Friday, April 18, 2014

New plaid quilt

I was recently commissioned to make a larger size of my Baby Plaid Quilt. I know I say this a lot here, but I'm really pleased with this quilt!

 

The finished size is 60" x 80", just big enough to cover a queen-size mattress with no drape. I did straight line quilting about 1.5" apart in the background, and straight lines following stripes.



The tricky thing about this quilt was getting it to be exactly 60" x 80". I did some math on previous projects and found that my quilts usually shrink about 3% after washing. I rounded up and made this quilt top a few inches bigger than necessary - 64" x 86". I spray basted and quilted the layers, then I trimmed just the extra batting and backing from the quilt - it still measured 64" x 86". I straight-stitched very close to the edge of the quilt and then I machine washed and dried it to make sure it did all its shrinking before I cut it to size. This quilt actually shrunk less than 3%, so I had plenty of fabric to spare. I squared up the quilt and trimmed it to 60" x 80".



I used Kona solids exclusively. The background is Butter, the stripes are Emerald, Asparagus and Berry. Where the stripes intersect I used Glacier, Laurel, Hibiscus, Periwinkle, Amethyst, and Kale. The binding is in Berry. The thread is cream-colored Gutermann cotton.



The background is mostly Kona Emerald, with a strip of improv piecing using leftovers from the front of the quilt.



Ready to ship!

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

KCW: Days six and seven

For Kid's Clothes Week day six, I put the facing on the Oliver + S Sleepover Pajama top.



For day seven, I practiced attaching snaps and successfully attached 4 snaps to the pajama top!



This is the first time I've used snaps in a project. I used size 16 pearl snaps and the SnapSetter tool, and it works great!

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

KCW: Day five

For Kid's Clothes Week day five, I worked on the Oliver + S Sleepover Pajama top. Everything except the facing is done!





Well, everything except the facing and the pockets. I decided this didn't need pockets after all. Getting this far on the top took a little over an hour.

Friday, April 11, 2014

KCW: Day four

For Kid's Clothes Week day four, I finished up a pair of Oliver+S Sleepover Pajama pants.



Well, everything except for the elastic waist is finished - I'll wait until Isaac is closer to size 4T to finish the elastic. Right now he's wearing a set of 2T Sleepover Pajamas.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

KCW: Day three

For day three of Kid's Clothes Week, I finished the Huck Finn Cap!





It took about 90 minutes for me to finish the hat, with most of that time spent on making the brim and attaching the sweatband. Those two steps take me so. long. The finished hat is adorable, and Isaac loves it!

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

KCW: Day two

For day two of Kid's Clothes Week, I started a Huck Finn Cap.



I didn't make a whole lot of progress because I had to trace the 2T/4T size from the pattern, and I find millinery work a little fussy - lots of pinning curves, finger pressing and topstitching. You might notice in the picture above that I should've been fussier with the cutting layout. It totally slipped my mind that I should be lining up the center of the hat with the center of a plaid stripe. ::sigh::



All the pinning and finger pressing is worth it though - these hats are so cute! I've made two of these caps before, one for my son and one for a nephew, both in corduroy and quilting cotton. For this cap I'm using Pendelton Wool and quilting cotton. The wool is pretty stretchy and ravels easily, but so far that's not causing any difficulty.

Monday, April 7, 2014

KCW: Day one

Today's the first day of Kid's Clothes Week! I've long admired other people's KCW projects, and I'm thrilled to be participating for the first time.

For the first day, I spent an hour cutting out Oliver+S Sleepover Pajamas in size 4T. The fabric is Betty the Yeti flannel from Robert Kaufman, which I love!

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Snow + scarves

This winter will just not end! Minnesota got a late-season snow storm this week. We got about 8" of snow. Good thing I just finished a couple late-season scarves for me and Isaac.





Pattern: Malabrigo Linen Stitch Scarf (ravelry)

Needles: US 11

Yarn: kit from the Yarnery











Pattern: similar to Roll-ups from Son of Stitch and Bitch (ravelry)

Needles: US7

Yarn: Cascade 220

I cast on 20 sts and knitted until the scarf was preschooler-sized. I'm usually a continental knitter, but I tried lever knitting for this. It was slow-going. I don't think I'll convert to lever knitting any time son.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Progress

I've been making progress on my second quilt of the year. I just finished straight-line quilting. More pictures to come soon!