A beautiful day

It is so beautiful out - cool enough that you can comfortably wear jeans, but sunny and warm.  Here is my found shelf, all painted up and sitting in my living room.  I thought about finding some means of hanging it, but that just involved too much work and tools I don't own.

I like it - I think it looks a bit elegant with the off-white grey 'colour'.

Here is a little quilt I made with scraps, and sewn entirely by hand.  It is small - maybe 6 x 7".  A fun project to work on while I watched movies or listened to tunes.  Even the batting is from scraps, I was able to piece it together into a workable patch.

The finished quilt:

Oh, and another project I made a few months ago:

Again, this is made entirely by hand.  Cross-stitched 'brown bowl' with fabric surround and driftwood hanger.  I made it for a friend who is a potter...I guess there is something special about brown bowls (despite having done pottery, I don't entirely understand the reference).

My first crochet project

I've tried knitting and found it wasn't for me.  I decided to try crocheting since I covet crocheted blankets and have no one to make one for me.  I got out the Crocheting for Dummies book from the library, it's really helpful with great images.  I used a small ball of yarn and a crochet hook that I picked up from a second store in town and I gave it a try.

I've been meaning to join a learn to crochet course, but it just hasn't worked with my schedule.  I'm sure I will eventually, in part to meet other crazy crafty people, but also to pursue my goals of blanket making.

Here is my first project.  I guess it could be a coaster.  Notice the random widths as I drop and add stitches.

I also put the final coat of paint on a little wooden shelf that I rescued from the side of the road.  I had to nail the one foot back on, but otherwise it is in great shape.  I took a can of brilliant white enamel paint back to the hardware store and the nice man there put a drop of black in and a drop of brown, so it is now a soft off-white.  I'm not sure what the ultimate destination or use of the shelf will be, but I might put a lamp on it in my living room.  This is the shelf pre-painting:

Cute baby bib

This is a bib I made for a friend who is expecting her first baby this fall.  I didn't come up with the idea, but I found it so long ago that I don't know where it came from.  You can buy terry cloth in a roll at the fabric store.  It is a bit of a pain to embroider on terry cloth since you can catch the loops and pull them through accidentally. Eventually you get the hang of it though.  

I made a similar bib a long time ago, but I like this one more with a warmer yellow as the edging.

Quilt for Grandma

I learned how to sew from my mother.  She in was taught by her mother, my grandmother.  For a long time I had wanted to sew something for my grandmother, but I never knew what I should make.  During my last visit with her I noticed two wooden end-tables in her living room.  I sneakily measured them, tucking away the numbers for later use.  I thought that I could make her a little quilt for one of the end tables.

I don’t remember where I found the cut-out below, I think it came from a design magazine.  I liked the colours, the shading and the shapes of the leaves and flowers.  It became my initial inspiration, leading to the embroidery.

My grandmother’s place is pretty stereotypical grandmother style: pastels, a bit dated, but cozy and welcoming.  I wanted the quilt to fit in, in her living room, but also show my style (a mixture of organic and geometric).  Rooting through my fabric I found some suitable pieces; pastel cottons, the strong green and some old floral remnant that I inherited from my other grandmother (it just goes to show that you never know when you’ll use a little piece of some fabric, so you should keep it!).

For the quilting, I did mostly in the ditch along the seams.  To add another level of detail and reinforce the organic motif I added some hand quilting copying the flower shape.

I pinned the paper shape to the fabric and quilted around it, cutting away pieces as I went, using it as a guide.

The quilt has been mailed off and through the grapevine I heard that my grandmother really likes in, in fact she suggested that I make her a matching one for the other end table!

Great books!

I've been reading a lot more lately.  I'm not sure why.  Probably a combination of more time and wanting to escape into something outside my regular world.  I'm really enjoying it, especially since I don't have a TV to distract myself with.  Here are a couple books I've read lately that are excellent and that I've been recommending to everyone.

I heard about this one on the CBC.  It's called Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay.  The main character is a famous ballerina who defects from the USSR.  The story jumps back and forth between the present and the past, tying together a man trying to learn about his past, a young woman who works at an auction house and of course the main character.  It is really well written and so easy to sink into, but also very intelligent and informative.



The other book is one that I happened to pick off a shelf at the library (why I love the library - you can try a book with NO risk).  It is called People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.  This book uses an ancient Jewish text to move between the past and the present, much the way the movie the Red Violin used the violin to connect past and present.  An Australian woman is called upon to mend this text and as she does she uncovers clues which are used to transport us back in the book's history.  These jumps bring us to various times where Jews have struggled under external oppression.  Again, a great story and a minor education into an area of history I knew little about.

Paris Cemetery inspired cross-stitch

In my Lonely Planet guidebook for Paris there is a beautiful photo showing the gate to a crypt in a Paris cemetery (probably the big fancy cemetery where Jim Morrison is buried).  For whatever reason it inspired me to design and do a cross-stitch.  In the end, I bit off much more than I needed to, but c'est la vie.

I often brought the cross-stitch to class, to the surprise of classmates and the probable chagrin of lecturers, but it made such a difference in my ability to pay attention.  When I have something mindless to keep my hands busy, my attention span is much improved.  I may come by this genetically, since I've been told that my grandmother knit my security blanket during meetings!

As with any project, there are things I would change about this one, including being more attentive to where I wanted the shadow to be so it was more consistent.  I also mis-counted the squares, and towards the end I had to modify the top to make it fit (oops)!

A cool bag for my cool bro

I like sewing.  I really like sewing bags.  I really, really like sewing things for my peeps.  Sewing for my mom, kind of easy.  Sewing for my dad, impossible.  Sewing for my sister, really easy.  Sewing for my brother, near impossible...UNTIL...I came up with an idea.  You see, I had bought him a cool, old-school travel agency bag from a Salvation Army type store.  Only, the bag was old and within a year the vinyl lining was peeling away, rendering the bag see-through and not structurally sound.  I finally had something I could make him - a replacement!  Next problem: my brother is VERY minimalist.  He's not into fun fabrics (well, in all fairness most men aren't) or crazy appliquéd detailing.  My solution was to make him a bag modeled along the lines of his old one out of natural cotton with some simple black thread embroidery.

This is the pencil drawing I made before I started the embroidery.  The design is a tracing I made of a plant shadow.  Organic, yet simple.

This is the front of the bag.  

I don't know what they treated the fabric with, and I probably don't want to know, because whenever I ironed it, the steam smelled like urine.  I warned my brother that he should try not to get it wet, or it'll stink!

This is the back, with a pocket.

This shows the side.  

I had a couple issues sewing this bag.  The one problem were the corners.  They are okay, but I wasn't 100% happy with the way they turned out.  The other problem was sewing through so many layers of thick cotton to attach the straps on the side.  My sewing machine was not very happy.  I eventually reinforced it with a bit of hand sewing.  

The zipper is one that I recycled from an old backpack.  Same with the plastic D-rings.  I'm all about recycling stuff.