Sewing Circle

I'm having a particularly great day today even though it's gray and rainy outside. Joe and I went for pancakes before work and it really jump-started me on my day. Not that I was really more productive at work, but I am happier so I think it was worth it! Pancakes with my hubby will always put a smile on my face. Hopefully this weather turns into Spring too, that would really make me happy.

The tulips along State Street are starting to bloom and if this weather makes them die, I'm going to be really upset. I wish I could have more plants at our condo, but we have a tendency to kill them. Gardening is really not my thing. A lot of people in my family are successful gardeners and I don't think I've inherited the gene.

For my cousin's Christmas present, ::ahem:: that I gave her two three weeks ago ::ahem::, I made a Lotta Jansdotter Gardening Tote, she has the green thumb. I got the green canvas from Ikea and stamped these abstract dandelions onto it. The stamping was really fun, even though the kitties kept trying to sit on the fabric, "Oh! You like this stuff? Let me try it out here ::stretch:: You know what I think would make it even better? Cat hair, here ya go, this is SO MUCH BETTER, right?"


The tote bottom has rounded corners that you're supposed to sew onto the tube of the body and for the life of me I could not figure out an easy way to do this. Am I missing something? Probably, oh well, that's why sewers invented linings, to hide mistakes. Other than that, I found the pattern pretty straight forward.


The Lotta Jansdotter Gardening Tote: Able to lift 12lb kitties who are attention whores and refuse to get off what you're photographing. He actually put up with being in this thing until I took him halfway down the hallway to test his nerve.

Cat head accessory not included

Wee Gifts for Wee Folk

I used to feel alienated by crafty sites having so many projects that were geared towards babies and toddlers. I felt like I couldn't really identify with wanting to make things for little kids because, obviously, there are not many little kids that I run into on a daily basis (unless you count the ones carefully disguised as grown men har har har). Now that more family members and friends I know seem to be having babies, I'm more inclined to make some fun gifts for their new additions.

There's one really great thing about projects for little kids: they're widdle! They don't take a lot of time and I like that I get to use sugary sweet cutsie patterns and know that it won't get stuck in the bottom of a drawer somewhere. First off, I made two quilts inspired by the follow-the-lines baby quilt in Last Minute Patchwork Gifts.

I'd been eyeing this spaceship fabric for a while. You don't see a lot of boyish fabric in stores. When I first spotted this print, it went out of stock before I could push myself to buy it, so when I saw it again online, I had to have it. It is so dang cute. I'd have a bad day at work and just knowing I'd come home to hand quilt some rocket ships made me smile. You cannot frown when looking at red and blue spaceships, it's not humanly possible.

This quilt was for Ryan's 2nd birthday. I hand quilted it, and the stitches are huge and definitely random, but I kind of like the effect. It's almost as if a little kid did it, I think it adds a bit o charm.

I also hand did the binding, my first time doing it. That was definitely tricky, but totally worth it.

The next quilt I made was a polar opposite of Ryan's. This quilt is so sugary sweet I think I could die from cuteness overload. The pinks are so pink, the yellows are so bright!


The other thing I really like about this quilt is that the fabrics technically do not match. The pinks are different shades, the flower pattern doesn't have yellow on it, but it looks like it should have yellow on it. I think the two different fabrics almost imply color similarities on themselves. For me, the yellow binding brought it all together. This quilt is for my friend Joyce's new baby girl, she is to arrive on May 7th. Instead of ties, I used a zig zag stitch to quilt the fabrics together.


When I gave Joyce the present she said, "I was hoping you were going to make me something!" I can't even tell you how that really warmed my heart. I think with handmade gifts there's always this fear that people won't really get it, or appreciate it. I think that's totally fine, I have just as much fun spending my time picking a thoughtful gift for a friend. It just feels defeating when you think that someone will like something and they don't, whether it's handmade or not. You know what I'm talking about, "Oooohh... umm yah thanks! Thanks so much! Oh yah I LOVE it." Luckily, I haven't run into this reaction yet. ::knock on wood:: And if you spend time making those little details and people don't notice, it's a little pang.

For the little details, I taught myself some tricks on the second quilt to make the hand-binding go a little easier. Maybe these will work for other people, maybe not, maybe this is totally obvious stuff that everybody already knows, well I didn't ok!?!

1. I have to pin binding to the quilt. I know I know, everybody hates pinning and all that business, but I tried without pinning and it turned into a huge gigantuar mess, so no more of that. And when I do pin, I pull the binding taut, otherwise pilling forms because the stitches are pulling things in tighter than the binding is laying. Does that make sense? Well, even if it doesn't, everything laid nicer when I gently tugged the binding taught as I pinned it down to machine sew it.

2. I use a teeny needle to hand-sew the other side. JoAnn's was having a 50% off sale on all quilting notions, so I bought shorter needs to do the binding with. I wound up using a medium size length (medium compared to what else was in the package, it was still relatively short) so that my chubby fingers had enough to grab onto but were still able to manage the needle easily.

3. I looked up exactly how to blind stitch. The Last Minute Patchwork Gifts book explains in words how to do a blind stitch. I need a visual. I am a visual learner. I don't even know how to properly use a thimble much less do a blind stitch. Here's how I stitched my binding, after hiding my little knot I put the needle in just below the machine stitching that attached the binding to the front of my quilt. We're talking a hair away from the stitching, then, I inserted the needle parallel to the stitching about 1/8" along the stitching and took the needle out. The next stitch went into the fold of my binding directly above where the needle had just come out from the back of the quilt. Again, the needle went parallel along the fold of the binding about 1/8" before coming out. So all it looks like is a vertical thread coming up from the back of the quilt and then into the binding. I continued along, tugging gently as I went to pull the binding to the back of the quilt. The result was flawless, in my opinion. That blind stitch is genius I tell you. If you still don't really get this, search for blind stitch on youtube. I think the other two things to remember are to go really close to the machine stitch and then into the fold of the binding. That way the edges of the binding on either side will match. Ta daaaa!!!

4. This whole binding method also taught me that next time I'm going to put the binding edge slightly away from the edge of the quilt before I machine stitch it, that way the binding will totally encapsulate the quilt edge instead of having a sort of empty space that makes you think your binding was too wide for your quilt.

I am definitely going to do more of these. I'm thinking the next one will have some simple patchwork involved. I like simple details. There's definitely something of a triumph when you patiently work something to perfection.

Draft

I'm fiddling with the layout and some of the features on here, see the new search box? Still experimenting, so bare with me!

Confessions

I've been holding out on you just a wee bit. I've been secretly way more crafty than I've been letting on. I'm hiding crafty projects from teh internets because they're presents. BUT today I mailed two of the big ones off on their way so I have some pretty picture posts coming up. In the meantime, I've had some other works in progress.

I finished my Endpaper Mits ages ago, and I really really like how they turned out. I use them all the time and I believe I am the envy of everyone on the CTA, or at least the homeless ones... and the smokers. Because they love pink.

Myspace Endpaper Mit Pic! OMG IDK MY BFF JILL?

I finally finished my first crafty gift for Joe: handwarmers! Aren't you surprised??? It's not like I've made oooh six of these already, but who's counting? Joe likes them a lot and says they make a part of him warm that he never thought was cold. ...his WRISTS! Jeez! tsk tsk tsk

Joe has very feminine hands.

Not much else to report except for the sad passing of our guinea pig friend Oliver. He's pretty much infamous around here. I got him right after moving into my place, and I have to say, even with the cats, it kind of feels weird not to hear him bleeting about and rustling. When I came home today the cats seemed alarmed that Oliver was gone and hadn't returned, but I'm pretty sure that's all in my imagination.

Of course, the past three weeks Bear has been rubbing against my legs every time I put on my shoes to leave for work. I was tempted to put up a video of it because it's ADORable, but all of them have my kitty talky voice in the background and nobody needs to hear that. Mew's been jumping into the tub and digging, flopping around in it and even sleeping in it. I feel like we're in London circa WWII. Except WAY cuter. I've been assured by my pet psychic this is normal kitty behavior. But who can trust a woman who's change her name to Skygirl?

RIP Oliver

Oliver the Guinea Pig
? - April 2008 (age, about 4 yrs.)

Oliver was a pretty good guinea pig as guinea pigs go. He didn't eat his vegetables even though every website I researched said he'd love them. He also neglected his salt lick, but he did love these little nugget treats. He was pretty content hanging around in his home all the time, occasionally running around and jumping while talking to himself. A big fan of his igloo house, most days he could be seen with his pooch hanging over the sides of it. Every once in a while we'd take him out and force him to be petted, and after a lot of persuasion, I think he would begin to like to be petted on his sides. Each morning he'd hear me wake up and get a glass of water and he'd start making his bleet sounds declaring that he was hungry.

The past couple months he hadn't been going on the top of his igloo. I'm not sure if that's due to old age or because he was getting fat, maybe a combination of the two. The past couple weeks, he'd seemed less 'talky' and wasn't running around as much. This morning I found him lying peacefully between his water bottle spout and his food bowl, looking pretty content.

Oliver has gone to the big plastic igloo in the sky. We tried to give him a good clean home with plenty of food, clipped his nails, made sure the cats didn't tease him too much. I'm pretty sure he passed due to old age.

Thanks Oliver for being the fat furry football that was always around for amusement and to endlessly torture my mother, who, when I told her her wish came true said, "Awww I'm sorry honey. But I never liked that tail of his, so gross."