Saturday, December 31, 2022
Sunday, December 25, 2022
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Make one - make four
This year I've had three advent calendars (which A thinks is a bit unfair). One is for each Sunday in advent - with parcels from both my mom and my MIL. The remaining two are from StepbyStep - a quilty calendar - and from Værbitt, - a knitters calendar.
I'll write a post about the calendar from StepbyStep soon, but I'm over the moon excited about it - and I will (if they make one) buy one next year too.
So, from Værbitt comes one parcel every odd day in December - from the 1st to the 23rd - and a bonus parcel on Christmas Eve (which is THE BIG DAY in Norway). The contents are a nice mixture of handdyed yarn and stitchmarkers - and this year's ornament. Yup, they design a new ornament each year, and include both pattern and kit for making these in the calendar.
This year the ornament came on the 9th, and was a gorgeous little bird, decorated with glass beads and feathers, and two different coloured yarn, so you could decide for your self which colour you wanted to ues.
I made the first one in the greenish-blue yarn and thought it was a cute little guy, which came together surpricingly easy.
So I decided to see how many birds I'd be able to make with the yarn provided in the kit. The answer? Four. Two greenish-blue and two orangy-pink.
They've fund their places in our Christmas tree, surrounded by both handmade ornaments, old and new, and some more vintage ones (from when hubby was little).
I have a couple of ornaments from Værbitt that I havenæt come around to make yet. I bought these patterns some time after they were published - so no kits for these. They're on my to do-list, with quite a lot of other things. Perhaps they'll be finished for next year's tree?
Monday, December 19, 2022
Memorial quilt
I rarely make anything for others when asked to. I can make stuff for people and gift them, if I get the idea myself - but I've avoided custom work. Mainly because it feels like whenever something is something I have to do, it's a real dread and all my motivation and will to craft goes down the drain.
Until now.
A friend of ours sent me a message a couple of weeks ago, asking if I'd be willing to help her help a friends of hers, who's just been through a devastating experience in her life, by making a t-shirt quilt for her.
I told her I'd never done that before, and wasn't sure if what I would be able to do would be good enough - but also that if she really wantet, I'd give it a try.
She came by with a bag of t-shirts and a fleece blanket, and I started to think..
First I demolished the t-shirts to see how large pieces I could get from them - and ironed on stabilising fabric to make them more manageable.
This is the first layout. Trying to save as much of the designs on the t-shirts that had designs on them.
Checking to see how this layout would work with the fleece blanket. I moved some of the blocks around to get a bit more air around the designs.
And finally spray-glued to the fleece blanket!
I quilted it with straight lines following each seam, and cut the sides of the fleece down to 2". Folded the edges in twice before sewing it down.
I didn't get a ood picture of the finished quilt, but our friends was very happy. The imposter syndrome is great in this one, so I'm still aftraid I've messed up..
