Friday, December 27, 2013

A Tale of Two Slippers

Here it is the end of another year and I can't believe how quickly this year has gone.  I haven't posted very much this year.  I haven't even taken photos of every project I have made this year!

My mom is 84 and has most everything she needs so I had no idea what to give her for Christmas this year so when my sister bought Mom a new winter coat I said I would make her some mittens and a scarf to match.  You guessed it I forgot to take a picture.  I also have finally started on a quilt repair job that I have been asked to do and again no pictures yet.

When my Mom was healthier she used to knit slippers for us. The pattern she used was the stripped slippers using Phentex Slipper and Craft yarn.  I loved those type of slippers.  I wore out the last pair she made for me and since my feet are a bit over sized it is difficult to find a pair of slippers to fit me that I like. 

My mom knitting a pair of slippers back in the late 1980's with our cat, Harry, supervising.
 
I was taught to knit when I was young and I can knit fairly well, with regular yarn.  I do not enjoy knitting with the Phentex yarn my mom used for these slippers.  When I was exploring a few thrift stores back in November I found a couple of balls of that yarn for only $1.49 a piece and I decided to try to make the same slippers that my mom used to make after all I have made them before and it only took me a year to finish them, eek.  So early December, this year, I pulled out my knitting needles and the yarn from the thrift store, cast on the stitches and starting knitting.  The reason I don't like working with this particular yarn is I find it splits so easily and I have to be very careful that I don't add stitches while I am knitting.  It is now the end of December and shockingly I finished my new slippers last night!  Only took me a couple of weeks to make this pair.  Maybe cold feet were my incentive, lol. 
 
 

Sunday, October 13, 2013

The Big Day!

My daughter has known her best friend, BFF, for about 15 years ever since they became friends in 4th grade.  This friend got engaged last year and asked my daughter to be her maid of honour.  She also asked me to make the bridesmaids dresses. (My daughter's dress was bought at David's Bridal.)  I said I would but since her bridesmaids live in the States I wouldn't be able to do fittings.  So BFF found a pattern online, printed it out, bought the fabric and I sewed them back in June and told her that a lot of alterations would probably have to be done.  BFF delivered them to the girls and the alterations were done in their city.  Fast forward to yesterday and the wedding day had finally arrived.  It was a warm fall day in a colourful fall setting.  The girls all looked so beautiful. 



 
The bride made the tutus for the flower girls.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Distracted

Not much sewing going on in my sewing room.  This summer has been just too hot, we don't have air conditioning just fans.  I have gotten distracted with family history.  I got the idea to make a memory book for my mom who has dementia.  After talking with family members and a social worker at the Alzheimer's Society I decided that maybe that wasn't the best idea.  The thought of discovering my Mom's family history was appealing.  I never knew my grandparents because they all passed away long before I was born.  Genealogy research can be very distracting and time consuming. Each time you find the answer to one question you discover questions to about a dozen more!

In the mist of all my research I thought about the parallels to quilting.  I have been using many Internet sites and family sources for information.  This I equate to going to fabric and thrift stores to find just the right fabric.  Then I have been organizing the information into a presentable form that future generations can understand and expand on.  This is finding the right pattern and preparing the fabric.  Next I have been putting the information; birth and death dates, family members etc. on cards and cutting these to fit into photo albums and finding photos of the family member to go with the information.  This is cutting the fabric and sewing the blocks together.  Next is writing a narrative to include some of the stories I have gathered from family.  This is putting the quilt sandwich together and quilting the "quilt".  The binding to all of this is the insight and love I have gained for the family members who are the foundation of my past.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Dress Number 2


The second dress is finished! These dresses were made for two young ladies that live quite a distance from me so fittings were impossible.  I made them in the sizes that were closest to their measurements and now they will have to have them altered, but my part is done.  The colour is washed out in this photo but the dresses are a lovely plum colour.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Father's Day

Yesterday was Father's Day.  Both my father and father-in-law passed away years ago so my husband and I try to visit their final resting place if we can.  We were able to do that yesterday. My father-in-law was laid to rest in a large cemetery in the middle of the city where we live.  My dad is laid to rest in a small country cemetery just outside the village where I grew up.  After paying our respects to my father-in-law we drove around the cemetery. When we were in the older section , the dates on the headstones were in the mid to late 1800's, we saw these peaceful creatures. 
 
 There are over 30 head of deer that live in this cemetery. 
On our drive through the cemetery we also saw some geese and a ground hog.  I didn't take any pictures of those.  I just find it fascinating that so many deer would reside in a place in the middle of a city. 

 
 

Friday, June 14, 2013

A different type of sewing...

When I was in grade school and high school many, many years ago I studied Home Economics.  Back in those days one semester would be cooking and the second one would be sewing.  I haven't done very much garment making in the last 30+ years.  My daughters best friend is getting married in October and she decided to try to save some money and have the bridesmaid's dress made. She asked me if I could help her out and try to make two dresses.  I finished the first of the two dresses this afternoon.

 This dress has an invisible zipper which I have never worked with before.  It turned out pretty well considering I am a bit rusty with this type of sewing.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

I am still here!

Hello everyone! Wow, I didn't realize how long it has been since I posted anything to my blog! I have been busy working on two queen sized quilts.  When I moved my sewing space to the basement it allowed me to finally open my quilting frame to its full width.  The first quilt on it was the quilt top that a friend asked if I could finish for her.  I am embarrassed to say that was over a year ago, but after a few false starts and a sewing machine tune-up there it is on the frame. 
I put the final stitches in the binding yesterday and will be delivering it to her tomorrow. 
This is the other quilt that I finished last week.  Another friend asked if I could make her a queen sized quilt for her bed.  After some consultation she decided on a pattern in the Dec/Jan 2013 issue of Quilt magazine.  The original pattern was for a twin size. I love the way this turned out. I especially like the binding which I used a 2.5 inch strip of each of the colors in the quilt. 


 

Friday, February 15, 2013

What else I have been doing?

A couple of posts ago I said changes were coming. Changes to this blog, my job and my life.  Well if you have followed or view this blog you can see the changes I made to it.  The name, the background, colorings etc.  As for my job, well I resigned from that in November for various reasons that I won't go into here.  As for my life I was not feeling challenged. I was bored and needed to do something different. I am needed at home because of our youngest son who has autism. For me working outside the home would cost more in care giving than I would be able to earn.  So I had to come up with another solution. 
 
Over the last couple of months I have moved my sewing space to the basement in hopes of starting a small home based business selling quilted and knitted items.  I also hope to open an Etsy shop in the near future once I get a few more things ready for sale.  The pics in this post are some of the things I have been working on.  
 
 
 
 





A Quilty Finish


This I Spy quilt has been waiting patiently on my quilting frame for quite some time.  I finally finished it when I had a person express an interest in buying it.  Now it is quilted, bond and delivered.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Back in business!

Over the last couple of months I have been slowly moving all my sewing equipment from our dining room to our basement.  I have a lot of organizing to do but it is all moved and I can get back to quilting. Eventually I am hoping to open my quilting frame up to it's full length.  One thing I really like about having the basement as my sewing room is I can spread out and if I am in the middle of a project I can leave it where it sits until I can get back to it. 

 
 
 
 
 
 

Monday, January 28, 2013

I did it!

 
For a long time now I have wanted to knit a pair of socks.  I was always hesitant about it because I have always heard how difficult they were.  Well last November I decided to finally just do it.  I went to a lovely yarn shop called The Little Red Mitten and I bought some yarn and a book on sock knitting and preceded to teach myself how to knit socks.  The book I bought is called Teach Yourself Visually Sock Knitting.  There are some errors in this book so if you choose to use it search the book title in your favorite search engine (I used Google) and you will find the corrections. I also found some how to videos on YouTube helpful.  Here is my first attempt at knitting socks on 5 needles!