Hand spinning - a personal history

In preparation for my friend's visit over Christmas I started tidying up my living room and came across some partially plied handspun. This fiber has been spun in fits and spurts over the course of maybe a year. In the spirit of tidying, I plied and plied and plied some more, wound, niddy-noddied, skeined, washed and stretched and voila! 300 yards of yarn! My living room was maybe not as tidy as I would have liked when my friends arrived.

This is only my fourth handspun yarn and I have to say, damn, I'm good! HA, the humility!

I taught myself to spin after watching my friend Amy make some beautiful lace weight with her drop spindle, buying a beginner kit from a store on Etsy. I'm not going to mention where because I was extremely frustrated with the kit. The spindle was not very good quality and didn't have a notch on the top which I really need. Then the fiber, one part was combed top, the other was a batt and was snarled and just plain impossible to spin from as a beginner. After fighting with it and cursing more than was probably necessary, I finally wrangled something useable out of the fiber.

 

124 yards of varying thickness that I knitted up into a pair of mitts for my mom.

The leftovers from this original kit I kept as singles. Delicious, delicious singles.

Emboldend by actually managing to produce a useable product from such a bad start, I purchased myself a new pretty spindle and a bump of fluff from a different Etsy seller. And spun up thread. Lots of pretty thread.

 This yarn is pretty stuff, if I do say so myself. 530 yards of fingering weight. Beautiful. Given that this was a skill I thought was beyond me in the first weeks of trying, I'm glad I stuck with it because it's relaxing and oh so satisfying. There is currently 4oz of a lovely green fiber waiting for my next spinning adventure, but I'm trying really hard to not acquire a stash. Spinning is a slow process!

One more whale, because, why not?!

This time I paid attention to the directions (funny how that works) with regard to the orientation of pattern pieces and fleece stretch and look! The curve in the tail came back! Since this whale was gifted to a 6 year old I used buttons for eyes. This might be my favourite so far.

 

Swimming on a sea of knitted diamonds off to Seattle.

More softies

My fleece arrived from Hancock's Fabric, and man is it easy to sew with!

First up I made a Japanese rabbit for Craft Hope:

This pattern is from another Japanese craft book I bought back when those were all the rage. He's supposed to have a dress but for some reason there was no pattern included and my brain could not wrap itself around making one. So I sewed on some bright red tennis racquets instead. I think it works.

The second fleecy creation was another whale, this time for a lab mate who had a baby boy on the same day my nephew was born.

 

The fleece made the curves much easier and I only managed to put one pin tuck in there. Somehow I lost the curve in the tail (possibly because I forgot to sew the little dart in the back piece, but I still think it's cute.

Auntie Tina!

My sister had a baby boy!

Project 19 :: Dolls, Animals, and Monsters. Oh My!

Craft Hope recently launched it's 19th Project - to make soft toys for children affected by Hurricane Sandy, a project I could really get behind.

I had a look through my fabric stash and Japanese craft book collection, consulted Pinterest (what did I do before Pinterest?), ordered a pattern and poly-fil and set to.

First up is a whale made from a DIY Fluffies pattern and a thrifted craft pannel.

 

This is labeled as an "intermediate" pattern, I'd heartily agree! I found the tight curves in the tail very fiddly and so there is a bit of pin tucking and creative fudging n the tail. There were also a few things missing from the tutorial, like sewing up the darts and clipping curves before turning right side out but I think those are fairly obvious things to do. I think it's still pretty darn cute though.

Second up is a little doll from a Japanese book I bought years ago, Nuigurumi style (ISBN4-05-604179-2).

 

For her I used scrap flannel and tree print fabric from the swap table at Quilt Guild, and more of that craft panel for the dress. I'm not sure if the pigtails are a bit too bunny ear-like but again, I'm pretty happy with how she turned out!

Little Triangles Quilt

Finally New York has seen some daylight! After a couple of days of not being able to see the bridge out of my window for the fog (double rainbow reference shot), the sun finally burned through this morning providing me with enough light to photograph my finished baby quilt!

 

I've been referring to this as my "Little Triangles Quilt", for obvious reasons. Since I riffed off a commercially available pattern seen via Pinterest, I'm not going to list any dimension specifics but it's pretty easy to figure out. Mine is a little different from the original in that the scrap triangles don't meet on adjacent squares, but it's very close so I don't want to do my inspiration a disservice :)

 

 

I really like how the scrappy binding blends the triangle colours all the way out to the edge, I pre-planned the colour sequence with this in mind. It worked even better than I imagined.

 

For the back I used a piece of green fabric I picked up at a thrift store. I'm a little worried that it's thinner than quilting cotton and so may not hold up very well over the years but, I guess quilts aren't meant to last forever. The quilting is a little difficult to see, but I did a double grid 1/4" away from the seems on the squares, and then mimicked the diamond pattern formed by the alternating neutrals.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be a gift for either my cousin, who is expecting in March, or my lab mate, due in February...

Franken-binding

In the continued spirit of scrapiness, I cobbled together a bunch of scraps to make binding for the little triangles quilt. The colour sequence sort of matches the scraps around the perimeter and I'm hoping adding a bright punch will liven the thing up a little. It's looking a bit too pastel for my taste!

Quilting Heretic

I foresee some pretty heavy handed steam ironing in my future...

Damn you bias seems!

Quilting Bug

The past few weeks have been very intense as far as graduate school and and getting the hell out have been concerned. I had my final Faculty Meeting last week, one that my boss causally told me I should prepare for as if it were my thesis defense four days before said meeting. I honestly have not been so stressed out and SO NERVOUS since I took my first driving test. The fact that I called it my first driving test should give you a hint that it did not go well, like, examiner slamming on the brakes five minutes in kind of not well. While I still contend that he overreacted, I still failed pretty spectacularly.

But! I did not fail my Faculty Meeting! In fact I got GLOWINGLY positive comments. I don't take compliments very well but everybody was so positive and congratulatory I felt as if I really had just defended, without even have to write. Of course I do still have to write but I'm feeling a lot better about the whole thing than I was a week ago.

All that is a long preamble into what I've been up to in the week since.

SEWING.

I took the day after my meeting off, slept til 11am and then sewed all day. It was blissful. I finished a secret quilt that might actually be the most favourite thing I've ever sewn (but I'll have to wait to post about it until after Christmas). Then my hands got itchy and I started hand quilting my majora quilt, until I broke my thimble and had to stop. I know, first world problems.

 So then I turned my attention to my scrap pile, and with one eye on pinterest started cutting 3" squares. 64 of them. Then I sliced up my only two neutral prints into 6" squares and sewed and cut and sewed and cut until...

Approximately 15 hours after I took this the top is now all sewn up. Just who I'm making all these baby quilts for is unclear to me but I'm sure having fun doing it!