Visions of blue

Fellow quilt guild member Jan brought a stack of blue-and-white pieced blocks to our monthly meeting back in November. She'd won them in an online swap. Pretty as they were, she didn't have an immediate use for them. Might they be useful in the guild's current community service project -- making lap quilts for residents of the local county nursing home?

"Absolutely," I told her. And I tucked them away in my sewing room for when I had a chance to do something with them.

Yesterday, while making good on my pledge to reorganize the sewing room, I ran across them. And it was the perfect time to stop everything, pull some marbled fabric out of the growing stack of blues, shove aside other stacks on the cutting mat to make some sashing strips, and get busy sewing. Just a short time later, Jan's blocks had become a great-looking quilt top.

My favorite block of the batch has a lovely Dresden look to it. Didn't the original quilter do a great job leaving a perfect quarter-inch seam allowance around all those points? The sashing framed it perfectly, and I love the thought of an older lady admiring the charming teapot in the middle.

In January, the guild plans a Saturday Sew Day when we'll layer, pin, baste, quilt and bind this quilt and a lot of others. We hope to have enough finished to make a nice donation to the nursing home.

Thanks, Jan, for a great contribution - and we'll never know who made all the blocks, but it's great to think about how a little effort from a lot of quilters will bring a lot of cozy comfort to someone who could really use it.

Quilting in the news - Chicago

Here's a neat news story about a volunteer quilting program in Chicago, fueled by an interior designer who found herself awash in discontinued fabric samples.

Be sure and check out the video version, which tells the story more poignantly than words can...makes me want to head right back to my sewing machine, which I'm going to do right now!

Scrap yarn and hats

Turns out the unraveled granny square centers worked well for making skinny stripes around various baby hats. Between those scraps and a lot of other yarn odds and ends, I had several happy hours of knitting with no real plan at all. Here's how a few of the hats turned out.

Three more days before heading back to the office...so tomorrow I'm going to make nice with my sewing machine, which I think is feeling a little jealous of the knitting needles...

A self-imposed challenge

I guess there was a time when making crocheted granny squares seemed like a good idea to me. Because when I was re-organizing my yarn stash the day after Christmas, I ran across a little bag filled with several dozen crocheted squares about an inch and a half across.

I know a lot of grandmas have made these afghans over the years, and bless their hearts for doing so, but you know what? Granny squares make lousy afghans. They've got big gaping holes in them, so they're not warm. Accordingly, they seem to have no sense of utility unless you want your couch to look like it's straight from the old set of "Roseanne."

So it's safe to assume that I will not, in fact, be converting these long-ago-started granny square centers into crocheted afghans.

Instead, I decided to challenge myself to see what else I could do with them. It's ridiculous, really, because there's not enough yarn in the whole batch to really worry about, and I could have tossed the whole bag and not lost a moment's sleep over it. Still, it seemed like a fun idea, especially as I'm working on this batch of baby hats for the hospital. I've used more than half of the squares already, and I'll post some of the results tomorrow.

I want to use up all the squares in the bag, but I've already subtracted three of them for another purpose. It seems that the charming Abigail thinks they make great cat toys, too.

Have a merry little Christmas

These past couple of weeks have been too hectic with work to leave much energy for major sewing projects. So it's been the perfect time to pick up the knitting needles in the evening and make a few baby things. Here's how a couple of non-traditional yarns knitted up - I love them!

When I dropped off the "Santa Baby" hats at the hospital last week, I asked the volunteer office if the maternity ward had any special needs for other donated items. Turns out they don't get nearly as many hand-knitted hats as they like to have on hand, which really surprised me - often hospitals are inundated with hats because they're the first thing folks think of making. I figured the Christmas hats would come in handy as a quirky little thing this week, but I really didn't expect they would have an ongoing need for hats.

So I've been enjoying the chance to relax with some of these small, finished-in-an-hour projects, and have been using a lot of brights from my stash. I'll make some pastels, too, but it's fun to use something a little funky as well.

It's especially nice to be reflecting on these sweet babies during this special season of the holy Babe in the Manger. I wish you a very warm and wonderful Christmas.

When mistakes don't really matter

I broke one of my own rules this week.

The rule is this: Don't ever donate an item for somebody else to use that you wouldn't be perfectly proud to see on your own child or use yourself. In other words - don't turn out junk in the name of charity, because that's not charitable at all.

I still believe in that rule. But when my schoolteacher daughter called Wednesday night to tell me about a family with a lot of children who'd just lost everything in a fire, it seemed appropriate to recalibrate my internal formula of quality vs. utility.

I'd built up a fairly substantial box of stuff that was clearly not my best work. A knitted blanket in double-thick baby pastels, but too large and too heavy for a baby. Another in garishly bright yarn. A winter scarf that seemed a few stitches wider than it ought to be. A bunch of hats that were experiments for new styles and stitches - and close inspection revealed more than a few bungled rows and mis-aligned ribs.

I'm not a perfectionist in my craft work by any means. Still, I hadn't felt right about sending this stuff off to the hospital or the youth center. But it seemed a shame to let vanity keep a bunch of hats and blankets in a box in my guest room when they could, with all their flaws, be put to much better use.

So off the box went to Brooklyn yesterday - along with the little jester hat I completed on Sunday, and a flannel baby blanket a la my mother.

This family will need a lot more help getting back on their feet, but if the children have new blankets to cuddle with at night, I hope it'll help at least a little.

A little color, a lot of punch

For some reason I tend to hang onto tiny little balls of yarn. I mean, the size of a golf ball. Just left-over odds and ends. It's ridiculous. I have a grocery bag of them and I've been adding to it for years. Lately, I've been meaning to throw the whole thing out.

But yesterday I actually discovered a use for them.

I was knitting a child's cap on standard off-white yarn and suddenly decided to give it more of a ski-cap sort of look by adding a little color. I've never done much multi-color knitting, but alternating every other stitch didn't seem too intimidating, and the little balls of leftover yarn were all I needed. And before I knew it, I had this:



There was just enough yarn left over to make the pom-poms for the corners of this little jester hat. The idea came from a preemie-sized hat in Knitting for Peace, but I sized this one up to fit a four- or five-year-old. I have to say, it's the best use of tiny amounts of scrap yarn that I've found in a long time!

Santa babies

Last week I read in Tracy's terrific blog, Wool Windings, about some adorable Santa Hats and matching booties she'd been making for The Preemie Project. Her sets were so cute I could hardly wait to rush to my stash and dig out a skein of Caron Red Simply Soft and start some for our local hospital. I didn't have any fuzzy white yarn for the "fur," so I picked up something called "Masquerade," part of the new line of yarns that JoAnn's has come out with. It's sort of chenille-y, with a little wisp of sparkly nylon - just right for the cheerful trim. Here's how mine turned out.

These knit up so quickly that it'll be easy to add to this little batch and get them to the hospital well before Christmas. Thanks so much to Tracy for the inspiration!

Cat quilt completed

This goes to Carm today - just the right size for her cat carrier. The happy little cat print, I hope, will make a cheery backdrop for some kitties in need of a loving new home.

A simple project for furry friends

Our friend Carm volunteers most every weekend with the Chemung County SPCA. She takes shelter animals to community festivals and retail stores, and chats with folks about the joys of animal companionship. Everyone always enjoys seeing the sweet cats and lovable dogs the Carm takes on these community appearances, and many a homeless pet has gone to a loving home as a result of her outreach efforts.

For some time I've been wanting to make Carm some sturdy quilted cushions for the animal cages she takes on her weekend tours, and for the pets awaiting homes at the shelter as well. I took the day before Thanksgiving as a vacation day, and found myself with a little time to make these:


Nobody wants to think of these animals as merchandise -- but the fact is, they do catch the eye of a potential new family if their cages are somewhat dressed up and not just lined with a newspaper or an old towel. So I had a lot of fun sewing these 5-inch squares together and thinking about the families that might be welcoming new pets into their homes.

The SPCA likes 18-inch-square cushions for their cages at the shelter, so that's what I made. The cage Carm takes on her weekly road shows is a bit wider and deeper than that, but we stacked the the cushions up yesterday and little Charlie and Jimmy didn't mind one bit. Their sister Lily watched from a distance, but soon all three of them were snuggled into a comfy corner for a nap.

Carm's cage measures 20 x 30, and we both liked the idea of the cushion curling up on the sides, like a padded bumper in a baby's crib. So I'll make her a 24 x 34 cushion and her little fuzzy friends will have a cozy place to nap. Of course, these cushions will stand up to many machine washings, too.

If you'd like to make cage cushions for your local shelter, be sure and call to check their preferred sizes. Some shelters will accept knitted or crocheted blankets, but the fabric seems to make a tidier liner with no potential for snagging on little claws. The five-inch scrap squares work very well for a simple patchwork. I used a high-loft batting I had on hand, but you can use old towels or worn mattress covers, too, as long as they're clean.

I backed the cushions with some leftover home dec fabric for extra sturdiness. For the edges, you can do the right-sides-together, stitch-around-the-edges-leaving-an-opening-and-turn thing. Or, leave your backing about an inch larger than the top, and fold it over to make a binding, machine-stitching on the top side. Make machine bar-tacks at each corner of the patchwork - no handwork at all.

A quick and easy project -- and one that can really help some deserving animals feel cozy as they get a whole new lease on life.

We can all knit for peace

I was in Barnes & Noble's last weekend, looking for a good book on felted knits. While I was hunting through the amply-stocked shelf of knitting books, another little jewel jumped into my hands instead:. "Knitting for Peace" by Betty Christiansen. Published just this year, it's a lovely compilation of ideas for community service crafting.

Not only does the author share wonderful profiles of many terrific organizations devoted to service projects -- she also includes all the sensible patterns we'll ever need. Simple, warm sweaters, vests, socks and classic hat patterns are all beautifully presented. I was happy to see The Ships Project featured, along with Warm Up America - accurately described as "the mother of all knitting charities."

"Knitting for Peace" is great reading and great inspiration at the same time.

Some warm November knitting

Since the silent auction in September, I've mostly been making small gifts for various wonderful folks. An enjoyable-rib scarf in red Lamb's Pride for my friend Judith, who bravely left the security of her agency job and to go to graduate school. Another in black Paton's Brilliant for my daughter, who bravely teaches 21 first-graders in Brooklyn each day. Warm wool socks for my husband's mother, who at 84 still braves the Colorado snow to help her ailing friends get to the doctor and the grocery store. Some slippers for my nephew David, an Army medic recently returned to Baghdad, who's got all of us beat when it comes to bravery and honor.

With those projects caught up, I wanted to make a few children's hats for Maureen's classroom stash. I've slightly adapted Norma's Dulaan hat for more shaping at the top, and I really like the results. You won't believe how quickly these things whip up! And they're so thick and cushy, they trap a lot of air and will make little ears feel so snuggly and warm on a cold day. Here's how to make one for a middle-sized child:

Use two strands of any acrylic or acrylic/wool blend worsted weight yarn. On a 16-inch circular needle (size 13), cast on 42 stitches, place a marker, and join. Knit in stockinette stitch until piece measures about 8 inches long. Start your decrease rows, switching to DPNs as needed: K5, K2tog around; knit one row even; K4, K2tog around; knit one row even; K3, K2tog around, etc. etc. Continue decreasing until you've K2tog around, then break yarn and thread your tail through the remaining stitches, drawing tight to close.

Now you've got half a hat - and you'll pick up 42 stitches around your cast-on edge and make the same hat all over over again, letting it "grow" in the opposite direction. You'll end up with a weird-looking thing like this (about 21 inches long):

Then just punch one end in to fit inside the other. Tack the tops together if you want. Fold up a cuff, and you're done! (I did end up making a pom-pom for this one later, which was good mindless activity while watching the finals of Dancing With the Stars this week - way to go, Emmitt!!)

The interior of this hat measures about 19 inches around, but it's really stretchy - so it should fit almost any grade-school child or small adult with ease. Just add or subtract a few stitches to adjust the size. My gauge was 2.5 stitches per inch.

This hat is a great way to use up stash yarn in a hurry, and the results will warm your heart.

Silent auction - a big success!

We had a great time at work on Friday afternoon with our department's silent auction to benefit United Way. Folks strolled through all day long, checking out the tables of great stuff we had on display and writing down bids. Handmade original jewelry was particularly popular. I had no idea so many of my co-workers were so adept at beading and jewelry-making -- it was a fun chance to appreciate one another's talents as well as raise some money for a good community cause.

I was happy that my quilted bags seemed to be a hit. Here's a shot of one of our two display tables, ready for eager bidders.

Here's a table runner I finished about 11 p.m. the night before. It actually came together quickly after I discovered three scrappy star blocks in warm reds and greens that I'd made for reasons unknown some time ago...


And here's the yoga bag that went along with Kelli's mat and personalized yoga lessons:



In all, we brought in nearly $1,700 to benefit United Way. Not the biggest fundraising event they'll have during the current campaign, but well worth doing - and a lot of fun for all of us.

Oh, and that purse I crocheted out of long strips of fabric? It didn't make it to the auction tables at all. In the end, I just didn't feel good enough about it to include it, especially when we had no lack of really nice items up for auction. I'll snip the red handles out of it and maybe sew the opening closed to make a potholder.

By the way, astute readers (who probably include my brother and two sisters) will notice I have changed the name of this blog to match the URL I chose when I set it up. I have no idea why I didn't have them match up from the very beginning, but anyway, it's done now!

Knitting with the stars

Sixteen inches complete on the silent auction scarf tonight... and lots of fun watching you-know-what-show!!!

A bagalicious weekend

My sewing machine was smokin' this weekend, and it felt great. Well, it felt great for me. I can't speak for my hard-working Janome.

I made this bag for the silent auction. The design is from Cindy Taylor Oates' "Purses, Bags and Totes" -- which, by the way, I highly recommend. Great instructions, giving precise dimensions of fabric pieces to cut, and a few full-sized patterns included - none of this "enlarge 245%" business like in most books, which I can't help but find awfully annoying when I spot a design I'd like to start right away. This book is also the source of the yoga bag I made last week (there are a couple of minor errors in the printed directions, but it's easy enough to figure out the "oops" when you're in the process of construction.)

Then, inspired by some of the clever designs I spotted on the Bagaholics blog, I started this little bag in some luscious autumn prints I had on hand. I foundation-pieced the wedges right onto the cotton batting, then put some decorative feather stitching in gold thread along the seams to quilt the thing. I haven't decided what handles to put on it yet...sophisticated black or woodsy bamboo?

On the knitting front, I completed this set of mittens that I had intended for my daughter's classroom supply. They turned out adult-sized, not first-grader sized -- but the wool/acrylic/mohair mix made them nice and soft and surprisingly great-looking. So I decided I'd add them to the silent auction, too, especially if I can get a scarf finished to go with them. I will probably start the scarf Tuesday night during "Dancing With the Stars" -- which, by the way, is absolutely the most entertaining television show to ever have been on the air, EH-VER.

I just have to hope that I won't get so excited watching Emmitt Smith dance that I drop a stitch... but that's a chance I'll just have to take.

Bags, hats and such

Haven't had much time to blog lately -- have been consumed by an energy-zapping project at work, so I've just been sewing in little bits and pieces here and there. I did manage to finish a yoga bag for the silent auction, but unfortunately forgot to snap a photo of it before I gave it to the yoga-instructing co-worker who's giving yoga lessons (and a mat) for her silent auction contribution. It did turn out great, so maybe I'll remember to photograph it at the auction later this month. I have about three other bags in various stages of completion at home -- with the best of intentions of finishing them tomorrow...we'll see!

I've been doing just a bit of knitting, too, and discovered a terrific pattern for a child's hat. Check it out...the Dulann Hat on Norma's blog. The key is the bulk -- double strands and double thickness trap a lot of air, the key to keeping the noggin warm, so even acrylic yarn will work nicely. With my daughter teaching first grade in Brooklyn now, I knew I had to churn some out for her to keep in her classroom stash. Here's a shot I took of one of the hats, in situ at P.S. 58 before the start of school last month.



I've been thinking about making something similiar in adult sizes, using a more sedate yarn. My only question was whether the bulk would just look dumb. But I think nothing could look as dumb as this $325 Marc Jacobs mushroom hat I spotted in the window of Barney's in Manhattan!

Survey says...

Well, the purse crocheted out of torn strips of fabrics got the thumbs-up from my co-workers for inclusion in the United Way silent auction ... but just barely.

Kelly said "absolutely" -- she thought it was "fun" and she liked the handles (a tactful way of overlooking possible dorkiness of the purse itself?)

Anna was definitely enthusiastic, saying it had a bohemian, "hippie-chick" quality that would easily draw bids.

Most diplomatic of all was 22-year-old Christie, who listens to edgy music and wears hip, urban black most of the time. She looked thoughtfully at my crocheted offering, paused for a moment, and then said with heartfelt kindness: "I wouldn't buy it - but other people might."

Y'gotta love a kid who can come up with that sort of honest answer on the fly!

When crafts collide, I can't decide

The jury's still out on my most recent effort for the upcoming silent auction for United Way.

Well, OK, it hasn't exactly gone before a jury. But I definitely need to run this purse past some young, hip sorts to see if it fits into the "fun and quirky" category or in the Land of Eternal Dorkdom.

Here's how it started -- I bought Designer Style Handbags by Sherri Haab in my quest for inspirations for the silent auction. There are some really cute ideas in there, including some wacky decoupage techniques for cigar boxes -- stuff I'll never do, but it was fun to read about them. One purse was a simple bag crocheted out of 3/4-inch strips of fabric. The author points out that the print won't show on these narrow torn strips -- only the color matters. So, it's a good way to use up any oddball novelty fabric that's taking up room in your stash.

Oh....you mean like THIS?????

So a couple of hours later, here's what I had instead:

It's lined with muslin, so it certainly is functional as a handbag. My only anxiety is that it might really look more like a grandmotherly potholder. And since I've been the most vocal advocate of the "no icky crafts" rule for the silent auction, I'd better get some opinions from trusted fashionistas at work tomorrow.

If it gets a thumbs-down, at least I'll know that -- on a rainy Saturday afternoon in August -- I finally got some use out of that enormous size-P crochet hook in my craft drawer!

Getting ready for the silent auction

Next month, my department at work will host another silent auction to benefit local United Way agencies.

Last year was our first year to do it, and it was a big hit with other employees. They loved all the handcrafted items, along with other things reflecting the personal talents of our team. One of my co-workers contributed a beautiful handwoven basket with embroidered liner; she also brought a set of gorgeous wine glasses with hand-painted embellishments. We had painted boxes, crocheted afghans. There were certificates for rounds of golf, and for family photo shoots for holiday cards. I brought a couple of quilts and a knitted scarf. It was quite a kick for all of us to have other employees wander through the department all day, ooo-ing and ahh-ing over our humble creations and writing down bids that would go toward the United Way campaign. One woman's fresh-baked apple pies brought in $40 each!

With quilted purses and totes being so popular right now, I thought I'd try my hand at making some for this year's fundraiser. I'm having so much fun! Here are a couple that I've completed so far.

I'm not sure I'm crazy about the embellishments, but I'll keep fiddling with them. In the meantime, it's fun to have little easy-to-complete projects to cross off the list.

It'll keep you in stitches

My recent unpacking of stuff out of storage reunited me with one of the best knitting resources I've ever had: Barbara Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns. If you like to knit, it's absolutely worth the investment.

First published nearly 40 years ago, this book -- all 300 pages of it -- has straightforward, easy-to-understand instructions for hundreds and hundreds of different knitting stitches. And lest you feel overwhelmed by the choices, make note what the author wrote in the forward in 1968:

"...suppose that you are a novice knitter or one who has done only 'plain knitting ' for years and imagines that 'all that fancy work is too complicated.' It is important, then, for you to realize that many of the most attractive patterns are astonishingly simple to do. All the pattern stitches in this book can be done by anyone who knows just four basic knitting operations: how to knit, how to purl, how to make a yarn-over stitch and how to use a cable needle."

True to her word, Ms. Walker keeps everything easy. She organizes the stitches into basic categories - from simple knit-purl combinations and color-change patterns to eyelet patterns, fancy-texture patterns, cables and even lace.

Her brief commentary on each stitch (and ways to use it) is both helpful and charming. Few of us will probably be knitting the lace gloves or winter suits she sometimes mentions. But it's great to know which stitches are reversible, have little elasticity (or a lot), or feature "a pleasing texture of horizontal corrugations," as she writes about the Roman Rib Stitch.

In fact, the Roman Rib stitch worked out nicely on the little blanket I knit last week as Dan and I drove to Cincinatti and back. I'm so glad to have this book close at hand again!



To double your fun, check out the Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, too. Both are classics, and you'll never be at a loss for knitting inspiration again.