crochet, yarn + vintage fabric = perfect flowers

another little project i did in the past few months were these festive little flower brooches for a friend's birthday.

i'd been looking for an excuse to make more covered buttons (i <3 covered buttons so much), and while i was trying to decide how to finish these, buttons seemed like the perfect idea.

the flowers are crocheted, and were actually crocheted ages ago. i have a bag full of flowers that i never did anything with - they were just something to keep my hands busy in front of the tv before i started doing so much needlework.



i went through my stash of vintage fabric pieces, mostly stuff i've gathered lately, and pulled out pieces that matched the colours of the flowers i had. i chose the brown shades because they suit the recipient so well, but there are other brighter flowers too - as you can tell by the different fabrics i used!





i stitched the buttons onto the centre of the flowers, and then stitch a pinbacking onto the back. i could've glued them, i know, but that kinda feels like cheating!

halloween, homos and authority. and a red hat.

i was going to post a bunch of xmas pictures, even a few tutorials, when it occurred to me that i still have halloween stuff that hasn't been posted!

obviously, i should catch up on them first. hence, some of the stitching i was doing in october and november. (i posted the needlework vulva a while ago)

these two halloween pieces were just for fun, and were done right after a bunch of pieces that were my own designs. sometimes it's just nice to chill out and follow instructions, you know?

plus, i LOVE the patterns! they're designed by Prairie Schooler (book no 156) and have a vintage halloween vibe going on. i'd love to stitch up the moon and the cat too.

the skeleton


and the owl


they were both stitched with glow in the dark thread, which is annoying to work with, but oh so fun anyways. the skeleton bones are all glowing, and the owl's eyes.


once i'd stitched them up, i moved on to this for a friend's housewarming.


in typical craftydame fashion, i didn't count out from the centre (i hate doing that!) and my piece ended up being an odd shape that wasn't very frame-able.

to solve that, i sewed a piece of kona cotton onto both sides of the aida cloth. then i slipped it into an ikea frame that i'd painted previously, and ta-da!


the homo sweet homo idea has been around for ages, and i don't think it's possible to say who really started it. i'm not as fond of the more traditional sampler style cross stitch (with flowers and borders and bunnies, etc), so i chose to do a more graphic design. i used the same lettering as i did for the queer piece, ages ago now.

after i did the purple one for tara, i played with it a bit more, trying varying aidas. see how tiny the bottom one is? i didn't actually cross most of the stitches!



and somewhere in between all these pieces, i stitched up a radical cross stitch design to hang in my kitchen. (cause the colours match) their patterns are fabulous, and are available from their etsy store (along with issues of hoopla, which i also recommend highly!)


after saying that i'm not into the traditional cross stitch style (even with ironic words in it!), this may seem like a bit of a contradiction - however, there are NO bunnies. ;)


if you looked at the listing for the pattern on etsy, you might have noticed that the colours are a bit different. that's for two reasons. one, because i have six million skeins of thread, but never the right ones. i'm trying to use what i have instead of buying more, cause every time i walk into the stitching store to buy one skein, i walk out at least $20 poorer! and two, because i wanted the colours to be a bit brighter, to match the blue and the green towels i have in my kitchen.


i've worked on a few more needlework pieces since the xmas hoopla settled down, but one is a set of two, so i'll wait until they're both done, another needs to have the edges finished, and yet another is soooo sooo close to being done that it's ridiculous, but since it's my "PG" project that i work on in dr's offices and such, it probably won't get the finishing touches for a while yet.


however, one thing i did do, that i haven't done over a year, was pick up my crochet hook again! several friends were talking about crocheting, and i'd bought bulky yarn in a lovely shade of red at micheals on boxing day, so i got inspired.

i actually started out with a pattern, but quickly changed it drastically. i think i frogged and re-crocheted the majority of the hat about 4 times. it was getting ridiculous, truthfully.





i'm still not entirely in love with it. i kinda feel like it makes my head look like a mushroom, but no one else seems to agree. but i do love the colour!

craigslist score!

last week my little sister found a listing on craigslist that said "estate: suitcase of knitting patterns" she e-mailed me the link, and i e-mailed the poster, even though it had already been up for a day. i totally wasn't expecting it to still be available, but it was!

i went and picked it up the next morning, and it's awesome! there are a lot of mid-80s patterns, not tacky enough to be fun, but just a little too tacky to make, if you know what i mean, and some are mid-60s and cool, but there were also some absolute gems! the suitcase itself makes me happy too. it's in rough shape, but i don't care, i adore vintage suitcases.

i don't knit, but i do crochet, and a lot of the books had both, or were cool enough that the images themselves were the best part!




i SO need to learn to knit! the elves with their fat bellies are the best (they call them pixies, actually), but i love the kitschy cuteness of the kittens too!


i love the little green hat with pixie front and the pompom on top. if i had kids i'd totally make them wear hats like that!

also, those red slipper/socks? ouchie! i don't understand buttons on the sides of socks, don't they dig into your ankles whenever you sit down?


this one was printed in germany on US soil (which i totally didn't even know existed!), so that explains the knitted shorts! the poodle totally makes me giggle.

i'm definitely going to be scanning them for my own use (artwork, etc), but i'm also looking into copyright stuff to see if i can scan any of them and post them for others. it's a bit more complicated because the majority of the patterns are canadian and british.

aren't they fun?

lots and lots of atcs!!

ah! catching up time!

i've had atcs received for two different swaps since i last posted any, so i'm going to post them together.

the first was the typical alphabet swap, GHI round. i was organizing, and ended up in two groups just to keep the numbers even, so i made two of each letter.

G is for games

a piece of a game board for a background, paper pieces from games (the top two i inked with stazOn to add colour), the mini playing card (from skybluepink), bingo sticker, bingo chip, and colourful game pieces. i put glossy accents around the edges of the pieces, but i'm kinda eh about it....

see! boardgame!


G is for gate and garden

the gate is made from thin flexible plastic (i think it was supposed to be a very thin cutting board) and i did a solvent transfer with a blender marker to transfer the gate image onto it.

the garden behind the gate! a bunch of flower stamps, all inked with nick bantok water based inks, and then an embossed butterfly that's green, and kinda hidden. you can also see the backs of the gate pieces, and the black button thread i glued on to make the hinges.

the ends of the thread are caught between the front and the back, you can kinda see the bumps

H is for hands and hearts

palmistry hand stamp from alpha stamps stamped with red and then embossed, and then pink ink embossed around the edges. the colour varied by how much heat was applied, so i played with that a bit, you can see some lighter spots. and the glittery purplish pink hearts are fun brads.

H is for halloween

mostly just an excuse to use halloween goodies! rub on transfer for "halloween", and the bats are stamped and embossed. the polka dot paper is glued to mat board, so it's raised from the background.

I is for india
i was gonna do something else for I, but after i planned out the india chunky page, i realized i already had it all worked out, i might as well use it for this!

silicone transfer of a punjabi newspaper, and it wrinkled a bunch as i tried to dry the cardboard backing, so that adds texture. painted over it with pink, and glued it onto another piece of card. everything's the same as the chunky page, except that the henna hand is teal instead of pink!

i wrapped the henna hand around the back, and added some gold foil.

I is for icon

i'm so in love with this one. i saved all my templates so that i do this again.
rubber stamp from invokearts stamped with black stazOn, then a stencil was cut for the rays to glue them, and then foil was applied to the glue lines. another stencil was made for the gown, which was stamped with blue pigment ink and then embossed. the edges were all inked and them embossed with silver. i added the red heart grommet (stupid crop-o-dile big bite messed it up a bit), and glued on the gold crown.

and that's it! a lot of them were more involved than i'd thought they'd be, but it was to experiment with different ideas.


and then the other swap was a no paper allowed atc swap, that i was super excited to organize. i'd been thinking about it for a while, but hadn't had the time to organize it.

i was in 3 groups, so i had 6 partners, and i ended up sending everyone 2 cards, because the second one was easy and fun!

i did a set of 6 cards and sent one to each partner. (soon to be 7, because i'm going to make myself one too!) they're all solvent transfer (blending pen) scissors with stazOn ink lace, stitching, buttons and ruler on a frosted plastic base. the scissors are photocopies from craphound.

when held up to the light you can see through the atc







and then i did three sets of two similar cards.



these two are metal flashing tape that's embossed with the craftster crochet skull symbol, attached to the same plastic backing as i used in the scissor atcs, then painted with adironback alcohol inks. after they were dry i punched holes in them with my crop-o-dile and crocheted into them.



these two are bubble wrap with acrylic paint in each bubble. i cut holes in the bubbles from the back, and inserted the paint with a cat medicine thing that i found on sale at the pet store (i forget what it's called). one bubble on each has a little snippet that says "art" on it. once the paint was a dry as it was going to get, they were glued onto the plastic base with goop.





the back plastic is the solvent transfer again with a picture of a gate, then the red transparency, and then the front layer is actually a piece of a HUGE b&w negative, from an aerial photo. and again, stamped with stazOn, cause i'm obsessed!


i was really happy with how they turned out!

catch up post #5! half moon ball shawl and matching scarflet

i bought this yarn AGES ago, at least a year ago, knowing that i'd one day find a use for it, and when taloola and i were matched up in the stocking swap, i knew i'd found the reason for the yarn! it's totally her colours, and i was so excited to use it! i also knew that she and her hubby were hoping for a new addition soon, so i decided to make it a "wish shawl", and spent the time crocheting thinking about them and what fabulous parents they'd make.

i only had 14 balls, and the balls were only 38 yards long, so i went searching for a pattern that used chunky yarn, but not too much of it!

i found the one-ball half-moon shawl on the lionbrand website, and got all excited... except that it calls for one ball of yarn that's 480 yards long! much longer than my 38 yard balls!

after much use of the google calculator (as IF i could find one of my three calculators in my mess of a studio! ), i decided to try it, figuring if worst came to worst, i'd just leave off the last row or something.

as it turned out, i only needed 10 balls! yayy!

all spread out on a towel to protect it from cat hair -

(note the paw peeking into the picture! sofie was curious!)

and on my dress form, with flash -


and without flash, which is probably the most accurate representation of the colours -


it's super cozy and comfy and warm!


and then, since i still had two balls left, i decided to make her a scarflet as well.


i just chained 15, then double or triple crocheted across (i forget which now). i added the vintage button to secure it, and ta-da!

catch up time! atcs, postcards, crocheted baby goodies, onesie, pj pants and christmas wreath

hopefully i remember everything....

fabric halloween atcs and postcards



bigger pics, though keep in mind that the colours are as shown in the group photos, i don't know why my scanner hates orange so much!















they were all made using this tutorial.
they're halloween fabrics that i pieced together and then quilted (they all have a layer of batting and black backing fabric). i zigzagged all the edges, then i used black pigment ink to stamp a bunch of my halloween stamps onto cardstock. after they dried, i cut them out and sewed them onto the mini-quilts. and i added halloween ribbon to most of them, and a few halloween charms to the ones that felt kinda empty.

and i made a few paper based halloween atcs as well, since i didn't have enough of the fabric ones for the swap i was in.




crocheted baby goodies

the pattern is "baby it's cold outside" from crochetme, but i changed it up a bit, because i'm apparently incapable of following a pattern completely.

the yarn is "sean sheep darwin" that i bought at walmart, they just started carrying it in stores here, and the 275m ball was $6 or something like that. i still have a TON left. i picked it cause it was kinda chunky, and because i thought the colours were fun, in a non-gendered-colour kinda way! (and cause i'm broke, so the price was good)

i used a 5.5mm(I) hook, and i'm still not sure why. the pattern calls for a 6.5mm(K) hook and the yarn calls for 7mm knitting needles (which doesn't exist in crochet hooks). it worked well actually, the 6.5 might have been a bit loose, but i'm still confused as to why i picked up that hook in the first place!

i fudged the pattern a bit. once i'd finished the basic portion, everyone told me that it looked too short. that's entirely possible, since i neglected to check the gauge at any point....

so i added 4 more rows to the front and back. the front ones were easy, just adding on, but for the back i had to crochet a strip and whipstitch it on. luckily, the varigated yarn covered it nicely!



the contrast trim is red heart soft touch, which i chose entirely due to the colour match. the trim seemed to take forever - i had it completely done, ends hidden and everything, and i decided to rip it out and start over. the first time i did it, i did the single crochet too close together, and it buckled the fabric of the body, so when i redid it, i spaced them much bigger. that meant i didn't follow the instructions for the button holes exactly - i only skipped one stitch, and crocheted a chain of two, instead of skipping two stitches and crocheting a chain of three. i also did two single crochet between the buttons instead of one, and i did three rows around, because i wanted the buttons to show up better and to add more of the lime green. oh, and i did the trim all at once, instead of doing the front and neck seperate from the bottom.



the buttons aren't sewn on yet, so maybe i shouldn't actually call it completed, but i was just so happy, i couldn't wait to take pictures of it!

you may have also noticed that the sweater is a mirror image of the pattern sample. that my friends, is why you shouldn't do the seaming while carrying on a passionate phone rant with the mother-to-be. i sewed it together wrong sides together! oops! luckily, the difference between the right and wrong side is pretty much nonexistant, it just meant that the overlap is on the other side.

all in all, i'm pretty damn happy with it!

i also made a matching hat, using a pattern from crochet today that showed an example done in a blegh pastely minty green and white, in that truly nasty terry yarn that you just KNOW is going to look like crap within a month. luckily, i looked beyond the blandness!





and then i also made baby "chucks", using this pattern

i fell in love with the lime green i used on the sweater, so i used it for the sneakers as well.



i modified the pattern quite a bit, because everyone kept telling me that the soles were too narrow, and babies usually have chubby little feet. once i had the base a better shape, i followed the instructions for the top, though i think i'll change them up a bit next time - add a bit more white to the upper toe, and make the tongue longer - it was way too short in my opinion!

(and i left the circle off the side because neither the mom-to-be nor i are big fans of the politics of nike, as much as we love the look of cons, and i figured they already looked recognizable enough, it didn't need any further advertising!)

and then i still had some yarn, and i was amazed at how quickly the first hat had whipped up, so i made another! this one ended up smaller, but that's okay, it's still super cute! and he'll need a small hat at first anyway.



and i also sewed him a striped baby onesie and matching hat (which turned out MUCH bigger than the onesie! syupid one-size-fits-all hat pattern!)

this was made on December 7, 2007. i know that because as soon as my best friend called to say she was in labour, i started pre-shrinking the fabric and sewing it! torrin x arrived at 10:45pm!


lots and lots of pj pants!
my grandparents visited for 2.5 weeks at the beginning of december (one of the many reasons i'm so far behind!) and somehow (don't ask me how, i still can't figure it out), my offer to help my grandmother make one vest turned into me sewing umpteen million pairs of pj pants for her to give as christmas gifts!




some of the ones pictured were mine - like the owls at the top of the last pic! i love that fabric, i made two pairs, one for a friend and one for me (i'm wearing them now!)

i also made a wreath - much more sedate than the halloween ones, but it was for my parents, not me.


i wasn't able to find the wreath forms i used at halloween, so i bought one of those twisted branch style wreaths and wrapped the garland around it. the red berries came from micheals last year after christmas (i tore apart the bundles) and the little bells are from daiso i think.