Spring has sprung!

The weather here has been absolutely beautiful for the past few weeks. The flowers are blooming, the trees are blossoming...and I am taking seventeen students to China for spring break in three days. Crazy? Probably. But I'm sure it will also be fun.

So, what have I been crafting?

I have been making some progress on my t-shirt quilt. This is one of the largest projects I've undertaken, and it has taken a lot of time! First, I had to pick the shirts. And figure out how they would lay out and look nice. And I realized I have way too many shirts.
Then I had to cut them all (and find a size that worked...)...and iron on the interfacing....I am almost finished sewing the quilt top together, but that project will have to be on hold until I get back from China. I have learned some important lessons from this project so far:
1) cutting straight lines is hard (is that hard for other people, or just for me?)
2) I am bad at math. I totally failed at figuring out how much fabric I would need for the sashing and backing and will have to go back for more.

For my birthday, my grandmother bought me an awesome book called "How to Sew a Button (and other things your grandmother knew)" by Erin Bried. It has all sorts of tips and tricks in it, from cleaning to sewing to organizing and cooking and gardening, budgeting, taking care of kids, entertaining...and the first project I tried out was "How to Make an Apron from a Pillowcase". Ta-dah! (Ew, you can see how messy my house is!!!) Picked up a cute pillowcase at a thrift shop, and a few quick seams later I had a new apron! I have since picked up several more cute pillowcases because this was a fun project and I think they would make nice gifts, especially for housewarming or something like that. The whole project took me about an hour, but I think I could do it faster next time.

Finally, I made myself this cute little bag. The instructions came from "Sew What! Bags" by Lexie Barnes, a book I adore. It has little pouches for my cell and, most exciting of all - it has a zipper!(Note to self: Work on taking better pictures, and read the cleaning section of that book Grandma gave you...although if it's any excuse, Keith was finishing the tile in the kitchen yesterday so the house is recovering from that project).

Rufio says, "Happy Spring!"

A Good Reason For Blog Silence...

So, lately I haven't had time to do much crafting or blogging...because I got engaged!

So we've been busy looking at places for the wedding and doing assorted planning! It's all very exciting - we're hoping to get married over Columbus Day weekend next fall.

So, getting married means I need bridesmaids. Of course, I couldn't just ask them. That would be boring. So I looked around and found a really cute idea at Project Wedding. And then I made one of these for each of my bridesmaids!

Now, I just need to track them down to give them away...

I also made several very cute penguins. My husband-to-be says he thinks they're the coolest thing I ever made. The pattern comes from Amy Gaines' Etsy shop - I just love her patterns and have made several of them in the past. This very cute penguin was a gift for a friend of mine who is having a baby:

Now that ski season is (mostly) over I'm hoping to start sewing more - and my Spoke sweater, in the works since just after Christmas, is blocking as we speak!

The last few weeks have been a bit crazy, but good. I went on an excellent (and free!) trip to Paris...

And then spent a relaxing week skiing (translate: picking up small children and carrying them around) with my family.

Nothing earth-shattering to report on the knitting front, but I thought I'd post some pictures of my latest finish - a baby gift for a friend. She doesn't know if she is having a boy or a girl, so I went with gender-neutral green :)

I'm not sure if I'm completely satisifed with how he came out - I knit him with bulkier yarn and larger needles than the pattern called for because I wanted a bigger toy. Regardless, I think he's very huggable, and the yarn is very soft.

Yesterday I went to my parents' house to dig out some old t-shirts for a quilt. Turns out that my mother has been saving them since I was very small (with what goal in mind, I'm not sure) and I have enough t-shirts to make several quite large quilts. I suppose there are worse problems to have - now I have to pick my favorites!

Thanks to all have been reading and commenting - it's nice to know there are people out there!

Thanks,
Erica

I have felt so craft-deprived lately! I have been so busy the past few months that I haven't touched my sewing machine since before Christmas...but I have been doing a bit of knitting. (This week on vacation I have been knitting an adorable penguin for a friend who is having a baby). Now that ski season (at least the competetive part of it) is mostly done, I should be having some more time. So, some of the things I want to try this spring:

• fusing paper bags. I think I'd like to try making some reusable sandwich bags, although it seems like the possibilities are endless.
• a dress like this one. I know, I don't have any kids. But I picked up a cute pillowcase at a shop called "Repurpose" and I think this would be a good use.
• a t-shirt quilt (I have so many old t-shirts I can't bear to part with...but I'm scared because I have never tried to make something so big before! Has anyone tried this/have any suggestions?)
• a t-shirt tote. This seems incredibly simple but really fun. And a good way to clean out the closet of old shirts...
• A new hat for my favorite boy. Haven't decided on a pattern yet, but I've been searching the possibilities on ravelry.

In the meantime, I love the Olympics!

Winter is both awesome and terrible...

In the wintertime, I coach the ski team at the high school where I work.

This means that around this time of year, my free time goes down to zero. This means, sadly, that there has been very little crafting going on in my house :(

However, I do want to post a few little things:
I made these handwarmers and the matching scarf (mini-scarf? I'm not really sure what to call it - it fastens with a button around your neck, it's very cute) for my brother's girlfriend for Christmas. I was very pleased with the result, although the pictures are not so great.
And then I got quite a bit of work done on my rug!My grandmother's house is full of these braided rugs, and I just love them. They seem so homey to me. I particularly like that the ones in her house are all made from old clothes. She can look at her rugs and remember that the blue is from an old bathrobe, and the white strips came from a pair of my grandfather's old dress pants...I've wanted to make one for a long time, but never quite got around to it. A few months back, I was at my grandmother's house and asked her about it, and she brought out a whole box full of braiding supplies, including wool she'd had cut to make a rug. She gave me some directions, and with some trial and error, I think I'm getting the hang of it.
This project got me thinking about why it is that I like to make things. When I was a kid, my grandmother taught me how to embroider and to knit, and both of my grandmothers have supported themselves by making things - one by sewing, the other by making baskets. So these kinds of crafts have always seemed to me to be a tie to my family and to my past (which, as a history teacher, I cannot fail to appreciate). Knitting and sewing and rugmaking are all part of that historical continuum that connects me to the women (and men) who have made things before me. Making things helps me to feel connected to that past, where making your own was a way of life.
In some ways, I think that a simpler life would be better. One of my grandmothers once told me a little rhyme that I think should inform the way we live: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do; or do without." This year, I hope to do a little more living that way.

That ended up being a bit more philosophical than I intended, but that's ok. If I can't "think out loud" here, where can I?

Post-Christmas Awesome

I love Christmas. My family and I are relaxing slopeside at the lovely Tenney Mountain - skiing, riding, and, if you're me, knitting. Best Christmas present ever: a tiny Dell netbook from which I am currently blogging. This will be super-helpful for my part-time job at the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School. My brother is my Christmas hero.

The day before Christmas, I stopped by the local knitting shop to start a new project. In the months before Christmas I was knitting gifts...so now I'm ready to knit for myself. I chose this pattern from knitty. I picked out the yarn I wanted...but sadly there wasn't enough for my sweater, so I had to make a special order. In the meantime, I thought I'd get a head start on a gift for a friend who is having a baby this spring. I found some really soft and fun yarn in the bargain bin - it's actually not so much yarn as fleece cut into really thin strips. I love it, and immediately started making a stuffed elephant. I like to give stuffed animals as baby gifts because, unlike clothes, they never outgrow them! For this friend's first baby I made a stuffed panda, so I wanted to keep going with the exotic animal theme :) My camera is back home, so I'll have to wait until later to show pictures. By the time I get home, I'm sure it will be done, and maybe I'll have gotten some work done on the sweater!

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas! Happy New Year!

Handmade Holidays, Part 1

This year, I want to give as many handmade gifts as possible. I feel like there's something so personal about a handmade gift...but it does take up a lot of time!

First, I had to get in the holiday spirit. So I made some Christmas stockings. Since this is the first Christmas that Keith and I will be living together, I thought it was suitable to have new, matching stockings.
This project reinforced to me the importance of planning out the WHOLE project before you dive in...I think it ended up being harder than it needed to be because I didn't think it through. The stockings came out smaller than I'd hoped (I seem to keep forgetting that seams make things smaller) but I'm pleased with the final product. Keith and I went together so we could each choose fabric for our stockings...mine is the green one (of course) and Keith, also predictably, chose one with penguins. My favorite, however, is the one we chose for Rufio...

Now, on to the presents...

I had planned on making Beth a paintbrush roll for Christmas, but I finished it early and got excited so I gave it to her for her birthday, which was last week. She was really excited! Up until now, she's been keeping her paintbrushes in plastic bags...now it will be much fancier.

My grandmothers are two wonderfully crafty women who will truly appreciate a handmade gift. They are each getting one of my snowmen, and I've made tote bags to hold them. I recently acquired a copy of a great book called "Sew What! Bags" by Lexie Barnes. The projects vary from very simple to "pro" difficulty, and the best thing about it is that it gives directions on how to make various types of bags without patterns, and great instruction on how to customize projects to your needs. It also gives lots of basic sewing tips, which are great for a beginner like me, but I suppose someone more advanced could just skip them.
Anyway, I used this book to make a collection of tote bags from various Christmassy fabrics.

This gift package went today to my Aunt Helen, a master knitter and crafter extraordinaire. She is 105 this year, and can't knit anymore because of her arthritis (a fact which bothers her to no end!)Usually I hate putting faces on my creatures, but I think this one came out pretty well.
I'm going to round out my gift bags with star ornaments and hand warmers, made from a pair of (sadly) defunct jeans and some scrap fabric.These aren't stuffed yet, because I haven't decided what to put in them yet. I got the idea and directions here, and they were remarkably simple to make.

Next up: a few manly catchalls for Keith and my dad, possibly from the other leg of those jeans...