Wrapping up 2013

What a year it's been! You wouldn't know it by my blog, but 2013 has been the busiest year of my life. Major events:

-I got married in November!
-I went to Thailand, which was an amazing vacation.
-I roadtripped in the Washington/Oregon area for nearly 3 weeks and visited some family in Eugene.
-I trained and ran my first (and only) marathon (42 km). It was part of a team Iron Man challenge in Penticton BC. I finished, not in the time I was hoping for, but it was hotter than I was used to.
-My rental condo was affected by the flooding, so there was added stress around that building. I'm happy to report that my tenant is now back in (as of December 22).
-My husband got laid off... one week before Christmas. We're managing ok.


You can see why I haven't posted very much since June, but today I had some free time and I've been thinking about this blog for quite some time. I haven't had time to do many crafty things, but I'll post a few photos:

For my wedding, I was very crafty! With the help from a friend, we made 16 centerpiece vases by hot gluing some vintage lace around mason jars. It was very easy and the result was exactly what I wanted! I made all the numbers for the tables, seating arrangement, and our cake toppers.

Vintage-inspired centerpieces for my wedding

Wedding centerpieces. I also made the table numbers.

I also made a shawl to wear with my dress... we got married in mid-November and it was cold! It looked amazing and everyone loved it.

 

Lace shawl, pattern is Summer Flies.

My most recent project is a new pair of mittens for my husband. I had originally planned to make him some as a wedding gift but they were way too small. So these ones are not a secret and will fit his giant hands properly ;)

Fried Chicken Thumb mittens, link to ravelry

I also finished the quilt topper that I posted about earlier. I picked up the kit from Traditional Pasttimes, who then quilted it and donated it to flood victims who lost everything in the Calgary flood in June 2013

Quilt top, made from a kit from Traditional Pasttimes

I promise I'll write more in 2014, which hopefully won't be nearly as crazy as 2013 was.  I'll be sure to post plenty of photos of my knitting and sewing adventures, as I have way too much yarn and fabric and I need to spend more time crafting and less time on the internet!

Thanks for reading!
Corina

Update...

So Calgary has weathered the storm, but there is a lot of cleanup to be done! I've been off of work for a week now (I work downtown, which has been closed until recently) and I've been up to all sorts of things! I volunteered with cleanup efforts and handing out food to volunteers for a couple of days, had my future brother-in-law and his fiancee staying over because they were evacuated from their building, been training for my marathon, and somehow I've fit time in for some sewing!

My latest obsession... hexagons!

These guys are tiny!

I'm working on a needle case kit, a design from Lynette Anderson. She visited Calgary about a month ago and I was lucky enough to take a class by her, and this is what we're supposed to make (link). She taught how to do the English paper piecing and some other nifty tricks dealing with applique. I've been slowly picking away at this project, this is a picture of the inside pocket, made up of more hexagons.

This is a picture of the front cover, almost done!

Right now, I'm starting/finishing the top of a quilt so I can donate it to Quilting for Calgary (link to Facebook group), who are collecting quilts to give out to people who have been affected by the floods. I picked up this kit this morning at Traditional Pastimes and I'm hoping to get it done in the next day or so!

Take care!

Not much to do... but craft

Hi,

There's been massive flooding in my hometown over the past couple of days, and subsequently everything near the river was evacuated. In a city of 1 million people, approx 75,000 were evacuated from their homes, the Downtown was evacuated (approx 300,000 people work there), and people are in a frenzy to stockpile supplies. If you'd like to read about it here's a good news link.

We were asked to stay home and stay off the roads, so I did!  I've been crafting away and finally took some pictures to share.

I organized some yarn into jars...

I finished a baby quilt, here's a preview of it because I haven't given it as a gift yet!

I also made another tag with some leftover binding and fabric from the quilt... Next time I'll be sure to iron the fabric at every step of the way, I noticed that the end result is a little wrinkly, even after ironing.

my sad attempt at free-motion quilting...

Finished a couple of baby hats

Baby Newsboy, made with leftover Patons Wool

Newborn baby hat, made with Mandarin Petit (Sandnes)

What's next? I'm about to work on a block-of-the-month that I haven't quite finished... I'll try to work on my birthday quilt (this project has been going on for 2 (or 3?) years and it's time to finish it... and I honestly have 10 or 15 other projects to keep me busy. Stay tuned, if I'm not working I'll probably be blogging!

Need to finish the top block

Birthday quilt, slowly coming together.

Thanks for reading!
~knittypie

Fabric Tag Tutorial

Hi! So I said I would post about how I made this lovely tag... so here's a tutorial!

Fabric tag!

What you need:

• Scrap fabric with batting, at least 3''x5'' in length. If you have a bigger piece, don't cut it smaller, we will quilt the 1 piece of fabric & batting and a larger size is less fiddly to do this on
• Piece of fabric in a lighter color that will be the 'message' side.
• Scissors, pencil for marking, pins.
• Button-hole making skills.

I would say that you need some basic sewing skills- quilting, top stitching, and making a button hole. In reality, you're making a tag and it doesn't need to be perfect. I'm a beginner quilter and I managed to make a half-decent one!

Tag Tutorial

1. Quilt your scrap fabric- I had this laying around from the end of my baby quilt. I quilted the 1 piece of fabric and batting together using diagonal lines, but you could try free-motion quilting if you're feeling adventurous.

The piece I used was approx 7''x 6'' but it doesn't matter because you'll trim it down after this step.

Scraps of fabric & batting from my quilt

I quilted the top in diagonal lines...

...or try free-motion quilting and follow along with the fabric pattern!

2. Trim your quilted piece to 3''x 5''. Cut your lighter fabric to have the same dimensions.

Neutral fabric on the left, quilted fabric on the right.

3. Now take a pencil and mark two diagonal lines so we can get the diagonal shape at the top of the tag. My picture shows that I used my 45 degree lines on my cutting mat and I used those to make the tag top symmetric. Do not cut these lines yet.

I drew on two diagonal lines to make the top of the tag.

4. Place the two pieces of fabric right-sides together, pin. We are leaving the bottom open so the tag can be turned inside out after. Starting in the bottom corner, use a 1/8'' seam and sew up and around to the other side, leaving the bottom open. I pretended the diagonal lines I drew at the top were the edges, so I sewed inside of it. It's not a big deal if you sew on top of the lines, we're cutting the excess off anyways.

Leave the bottom of the tag open. Use ~1/8 inch seam and sew to the other bottom corner, leaving the bottom open (so it can be turned inside out after).

5. Now cut the corners off the ends off the tag. Now is a good time to assess if this looks symmetrical. If not, just run a couple of stitches on one of the sides to even it up. 

This is what your tag should look like. See the bottom is open. Sorry I didn't think what color of thread I was using on this step!

6. Turn the tag right-side out. Fold the fabric in on the bottom, pin and steam.

Fold up the bottom edges so the raw ends are inside the tag. I turned it in approx 1/4''.

Front view, before sewing. It's looking like a tag now.

7. Close up the bottom edge with ~1/8'' top stitch, and continue around the entire tag. This was a little tricky to do, but just use a consistent distance around the entire tag, pivotting at the corners & continuing to the end. Backstitch to secure. 

See my tag, this is the bottom corner.

 8. Create a button hole at the top, so a ribbon can feed through. Make sure you line up the centre of the buttonhole to the centre of the tag!

I have an automatic buttonhole feature on my machine. I simply put the foot on, choose my width of buttonhole, and push the pedal. It creates the buttonhole in 1 continuous process and I watch in amazement :)

I played around with some parameters and decided '10' works for me... your machine will be different so I would suggest practicing on a scrap piece of fabric to see how you want your button hole.

My buttonhole foot.

Husqvarna Sapphire 835 buttonhole parameters

I tested two sizes, 16 and 10. I prefer 10. I then marked on my tag where I needed the needle to start to create the buttonhole.

9. You're done! Write a message, I used a regular ball-point pen because I can't imagine anyone would actually wash this tag. Whatever pen you use, TEST IT on a scrap piece of fabric before you write on your tag so you can make sure the ink doesn't bleed!!

Finished result. Tie a ribbon through this and write a message!

Tag from the baby quilt that I made last week... blogged here

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions just leave a comment below and I will do my best to clarify things. 

~knittypie

Quilt for a friend...

Last time I posted about buying some cute girly fabric ...

Sometimes I'll just keep bundles of fabric and debate for weeks (or months) what to do with it. This bundle, however, was purchased with a particular project in mind. One of my best friends told me she was having a girl! I bought this fabric with her and her little one in mind. I also fell in love with this zig zag quilt so I knew I had to give the free pattern a try!

I cut out 4''x4'' triangles in order to maximize my fat quarter fabric amounts. I love the tip about how to create perfect paired triangles, it's much easier than cutting the triangles out & trying to sew on the bias. I laid them all out and sewed the strips together. Here's the finished product, I think it looks great!

Front side, after washing so it's a little wrinkled.

Back side, I love this fabric and how it looks with the dark pink binding...

Can't forget the tags! Brown one is from RememberWynn on Etsy. The white one is one I made with some scraps!

It was my first time sewing binding on by machine. I found a great tutorial here for a machine binding tutorial. If you look closely in the corner on the picture below, you can see where I was a little wobbly. I'm sure practice would make it look a lot better, but what baby would care about a couple of wiggly stitches anyways?

Machine binding... It's not quite straight but it saved me SO MUCH TIME!

Overall, I learned some new techniques on this quilt and I'm very happy it was completed in time!

What's next you ask? Here's a sneak-peek...a mini-tutorial on the cute tags I've been making with the leftovers from the quilt!

Do you love this? I'll share a mini-tutorial once I get some more photos!

Thanks for reading! If you like the tutorials that I link to you should follow me on Pinterest, it's where I find a lot of inspiration!
~knittypie

Sick Day...

Today I was at home with a cold, so I took this opportunity to catch up on some sewing and blogging!

First up, I have some photos of a quilt that I created for my mom at Christmas this past year. I used a pattern called Scandinavian Snowball Fun by Lynette Anderson. I love her designs, and so does my local quilt store. They had kits with this pattern so I credit them with choosing the coordinating fabrics. I love how this turned out, even though my embroidery is a little crooked in places.

This is the second quilt I've ever made!

Putting the lights on the tree...

Riding in a sleigh... (sorry this one is a little blurry!)

On the way to school... my favorite one

Back of the quit

I used fabric scraps from the quilt for the applique for the snowballs, which was hard for me because it was my first time doing applique and I'm sure I wasn't using the most efficient technique. Nevertheless, I love it, and so does my mom :)

My niece turned 3 last week, and so I made her one of these simple skirts. For the full tutorial, see this blog tutorial, I have summarized what I've done below.

Supplies:

• Thick elastic band for waist. This was for a smallish 3 year old with a waist of 17 inches, so I bought an 18 inch elastic.
• Cute fabric. I used a square approximately 13'' long and 28'' wide. This was a little big for my niece, but I just folded the waistband over on her so she can grow into it. If you have a child, try measuring a skirt that they already own and approximate the length from there. Sorry I'm not more help!

Found this cute fabric on clearance at Fabricland, and my niece LOVES Yo Gabba Gabba.

So I cut out a square approx 13'' long and 28'. I folded over and ironed a seam on the bottom of the rectangle, approx 1/2'' wide.

 

Picture trying to show how I folded over the bottom seam

Stitching the seam down, approx 1/8'' from the folded edge

seam after sewing

Then I sewed up the side to create a tube... (no photo of this step). I stitched the elastic waistband, then pinned it in 4 places onto the fabric skirt. As I sewed, I stretched the fabric to make it fit the circumference of the fabric tube. Here's what it looks like when it's done: 

Finished skirt

Zoomed in on elastic waist.

Here she is modeling the finished product. It's a little big, as I mentioned I had to fold the waist over... If I made this again, I would make a longer rectangle, maybe 32'' and cut it so it flares out a little at the bottom, and add some lace to make it extremely girly.

And finally, here's some fabric I recently picked up... I can't wait to get started on this!!

Thanks for reading! ~knittypie