Handmade Christmas 2017

Wow, this post is late!  I didn't plan to make very many Christmas gifts, but somehow I ended up making a bunch anyway.  This quilt was for my Grandma, and it was a team effort with my mom.  We had given Grandma the fabric and pattern for Christmas two or three years ago, but we came to the conclusion that she was never going to sew it, so we decided to do it for her.  It was relatively quick (two weekends), and fun to do together!  It came out great, and Grandma loves it.

I've done Christmas sweaters for my niece and nephew every year so far (although last year I made a flannel shirt for my nephew instead of a sweater), and I kind of thought last year was going to be the last year - they're getting big, and the sweaters are getting to be more of a production.  But then I hit on the idea of a ballet wrap sweater for my dance-obsessed niece, and I couldn't not do one more year.

I used free patterns and used worsted weight superwash wool from Valley Yarns (the Webs house brand).  They were fun to knit, and apparently were a hit with the kids.

Earlier in the Fall, I knit a pair of socks for Robert for Christmas.  He loves them, but has dubbed them "the betrayal socks," because I knit them right in front of him without telling him they were for him.  He assumed they were for me, and was surprised that I was knitting myself socks in a blue tweedy yarn.  He tells me that he resisted the urge to ask if he could have them - he did it so well that I hesitated a bit to wrap them up for Christmas, because I wasn't sure if he liked them!

And lastly, I made a few Christmas-y kitchen things for us.  I took two fat quarters of Christmas-y fabric I bought for this purpose in Fall 2016 and finally made a set of four holiday napkins for our dining table.  I also knitted three Christmas dishcloths.  One of them made its way into my mom's stocking, and we kept the other two for ourselves.

Knitted Dishcloths

I made two more knitted dish cloths for our kitchen last summer.  The one on the left is a grandmother's favorite, and the one on the right is something I made up - it's a couple rows of garter stitch alternating with a row of p1, *yo, p2tog* across.  That one is our favorite of all our handknitted dishcloths so far, because it has the scrubby garter ridges AND lots of holes, so it dries quickly.

I'm planning to knit lots more of these - I recently ordered 17 balls of dishcloth cotton yarn from KnitPicks!  The plan is to make a bunch to keep and a bunch to give as stocking stuffers at Christmas.

The Ravellenic Games

I wanted to participate in the Ravellenic Games, but between prepping all my classes, getting settled in the new house, and having lots of sewing projects and knitting WIPs already going, there was no way I was going to do any sort of big project

But we've been talking about replacing our succession of gross kitchen sponges with washable scrubby cloths for a while now, and I had two skeins of cotton yarn in my stash from years and years ago, so Robert encouraged me to knit a few dishcloths.  The first one, up at the top, was fun and easy to knit, although since it has a seam that doesn't stretch, it ended up not being round.  I didn't manage to photograph it until it had already been used.  The second one was a super simple Grandmother's choice washcloth.  It used significantly less yarn than the first one.

The third one is a pattern I made up to try to use up the rest of the cotton yarn.  I started in the center with a turkish cast-on and a 3-stitch garter tab, then picked up three stitches on each side and started knitting in the round.  Then after a little bit I started knitting spiral stripes.  I did that until the red yarn ran out, and then I did a few rounds of garter stitch in blue and finished with a picot bind-off.  I didn't use up all of the blue yarn, but it was getting to be too big.  I also didn't manage to photograph this one until it had been used.

These were definitely a success!  They're not quite as scrubby as the scrubby side of a sponge, but on the whole they work well.  We'll see how they hold up through the washer and dryer, but I'm already planning to make more.  Our new washing machine has a very large capacity and runs best when it is completely full, so we're going to need several of these so we can change them often in between doing laundry.  Also, I have that leftover blue yarn to use up.

Friday night sewing

I sat down to sew last Friday with two projects in mind. The first was a fourth of July bandanna for Huck, inspired by the one my cousin gave him for Christmas. I used scraps from other projects, and one side of the bandanna is red, white, and blue and the other is a single lime green print. Huck was very cute and patriotic wearing it for the fourth!

The other project was another pair of cloth napkins. I really love this constellations fabric, and I'm excited to get to use it every day! This fabric turned out to be narrow, so I ended up having to hide a bit of the selvedge in the hem of one of the napkins. Luckily it's not visible now that the hem is finished.

Two quick sewing projects

I've been intending to re-cover the full-sized ironing board for a while now.  It was old and pretty gross, and the little clip holding the string holding the cover on didn't work very well, so it would always get loose and let the padding get bunched up along the edge of the board.  It was really frustrating, but I had a lot of other projects I wanted to do, and I have another smaller ironing board that hangs down over the back of the closet door in the sewing room/guest room, so the big ironing board wasn't a priority.  But I finally got around to doing it.  I used a tutorial from Crazy Mom Quilts.  It was easy, if not quite as fast it was for her.  And now I have a lovely new polka-dot ironing board cover with an elastic edge!

I used the newly covered ironing board to make some cloth napkins with mitered corners.  Now we don't feel quite so much like heathens when we have company (or when it's just the two of us eating dinner on a week night).   I used this tutorial from Nicole at Home, with the narrow hem option, and I cut the rectangles 10.5" by 18".  I probably should have pre-washed the fabric, but I was impatient and I didn't.  So far I've made two of this lovely blue leaf print (one fat quarter makes exactly two with no leftover fabric) and two in a peachy sort of print.  I'll make more so we can have more people over and still have napkins when we need to do laundry, but four is a good start.