quilt-ly cuddles

Long, long ago, I made a quilt top.  See, I had just loved the fabric and it was in a cute little layer cake for not a bad price at all and so I snatched it up and decided I'd make myself a lap quilt.  But, sewing for myself, especially when there's no specific deadline, makes for a project that quickly gets put of the very farthest back of burners.  Besides, I didn't even have anything to back it with yet.  Then, when perusing the local fabric store, I saw a baby quilt made from the same fabric line, and a little spark ignited.  My little Bean prefers to sleep with a quilt, so I thought I could make this for her.  At this point I have finally gotten around to buying some backing and a little extra to border it with, but, because it was just going to be an extra, even bringing it all on Christmas vacation with me didn't give me enough of a push to complete the project.

Recently, I started knitting a baby blanket for a friend.  The pattern was simple enough, but the yarn was delicate and the needles were small, and after about a week of diligent evening knitting I noticed I had messed up the last five or so rows, so I gave up with that.  Feeling pretty close to failure I remembered my lovely quilt, all ready to get put together and quilted.

I've tried machine quilting before.  It was a mess; I managed to have a nasty little gather at every join.  It was wretched.  I tried it anyways.  This time: success!

Voila, a lovely, classy quilt.

I bound it with satin blankie binding, which I find makes it more baby-ish and less adult; plus babies love the satiny texture.

Also, I really loved how my mitered corners turned out.

Bug decided that Dr Seus's ABCs was required in the quilt photos.

And Bee, our cat of extreme fluffiness, also wanted in on the photography.  What a cozy little scene.

I hope they have lots of fun playing on and snuggling in it.  I'm so glad it has a home.  I had even started to toy with other uses for a quilt topper, as I began to think it would never reach quilt-dom.

10 other Uses For a Quilt Top:

1) Table runner (just make sure you sew on a back).

2) Line a basket (or cover a box).

3) Cover a cork board, add a frame, and you have a pretty snazzy pin-board.

4) Cut it into chunks, which you could frame and make a pretty interesting picture arrangement (or frame in embroidery hoops).

5) Make a teddy bear.

6) Tote bag.

7) Christmas stocking.

8) Hot water bottle cover (or rice bag cover).

9) Oven gloves, or re-cover old oven gloves (depending on the material).

10) Basically, it can be used as a regular piece of material that's just a bit fancier.

However, like I said, this all started because I loved the fabric so much, so I'm glad I didn't have to resort to chopping it up for anything else.  It was meant to be a quilt and I'm really happy to have had it to give to my friend when I did.

time travel, oooooo!

While life continues to be crazy, I seem to have fallen off the creative-wagon.  However, never to be defeated, here I am today with not one but two cute little projects to show you.  How, might you ask, can this be?  Um, well, to be honest, these are things that I made quite a while ago but never got around to photographing.  Now that you know my secrets, may as well get along to the good stuff.

Firstly, I bring you a little piece I like to call my Peony Sweater Dress!

(in actuality, it's the sweater from the Sweetie-Pie Kit)

It was something I had my eye on ever since I first stumbled across it on Pickles website.  They do this fantastic thing where they offer one free version of their patterns, and it just so happened that this was available for a 6 month old, and I knew it was meant to be.

Ok, so while I was knitting it up and stumbling over the fisherman's rib, I was a little less certain, but eventually I opened my eyes and really read the pattern (for any interested parties, you have to alternate between knit one, knit one below and purl, knit one below when knitting it in a round, silly me) and BAM, there I had a lovely little sweater dress.

Man, that's one cute baby, eh?

Oh, and to take you even farther back in time, back to the days when I didn't even know if I was having a little baby girl or a little baby boy, behold, the Stripey Baby Lap Blanket!

Now, to anyone wanting to knit up a fast simple and well loved gift, I highly recommend one of these.  A lady at our church gave us one for Bugaboo when he was born, and it was the most useful thing.  The trick is, that it's the right size to cover a baby's lap when their in the car seat or stroller.  It may seem small, but you see, if it's any bigger and covers their hands, they pull it up over their face (or at least my little monsters do) or you have to fold it in half, which gets bulky.  Oh, or sometimes it dangles over the sides (this is again, if it's too big) and then gets caught in stroller wheels or car doors, or drags on the ground and gets dirty... really I think you can see my point here.

Project-wise it's a breeze.  I don't really remember the dimensions; I just kind of cast on enough stitches to make it look about right, and then garter stitched away until it was the size I wanted.  Couldn't be simpler.

Not bad eh?

Oh, and if you promise not to tell anyone on ravelry, the glow-bug is actually covering a tiny little hole where I dropped a stitch.  tsk tsk.

Alright then, now maybe I can get something new put together.   Maybe.

...apologies and snuggles

where have I been?!

It's been nearly two months since I've last blogged. Man, time goes fast with two little kids. It seems like I've only just woken up and it's already time to be getting supper ready and then the kids are already going to bed. It's crazy times 'round these parts, I tells ya (Oh, and a brief disclaimer about the supper bit: my husbandito is the one who actually does most the cooking).

Well, I'll ease back into things. Ok, not that I exactly have a boat load of projects to unload, but I'll pace myself regardless.

Here's something that I'm especially proud of

Can you tell what it is?

Bits and pieces of it are rather disjointed,

but it's my quilt!

Well, actually it's the quilt I made for my baby daughter, but it's my very first quilt and I made it mostly by myself (under the expert supervision of my mother and with a good deal of assistance from her and my aunt).

*Blogger (or maybe just my compy; I don't know) is a little twitchy right now and I can't select so I can't make any fancy little links, like to Spoonflower, where I got most of the fabric, but I mentioned my quilt in my last post (here: http://my-cozy-life.blogspot.ca/2012/01/ribbit-and-also-choo-chooo.html), so check it out if you want any additional info. Also, sorry about the spacing between paragraphs. I can't seem to get that to work for me either right now.

It's getting a lot of use.

I hand quilted it, which was a lot easier than I expected. Anyone wanting to try it, I definitely recommend starting with a baby quilt (or a lap quilt for those without kidlets), because it's a reasonable challenge (believe me, because I'm prone to give up when I take on something that's too challenging). I also love the crazy colours and mix-matched patterns. They really suit my little girl; a little girly, but mostly bright, fun and energetic. Like I said, I am really proud of this project!

ribbit and also choo-chooo

For those not in the know, the process of ripping out a knitting project is called "frogging" (because, you 'rip-it'...see where I'm going). This just goes to show that knitters are really as peculiar as they seem at first glance (present company included).

My point being that while I have a new baby and am on vacation and my creations are slow by any means to begin with, I'm also finding that I am having to go back a re-do a lot.

Firstly Baby's sweater dress, on take 3 and am trucking along well (finally). It will be fabulous.

Secondly, Baby's quilt. Well, while it's not called frogging when you rip a quilt, yeah it's in the same boat. I hodge-podge mashed a wild selection of prints together...wait, I'll start further back. I ordered a bunch of fabric off of Spoonflower. You can have too much of a good thing. With so many beautiful and wild fabrics to choose between, I eventually settled for just taking whatever I wanted instead of trying to co-ordinate it. Interestingly enough, A fair amount of the fabric worked, so I went down to fabricville and found a few pieces to tie it together. I'm using the Speedy Baby-2 from Quilt Taffy (which works really well with a handful of fat quarters). However, as I placed the last panels in place, I decided they were too much (too bright and crazy and colourful), so I've ripped them off and am putting in plain grey panels that match the little elephants instead.

Lastly, I realize that I've never properly shown off our train table. We finished it this summer. Every time anyone comes to the house Bugaboo takes them over to show it to them saying "My daddy maked me that". It's fabulous. We do have plans to expand and better paint the scenery and add a big red H for a heli-pad. I also want to state that the only things we paid full price for was the train 'Emily'. All the other trains were bought second hand from value village, or on sale, or were birthday gifts. The tracks were also found at value village ($5) except for the bridge which was also on sale. It's not fine art, but it's very fun.

(nice hat eh?)

Well, my little girl is hungry, so I'm off to do some mothering. :)

snuggly warm in 2012

the Pirate scarf is done!

Huzzah, how's that for staying on top of things in the New Year (well, I actually finished a day or two ago, but shhhhhh).

I'm onto a sweater-dress for my little girlie, so back to work for me!

Happy New Years!

fall, fall, glorious fall! oh, and an octopus

Best Season Ever!

Even out here in the ever so slightly drab west coast, it makes me so happy! So a new baby and a new house make it a lot of fun (and a lot of work, but it's fun work, so that's great!).

Due to the craziness of life in general, I'm keeping things short (never know when a 4 week old little girl is going to wake up from her nap).

House=a long way to go before any exciting progress can be reported.

Knitting=looky what I made! (I'm referring here to the knitting, not the baby, allthough, yeah, I made that too)

This is what I'm calling my Octopus Sleep Sac. It's based on the Owlie Sleep Sac pattern found on Ravelry, but when I looked at my yarn options, I saw octopus, not owl, so that's what I did.

I had been wanting to try making a pattern, and with my mom here, she was able to guide me through how to knit it up once it was made. I think I've found a whole new element of knitting to become addicted to, and am scheming of many more intarsia patterns to come (um, once I get a bit more time on my hands though). All I did was draw the octopus I wanted, and then traced over it by blocking out which squares I wanted orange and which were to be blue. Feel free to use the x&o pattern here (if you can see it well enough), but I am planning on making a nice and proper one to post on Ravelry, so you could wait for that too.

Oh, and celebrating fall, we went to the local pumpkin patch for some fun.

And fun was had!

snugly bugly rugly

Ok baby, I'm ready!

Well, I've actually been ready for a while, however, I have happily completed both a girl sweater and a boy sweater, meaning that my knitting is in order and you can be born anytime now. Please!


In all honesty, I finished the little boy sweater a week or so ago, but have had no energy for photographing it, and so it waited. But Costco had sheepskin rugs on sale (I've wanted one forever) and I magically found inspiration for a few snugly photos. In other news, Bugaboo approves of the sheepskin for snuggle purposes. We'll have to find a nice central spot in the new house where it can be readily available for snuggles whenever.





Back to the sweater. I found it on Ravelry; 'Knitted Jacket with Raglan Sleeves and Cables' by DROPS design. The pattern is fabulous, but the way it's written is horrendous. Literally, I had to decode it every step of the way. I'm honestly thinking of organizing all my notes and posting a user friendly version. The biggest issue I had, was most of the pattern seemed to be nonsense until you tried it, failed, realized what they had meant, and then did it again. For example, the cables are all from charts. The key to the charts are on a separate page. I was within an inch of the end when I realized that I had been doing them upside down all along (no big deal though). The decrease pattern at the end was similar, however I did do it right. I think if I try this one again (which I think I will now that I have it deciphered) I'll decrease a lot more though, because the neck is really big. We'll see how it looks on the baby (if he's a boy).






Anyhow, it's lovely and soft and warm and I'm really pleased with how it came out, mistakes and all.

Oh, and for the record, Mom did all they tying in of the loose ends for me. :)

happy civic holiday!

What a silly day. Not that I'm complaining about a day off because that's awesome, but one that's different for every Provence? Oh well, yay BC-Day!

In other news, my husband has been using our camera and has put it somewhere, so what I wanted to post will wait a few days, and instead I'll bring you and update on my dandy knitting projects. Ok, so still not finished that sweater for the Sew Along. No excuse really, other than I don't like finishing and tucking all the little ends in. However, I did finish a beautiful pair of little baby slippers!

Now, I don't actually know the gender of our baby, so I'm knitting a few things for a girl, and have a few pieces for a boy lined up too. These little sandals from Debbie Bliss's 'blankets, bears and booties' book were too cute and I really wanted the challenge. Challenge me they did and still I prevailed! There was definitely a point where they looked pretty mangled, but finish them up and stuff them each with a weeble (because I don't have any little toesies for them yet) and they turned out lovely!

I'm on the final sleeve of the matching sweater, so back to knitting I go!

PS. These were done in the fabulous sock-wool I picked up at the Belfast Fibre mill. My little guy keeps picking up my work-in-progress or the ball of wool and just stroking it, so I hope new-baby finds it as snuggly too!

Ta-daaa! (photo-heavy, which I kind of like)

So starting in reverse order of projects actually accomplished (silly, I know), my brother-in-law's baby is currently in the process of being born! Right now! Very exciting! Unfortunately, this is the baby for whom I've been knitting that blanket forever, and still haven't finished it, but I guess I have a little extra motivation to kick it in to knitting-gear and get it done.

Also, I have started a quilt. Actually, I've gotten a fair amount accomplished (not considering the actual quilting which will have to soon take place). I don't have any backing for it, so it's on hold.
My friend and I finally got together for some sewing, but only finished our aprons, and never got around to the hats. However, soon. Here's Bugaboo helping me with some cooking. We made Salted Caramels from this recipe here, and so I did most of the cooking (it being up on the stove) and he enjoyed a snack in his new apron.

We have finally broken dirt in the ol' garden, planting peas and some onions. I'm weathering my tomatoes so they can go in next week too. I'm getting excited, but I think I'll miss the lush forest growing on my windowsill. Perhaps a herb garden, something which greatly intimidates me, will have to be in order.

And lastly before I get to my fancy-schmancy BIG news, I made up some Mother's Day cards! We normally give our Moms and Grandmoms a call, but I was feeling we could do a little better than that, so here they are! They've all been sent out and I hope they get there (the other side of the country) on time. Well, we're normally late, so no one would mind, or be surprised, if they are a little bit belated. As you can see, some are more audacious and some are quite muted, but I figured that would suit my Mom, Mother in-laws and all our grammies respectively.

And of course we had to include a picture or two in each!

And now, are you ready? I finished my shirt! For the Spring Top Sewalong 2011! Done! Well, no, I need one more button, but if it comes down to the grind, I have one that's not quite the right shade of yellow. Maybe I can go hunting tonight...

Well, it's a glorious glamorous day, and my little Bugaboo needs to be woken up from his nap. I'll have the official super fancy posed-to-the-max shot of my shirt later, so I look forward to posting it too!

Tadaaa!