Month: March 2017

Knit one, purl one

stitchesoftime2 Comments

Hello from damp and windy, (as usual), Yorkshire. I have had a busy time just lately with some very exciting things to do, namely helping Ellie move into the house she has just bought! I went down to Worksop last weekend and with Kerry and another friend James helped her move some of her things then the removal men came on Monday.

All very good, she is very pleased to have bought a lovely house in a little village not far from work and has been busy buying furniture and things for it this week. I am going down again next weekend to help her do some painting.

Meanwhile on the crafting front I have cast on some knitting. It has been about a year since I last did any, I put together the mouse for Ava which involved some finishing but have not knitted for a long time as I have had tendonitis in my left wrist which has been painful. I was inspired however by the fact that we have a new baby in the family so got some of my stash out and have cast on this cute cardigan from an old magazine so excuse the creases!

baby cardigan pic March 1

Am knitting the 6 month size so will have to finish it by August which should be fine, I have two weeks in Spain at Easter so will be sitting on the terrace in the sun with it.

baby cardigan knitting March 1

I have also made another little pouch, this one has some hair bobbles in and is for a friend’s daughter’s birthday. Same design and tutorial as before, Jedi Craft Girl

Blue linen pouch 1

The bow fabric is from the mini charm packs I bought at Quilt Festival last summer and it is lined with red linen which works well with the blue.

Blue linen pouch 2

The linen is all scrap from making kit for the boys.The deal is that I make things for them in return for a bottle of wine and the fabric left overs which seems like a very good deal to me 🙂

Blue linen pouch 3

I love the ric rac braid and thought that the motif on the charm squares was very appropriate for hair bobbles.

We are coming to the end of term now and teaching is slowing down and the evenings are getting brighter so I am feeling very springlike, apart from the rain the last few days, and am looking forward to the summer starting. Roll on warm days and camping!

Hope that you have a good week ahead, see you all in a couple of weeks for an update on a newly tried design, I made my first Dresden this afternoon and it went very well! Just needs the centre finishing and some backing and I can share it with you.

Thanks for visiting and see you soon.

Fit for a saint

stitchesoftime1 Comment

Here is the surcoat for Saint George. I decided to make it open sided, more of a tabard as it may well be worn by lots of people within our group over its lifetime and that way it will be a ,’one size fits all’, piece of kit.

St George's tabard 1

I designed the garment myself, a very simple and quick make as I only had one afternoon to do it.Basically it is two and a half metres of fabric folded in half lengthways with a little trimmed off the one edge.This meant I only had one side seam to sew. The width of it is 25″ before sewing it up.

I had planned to then use the length folded in half width ways to make front and back. The length of the tabard from shoulder to knee is 46″. I appliqued the cross onto the front before sewing up the side seam. The cross pattern I cut out from paper with a 2″ width for each end, tapering in to the middle. The fabric was cut as one piece then machine appliqued onto the background with zigzag stitch.

St George's tabard 3

I cut a hole in the middle for the head, this measures 12″ and I just drew round a plate and elongated it from the centre of the tabard. I bound the neck with a bias binding, using the quilt binding method of cutting a 2 and a half inch strip on the bias then machining it to the outside of the neck, folding it over to the inside then folding over the raw edge and slip stitching it to the inside.

St George's tabard 4

I am very pleased with how it has turned out and hopefully will have some pictures of it in action for you in a few weeks. I am not going to be at the event as I am in Spain but fingers crossed there will be a few on Facebook!

I have also managed to make a very cute pouch in between marking this week so will share that with you soon I am away this coming weekend at Ellie’s so will be back with you next weekend.

Thanks for visiting and have a lovely weekend and week ahead.

The internet is reading my mind!

stitchesoftime3 Comments

Well bits of the internet are anyway. As regular readers know I have been developing my skills with zippers in the last couple of months and have plans to make more of the lovely pouches that I have been making and maybe even experiment with some more designs.

So I was really pleased when I visited Amanda Jean’s Crazy Mom blog this evening to find that she had a link to a friend’s site,  A Little Crispy  – what a fab name for a blog – who is running a 52 Zippers Project, one for each week of the year! This is a screenshot of what she has made so far.

52-zipper-pouch-web-pic

How fantastic is that exactly 🙂 This is going to be a major source of inspiration for me this year as she has links to tutorials for each of the pouches for free and a basic pattern to print and there are some lovely ideas here.How kind people on the internet are!

I have not tried any curved pouches yet but these look lovely.Sadly I have other stuff to do this weekend and am busy for the next few weekends after that but the next free weekend I am going to lock myself in the craft room and go pouch mad, at last count I had about 50 zippers and I do have a little bit of fabric as well 😉

Hope that you have a great weekend ahead, I am hopefully going to be making a surcoat for St George this weekend for the show that the group has coming up at Easter.

Take care and thanks for visiting.