Sunday, February 15, 2009

Sorry, I've been cheating :)

I have something to tell you all.

I've been seeing someone else.

His name is "crafting". No, not just crochet, but OTHER stuff too.

I'm so ashamed.

...

But look at the cool stuff I made!!!

The first one is a teddy bear that I made for my son, to help him scare away the mean monsters under his bed. Well, actually, in the time I've taken to make it, we've managed to convince him that there are nice monsters too. The nice monsters come and have a party with him after we've put him to bed, and the bonus is that the nice monsters scare away all the mean monsters. So he doesn't really need a teddy anymore, but he still loves it! Here he is:


I started out hand-stitching everything, but eventually gave up and turned to my old Singer 99k for help. It took a while to get it right because the tension discs were messed up for some reason...Anyway, turns out that the manual that came with the thing (keep in mind it's like 50 years old) is AMAZING! It gives really good step-by-step instructions on how to take apart absolutely everything, so I was able to fix it myself. Eventually I got it working with this fabric, which is really just an old Gap jumper that shrunk in the wash.

Probably the hardest bit of this project was doing the blanket stitch around the edge; it took nearly all of an 8m pack of embroidery floss, which I had to pull through every stitch. If anyone knows a better way of doing this, I would appreciate the advice!

Long story short (too late!), Jim loves his teddy :)

And here's an older shot of my sewing machine. It's an oldie, but goodie! In this shot, I was sewing a purple crinoline into a dress.

Happy crafting!

noisypitta.etsy.com

Monday, February 2, 2009

Quick progress report

I have been seriously caning through these granny squares...Okay, "caning through" them for me is a snail's pace for most of y'all, I'm sure...

Just thought I'd give you an update. Here's a big stack of 'em, complete with a few of the little Irish rings that I'm also making to use up some yarn. I got them from the pattern in Textured Crochet (see my Amazon store).


noisypitta.etsy.com