Stash Avalanche

One finished baby quilt

It's done! Well, it was finished a week ago, but it took a while to get decent light and non-gale conditions for some photos.

Mr G did the honors and held it up (better than pegs!) but I forgot to take some photos of the back to had to pin it up on the washing line.

It took me 5 weeks fron start fo gifting (including too much two-steps-forward-one-step-back), but that was interspersed with some crochet (that needs a post) and a bit of work on Stashlet's quilt. Speaking of which, I put that on hold to get Baby L's version finished so can now continue with that, and some dress sewing. More on that over the weekend hopefully.

Finished quilt size was something like 57" by 68". Can't remember exactly.

Baby L was unimpressed (well, he's only a month old, so still trying to get to grips with life in general) but Mama L was pleased so I'm happy.

Linking up with Randi's Show and Tell Tuesday. Happy Tuesday, everyone!

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Then one became two...

Quilt making of a sort has continued to progress over the last week. I made a backing and went off to buy some cotton wadding... and then things kind of went mildly pear shaped and now there are two quilts!

Well, I wasn't happy with the wadding (too thin) so I ended up buying polar fleece instead with the intention of using just like normal wadding - sandwiching it between the quilt top and bottom. But - being a complete novice at this quilting malarky - I had made my backing exactly the same size as the quilt top and thereby created a complete fiddle when trying to sandwich the three layers together. You just can't get them all in line and all perfectly squared up. And I only discovered the idea of having a bigger backing after I trundled off to YouTube to look for some advice. Common sense really but there you go.

And while all this was going on, part of my head was thinking " why hide the (snuggly) fleece away behing another layer of cotton?", so after some mild grumpiness and head scratching, I decided to back the quilt top with fleece, and use the bottom for another quilt. But of course - well, to my mind at least - a rather white quilt top with some bright white fleece would just be too blinding, so more fleece would be required. Something dark blue-ish. And after trawling round all the shops in Dublin, and finding nothing at all, I went off to the internet.

Meanwhile, to add to the stress of all this, the baby arrived. Hooray! But... no quilt to give him, and I got rather over-stressed by this, and the indecision of which fleece to buy for the backing, and the fact that it would probably take at least a week to arrive (because yet again, there was nothing suitable to buy in Ireland - what is it with this country?!). Who'd have thought making a quilt would be so nerve-wracking?

But yesterday I had a brilliant brainwave: use brushed cotton instead, because I can go to the shops and buy a flannelette sheet and some wadding, and not pay for postage or wait a week for the thing to arrive. Double hooray! So that's the plan.

In amongst all the angst, I did actually progress both quilts a little, as you can see. I've done the text on the quilt top, and started to quilt the quilt bottom/top with the fleece. This latter quilt will be for Stashlet; I was sewing fabric together for the quilt top and he wanted to know what I was doing, and then said "can you make a quilt for me next?". So this one is for him, and the quilt I've been planning to make him for er... at least 2 years now, will come next. I have half the fabric for it already (a lovely alphabet panel by Laurie Wisbrun which you can see here), but I want to make a wonky log cabin version and clearly, judging by recent efforts, I need a bit more practice before I get it right.

Sharing this on Randi's Show and Tell Tuesdays - even though it's Wednesday today!

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Secret patchwork WIP

Makes a lovely stained glass curtain doesn't it?

That was at lunchtime. Now it has a round of dark blue and I'm working on a second round of white, and then the top is done. Hurrah!

What I failed to mention in the last post was that this was a quilt in a hurry as it's for a friend who is about to have a baby. Her due date was last week but but the baby seems quite happy where it is, so I still have time to get the thing finished (finger's crossed).

I had to get more fabric; the sales assistant asked me if it was for sashing and I hadn't a clue what she was talking about. Just shows how little quilting I do!

(and I made it to Randi's Show and Tell Tuesday again. Things are looking up!)

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Secret patchwork

Can't believe I've actually made it to a Show and Tell Tuesday! I think the last time I managed to post on Randi's blog was about a year ago (sigh).

Anyways, here's a sneak at a little bit of sewing I'm doing at the moment. Sorry, the photos aren't great - taken in a hurry (because I can't actually believe I have time to write a post!) and in too bright sunshine <places hand dramatically on forehead>.

My favourite...

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Two!

Stashlet's birthday hedgehog cake looks a bit worst for wear (the buttercream would not cooperate) but judging by a small sample this morning (eaten purely for research purposes, you understand), it should taste fine.

How time flies...

 

 

If you want to make your own hedgehog cake, it's very simple:

• make a 3 egg sponge (that's 6oz butter or margarine beaten with 6oz caster sugar, then add 3 eggs (one at a time) with 6oz self-raising flour and 3 oz ground almonds)
• pour into a 9" sandwich tin and bake till a sqewer comes out clean in the middle, then allow to cool
• cut in half (so you have two half circles) then slice through the middle of each (so you have 4 half circles)
• sandwich together with jam or butter cream* (or whatever you like, really) then carve off the corners on one end to make a wedge-shaped head
• cover the whole lot in chocolate buttercream (or ganache if you're feeling fancy), and stud with halved chocolate buttons
• do a better job on it's face than I did

I used a double quantity of Pam Corbin's buttercream recipe (from the River Cottage Handbook no8: Cakes) which made just enough to stick the sponge slices together and cover the beast: beat 125g soft unsalted butter until pale and creamy, then mix in 200g icing sugar and 50g cocoa (that's the total weight) in three lots beating well after each addition. My butter was too cold and it was a total bugger to get it to stick to the cake, so be warned.

 

Little stripey cardi

The little brown cardigan has been temporarily put aside for cooler weather so here is yet another make-it-up-as-you-go-along cardigan, this time in Tivoli Cruise 100% cotton DK (white and navy blue).

I was inspired by a wonderful dusky blue and white stripey top that Stashlet has, and while the cardigan's blue does not come close to the inspirational blue, it does satisfy my need for stripes. I've probably said it before but babies and stripes are made for eachother..

I was in need of a quick fix so I knitted two strands together using 5mm needles for cuffs, waist band and neck band in garter stitch, and 6mm needles for the stocking stitch body. The ball band says  22st x 30 rows on 5mm needles (for a single strand) and my tension was 14st and 20 rows.

I'm not entirely sure about the garter stitch cuffs and hem, and as with the brown cardi, the cuffs could be a little bigger, but apart from that I'm happy with it. Also as with the brown cardi (which I forgot to mention) the sleeves are a bit on the long side and have been turned back, but I'm ok with that as I want this cardi to last a while. Oh, and the red zip was a last minute bit of divine inspiration which I think works rather well.

Sun hat #2

I made another one! This time for Stashlet.

Having had a bit of a ponder on how to construct this hat, I hit on the idea of bias binding - not round the edge of the brim as previously mentioned, but round the brim-crown seam, like this...

I have to say the inside of this hat brings me great joy.

Using this method makes a reversible hat - you could even put bias on both sides if you wanted. Unfortunately I was too clever and sewed a name tape into the crown, so this particular hat is not reversible, but the orange+spots combo is so fabulous I may have to make another one.

Here's what I did:

• sew brims together and top stitch
• sew crowns and tack together
• create sandwich of bias binding (wrong side out) + brim  (right side out) + crown (inside out) and sew all together
• turn up bias and hand sew edge to crown (but through one layer only)

If I do this method again, I'll try to take photos of the sandwich bit because I'm not entirely sure my description is clear.

ps. fabrics all from Ikea except the bias which is some I made from an unidentified fat quarter a while ago.

 

A hat for Master H

Stashlet has a friend at playgroup who turned one the other day, so I decided to make him a sun hat (not that we have sun at the moment but there's nothing like a bit of optimism to get you through to summer, is there?).

It's the same pattern that I used for Stashlet's hat last summer. Like the sweatshirt I showed you the other day, it's from the Burda 9522 pattern. This time I made the largest size (18" head circumference) which is a wee bit too big for Stashlet, and will be a bit to big for Master H at the moment, but I'm hoping that it will fit him by the time summer comes.

The fabric is some Ikea heavyweight cotton (which I bought ages ago to make an Onion Uniform Jacket and still haven't got round to it) and a polycotton (I think) gingham lining.

Having made this hat once already, and not being very impressed with the construction instructions, I decided to go my own way with putting it together:

• sew the two brims together and topstitch them
• sew the tops and sides together to end up with two separate crowns
• stitch the brim to the outer crown
• turn under and baste the seam allowance on the crown lining
• pin and topstitch the crown lining inside the outer hat

You don't get a reversible hat this way, but all the raw edges are concealed so it looks nice and neat. The only way I can think of to do a truly reversible hat would be to sew the lining and outer separately, put them together and bind the brim edge with a bias binding. I intend to make at least a couple of sunhats for Stashlet this summer, so I will try to do one of each construction and see how they turn out.

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In other news, my mother came for a visit, I've started an exceedingly part-time job at my LFS, and Stashlet is now with a childminder three mornings a week, so unfortunately blogging (as you will have noticed) has got even more infrequent.

My distance learning course has to be completed by the end of this month - I just have an essay left to write but having had a year's break in the middle of the course, there's a lot of re-reading that needs doing first (sigh).

But some positive blog related news: MrG's friend, Mr C, has given us one of his old laptops, so once we've put Windows on it (it has Linux Ubuntu at the moment which drives us mad), I'll be able to blog on the kitchen table and not wake Stashlet up with creaking floor boards every time I try to get to my pc. So small hurrahs and hopefully things will improve blog-wise next month.

Happy Tuesday!

Little envelope neck sweatshirt

A long, long, long time ago, so long that you probably don't remember, I made a little orange fleece for the wee Stashlet. And at the same time, I also cut out and started a sweatshirt using the same pattern (Burda 9522).

And then, because I am a slovenly sewer sometimes, I broke the twin needle that I was doing the hems with (I was sewing over pins and not paying attention), and the 90% finished sweatshirt got put on hold while I tried to find another twin needle the same size. Well, it's a very boring story so the short version is, I finally got some, put them somewhere safe, and then couldn't find them. So the sweatshirt sat around for a bit more, until this Thursday when I finally cracked, pulled out all the hemming and redid it with a different size needle.

So finally, here is the little envelope neck sweatshirt, which Stashlet now fits without having to roll the sleeves up as I did with the orange fleece in December.

It's made from a lovely soft double jersey, which to the uninitiated (as I was until I came across this fabric) is two layers of jersery cleverly knitted so that they remain seperate but at the same time are linked together by a stitch very so often (like double muslin). the colour is not something I would have gone for but it was that or a horrible muddy dark green, so I thought if it turned out looking awful I could always dye it. In the end, I decided it looked alright, but there is (or there should be!) enough left over for something else, so I will probably dye that. One pinky biege top is quite enough for any little boy.

When I made the little orange fleece, I used a sort of pseudo overlock stitch and what with the thickness of the fleece, that worked out very well. I decided to use twin needle top stitching with this sweatshirt, and to be honest it was a bit hit and miss. I learnt that you can't turn neat corners with a twin needle, so the side vents look a bit crappy, and for some reason I managed to sew the whole of the back neck binding on whilst missing it on the wrong side, so I had to do a bit of a patch job with some hand hemming on that. But all in all, I think it looks alright on, and no-one will notice the crappy bits (I hope!).

 

Little heather jumper

Oh dear. here's one of those posts which I wrote 99% of three weeks ago then never had time to find one vital bit of information and so it stagnated in my drafts folder...

You have to hand it to Lidl. They do have some great finds if you're prepared to go on a regular basis or subscribe to their newsletters. We shop there pretty frequently because they do a lot of German food which, of course, keeps Mr G happy.

About twice or three times a year they do knitting yarn. You have to be selective because some of it can be 100% acrylic but they often have cottons and wool mix yarns too, and these are clearly very popular as they're often nearly all sold out by the end of the first day. I am terrible; I buy loads and then it sits in my cupboard until I can think of something to do with it.

Which is how this little jumper came into being. I got a pack (6 x 50g balls) of this yarn a good while ago. It's called Monte Carlo and it's 74% polyacrylic, 10% alpaca, 10% wool and 6% viscose, which is not my ideal choice but the colouur was too pretty to pass over. I'd already made a little cardigan from it and I found that once it's washed it becomes really soft and snuggly, perfect for baby knitting, so I thought I'd make Stashlet a jumper for this winter (although at the moment it's more like the tropics here) and make it big enough so that it will hopefully fir him next winter too.

Because my knitting tension frequently tends to be nowhere near what it says on the ballband (in this case the ball band says 14 stitches and 18 rows on 7mm needles and my tension came out at 16 stitches and 23 rows on 5mm needles), I knitted a little swatch and then drew up the pattern using some knitting graph paper I printed (I use this site the most).

The body was knitted in the round and the sleeves separately and then sewn in. I've never 'designed' a set-in sleeve before but I thought that, if I measured how tall the arm opening was and converted that into a triangle of decreasing rows, I'd get a reasonable sleeve top. Somehow, though, this didn't work (too many rows) and I ended up winging it on the basis that the yarn knits up quickly so I could always pull out a few rows and try again when it didn't work.

This is the kind of knitter I am, I'll carefully work out tension and size, and then not pay any attention to the details: I have no idea how many stitches I picked up round the neck but it worked out nicely to create a little polo neck effect. I put one button hole in the shoulder, and one in the neck itself, and with the colour of the yarn, it had to be mother-of-peal buttons.

The fit is big, as I expected, with few inches of growing room in the arms. I'm not sure how it will fare lengthways, as Stashlet seems to get taller and taller by the minute, but I have a little bit of yarn left over so I could always lengthen the ribbing at the bottom if necessary.

I have to say, I'm really pleased with it, and am all set to do another one. The Lidl stash needs using up, you know!