Lots of Jammy Pants

Hi all -

I decided it was time again to make a slew of jammy pants. I'm a telecommuter, so I spend a lot of time at home and, although I shouldn't admit this in public, most of that time is spent in my jammy pants. They are just so comfortable! But they are made out of cheap flannel and so they wear out after a while. I had a bunch of flannel that I had purchased on sale at Joann's several months ago just waiting to be made into jammy pants, so I finally put my nose to the grindstone and got those done. Here are my 6 new pairs of jammy pants:

I love how extra-soft the fabric is when it is new!! While working on the jammy pants, I knew that I also had to make the leftovers of the llama fabric (second from the left) had to be made into a project bag, too:

Isn't that cute? Since flannel is a pretty weak fabric to be used for a project bag, I quilted the fabric with a cotton batting to make it stronger. I used a matching thread and did a simple diagonal cross-hatch for the quilting because I wanted the quilting to add strength to the fabric, without competing with the design. And the fabric went perfectly with this soft Ultrasuede that I got really cheap as a bolt end. At some point I'll be making some bags out of the Ultrasuede alone since it is so pretty!

As usual, I've also been doing some knitting. I've made good progress on my Aller shrug by Laura Nelkin. I now have the body completed, and just need to knit the sleeves and an edging around the front and collar:

I should be able to finish this up pretty quickly.

I also got my first installment for the Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club project. In the shawl club, Jimmy Beans sends me a little ball of yarn and a piece of the pattern every month of the year. This year's pattern is the Coral Coast Wrap by Ambah O'Brien. I got January's installment knitted up and am now waiting for February's installment.

These come out at the end of the month so I should be getting the next installment in about a week.

I'm also working on another shawl: the Fraser's Ridge MKAL by Rachel Roden. This shawl was designed as a Mystery Knit-ALong to coincide with the new season of Outlander. For those who haven't heard of this, a MKAL is a project where the pattern is divided into parts (or "clues") and the knitter doesn't know at the start what they are making. You follow the clues and find out when you're done what you are actually making. I've never watched Outlander and I wasn't planning on knitting another shawl right now, but I peeked at the spoiler picture of the project and I loved it so I decided to jump in. Here is the first clue knit up:

This has been a fun knit so far because most of it has been knit with a regular yarn (the orange) and a thin mohair yarn (the gray) held together. This is my first time to knit with two yarns held together and it's going really well. And the mohair yarn is really soft and fuzzy, so it's fun to touch. We got the second clue today so I'll try to get that knit up before the third clue comes out in a week.

Finally, I've had the urge to work on some cross-stich again. So I pulled out a project that was started by my mom and I took it over after she passed away. I worked on it for a while after she passed, but got bored with it and put it away. So I got it back out and hope to push through and get it finished.

I just have to stitch the trees on both sides of the picture and do all of the backstitching on the bridge. That's a lot of stitching, but I should be able to get it finished by summer. Then I can get it framed and hang it in the bathroom next to the companion one that she had completed and framed a long time ago.

Well, that's all I've been working on lately. I hope you are all doing well!

Nancy

Japanese Garden Center Finished

Hi all -

It's definitely winter now. We've been having cold, snowy weather lately, but I just remember that spring is just around the corner and it will be March in a couple of weeks. We'll have more snow then, but the days will continue to be longer and warmer now.

I've made some good progress on my projects. I finished the center of Japanese Garden, the wedding quilt for my niece. This quilt started as the Punch Bowl Botanicals Plum Quilt Kit from Bluprint, but I've changed some of the fabrics to add an Asian element and to add some greens to the purples of the kit:

The actual colors are brighter than in the picture, but you get a good idea of the movement the quilt creates. I love how this is turning out! I still need to decide on borders, but I decided to step back and work on some other stuff for a little while. After all, I have until the end of August to finish this one.

I've also done some sewing for Relief Crafters of America, which is a Facebook group that organizes sewing/knitting/crocheting projects for animal organizations. I originally joined them to make things for the Australian wildlife affected by the fires, but just as I got started the word came down that the Australian organizations were getting overwhelmed by the donations so they were asking us to hold off for a while. So the group changed focus and they are now picking several animal charities in America each month and are organizing crafting for those organizations. This month I signed up to make some things for The Pipsqueakery animal rescue in Indiana. I signed up to make 2 little snuggle sacks:

and 10 animal hammocks (I folded over a corner so you could see both sides of each hammock):

A friend of mine might recognize one of the polar fleece fabrics since she gave these scraps to me many years ago.... I'm washing the donations now and will package them up to mail to the collecting hub in the second half of the month.

I've also been doing some knitting. I finished by Umami Mitts by Laura Nelkin:

This was the November 2019 Lola's Choice kit, but I didn't have time to work on it until after Christmas. These are knit with a Fisherman's Rib stitch, which creates a fabric that is really spongy and airy so that it creates warmth from trapped air while remaining light weight. I'm keeping these!

I also made my Cassio Collar by Laura Nelkin. This was the Lola's Choice kit for January 2020:

This was a fun, quick knit and ended up really cute. I do love knitting with beads!

Finally, I started knitting an Aller by Laura Nelkin. This is a cute short-sleeved shrug that ties in the front. It is knit from the top down. I've gotten past arm holes so you can start to see the shape of the shrug:

I'm making this one exactly to the pattern, but I might also try another version with long sleeves since I think that might be useful when I get a little cold in the summer, but not cold enough for a full sweater. It's nice to have a project to work on that has long stretches of knit or purl stitches that I can do without much thinking. I've been doing a lot of lace knitting lately, which takes a lot of attention to make sure you don't make mistakes.

That's about all I have for now. I hope the winter is going well for everyone!

Nancy

Started Piecing Japanese Garden

Hi all -

I hope everyone is having a wonderful 2020! Mine has been good so far. I've started working on my niece's wedding quilt. The date has been set (Aug 28, 2020) so now I have a deadline! My niece and her fiancee got engaged last summer, when he proposed to her in the Japanese garden in the botanical gardens in Austin, TX. To honor that, I'm calling the quilt Japanese Garden and am using floral and Asian fabrics for the quilt. I started with a quilt kit that I got from Bluprint that is called the Punch Bowl Botanicals Plum Quilt Kit (which I got on sale for a really good price).

The kit comes with floral fabrics, so I'm adding Asian fabrics to the mix to make the quilt my own. I also decided to add green fabrics to the quilt because I love how purple and green look together. I played with putting the quilt into EQ8 and playing with the colors and this is what I came up with:

The colors are approximate, but I think I really like it!

I decided to make sample blocks to make sure I like the colors. There are only 2 blocks in the quilt, a 28" block and a 14" block, so I made one of each to start with. Here is the 28" block:

And here is the 14" block:

It was a good thing that I made sample blocks because the pattern has a bunch of wrong measurements in it for the squaring up that you have to do after sewing on each round! For this reason, I would definitely not recommend this pattern to anyone else. Some of the measurements were off by several inches, some were just off by a little. The ones off by a little are the worst because it's hard to decide whether the measurement is off in the pattern or if your seam allowance is off. Doing some math, I determined that it was the pattern, which is really annoying! Anyway, I made my sample blocks and then cut out all of the pieces. I'm now working on piecing all of the blocks. I have all of the 28" blocks pieced:

And I'm making progress on the 14" blocks:

These blocks are really quick to sew, but are really slow to square up since you have to carefully align everything for each cut, making sure that everything is square and measured correctly. I'm really liking all of the colors and fabrics in this quilt and am excited to get it all put together! After I get the center pieced, I'll make some decisions on the borders so I don't know what I'm doing there yet.

I've also been doing some knitting. I made progress on my Jimmy Beans Wool 2019 Craftvent project, the Spirits of the Season shawl by Amy Gunderson.

I'm up to the last day of this shawl, where I will be adding a border around the outside edge. I really need to get this finished!

I also received the last installment from the Jimmy Beans Wool 2019 shawl club:

This is the Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'Brien and, just like the Craftvent project above, I just need to knit the border and block the shawl and it'll be done.

But I did finish some knitting. I made this Quest 2 hat by Laura Nelkin:

This hat will be donated to the homeless shelter. I also started my Umami Mitts also by Laura Nelkin:

I've got the first mitt finished and have started on the second. These are are going to be really warm and squishy when I'm done! I've been working on Laura Nelkin patterns because she is having her annual 1st quarter knit-along where you can win prizes for knitting her patterns. I have a bunch of her stuff sitting around, so it's a win/win to work on some! I also received the January 2020 Lola's Choice kit in the mail:

I'll tell you more about that one once I get started on it.

Happy crafting!!

Nancy

Inclusion Finished

Hi all -

I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season! I've just returned from my trip home for Christmas. As usual, it was wonderful! I have to say that I am exceedingly lucky to have the family that I have. We all love and respect each other. We have disagreements, but we don't have fights. This is something that I wish everyone could experience! And now we have the joy of starting to see our family grow. Our next generation are starting to find life partners and get married, and soon we will start seeing another generation. It warms my heart!

But on to the crafting.....

My top project, my niece's graduation quilt, was finished just in time. The quilting always takes a lot longer than expected. We also had a lot of trouble with power outages, but luckily I put the binding on the quilt early so those hit mostly when I was hand-stitching the binding to the back of the quilt. Here is the finished quilt, ultimately named Inclusion:

And the finished back:

I used a different quilting fill pattern in each of the different colors of hexagons:

And here's the label I made for the quilt:

The quilt is far from perfect, but I still love how it turned out. And I think my niece really likes it, too. This is my last graduation quilt, at least for this generation. So now I'll be moving on to the wedding quilts. 😃

I also finished up one last Christmas gift since my last post. I made the fourth dish towel for another niece:

This made a nice set and she really liked them. These are made with Dishie cotton yarn from KnitPicks. We've all found this yarn to be wonderful for dishcloths and dish towels. It really soaks up the water well and can be thrown in the washer with no problems (I've even used bleach with my Dishie dishcloth with just a small reduction in color). I've had several requests for more of these so you'll be seeing more of these in the future.

Once the Christmas gifts were finished, I took some time to work on my other projects. I finished the November installment for my Jimmy Beans shawl club project, the Sunshower Shawl by Ambah O'Brien:

Just one more month, and this project will be finished!

I also started working on my 2019 Jimmy Beans Craftvent shawl project. The Craftvent project is packaged as an advent calendar, with a bit of yarn and pattern instructions or a little prize for each day from Dec 1-24. This is a really fun project for the Christmas season! This is my second year of participating. Last year, I was caught up enough with Christmas that I was able to sneak in a little time each day to keep up with the calendar until I left for my trip to see my family. This year, I was too far behind to start on time, but I was able to do a few days and have now finished through the Dec 9 section:

The pattern for this shawl is Spirits of the Season by Amy Gunderson. The shape of the shawl is a long, skinny triangle that I think will be fun to wear as a scarf. Hopefully, this will be finished by my next post.

I've also received some more things in the mail that I need to work on. First, I got the last two installments of the Jimmy Beans knit club Oct-Dec project, Kickshaws by Shanel Wu:

These will be a pair of slippers that I'm looking forward to trying. If I like them, they might be something fun to make for the family.

And I've received the November Lola's Choice project, Umami Mitts by Laura Nelkin:

I love fingerless mitts and these have an interesting stitch pattern on the back, so I'm looking forward to working on this project.

And I'll also be starting on my big project for 2020 soon: my niece's wedding quilt. I've shared the pattern for this quilt in earlier posts. I bought a kit for the quilt at a price that was hard to beat, but I'll be adding some of my own fabrics to the quilt. The kit has floral fabrics and I'll be adding Asian fabrics to fit the Japanese garden theme, since her fiancee popped the question in a Japanese garden at the botanical gardens in Austin, TX. I'll share more about this quilt as I make progress on it. I have until August 28 to finish......

Nancy

Christmas Gift Progress

Hi all -

It's been a while since I've shared what I've been making for Christmas so I thought I should catch up on that. I've been knitting and sewing like a crazy woman! I'll start with the knitting.

I've made several hats for the men in my family. My latest hat is the Whitman Slouchy Hat designed by Danielle Morgan that I made for one of my brothers-in-law:

For a while I've been sharing pictures of the Eiffel Tower mittens I'm making for my sister. I still wasn't completely pleased with how they were going and time was running out, so I decided to put those aside for next year and instead knit the Riverfront Mitts designed by Amber Swim:

I really love how these turned out and I might have to make a pair for myself! I looked through the patterns on Ravelry and found the Mystic River Cowl designed by Tanja Luescher that I thought would be a perfect companion for the mitts:

I think they make a perfect set!

Finally, for my niece who just bought a new house, I'm knitting a set of dish towels using the Dish Towels pattern designed by Kerin Dimeler-Laurence. I've finished three of the towels and have started the last one in the set:

On the sewing side, I made this project bag for my niece:

My niece has a very strong Yoga practice so I searched online for Yoga symbols and found the Lotus image and the Om. I ironed two layers of freezer paper together to make the paper thicker, then traced the images and cut them out using an exacto knife:

I ironed the freezer paper onto some prewashed Duck canvas:

I'm not sure if I needed to prewash the canvas, but did it just to make sure that there weren't any chemicals, like sizing, on the fabric that would keep the paint from adhering. If you've ever prewashed canvas before, you know that it comes out of the dryer as a wrinkled mess. To avoid this, I prewashed the canvas but didn't put it in the dryer. Instead, I took the wet canvas to the pressing table and ironed it with a hot, dry iron to dry the fabric. While using the iron, I would also periodically stretch the canvas in the opposite direction from the folds from the washer. This worked well for me.

Once the freezer paper was adhered to the canvas, I started painting the symbols using Jacquard fabric paint and a medium stencil brush:

I was worried about the paint getting under the edges of the stencil, especially since I had to apply it rather thickly to get good coverage, but the freezer paper adhered to the canvas really well and I didn't have any trouble with leaks. Once the area was covered with paint, I carefully peeled off the freezer paper to reveal the images:

I did the lotus image first and didn't get full coverage because of my fears of messing up the edges, but I still like how it turned out. And the Om symbol turned out almost perfect! I then set the painted images aside to dry overnight (in a room where the cats aren't allowed, for obvious reasons....). The next day I also heat set the paint and sewed the bag without using a pattern. The bottom of the bag and handle are made out of a black micro-suede. I think my niece is going to really love this bag!

That's all of the Christmas crafting so far. I've also made progress on my niece's college graduation quilt. I had been calling the quilt Inclusivity, but that name was bothering me a little. I've changed it to Inclusion, which sounds less awkward to me. I got all of the background quilting finished on this quilt:

I also got the binding sewn on. I do the back of the binding by hand because I'm very picky about the binding on quilts that will be used, so that part alone took several full days of handwork. But now I feel confident that I will have the quilt finished on time since all I have to do now is quilt some fills in the hexagons and add a label. It feels so good to almost have this one off my plate!

I've also done some knitting for myself. I received the October installment of my Jimmy Beans Wool annual shawl project:

I took time out to knit this up:

But then I received the November installment and had to put that on the back burner:

I think I'll have time to knit this before Christmas because my Christmas knitting is going well.

I also received my 2019 Craftvent calendar from Jimmy Beans Wool. They offer a project each year that they divide into 24 pieces that you get to open each day as an advent calendar. Some days you get yarn and instructions for you project; other days you get a little gift. I got the knitting project that came in these cool containers that have magnets so they stick to a metal base that you can put on the wall:

I was able to keep up with the Craftvent project last year, but this year I've only been able to open the canister each day to see what I received. My niece's quilt really put me behind on everything! But I look forward to working on this shawl after Christmas....

That's everything that I've gotten done so far. Christmas is close, but I think I'll make it!

Nancy