Quick 'Design Wall' project

Hi!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was going to make a design wall similar to this one. I have an IKEA canvas print that measures about 118 cm x 80 cm (~46'' x 31''). I didn't take any photos while I was actually making this, but I have some simple instructions. I don't think this is as durable or as awesome as the one described by Elizabeth (see link above), but it was a quick & easy project and it will help me decide if I want to spend the time and effort to build a nice one like hers.


Supplies:

• Picture frame
• Batting
• Masking Tape
• Scissors
• Helping hand if you have a large picture

1. Measure your frame that you want to cover. Add ~8 cm extra on each side, enough that you could wrap the batting up and tape onto the wood frame on the back (add more if your frame is thicker).  I had some leftover batting from another project that was a pretty tight fit.

2. Clean a nice spot on the floor, lay the batting down, and lay the picture frame face down, centred around the batting

3. If you have a friend, begin at the middle of one edge of and start taping the batting to the frame adn work your way to the outside. Don't stretch the batting too much or it will tear. I put masking tape on the batting to attach to the frame every 10 cm or so, and I folded the corners very neatly so there wasn't a lot of bulge.

View of the back, sorry I didn't get a better one!

4. You're done! Hang it on the wall (or lean it up against the wall as in my case). Ideally I would like to push pins into mine, and I can't really do that without ruining the canvas. So I'll probably make a nicer one when I have the time and energy.

Tadaa! These are some block-of-the-month from my local quilt store

Here's something else I'm working on: 

Pattern: Well-Dressed Bunny by Barbara Prime

Pattern: Well-Dressed Bunny by Barbara Prime

Yarn: Rowan RYC Baby Alpaca (Super Soft!!)

Ravelry link to my project page here

He's almost done, just in time for Easter... just missing some eyes, a mouth and some clothes! Overall it was a good pattern, but it was written for knitting flat and seaming afterwards. I am not very good at seaming so next time I make this I'll try to knit it in the round (and on smaller needles). I also used DK weight yarn instead of worsted, which made my rabbit a little smaller and partially see-thru. I can see the white stuffing inside of him if I look closely!

Take care,
~knittypie

Craft Room Cleanup

Hi!
    So a couple of weeks ago I posted about how messy my craft room was, and my plans to clean it up. There were definitely pros and cons to tackling that room! While I'm happy to report it's in much better condition, I've also quadrupled my to-do list because I found so many half-finished projects! Everyone loves before & after shots, and I wish I had done a better job setting up the camera & taking better photos, but this will have to do.

Behold:

Desk- before

Desk- after. This was a basic cleanup of everything on there (and piled into other things on the bed in to-do piles)

Before, things stashed in the corner

After- A little tidier, but things still stashed in the corner!

before- storage area for magazines and randomness

 

After- magazines organized and purged.

Before- messy closet! There's yarn, fabric, costume jewelry (pink box), roving (white bag) and art supplies all in this photo.

After- This was my favorite place to clean up. Now I can access my yarn & fabric easier.

     It was a daunting task to organize this room, it took almost 5 hours to complete! I worked on one area at a time and sorted into categories on my bed-- To-Do, To Donate, To Keep/put away, and a pile for future sorting. Here are the final areas:

To Do. Yes, this is a giant pile. There are T-shirts, pillow cases, new fabric for a knitting basket, clothes to hem, and clothes to sew. Yikes!

Another view of the To-Do pile, including some vintage lace I found stashed in my closet!

To Donate: There's some stuff here that I know I'll never get around to using, including yarn, magazines & T-shirts.

"Needs more sorting". Yes, I admit I have WAY too much stuff. My fiance says I'm a borderline hoarder, so I've got some cleaning up to do! Most of the stuff in here is for give-away or I'll try & sell some of it. Since I took this photo I've already whittled this pile down to about half of what I'm showing.

     So I ended the day with a semi-clean room and a giant pile of stuff to sort, and an even bigger pile of projects to do. My next couple of blogs will be focused on some of the projects I intend on finishing. Before I close out this post, I wanted to share some photos of some interesting and lovely things that were hiding in my room. Enjoy!

A pile of vintage lace (I need to store these properly).

Some beautiful fabric I picked in in Japan, intended to be used for Japanese Furoshiki.

Some silk-screening on fabric that I made at ACAD

The magazine (and unfinished sweater) that re-introduced me to knitting!

(I never finished this, I didn't know much about knitting and yarn choices, and used Bernat Cotton for this!)

My initial to-do list..... *sigh*.

 Thanks for reading! ~knittypie

Stay-At-Home Sunday

This morning I woke up to this:

Snowstorm- March 3, 2013

We're expecting 10-15 cm of snow today, so I decided it was a great day to blog... and what am I blogging about? My 'new' craft room! We've been living in this house for about 5 months now, and we really haven't done much with the place (luckily we didn't have to do much when we moved in), but we're still without blinds and have yet to put a nail into the wall to hang artwork.... but I'm hoping today that's going to change! I'm going to focus on my craft room, which also doubles as a spare bedroom.

Here are some before shots:

View of the sewing table (covered in stuff!)

There's a lot of stuff on that table, including some fabric I recently picked up from a garage sale. I love the colors, there's some vintage bedsheet fabric (blue one) in that pile. I'm not sure what I'm going to make yet, but for now I'm just going to clean up that area.

Awesome vintage fabric... not sure what I'll make!

 Here's a view of some bookshelves, and the walk-in closet:

This is my disorganized walk-in-closet. I'm hoping this looks a lot neater after today.

Here's one of the projects I hope to complete today. It's currently a picture from Ikea, which we purchased to stage our old condo when we were selling it. It's a nice photo, but I want to transform this into a design wall for quilting. If you don't know what that is, check out this blog that inspired me to do this. This is probably half the size as the one Elizabeth made, but if I actually use it, I'll try making a giant one.

Ikea canvas picture

I'll post some 'after' shots of my room and this project in my next blog. Thanks for reading!

It's 2013

Hi,

I've been on a long hiatus from this blog, it seems almost every post is apologetic because I don't post nearly as much as I would like! I am sorry, and I'll give you the rundown on what's been going on.

I've been up to a lot, no really! The main ones are I bought a new house, got engaged, and have been traveling the world. I've still managed to sew and knit, and now that I have an awesome new craft room I can lay everything out & create so much more!

The focus of this post will be baby stuff, mainly because everyone around me is pregnant or just had one... the next  post will be on quilting & the projects I've been sewing up ( I need to get some photos).

I love knitting with Mission Falls merino, unfortunately that company went out of business. I think I've found my replacement yarn, "Sublime Yarns Cashmere Merino Silk", it's soft and gives beautiful stitch definitions... see the hat I made for my niece?   This pattern was fun to knit, I would definitely make it again

Pattern: Lina by Johanna of Joko Knits 

Yarn: Sublime Yarns Cashmere Merino Silk, colorway 301

Ravelry link to my project here

Next up, I've got an assortment of newborn stuff. There are plenty of free patterns online for hats, but I had a hard time getting the sizes right because baby's heads are so variable in size. Most of these measured around 12'' wide, and fit the kids within the first couple of months. I like using cotton for these, mainly because I'm afraid that a baby might have an allergic reaction to wool or other products. 

Pattern: Aviatrix baby hat by Justine Turner

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Colorway 340007

Ravelry link to my project here

Pattern: Kürbis Baby Hat by natalja 

Yarn: Berocco Touche (Awesome yarn!)

Ravelry link to my project here

Last up is one of my favorites, a "baby sophisticate" sweater with matching old-man hat! The sweater is probably too big for a newborn, but the hat should be ok (or he'll grow into it!)

Pattern: Baby Sophisticate by Linden Down

Yarn: Mission Falls Merino (Discontinued, sigh...)

Ravelry link to my project here

As I mentioned, next post will be about sewing. I'll take some pictures to show my new machine, craft room update before/after the move,  as well as some quilting stuff I've been doing. 

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the lack of posts!

~knittypie

Hello April- look at my sweater!

I wish I had shared this earlier, but better late than never!

November10 by fallmasche
Quince and Co. Lark in "Peacoat"
Made for me!

I offered to test-knit this in November, ordered some delicious worsted-weight yarn from Quince&Co, and cast on in mid-December. This was a straightforward knit, but I had some challenges along the way. I misread the pattern at the start, and had 8 raglan increase stitches (instead of 4). Then, I was almost done the body when I realised I forgot to do the increases at the pockets, and had to frog and re-knit the bottom half. Finally, as I was knitting the hood, I noticed that I was on my last skein of yarn and started to panic that I was going to run out of yarn! I managed to finish the sweater, using approx 900 yds.


I finished this in January, and I wore it a lot when it was cold out (it's a really warm sweater, especially if I wear a long sleeve shirt underneath. My favourite part is probably the pockets. I used some extra yarn I had in my stash (sportweight) and alternated colours every other row. I love how they add a little bit of surprise to a simple-looking sweater.


Now that it's April (and finally starting to warm up) I probably won't be wearing this as often-- I'll just have to knit something else to wear! Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! And to start the new year, I decided to change the template on my blog! The old one was used by a lot of people, and I wanted to have something different. Hope you like it!

I barely blogged last year, and I wish I could have shared more projects that I made. Of course, there is no way to go back and talk about everything I crafted, but I thought I'd share some of best Christmas gifts that I've given in a while!

I made my niece a beautiful dress:

b13-17 Dress, bonnet, socks and duck by DROPS design
Estelle Arequipa in colour 208
Made for my niece!

I also made her a baby blanket- and it's my first quilt! I love the fabric and colours that I chose. My local quilting store had an excellent selection of fabrics, and they were very helpful in showing me how to sew squares together and which way to press. I love the fact that these colours are feminine, but not over-the-top girly pink. I can't wait to make another one! I can't remember what the pattern was called, I think it's something like sweethearts, and it was pretty easy to make.

(Sorry for the crummy pictures, the lighting was not very nice to work with)

After my first quilting success, I decided to make a couple of table runners. The pattern is by Lynette Anderson Designs, and it's called "Santa's On His Way". I searched online to try and find others that have made this pattern, but I didn't find any! Again, I went to the quilting store to buy some very Christmas-y fabrics:

There was a handy iron-on transfer with the pattern, which transferred quite well (I made two of these runners, each with two panels to sew). I had to fumble my way through the embroidery, I don't have the patience for this and my fingers hurt the next day! I'm sure my technique is all wrong, but here is the resulting Santa and reindeer on their way...


Here is a picture of the finished project, approximately 65cm x 25 cm wide:

What did I get for Christmas? Sadly, nothing handmade... but my mom bought me a gift certificate to my new favourite quilting store (so I can feed my new-found quilting craze). One of the best gifts (to myself) were these amazing custom-made sewing tags, from Remember Wynn, which arrived on Christmas Eve... and just in time to sew on some gifts!

Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll be posting more in 2011!

Knitting all summer...

I said I would post more often, and I suppose I lied. It turns out I hate blogging when I'd rather be outside enjoying the summer. Since today is freezing and cold and a true taste of Winter, I thought I'd update with some pictures of what I've been up to!

I am especially proud of my Ishbel scarf that I knit up while on holidays in Nova Scotia. I went out there for a wedding but we made a vacation out of it by renting a car and driving all over the island. We put on 3500km on our rental car (Yay for unlimited mileage contracts!) over 9 days. My boyfriend did 95% of the driving, which gave me time to work on this beauty:

Ishbel by Ysolda Teague

Diamond Yarn Foot Loose Superwash
Made for Me!

I'd never been that far east (within Canada) before and it was fun to do all the touristy things like Peggy's Cove and eating fresh seafood everywhere we went. I also had a chance to visit Gaspereau Valley Fibres, where I picked up some Fleece Artist yarns and a beautiful woolen blanket. I haven't made anything with the yarn yet, but I will very soon for Christmas gifts.

As I mentioned in my previous post, baby knitted goods are so much fun to knit. The patterns are generally easy-t0-follow, and it only takes a couple of hours (or couple of days) to finish a project. Here are two cute sweaters that I made earlier in the year:

Maile Sweater by Nikki Van De Car
Araucania Ranco Multy
Made for a friend's baby

This pattern is free and very rewarding, although the sleeves were a bit of a pain. I absolutely love this sweater, and the only thing that I would do differently would be to use a slightly thicker yarn in a superwash (this particular yarn needs to be handwashed!). I made the next sweater out of cotton, which turned out to be a great idea because my niece wore it all summer long:

Autumn Leaves by Nikki Van De Car
Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton
Made for my niece Talia

Again, this was a great pattern, and since it was top-down, the sleeves were very easy. I enjoyed knitting with Debbie Bliss cotton, it felt soft and buttery, but I'm not sure how it's holding up to baby wear. The last time I saw this sweater on my niece it was looking a little malformed and stretching in some areas. Since this only took me a couple of days to make, I could easily whip up another one using a more baby-friendly cotton (maybe Lion Brand!). Also, I have a huge bin of mismatched buttons and I think mixing them up on the sweater was a cute, playful idea. And what baby would refuse such a cute sweater!?

I'm in the process of making Christmas gifts, stay tuned for how they turn out!