Apr 05

Easter and Spring Embroidery

I thought I would get started early for Easter (I did these Jan/Feb, only posting now they are with the recipients!). I had managed to buy quite a lot of embroidery designs from JuJu at a really reasonable price. I bought some plain tea towels (Amazon Prime next day delivery is so useful). I have lots more of these to go… I used water soluble stabiliser for these, as didn’t want tearaway left on the back. I have since tries some with just tearaway, although I haven’t washed them yet!

I also decided to embroider some hankies for my Dad for his birthday (although he has said they are too pretty to use).

And some more tea towels

Feb 24

Crochet dress

This brioche crochet jumper by Tatsiana Kupryianchyk of Lilla Bjorn Crochet kept appearing in my Facebook feed on various crochet pages, but it was only when I saw this dress variation by Lisa Khoo I decided I had to make it!

Original pattern can be purchased via Ravelry – https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/alma-sweater

I decided to use the wool as per the pattern, as I haven’t actually made a crochet garment before, and wasn’t sure what other wool would give the same tension etc. I have made a blunder though, and ordered the amount specified for the jumper, and haven’t scaled up for a dress – oops. Oh well, Black Sheep Wool will get another order from me shortly. I think I will need more again, before they can re-open.

  • Yay – wool arrived 9th Feb – got started straight away!

I have made The Spirit of the Orchid wrap by Tatsiana in the past which is beautiful, and was my first experience of mosaic crochet, and I imagined brioche crochet was quite similar. https://kariscraft.space/wp-admin/post.php?post=792

I think it is a little similar, in that you alternate the colour for each row, and work in front of chain spaces in the previous row of the other colour. The main difference, I felt, was that mosaic is very straight. The chain spaces of one row, and corresponding longer stitch in front with the opposite colour are very specifically placed to make a geometric pattern. The brioche is one stitch, one chain space, with dc2tog (a dec) or dc chain dc in a single stitch (an inc) to create the pattern. The regular chain spaces combined with the above ‘pull’ the direction of the pattern, making it swirl. I don’t know how else to explain it – you have to do it to see it.

The garment is crocheted from the neck down, and no sewing joins anywhere – yipee! Here are my early photos.

  • Just got to the end of the pattern part
  • Just started the lower body – gaps for the sleeves.
    I actually unpicked this once and made the yoke longer for me
  • This is the back!

It is now just alternating row of sc (RS), turn row of dc (WS). I am not sure on the need to turn when working in a round, but I am doing what the pattern tells me!!

According to Lisa Khoo’s dress modification notes, I have decreased 2 stitches on each side in the dc rows to shape to the waist. I did 9 rows of decreases – trying on regularly. A few rows straight, and am now increasing 2 stitches each side for the hips. It’s a bit less exciting now the main bit of pattern is finished, until I get to adding some pattern at the bottom of the dress, but is easy to pick up in front of the tele in an evening!

Feb 24

Neonatal unit baby blanket

I joined another ‘craft’ facebook page, which received a request for knitted blankets for the local hospital neonatal. I have opted to use a lovely soft Ella Rae Cozy Soft Prints wool that I got recently from the Knitting Network when it was on offer. The Pattern said 250g of double knit, but I think I am going to use more of this for the details they have given!

Progress so far (started last week of Jan):

This is something I just do few rows of when I sit down. My main project currently is the jelly roll quilt. This looks more pink in real life.

Finished on 18th Feb. This measures ~60cm x 70cm or 24″ x 28″ depending how much you pull it when you measure!!!! I hope it helps a tiny baby and their family at some point.

Just adding the pattern details. A few were made by members of the Cheshire Bake n Create Facebook group, and they were taken to Manchester Royal and Warrington hospitals. The lady who co-ordinated it was ‘Sophie Louise’ on Facebook – that’s all I have!

Feb 09

Patchwork Pillows

Paul has been asking me for some new cushions for our bed for a while. I really loved the colours and effect of the simple patchwork quilt, so thought I would make some to match. Cue a long search on line to try and find the same jelly roll that I had used for the quilt, which I had bought a year ago in a shop currently shut due to the lockdown. I even went through my bin to dig out the cut-off ends of the fabric to find out what make it was – result!

Benartex / Kanvas Studios – not easy to find in the UK from the looks of it, but I found loads on eBay. I got so tempted in my search and the success of finding the same jelly roll (or ‘strip pie as it doesn’t come in a roll) that I ended up buying 3 packs!! With a multi-buy discount it would have been rude not to!! The seller was Carogojo on eBay, and I would recommend them. They applied an additional postage discount to what eBay had applied and refunded me on Paypal, AND shipped straight away. Ordered Thursday, arrived Saturday morning – great service!

Aren’t they gorgeous? The dragonfly ones are the same range of fabric as the ‘new’ fabric In our Bollin Morris tatter jackets, and this is almost a ready made tatter kit (not quite the right colours for us though).

Not only did I need to do patchwork pillow cases / cushion covers, but also had to make the pillow/cushions. These are for sitting up in bed. We decided on a bolster, and discussed a diameter of around 12-14″. This is where basic maths really does get used in real life 🙂 I needed to work out what size bolster I could cover with the patchwork strips I had.

If I went with 14″ diameter, that gave a 44″ circumference – so 5 and a bit 8″ squares. 12″ diameter would be 38″ circumference, so to work with the patchwork squares being 8″ I went with a 40″ circumference (5 x 8″ squares), and therefore a diameter of 12.7″ (plus 0.5″ seam allowance all round).

Length of a normal pillow is about 26″, so I went for 24″ for these – 3 x 8″ squares.

Next check was that there would be enough patchwork for the ends. So far, for the cylinder bit I am using 5 x 3 squares for each one, so 30 squares for two. leaving another 20 squares to make the end circles, and think about an opening to get the bolsters in. I had worked out I could make the circles, but was still mulling over how to overlap the ends to get the bolster in…

Then I remembered we had some small bolster type pillows from years ago. I dug them out and saw that the covers on those were basically just cylinders with drawstrings in the end. Happy days – all I needed to do, was make the cylinders longer. So each bolster cover is 5 x 5 x 8″ squares – using up all 50 I can get out of the pack of fabric – perfect.

I made the bolster pillows themselves first, from some cotton fabric I had knocking around, that I think Mum gave me when she had a clear out. A rectangle of fabric 25″ x 41″, and two circles with radius of 6.8″. I cut myself a little paper quarter circle to cut around for these. These came together relatively easily, and were stuffed with the filling of a double duvet on offer in Lidl!!

Usual pretty pictures of strips of fabric becoming squares 😉

Trying to arrange into strips of 4 to sew together to start.

Lying in bed last night I was trying to think of what distance I have sewn creating these – more maths (must be the home-schooling rubbing off on me – actually I haven’t had to help them really, I just love numbers).

Maybe I should go metric at some point, but this works in imperial better!!! Each strip of 4 has 3 seams 44″ long = 132″, and there are then 10 of these = 1320″.

The 10 strips then each get cut into 5 8.5″ squares (0.25″ seam allowance around).

These are then sewn into strips of 5 (4 seams 8.5″ each = 34″), 10 strips = 340″

5 of the strips are sewn together for each bolster (4 seams 40.5″ each = 162″), two bolsters = 384″.

Seam to make 5 strips into a cylinder = 40.5″, for two = 81″.

Hem / catchment for drawstrings on both ends of both, plus a small seam to mark the end of each cylinder part, before gathering at the end = 2 x 4 x 40″ = 320″

Drawstrings – 4, each ~48″ long (192″). These were made from leftover bits of sheet used for the quilt backing. 2″ wide strips. I actually used my bias binding making kit to fold this over to make a drawstring, and then topstitched down the edge.

Threading drawstrings through.

And TA-DA! For those interested I think that was 2,637″ (73.25 yd) of stitching… so not as much as I expected actually!!

Feb 06

Jelly Roll Quilt

I bought this jelly roll when I bought the fat quarters for the 3D patchwork. I liked the colours in it, but it wasn’t enough to do the 3D patchwork I wanted to do at the time. I finally got round to doing something with this, as I need to practise the quilting part of the process to finish the 3D one off! This didn’t actually come in a ‘roll’, but has the usual 40 strips each 2.5″ wide by 44″ long. This had 16 different fabrics, 8 with3 of each, and 8 with 2 of each.

I opted to just do 4 stripe squares. So I grouped them into sets of 4. The 4 strips are then sewn along the full length. These strips then cut into 8.5″ squares.

Sorted into groups of 4

Sewn with 1/4″ seams using 1/4″ quilting foot

finished strips – 10 of them.

Cutting into squares:

50 squares:

Then sewn into 7 strips of 7 – playing about with positioning:

and finished patchwork:

I bought a sheet for the backing of the quilt and used the wadding I originally bought for the 3D quilt which I haven’t dared finish (hence this practise) [Hobbs Heirloom Premium cotton batting]. I laid out the sheet (right side down), then the wadding, and then the patchwork on top, on the dining room table. I tried to straighten and smooth out all layers, but after pinning with quilting safety pins, the backing still looked rippled in places. I unpinned most of it and called in engineering to help!! Husband brought clamps out to clamp down the backing sheet to keep it flat! I then only pinned down either side of the middle in both directions vertically and horizontally, and around the edges. Decision was to just stitch in the ditch for the middle seams and then see how it looked. I am not sure how other quilters deal with this, but I found it quite hard to deal with the volume of fabrics (and my 3D one is bigger), and keep the layers in place and smooth. I also found that the tension and stitch length was fine on a test piece of fabric, but that, even with a walking foot, the whole quilt didn’t seem to be feeding through quite as smoothly, and the stitch lengths are tiny. I am doing the classic roll it up to fit through the machine, and have added the embroidery table extension.

I have now done most of the major ditch channels, and am not 100% happy with the backing – it has still rippled. I will persevere a bit more tonight and then either do some fancy quilting in some individual rectangles, or just try and complete the binding. I am going to do a turned edge binding and fold over the excess backing fabric to the front.

First trimming the wadding to the size of the quilt, and then trimming the backing to 1.5″ round to fold over the front:

I ironed the backing and pinned all the way round, and decided to use one of the fancy stitches on the machine to top stitch it. My Brother Innovis f420 has loads of fancy stitches which I have actually never used, so great to finally use one! However, with the bulk of the quilt, it hasn’t actually fed evenly through all the way round, so some of the patterns are longer than others. No-one will be getting that close to look, so I could have kept quiet!!

And the finished item, front, back and corners!

Next task is to make some matching bolster pillows.. I have managed to find another set of the same jelly roll (or strip pie – as it didn’t come in a roll), so that is next on the list 🙂

Feb 03

Another Baby Cardigan

This is another, that when I saw the cable pattern on this cardi I had to buy the pattern. I have made this 6-12 month size, and will hopefully get this in the post to my niece for her little boy before he grows too much! I just need to finish sewing it up, and get the buttons on.

I have actually bothered to line up where in the wool I started the second front and second sleeve, so they matched up with the first ones. I like multi-coloured wools, but sometimes when the stripes don’t line up it sets off some minor OCD in me! Finished item:

Jan 24

Embroidered FSL Hearts

These designs are from Designs by JuJu. I saw a fantastic deal on their website that if you spend $20 you got 16 designs free (most of these were sets, so multiple designs). I had seen these hearts and thought they would be nice, but then had to try and spend $20 to get the offer. I thought this would be easy, this design set of 4 was already reduced from $20 to $6, so I only needed to select 3 more to pass $20! However, be warned, you can lose a day looking at embroidery designs and reducing down to the ones you really want. I ended up adding loads to my basket, and thought I would reduce down at the end. But when I looked at my basket, the $6 ones were reduced even further to $1.50 due to a multi-buy offer!! I then had to pick even more to get to $20!! I ended up picking 16 design sets for $20, and then got 16 more free!! Should keep me going for a while. I stocked up with Easter and Spring designs as well as some for next Christmas!!!

I have these hearts stitching out as I type. The first one I did I picked the second heart design but with 2 colours. The design itself should take 22 minutes, but with multiple colour changes it took much longer.

The next one I chose a single colour, but for some reason the thread snapped and the machine didn’t stop and tell me. I couldn’t quite see where it had stopped to set it going in the right place again… I tried, but then the needle snapped (~13,000 stitches into a 15,000 stitch design – not happy).

I scrapped that one, and started again, but mustn’t have tightened the needle up enough – cue a bent needle this time, and stabiliser pulled from the frame!

Third time lucky – it looks great!

Will try the other two designs in single colour now too.

And a couple of butterflies too:

Jan 23

Circuit board shirt

Eagle eyed followers may have spotted this fabric in one of the other posts, when I bought fabric and wool on by birthday day out in Shrewsbury.

I finally got round to making this one up last week, and did the button holes yesterday. Really happy with the pattern matching… what pocket!? Photos are before I had the buttons..

Jan 23

Chunky purple cardigan

I had bought some of this lovely JC Brett Marble Chunky a long time ago, not sure what to make with it. When I saw the cable pattern on this, I had to buy it. I didn’t have enough wool though, so had to find more! What is really strange is that the pattern says 14 x 100g balls of Stylecrafy Chunky, so I got 7 x 200g balls of the Marble Chunky, and I actually have 3 full balls left – just shows how different brands knit up. I went for the 34″ version and it is also massive! It is lovely and snuggly and warm, but would have preferred it a little smaller!

Close up of the cable and shimmery button!

Jan 23

Robin dress

I found this lovely fabric on-line when I was looking for pyjama fabrics. This was on eBay, which I have rarely used for fabric (always for buttons and zips though!). With a son called Robin, I can never resist a good robin pattern, especially with this shimmer/foil effect.

I wanted to make a skater type dress. I used New Look 6435 which I have used previously (silver top), but this time, view B with long sleeves, and made the bottom part longer to make it a dress, rather than a top. Simple and really quick to run up on the overlocker (mainly).