out tomorrow.  I sure hope I enjoy seaming them together, because there is a lot to do!

Rather than seaming Betty right away, I decided to reward myself and cast on for a new project.  This is going to be the Featherweight cardigan, knit with JaggerSpun Zephyr in a pretty teal.

I'm perhaps halfway done with the yoke.  I LOVE the fabric this is making on size 5 needles, and I'm really looking forward to wearing this sweater!

As my energy levels increase, I'm hoping to get back to my sewing machine as well. In the meantime, I'll be knitting and hand-quilting!