Tag: crafts

Charming Pink Baby Blanket

Yesterday, I completed a baby blanket for a friend who is having a baby girl in July.  It’s her first child, and she is really excited and nervous all at the same time.  I was so happy to make this for her and her precious new bundle of joy, whom she is going to name Emma.  I love the name Emma.  I wanted to name my first daughter that for a while.

Here’s a close up of the pretty shell pattern.

There is a pretty, solid border around the shell pattern, followed by an open stitched border to give the edges a pretty ruffled look.

I just love making blankets for baby girls.  So much pink! 🙂  I have a feeling that when I have a daughter of my own (hopefully) one day, there is going to be a lot of pink in our house.

Crochet Hook Case

I’ve been wanting to make a case for my assortment of crochet hooks for the longest time, and I found a pattern online several months ago, bought all the supplies, and then never got around to making it.  Until last night!  Now I finally have an organized place for all my crochet hooks!  I used to have a small plastic case, but since I have so many, they didn’t all fit, and whenever I needed to crochet something, I would inevitably not be able to find the exact crochet hook I was looking for.

Here is the free tutorial I found online.  That link will take you to a page with several different styles of cases, but I chose to do the one on the top left.  I just thought it was the cutest.

It was my first time using quilt batting, and let me tell you, it’s not that easy to work with that stuff.  First of all, it loses it’s shape very easily, getting stretched out if you pull on it too hard.  And secondly, it didn’t always want to glide through my sewing machine very well.  My bobbin got tangled up a few times as a result.  For those of you that are new to sewing or have never sewn with a sewing machine before, a bobbin is a little spool on a sewing machine that holds some of the thread that is used to sew your stitches.  Don’t worry, I didn’t know that until I was reading the directions on how to set up my sewing machine for the first time.

I was able to figure out how to sew little pockets for each of my hooks.  As you can see, I marked where i THOUGHT I wanted the pockets to be, and then when I started sewing, I realized I had made a few too small, so I had to adjust accordingly.  Which meant that I was left with some pen lines on my fabric.  Hopefully they’ll fade with age.  Or I guess I could always throw it into the washing machine.

Look at the cute ribbon ties and buttons!  I think that is my favorite feature.  If you are a person that crochets alot and doesn’t have a place to store your hooks, I highly recommend making one of these cute cases.  It’ll make your life so much easier.

My First Sewing Machine Experience

Well, I figured since Steve so thoughtfully gave me a sewing/embroidery machine for Christmas this past year I might as well put it to some use.  So last night I taught myself how to use it.  I had never used a sewing machine before, and the only time I had ever seen one used was on TV or in pictures.  So I had alot to learn.  For my first project, I decided to make some pillows for the furniture we are getting for our screened in porch (a love seat and 2 chairs).  Here is how I began.

I cut out 2 pieces of fabric 13×13.  2 of the pillows I was going to use for this project are 12×12 and I wanted to leave a little room for the seam.

Next, I hand stitched the 2 pieces of fabric together at one end so that the correct sides of the fabric were facing each other.  The wide loose stitch is called “basting” and it’s used for when you just want to hold fabric together temporarily.  Once you’ve machine stitched, you can remove the basting stitches.

This is what the fabric looks like when I opened it up.

Then I pressed the seam open.  This is where the zipper is going to be.

For the record…the fabric is cream and blue, not green.  My camera just decided that it wanted to pick out the slight green hue in the fabric and make that color the dominant one.

Next I basted a zipper onto the open seam.

Then I used the machine to sew the zipper firmly in place.

Now I’m not sure why I stopped taking pictures at this point.  Maybe I was distracted by Lazarus’s arm clawing at me from under the door, or maybe I was just so focused on my work that I just simply forgot.  Either way, this is how I finished.  Once the zipper was securely in place, I pinned the rest of the fabric edges together and machine stitched all the way around the pillow case.  Then I turned the fabric right side out and inserted my pillow.

Tada!!!!!  The first thing I ever made with a sewing machine.  I was really proud of myself!

I repeated that process 3 more times, with 2 of the pillows being 12×12, and the other two 14×14.  Now I’ll have some nice home-made pillows to accessorize our covered patio!  Next I’ll be making some white linen curtains for the same space.  Stay tuned!!!!