Fabric baskets

These are the solution I needed for organizing all the baby bottle parts and small plastic containers + lids that are floating around our kitchen cabinets. Instructions can be found here.



These are so quick and easy (and cute!), I'll be making a few more to organize other stuff around the house.

Catch-all

Inspired by this tray by Noodlehead. Outside is linen, inside is a Japanese owl print. It's holding all the little things that our cats usually knock off the kitchen counter like wallets, glasses, and phones.

Sock monkeys!

I have admired the funky monkey fabric by Moda for such a long time. Last summer I bought a bunch of the fabric, pieced a quilt top for Isaac, stretched and basted it... and am waiting for the courage to quilt it. I am kind of a chicken when it comes to quilting things larger than a placemat; they never seem to turn out how I'd hoped. In the meantime, while procrastinating on the quilting, I made him a little pillow with the leftover fabric. I pieced and quilted the top, and bound the edges with grosgrain ribbon.



The pillow insert is a little 12x16 decorative down pillow that I picked up for $10 at Pottery Barn Kids. I'm entering the pillow in the Blogger's Pillow Party, as well as the Great SMS Pillow Contest.

What begins with O?

Big O, little o what begins with O? OpArt blanket and an owl. O. o. O.

I've been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss lately. I've also been working on a little package for my cousin's baby.

 Some pre-blocking pictures of the OpArt blanket:   



All bumpy.



With so many ends to weave in.



The finished blanket. It ended up taking 4 blue skeins and 5 brown skeins of Knitpicks CotLin. The adorable owl pattern is from Retro-Mama.



All folded up and ready to go!

the pink quilt

A friend of mine commissioned a queen-size quilt using the Urban Cabin pattern. I'm not generally a fan of the color pink, but by the time the quilt top was pieced I was converted. I was a little sad to have to turn it over to its rightful owner!

 

One corner of the quilt. A very talented friend went to the quilt store with us and helped pick out a great combo of printed and batik fabrics.



The other side of the quilt top.



I made these 2 quilted pillow shams with extra fabric.

Mosaic knitting

One of my goals last year was to get better at knitting colorwork. I took a great class at the Yarnery where we learned intarsia, helix knitting, shadow knitting, brioche stitch, and mosaic knitting. For mosaic knitting I made a set of coasters:

 

I like the high contrast and the stitch definition of mosaic knitting, but they seemed a little too big and floppy for coasters. And, being coasters, they were going to get washed sooner or later. So I washed them sooner.



The felted fabric is a little furrier than I hoped, but it is nice and dense and the shrunk to a good size for coasters. The yarn here is Brown Sheep wool (blue) and Lopi Light (orange). The pattern is from a Barbara Walker book.