Kai's Quilt

This is the same pattern that I used for Taz's blanket - but with girly colors and prints.   I also machine quilted this myself on a long arm quilting machine.  

I also made a little tiny quilt for her doll to match her own quilt.  

And I made another pillow case to match Taz's pillow case and 2 pillow cases for Kai.

Baby Kai's Blanket

My sister just had a new baby and for her new baby girl, I made this beautiful blanket, hat, booties, and sweater set - I really love how it turned out and the soft yarn was wonderful!  I really only made one change to the pattern.  The blanket had fringe on the top and bottom, but I didn't like the raw edge look of the sides - so I added a row of single crochet along the two sides and I really liked the way it looked with that edge MUCH better!  I wish that I had made the had a looser stitch, because it ended up being a bit small for her.  :(  

I got the pattern from a book called "Dressing Up Baby" and I can't wait to try another pattern from the book!  

Taz Quilt

I made this quilt for my nephew - his name is Taz and so I thought this fabric was perfect for him!  It's a pattern from Perfect for Precuts Volume 1 and it's called "Flower Show" It was a really easy quilt - easy to cut, easy to piece.  It's a twin size quilt - but it's a very large twin size!   This first photo shows the binding and you can just barely catch a glimpse of the awesome tazmanian devil swirls in the quilting.  I got it machine quilted by Susan Bateman.  I also made a matching pillowcase.  

Most of the prints are a set of fat quarters - but the blue fabric I got online and the orange fabric and green polka dot fabric are from Hobby Lobby

This one shows the pattern a bit better - I hand stitched the binding while on our way down to Texas and barely remembered to take a picture of the blanket before I sent it with my sister!

Baby Blankets!!!

Well I have a lot of friends having babies - and since (for once) I'm NOT having one too - I am having fun making baby blankets for them! This is the first one I finished for one of my online scrapping buddies - she's having a little boy!

The pattern is from this book - I got it at JoAnn's but if you click the image it will take you to where you can get it at Annie's Attic.  It was a fun pattern to work and the edging was unique in the way it went together.  The only problem I had with it was in the first round of the edging (the round of single crochets that is the foundation for the rest) it has you do 2 more stitches than my math tells me is necessary for the edge - if you follow the directions, you will end up with 502 sc's around the outside - however to work with the rest of the edging (and to avoid pulling out a half finished round because it didn't work out right - and your hair along with it) you need 500 - once i figured that out and made marks all over my pattern to remind myself if I make this again - It was an easy and fun pattern.  Hopefully my friends little boy enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it.  I used Bernat Baby Coordinates Yarn - the boucle type yarn - in blue green and white.  The blanket came out so soft and snuggly!  I think it took 3 skeins..... 

I've been working on lots of stuff and even finished some of it, and maybe I'll get around to getting some of it posted here.  :) 

Road Trip!!

Now some of you may think that the prospect of a 14 hour car trip with 5 kids would scare any sane person out of their minds.  Which either means that I'm insane, or I know secrets!!!  We had a 14 hour (drive time) road trip planned for this summer.  My hubby was going to be travelling a lot this month, so once the kids were out of school, we packed our bags and headed south.  I love to surprise my kids on the day of the trip with fun goodies to help keep them entertained.  Between those goodies, movies, and my audio books - I was looking forward to a nice peaceful ride.  And believe it or not... I got it!  A few potty stops, a few food stops, but we made good time and there was little fighting or screaming!  YEY!  Really - when you think about it - when the kids are trapped in their seats and I have an audio book (so I can ignore the barbie movie they are watching for the 10th time) I'm one happy camper!  The only thing better is when my hubby is with  me so I can crochet and sew and listen to an audio book while he drives :P

Well to prepare for the trip, I made a few fun goodies for the kids - I started out by making these (click on the image to go to her blog for instructions) The kids LOVED these - they love to color and draw and can spend hours happily entertained with colored pencils and paper. The roughest part was cutting out the dvd holder part - get a couple extra cases if you are going to do it to practice on - you can find the cases pretty cheap and the cutting takes some practice (at least it did for me.)  I also went to Hobby Lobby for some matching fabric for the inside and paper for the outside.

I also made these - i love how they came out and the kids loved having them - i stuffed them with their coloring cases, and books and other goodies and they loved it.  I mostly used left over fabric from the big quilt we made for my sister-in-law and her family for Christmas.  I also used a sheet of plastic canvas to give it stability, and some batting that I used spray adhesive to attach to the plastic canvas.  The pockets were just pieces of fabric folded in half, seamed and stitched in place.  The handles were using the plastic-y canvas type handle stuff (I got it at hobby lobby in the fabric area) and melted the ends with a lighter to seal them.  Then i sewed one end into the seam at the top and added snaps to the other end.  I started writing up an actual pattern for this - and left it back home :)  I will include it with all the dimensions and stuff when i get back.

Old Jean Made New

Ok so I have 5 kids, which means that I have a lot of jeans with holes in the knees.  With the weather warming up, my kids had a need of shorts and less need to holey jeans, so I took this weekend to do some re-furbishing.  I'm SOOO excited about how these turned out!!  All this was done with two pairs of my kids jeans and the leftovers of the Jelly Roll I used to make the table runner for my sister.  I started by making a double fold bias tape out of the fabric, and covered the edges and sewed them on about 1/8 in from the edge. (The butterfly and embroidery on the second pair was already there)  

The purse was done by using the bottom of one of the cut off legs.  I hemmed the bottom and covered it with another strip from the jelly roll.  I folded down the top and frayed the edge a bit - then using yarn, created the handles by threading it back and forth about 5 times - the single crocheting around them.  

For the headbands, I cut a strip of the leftover leg about an inch thick and took another strip from the jelly roll.  I put the wrong sides together and sewed about 1/4 inch from edge down both long sides.  The jelly roll piece was wider than the denim so when i turned it right side out and pressed it there was some of the colored fabric showing on the same side as the denim.  I then measured my kids head and put a strip of 3/4 inch wide elastic into the ends and hemmed them.  Sorry I didn't take pictures during the process, but I didn't think of it..... Anyway - what fun stuff can you do with your worn out clothing - now i just need to find time to do the rest of their holey stuff!  They were so excited about their "new" clothes!

If any of this is unclear, feel free to ask and I will try to do better - maybe when I work on the other pairs this week I can take more pictures for clarification.... :P

Scarves

This pattern was part of another kit from the Hook and Needle club through Annie's Attic. The kit came with 3 different scarf patterns, but after making this scarf, I enjoyed it so much I wanted to make it again. This first picture is the scarf I made using (mostly) the yarn I was given and (mostly) the pattern I was given. I accidentally did the first couple rows different from the pattern, but ended up preferring it that way. The pattern asked me to do 2 rows of sc after the beginning ch and then no rows of sc on the other side. Instead I did mine with the chain right in the middle and a row of sc on either side. Also - I didn't worry about gauge since it was a scarf, but that ended up being a problem since I ran out of yarn.... So i found a fuzzy yarn that was the same color and did the border round with that.


I ended up liking the fuzzy yarn look a lot, so I found some spare yarn I had lying around and modified the pattern a bit and made this scarf. Both scarfs used a bit more than a skein of yarn total.


Ok here is how I made the second scarf - the first one wasn't my own pattern - though mine was heavily based off of it. Click on the image - then right click and choose "Save Image As"