Finishing Things Left and Right

...and it's not even February, yet!

Last week I finished up a pair of mitts for me, a scarf that was busy knitting, and an embroidery lotus from my chakra wall hanging project. Not only did I finish all these things, but I did the button sewing, end-weaving, soaking, blocking portions of things as well!

I'd love a photo of them on my hands, but I didn't have another photographer at the time.

These Felicity Mitts were started as a sort of Yule gift to myself, though they got put on hold when I started hitting crunch time on the actual gifts for other people. This yarn was leftover from the Dragonfly Tam, and I thought it would be really cool to have a pair of coordinating fingerless mitts. I've even thought of buying some plain cream gloves to wear under them on really cold days, so they'll match even better.

Sadly, this tam seems to have gone AWOL since last winter. :(

I finally realized I was ridiculously close to done and spent a couple evenings of knitting and catching up on old Castle episodes to finish them. After a soak and a day on the drying rack, I tried them on and literally clapped my hands and bounced around like a five year old. I'm so excited to have them done, and just hope I can find the hat to wear them together eventually!

I could have finished them earlier, but once the holiday rush was over and I had officially gifted the last knitted/crocheted gift, I cast on a simple scarf with some beautiful Mini Mochi yarn. It was a simple stitch pattern that worked really well with the color changes in the yarn and turned out beautifully (imho).

I just love the colors in this!

And last, but not least, I completed the third in my chakra embroidery series. They will eventually be pieced together in a quilted wall hanging, but for now, they are serving as a learning tool. On each lotus, I've been doing a different embroidery stitch, practicing the technique. It's working out well, and I can actually see improvement in my stitching when I look at where I started and ended each lotus.

Third Chakra Lotus

Sunday is the first of February and I hope to be finishing lots of things and posting on them throughout the month!

Bella's First Quilt

My baby cousin Ella, first quilt I made completely alone

Baby Quilts - is there anything more awesome to Make? They're adorable, and relatively quick, and have endless possibilities, and they're fantastic gifts for the new baby and parents, they show love for a new person, and there's always a charity, hospital, shelter, or NICU that can take them as donations as well. I've made a number of baby quilts over the past eight years, but today I want to tell you about the very first one.



Shortly after I learned to quilt with a little hand-stitched potholder at a resort in the Smoky mountains, I learned that a couple dear friends of mine were expecting their first child. I knew several other members of our mutual community were also crafty, so I posed the idea that we join together to make a quilt for this baby. 

Dot's Quilt - A Community Gift

We had a color pallet based on a request by the parents - red/orange/yellow. We had several willing participants. We even had a couple people with actual quilting experience! (Yeah, sometimes I jump right into projects and figure them out as I go.) Unlike Ella's quilt, which was a simple nine-patch, I went with the "please contribute your choice of quilt block at x inches square" option.

 

        that middle square is a pocket for teeth & tooth fairy gifts       tote bags are always handy when you have kids!

I got quite the collection of quilt squares - more than I could possibly use in a baby quilt - which allowed us to make it a full crib-size quilt, and give a coordinating tote bag and tooth-fairy pillow. Some of the people involved had never done any quilt piecing before, but they were willing to jump in with both feet and learn on the fly with me so we could present our friends with this bunch of love.

Of course, no matter how lovely the finished product was, there's a story in the process we went through to get there. You see, most every "how to quilt" blog or website will tell a newbie quilter to prewash all their fabrics. Well, I read on one of these sites that if you don't prewash, then once you layer and quilt, the fabric will shrink and the batting won't and - well, it made it sound like that would completely ruin the quilt (turns out it won't, but it will give it a slightly more "wrinkled" look). I decided I would prewash the front and the back before I quilted it all together.

Thankfully I learned my lesson before future quilts, like this one for my niece, Lucy

I ended up calling my dear friend and quilter, Kade, and honestly I'm amazed she could understand what I was saying because I was crying so hard about how I had ruined the quilt. You see, with nothing to reinforce all those seams both within and between the blocks, some of them came undone. Worse yet, some of the fabric raveled. A lot. What came out of the washer, well, I wish I had a photo of it to show you, but I was so distraught at the time I couldn't bear the thought of photographic evidence of my royal sized screw-up. It was a tangled mess of partially connected quilt blocks and lots of knotted threads.

 

Kade was awesome, and when we had a chance to get together so she could perform triage on the quilt top, she helped me get it back together and suggested the sneaky addition of extra fabric for those places that frayed. See these black bits that beautifully coordinate with the embroidery details? Yeah, that's where we fixed the holes. I felt especially sad about those blocks being the most damaged because they were so special with their messages and extra detail. They'd been an obvious choice for the four corners of the quilt (and I was floored to discover that my friend Love had never does this before!) Still, thanks to some creative thinking and a skilled quilter sharing some of her secrets and experience, it all came out in the end and as you can see, it became a beautiful quilt!

 

The child in question is now about to turn eight, and I still see and hear stories of both she and her nearly six-year-old sister sleeping and playing with this quilt. As a toddler, it was declared "her favorite" and every time I see it, I think of all the love and hopes and dreams for her that went into every stitch of it. Some of the participants watched as the hand stitching was done along the binding, and learned enough to do some of it themselves, even if that was all they could do. But each and every bit of it was done with the express intent of sending love and happiness to the recipient, and that's the magic of handmade items. That's the wonderful thing about crafting, and it's just more wonderful when applied to babies. Because... babies. :D