In hopes of finishing the baby's blanket for her birthday, I worked on it for several evenings. Took it to work and got a lot done on it during a rare hour-and-a-half phone call, then forgot it as I ran out of the office for the evening two nights in a row. It occurred to me to be worried that I may not finish it before winter ends, but at the rate we're going, there will be plenty of frozen hellscape left in which to enjoy a snuggly new blanket. Meanwhile, she's turning one and has no concept of a birthday or birthday gift, so it'll get finished soon and I'll give it to her when it's done and that will be fine.
The purple and green quilt is coming along - three blocks are together and more are laid out.
I'm working hard to accept that this quilt will be a slow plod - I'm working really hard to match up points and edges, and the third block looks better than the first. Once I finished the first block, I considered making it bigger by a block in each direction, and then I considered the work it would take to do that and gave right up. When I realized how slowly this one was going, I went with a whim and started a new quilt.
And then when I forgot the baby blanket, I spent an evening piecing the back from light-colored remnants, and then I forgot it again and this happened:
This involved lots of spray baste, which you're supposed to use in a well-ventilated space. I'm pretty sure a cozy little house in the dead of the aforementioned frozen hellscape totally counts.
I plan to quilt it with close parallel lines running horizontally - not close enough to be matchstick, but maybe 1/4". After I finish knitting the blanket. Yeah.
Happy crafting!
My office does a Secret Admirer swap in February instead of a Secret Santa at Christmas, and the person whose name I drew once said she hoped I'd knit her something someday. With only a week to get it done, I wasn't sure I could finish a handknit project, so I made a little pincushion/office ornament for her using this tutorial.
If I'd had more time, I probably would've made a fabric-covered button to match the dark pink background fabric, but was lucky to find a suitable bead/button thingy for the middle in my bead stash.
I'm making two again, and was happy about how much my folding improved from the first to the second.
Though I'd intended to put the teal and yellow-green across from each other, I luckily messed it up on the one that wasn't folded as well.
Bwaaww, little tiny blanket-stitched label! It's really there to distract from the Frankensteinian whip-stitched turning hole. Not even invisible thread can help that one, so distraction seemed to be the best way to handle it. Usually, doing the one I'm keeping first allows me to get all the stupid mistakes out of the way and it's nice to just have a practice run so the second one can be a little better. Because I didn't have much time left, though, I had to finish this one first, so it could be a bit more polished than it turned out.
I stuffed this with fabric scraps - piles of thread ends and threads clipped from the edges of fabric after prewashing make the best stuffing. Leftover wool is really great too, springy and squishy.
I feel like I'm putting myself out there a bit with this one. I'm sure the recipient will appear to like it, because my coworkers are almost uniformly lovely, gracious beings, but I hope that she hangs it on her wall and it gives her a little bit of joy to look at every day.
Linking to Finish it Up Friday at crazymomquilts.
Happy crafting!
My favorite part of the whole quilting process, I think, is when it's time to start the laying out of actual fabrics.
I sewed eight segments together, sewing the wrong edges together on one and then running out of bobbin thread and not noticing on the last three. Then I swore a lot, fixed it, and walked away for a bit, partly because quilting is supposed to improve my day, not make it worse, and also because the little one is going through a transition right now and it is a loud and time-consuming process, and incompatible with seam matching and correctly orienting anything. (And sleeping, and thinking straight.)
(Re-)Enter the baby dots/dot pattern blanket that I started oh, back before she was born. It is a gigantic pain in the ass to knit, but I like the effect and it's giving me something to focus on. Kiddo, I can't make you stop crying, but I can knit you this blanket.
Happy crafting!
