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Showing posts from July, 2011

Quilt and Craft Fair Excitement!

A small group of us are heading up to the Quilt and Craft Fair in Melbourne this coming weekend.  This year the Tassie version was up in Launceston, so it seemed a good time to branch out to the (apparently rather larger) Melbourne stop instead.  I am torn between wanting to be focused and restrained in what I buy (I have a rapidly growing stash of both fabric and wool and perhaps should finish some more things off before buying yet more to start yet more...!) and wanting to make the most of the opportunity. My shortlist is therefore as follows: 1.  I definitely want to make some of these: http://www.modabakeshop.com/2011/07/jelly-roll-floor-pillows.html I generally don't go for jelly rolls but these look fantastic and a jelly roll is nice and compact to fit in the luggage home... 2.  I might want to try and get some wool for my own version of this: http://www.purlbee.com/the-purl-bee/2011/4/16/elegant-granny-style-the-granny-stripe-blanket.html I definitely want to ma

Big Quilt for Little Princess

I really often struggle to make things for our house and our kids when there are so many birthdays in the year to make stuff for.  I love making presents for people and they are usually seriously appreciated, but I also have a list as long as my arm (actually quite a lot longer) of things I want to make for us.  So, finally, I managed to finish off a quilt for madam as shown below: I used the Rainbow's Garden range from Prints Charming which I bought ages ago.  I wasn't sure about cutting it up so heavily (some of the designs are so lovely you just want to leave them in massive blocks so you can appreciate them fully) but I think it worked really well.  I cut random width strips (varying between I think 1.5 and about 3.5 inches - can't really remember as I started this ages ago) and then sewed them together into 9.5 inch wide sections.  I then chopped those into 3.5 inch blocks, so the finished blocks were 9 by 3 after seams.  I alternated plain white with the strippy bl

Teeny Weeny Beanies and hip spica pants

I love a good craft emergency - it makes me feel so useful when someone I know needs something they don't seem to be able to buy and I am able to whip it up :) Two of these situations have occurred recently.  One was for my friend whose daughter arrived about 5 weeks early.  She is absolutely beautiful and perfect but her head is too small for any hats.  I used a cleckheaton pattern which I adjusted a bit (mostly by using smaller needles than the pattern requested - as it wasn't a premmie hat pattern) and some leftovers I had from other projects.  They are both the same pattern but in the first try (the white one) I didn't bother adding the crochet edging and just left the hat with the ribbed edge.  I thought it still looked OK and I didn't have her head with me to try it so the effort was kept to a minimum until I had a sense it would fit her. The second is the same hat in a lovely soft grey wool and cashmere blend with the edging specified in the pattern in a

A Barrel of Monkeys

This post should rightly have come in June as well but I don't seem to get much time to detail all this at the moment. Introducing the lovely monkeys: These began with the monkey on the left, who was a present from my Auntie  (shop bought) when Issy was born.  Then Issy's friend Mia fell in love and didn't want to return original monkey, so I decided to make one. I found the Supermonkey pattern in the Arigurumi (Cozy) book (and in fact this was the reason for buying the book) and thought he was similar enough for some adaptation.  And so the monkey in the middle was born. Two things led to the monkey in the middle becoming stunt monkey (muslin monkey, Marcus' monkey) rather than Mia's monkey: I didn't have original monkey around for much of the time I was making him so I was working from memory and a couple of mobile phone pictures It was the first thing I ever crocheted and the more I did (including many other projects which have already been detaile