These Shoes Were Made for Sleepin'

Once again I'm not going to show off the chevron quilt progress. FH and I found out his grandmother was feeling well enough to make the trip to meet her new great-grandson, so we headed south so we could see her too. Well worth skipping over the chevron quilts again.

I did finish a fun project for our little nephew.

They are already almost too small! He's got big feet for a baby his size. Takes after his daddy and his uncle. ;-) They both had gigantic tootsies at birth as well.

But his mom and dad both love those iconic sneakers and think the booties are adorable.

Time to rest up so I can do laundry and try to get the quilting on the last chevron done tomorrow. I'm going to try and have the binding made and machined on before Thursday night. We'll see how well that works.

Until next time!

Booties and Blackwork

Hello everyone!  I hope lots of fun and crafting has happened for everyone in the past week.  I've managed to have some fun in between housework and cleaning up the yard.

I finished two more pairs of booties this week.  The first is lacking the coordinating ribbon to really be "finished," but the crocheting is done.  No rush though, because this pair is more my stash o' baby gifts.  I'm not entirely pleased with the crooked placement of the hearts on the instep.  I'll have to figure out if that was my goof or a misprint in the instructions.

The second is already on its way to the recipient on the east coast, via the baby's grandma.  I hadn't worked this pattern up before, but I believe I'll make more.  They were lots of fun!

Then I got more work done on the Aragon Blackwork piece.  I still haven't gotten to the actual blackwork portion of the chart, but I'm happy with my progress.  Last time I posted about it, it looked like this.

That's all for this week.  I'm beat after a full day of yard work followed by a day of crocheting.  I'll hopefully have the fourth motif of the blackwork piece done by next weekend and at least one pair of booties.  I may be late in posting next weekend... later than today.  FH, Gus, and I are headed south for Father's Day.  Artie and Pixel will be guarding the house, with a little help from our neighbors.

See you next time!

Isabella's Gifts

I got to play Santa on Wednesday for Ms. Isabella.  She came 6 weeks early, but is now home and doing well.

She has the yellow pair of booties in this photo, which will fit in March/April when it's still cool here.

 I made her the tiniest pair of red and white booties for this weekend.  They are the ones in the center back.

She has one of these:

And one of these:

Every girl wants a pony.

And finally the stocking that she can fit into, but we decided to let her eat in peace instead of slipping her into it.  The main body is a supple buckskin, trimmed with white rabbit fur.  The carved detail is the piece I showed you earlier.  I made a lining out of some red fabric and stitched the trim and lining on at the same time with a sewing awl.  Her parents are friends from the Rendezvous scene, so a buckskin stocking was very fitting.

I loved doing this stocking, but if I ever do more I'll sew them well in advance as the whole thing, minus the lining, was stitched by hand.

He'll Have A Blue Christmas

But that's ok, 'cause he's only going to be wearing blue.

One of the ladies in Guild has a new grandson.  He was born right before Thanksgiving.  She also hasn't been well this year and knew she'd never get anything made for him this Christmas.    I asked her about particulars and came up with these:

Happily I've had these booties cut out and ready to go since this summer.  As before, these are Vogue 7707.

 Same with this puppy.   (Vogue 7760)

 The only thing I had to cut out was the little boater-style hat.  Same pattern envelope as the other little hats I've done.

He also has a pair of the red and white booties.

Additionally I made a little something for his cousin in California.  Again I had the pieces already cut out.

Here's a close up of the mouth and nose.  Embroidery on fleece is a pain, but I think I'm getting better at it.

Both the bunny and puppy are from the same pattern envelope as the ponies from the earlier post.

Seeing Red

But maybe not the way you're thinking.

 Of course I had help.

 Ta da!

 A little too plain though.

 Some randomly cut pieces of fleece....

 Perfect!

But we can't have hats without the proper shoes.

The hats are from the same pattern envelope as the Tulip and Newsboy Hats I did before.  The booties are my favorite Vogue 7707.

And now I'm off to sew again.  Ttfn!

Projects Everywhere!

I'm hoping I can safely think life might get back to normal, at least for a while.  I won't go into details because frankly there are too many.  The highlights include having two cars repaired and my hands gaining lovely scars on the palms.  In fact I couldn't work on any projects for the last two weeks of October.  I'm still terribly behind, but I'm catching up.

So here are the little projects that are finished.

 A set of blue and white potholders that I made for us.  I was trying to recreate my favorite potholder pattern before making sets for holiday gifts.

 They are slightly different in size because I used two different hooks, my original metal hook and a new ebony hook.  Both were the same size, but were made by different companies.  I found that I prefer the original hook to the new ebony hook for the potholders.  The stitches were looser than I'd like for the functionality.

One cool thing about the ebony hook is it's made by a company that utilizes scraps of wood leftover from making piano keys.  Lest waste = greener product.  It also feels great in my hand.

The ebony hook does work great with my towels.  Looser stitches don't affect the functionality in the least.  I have more of these in the works for the holiday gift stash.

Now for a different flavor of gift.

These were for a handsome baby boy whose parents are friends from college.

 These I whipped up really quickly when I found out one of FH's coworkers was about to become a godfather.  

I have a really large project that's been in my queue since this summer.  The next post will feature it. 

Ttfn!

Two Sets of Baby Gifts

The first two of the six babies arrived at the end of September.  I managed to do the finishing touches on their ponies and other gifts just in time.  I'll be back to making baby gifts after we get back from the wedding.  It will be a nice change of pace.

Baby Evelyn joined big sister Anna.  I crocheted her a set of sandals in addition to the sewn gifts because her sister has a crochet pair of sandals and I wanted them both to have an heirloom when they were older.

 Here is the purple pony with it's face embroidered on.

 Baby "Charlie" came early.  Her daddy grew up down the street from me and used to maintain my parents' lawn.  I figured she is going to grow up as a bit of a tomboy, so I chose the green pony for her.  I didn't have a green floss that would work with the fleece, so I used a pale yellow for the face.

When I made the booties I picked these fabric for her in mind.  Just a touch of pink with green.

Hopefully we'll have an uneventful trip back home today.  Last weekend was crazy enough to last us for a while. ;-)

Ponies!

These ponies were so much fun to work on and cute to boot!  I have to say this Vogue pattern is now one of my "go-to" patterns for baby gifts.   (The fleece puppy and bunny toys I've already cut out also came from this pattern.)

 I decimated the majority of my fleece stash between these toys and the two hat styles.  In fact you can see pieces for the Tulip Hats in this picture- upper left corner.

 The first five ponies.  Yes I said first.  I have plans to do at least four more.  The three ponies that match the Tulip Hats are going to girl babies that have big sisters.  I just happen to have extra manes, tails, and saddles that match each pony's body color.  I'm going to make the big sisters ponies with the coordinating extras.  Fun fact:  If you look up "glutton for punishment" in the dictionary, you'll find my name.

 Here are the ponies ready to be stuffed.

Stuffed and waiting on embroidered faces.  I'm going with embroidery for the faces on all of the fleece toys because they are for infants.  Much safer that way. 

 

Projects Which Are Cut Out and Waiting

I have several projects that are already cut out and waiting for me to work them into the queue.  At the moment they are all baby gifts.  Not all of them will be giving away right now.  Some will be stashed for the next round of babies.

Fleece bunny toys:

 Fleece puppy toys:

 Fleece pony toys:

In the next post there will be pictures of the ponies coming together.

Showing Off Bootie(s)

So in the mad dash to finish machine stitches before relinquishing my trusty Singer last week, I was able to prep five pairs of fleece booties.  Add in a random pair that was never finished before and that gave me six pair to finish up.  These are all sized for babies born in late spring-early fall to wear come winter.  After I finish sewing the last two pair that I've already cut, then I get to ponder the smaller size for the two winter babies.

 I used Vogue 7707, view C, but I omitted the suggested piping for the cuffs.  Some of my contrast fabrics were busy enough already.  Btw this Vogue pattern is one of my "go-to" patterns whenever someone is expecting.  I love this pattern.

 The pile o' booties waiting to be sewn.  I started the purple pair before I thought to take a picture.  One blue pair and the cream pair are waiting for me to get back to them.

Six finished pairs of booties.  The navy blue and red were the random pair that were never finished from a few years ago. 

When I was going through my stash of buttons I found a bag of animal faces like the ones I bought for the Panda Nursery.  I guess I liked them more than once!  Of course this means I have a use for all the non-panda faces in the package I have with the mini supplies.

Oh and the Singer is home as of Wednesday morning.  I'm so happy to have it back!

Time to get back to work!