Look what I made!

OK, it's been four weeks now since she was born, but I think I've got the valid excuse of busy and tired!

It's a girl! 8lbs, 2oz, born October 18th. :)

A finished quilt!

I am ridiculously proud of this quilt, especially as it's only the third one I've ever made.



I had a bit of trouble photographing it, between the auto-timer, the sun, the wind, and my well overdue bump. Plus trying to avoid all the enormous spiders and spiderwebs which are everywhere in the garden at the moment!



You can see the back of the quilt there, in all its chartreuse-ness.

Here are some close-ups of the quilting, which I did in a swirly zig-zag, with accents of stippling and swirling.

I used 7 colours to quilt with, because I couldn't stand the look of light thread on dark fabric, at least for this project! I also could use a machine with a stitch regulator, I've got horribly uneven stitch lengths. For my first go with a free-motion quilting foot, however, I think it's pretty good. :)









If I were to do this over again, I would make a narrower road, with no white dashes - these were boring to sew and a real pain to get lined up around the middle bit!

Finished dimensions: 44" x 59"

While I'm waiting...

My version of nesting seems to consist solely of a) cooking and b) crafting. The freezer is chock full of yummy eats (the fridge is particularly empty however. Oops.) and I am sewing to fill the time when I'm not too tired.

I knitted this hat-and-bootie set while at my antenatal classes. (Seemed appropriate!)



That's a modified-for-DK Sweet Norwegian Baby Cap and some Oh Baby Booties. (Picture taken before I realised that the tops of the booties fold down. :) )

And some sewing:



In the background: A simple swaddle blanket from My Longest Year. Behold the power of variegated thread!

Then a little crinkle square (that's the one with bees on), crinkle provided by Oreo packaging; a tiny taggie blanket, idea shamelessly gacked from OxfordKitchenYarns; and two soft fabric balls (in medium and small), pattern by Grand Revival Designs.

I should really be making more useful things, like reuseable baby wipes, but that's much boring-er! :)

Also, the quilt is finished, so a seperate post about that if it stays sunny and I get a nice photo of it....

All the fun of amazing, crafty people

I had some people over to help me decorate baby clothing, and just look what they turned out! Some people have asked where I learned the freezer paper stencil technique from. I used this tutorial, but there are lots out there!



L-R from the top: 1. Toad, by Mikal 2 & 3. Boom box and Film camera by Abstar 4. Ducks in a row by Mootthing 5. Sun and Moon by S* 6. Tulips and Black Cat by Ruth 7. Owl by Liz 8. Ninja and Random Pattern by myself and my partner* 9. Die net and Totoro by C* and J*

*Let me know if you want your real names published or not!

Additionally (I am such a lucky girl!), two of my best buds in the states Jacicita and Kat sent me a care package with even MORE painted (and geeky!) baby clothes in! Woo! (Can you get all the references?)





And also got me this awesome baby book from Nikki McClure and made an amazingest nubbly bunny which I'm sure baby will love chewing on. :D




There is more baby-crafty goodness coming from me and friends. I just wanted to say, THANKS EVERYONE!!!

The quilt top is FINISHED!

It took what seemed like forever (although in reality I had a week off while waiting for interfacing... more on this later), but the quilt top is finished. Today I bought wadding and curved safety pins and three (!) different colours for quilting with. I just need to sew together the back and away we'll go...

Here's the whole quilt top (click thru to get a bigger picture on Flickr), measuring 47" x 62", pretty good considering I was aiming for 45" x 60". Yes, it's going to be a floor quilt at first, although it's going to need a lot of floor space!



The light blue sky fabric was problematic: I picked it up from my local stacked floor-to-ceiling fabric shop, and it was in with the solid quilting cottons, so I didn't think twice about buying it. Almost straight away when I got it home, I realised that it was a MUCH lighter weight cotton than quilting cotton is. I had visions of it tearing to bits under baby's bum scootching. Oh dear.

I ended up getting the lightest weight fusible interfacing, which seems to have worked really well. Its somewhat heavier than the rest of the fabric, but the seams press down nicely and it looks good, which is really all that matters.

Oh, and a bit about design: I thought very carefully about which colours I was going to use, and I settled on a palette of true red, green, and blue. I was not allowed to use purple at all, so periwinkle blues were out, and I also kept out teal. There's a limited amount of yellow and pink, just enough to add a bit of splash and verve. :)

Every house is in a different fabric, stretching the resources of my very small stash! There's only so much fabric I can justify buying for any one project, though. Most of the fabrics are fairly new but two came from my mother's stash and are at least 25 years old!

Here are some detail pics of some of the trees and houses I sewed since the last post.

Terraced Housing:



Shotover Park (a big foresty park near to our house):



A barn on a hill:



A castle and the sun:



The school, post office, and shop, which will all eventually have embroidered signs on them!:

Maternity Wrap Top

I made this top ages ago. It's a knockoff of an Isabella Oliver top by Megan Neilsen. Here's her post about it.) The pattern was free when I downloaded it, but it looks like it's $5 now.



Anyways! I was determined to make this top, even though I'd never had success sewing with stretch fabrics in the past. I did my research, bought the right needles for my machine, and had a go. Good thing it worked, because the only place I could find 4-way stretch was John Lewis, and it was a bit spendy. (I have enough left over to make a pair or two of baby trousers though, so win!)

And here's a side shot of the bump. 35 weeks! And I totally need a haircut.

Bank Holiday Weekend

What I've been up to this bank holiday weekend: I started a massive mission to create a quilt for the child-to-be, something I dreamed up a while back. Since it will definitely be a floor quilt to start, it made sense to make a quilt that would be interesting to lie on and use. I thought about those car mats, whiere there are lots of roads and buildings and things to interact with, and went from there.

Here is my current rough plan:



Not too many roads, no. My first plan was much more literal, an attempt to reflect our neighbourhood. This one's a bit looser, but still includes our house, one of the semi-detacheds in the middle bit. Each square represents 6 inches of quilt.

I finished the middle bit today, which is very pleasing, as it involved a lot of brain-rending piecing. I had to be extra careful, because I only had a fat quarter of the green-with-daises-and-snails. I made it with a small bit leftover spare. Phew!



Here are some other houses, plus a church, which I've completed for the project:







I feel like I've completed the most difficult bit. Next up I'm going to create lots of road!

We Are Two Mariners

When I saw this fabric, I knew immediately that it should become a bag for Jaci, who is ever interested in all things seafaring. I bought the aqua green fabric at last year's NEC quilt show, picked out a pattern... and then did nothing to it. And then I got pregnant and tired and busy blah blah blah, you know how it goes? And finally, this summer, when I was ready to sew the bag (Lickety Split Bag), I found that I needed a full metre of fabric for both interior and exterior, not the meagre half-metre I'd bought.

Cue frantic searching on internet for more fabric. Cue finding out that Tula Pink is one of those crazy sought-after design lines that gets snapped up and hoarded. I was lucky enough, though, to find the same undersea-themed fabric in dark blue, and the coordinating chains-and-anchors fabric and two different UK vendors. *phew!*

OK, not the best photos ever, but here's the bag!



I fussy-cut the pockets because I wanted to show off the coolness of the fabric. You can see the lining in the first shot, too.





Happy birthday half a year late, Jaci!

Freezer paper stencling

Today I am posting off my package for the Ravelry October 2010 mums swap. (I received mine the other day, full of such lovely things!)

I got to try out a technique which I've been dying to do for ages: freezer paper stencilling! I didn't get process photos, but here are the results:



I even liked the hedgehog so much that I made a second one for myself. It made bringing back all that freezer paper from America worth it, even if I did then discover you can get it here. :)

Clapotis (from handspun)

About a year ago, I spun up some gorgeous fibre that my friend Felix gave to me, and then in a last-minute snap-decision, decided to knit it into a Clapotis scarf. (Ostensibly for the Clap-o-tea at Knit Camp, but let's not talk about that...)



I knit two repeats of the increase rows, which was just enough to get me a decent-width scarf. I used 110g of my 115g ball, which was originally around 225 metres. The dropped stitches both allowed the yarn to shine really well, and forced me to have a good look at my uneven spinning. Oops.



But I still like it, and it'll be nice to have another scarf around; I generally hate knitting them, but this one only took four days!