Monday, January 27, 2020

Newborn Sweater


I made this tiny sweater for a friend's baby daughter, who was born in October.  I had every intention of knitting it quickly, but in the end finished it just before Christmas and finally managed to mail it out today. 

It's the smallest size of Baby Tea Leaves, knit in Ella Rae Lace Merino DK.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Handmade Christmas 2019

 This year I was much more ambitious with handmade Christmas gifts than I was last year!  I made three different types of handmade gifts, all in multiples.  The first was eight pairs of tea towels with two of my grandmother's recipes on them, in her handwriting.  This gift was a long time in the making - when we visited my grandma LAST Christmas, I asked her for her cornbread and pecan crescent cookie recipes.  Then I photographed them, uploaded them to Spoonflower, and followed the Spoonflower tutorial for making family recipe tea towels.  We gave them to all of the households on my mom's side of the family, and I think they were a hit - since we live far away, I didn't get to see anyone but my mom open them.
 My one disappointment was that the Spoonflower fabric didn't seem to be printed on the straight grain.  This is the first time I've ordered from Spoonflower, and I don't know if that's typical or if it was some sort of user error on my part, but it was a bit frustrating that I had to fudge so much when I was cutting the panels apart.  In the end, I don't think it was very noticeable in the finish product, though.  Once I had cut the panels apart, I used spray starch to help get crisp folds on the hem (I just folded half an inch under, and then another half inch under on all four sides, and cut little squares out of the corners to reduce bulk).  I took some twill tape I found in my sewing desk and slipped it into one corner of each towel for a hanging loop.
I also made four little kid aprons for my son, my niece and nephew, and my cousin's daughter.  I used a free pattern available from Sew Liberated, which I originally saw on the Sweet Alchemy blog.  My son loves to help in the kitchen (he particularly loves baking bread), so I knew I wanted to make him an apron for Christmas.  I know my niece (6) and nephew (4) also like to help in the kitchen, so I decided to make them for all the little kids we give gifts to (our 18-month-old, our niece and nephew, and my cousin's 6-year-old).  My SIL loves Tula Pink fabric, so I decided this cute cut that I had in my stash was perfect for this application.  I didn't have enough to make the fronts and backs of all four aprons, so I used a different fabric for the linings - blue stars for the boys, and a grey/pink floral print I had in my stash for the girls.  Having different linings also helps distinguish my niece and nephew's aprons, since they're slightly different sizes.  

The pattern is intended for kids age 3-6, so I made the 4-year-old's apron exactly according to the pattern.  I made the two 6-year-old aprons the same width, but lengthened them by 2" at the bottom.  For my 18-month-old, I folded the top edge of the pattern down by 1" and took half an inch out of the center of the apron by hanging the pattern piece 1/4" over the fold when I cut it out.  I haven't seen any of the other kids in their aprons yet, but my son really loves wearing his when he helps in the kitchen - he reminds us to put it on him if we forget!
The last gifts I made this Christmas were two Open Wide zippered pouches, using a tutorial from Noodlehead.  I made the medium size, and used fabric I bought on our vacation in Hawaii just before Christmas.  These were for my husband's aunt and a friend of my mother's who spent Christmas with us.  They turned out really well and were easy to sew!  They also turned out larger than I expected - almost big enough to carry around a sock-knitting project in.  Here's a picture with a 12.5" ruler for scale.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Handmade Christmas 2018

I didn't make very many Christmas gifts in 2018 - I had a 7-month-old, I'd been back at work for a rather overwhelming fall semester, and we were flying cross-country to visit family for the holiday.  In the end, I made two gifts, both from kits I bought from Connecting Threads.  The first one was a Santa Claus apron for my husband, who cooks and bakes a lot (since our son was born in May 2018, he's made dinner almost every night and baked bread and desserts at least two or three times a week, as I've struggled to keep my weight up while breastfeeding).  He also gets really into the Christmas spirit, so when I saw the kit for the apron I really wanted to make it for him.  The kit was really well done and pretty easy to sew up - you can't quite see it in the picture above, but the apron has two large patch pockets on the front, so it's quite functional!
The other gift I made in 2018 was an advent calendar for my son.  This kit is for a quilted advent calendar with small pockets, which are topstitched onto the quilted background so they are almost invisible.  This is really adorable, and hopefully he will enjoy it as he gets older.  This year, we put little dove chocolates in the pockets, and he really enjoyed eating them when we remembered to let him (and he learned to say "please" for his chocolate!).  For next year, we need to figure out a location and method for hanging the advent calendar where we can see it and where toddler hands and dog mouths can't reach it easily.