newest project

I’ve been working hard today and I’m excited to share my next project with you!  I’m making a cushion!

As I didn’t have any extra white pillows or any white linens to make a pillow out of, I used one of my boyfriend’s huge T-shirts.  It was difficult to work with knitted fabric, especially since I only have a straight stitch on my old sewing machine:

I filled the pillow with regular old Poly-Fill from Wal-Mart, and it’s ready to go (it’s quite lumpy and weird looking, but it’ll be covered up with my cushion cover anyway).

For the crocheted cushion cover, I chose these yarn colors from the Caron Simply Soft collection, again at Wal-Mart:

Aren’t they pretty?  The dark blue is going to be the back side of the cover, while the other colors will be on the front.  I’m using a granny square pattern written up by Lucy at Attic24, and I’m also using her tutorial for joining squares as you go to save me the trouble of putting them together at the end.  Some people may think it looks a little sloppy, but I think it adds charm to certain projects like this.  I also think the colors look a bit Cath Kidston-y, which is awesome since her products are my new obsession (my craft bag has unfortunately not come in yet).  Anyway, here’s what I’ve done so far:

I have 2 more long rows to go and I’ll be done with the front of the cover.  It’s going to be a long throw pillow, almost regular bed pillow size.  Hopefully I can finish the front part of the cover tomorrow, and then get crackin’ on the back piece.  Hopefully I’ll be sharing good progress soon!

crochet “paintings”

The other day I saw these on Pinterest, pattern by Claire at Haken en Meer, and I had to make my own.  Now before you see the pictures, I must tell you that I am a complete novice at embroidery.  Just today I learned how to make french knots.  My technique is terrible, but for my first try I’m pretty pumped.  This is the leftover yarn from my afghan, posted previously.

a bird with a flower

Scottish thistle

owl

whale

kite

heart

umbrella in the rain

Now I just have to coat the back of them with something to make them keep their shape, attach a hanging device of some sort (perhaps just a loop of yarn), and hang them up!  I’m thinking in my bedroom, because there’s really nothing on the walls in there and it’s gloomy.

These are a little different than Claire’s — I used hdc for the circles instead of dc and tried to find embroidery patterns on the Internet.  A few of them came from here, and the others were just Google search results.

I hope you like them!  I have no idea what’s coming up soon — I’ll have to start something new!  See you soon!

finished the flower sunburst granny blanket

My flower sunburst granny square afghan is complete!  Made from Berroco Vintage Chunky, it’s super heavy and thick, so I know it will be toasty (although I’ll never use this yarn for a blanket again — it’s perfect in every way except that it’s too expensive).  It covers a double bed, but the picture below is taken on a queen so you can see it all flat with the cute ruffly border I added.  This has been my most expensive afghan, but it might just be the one I’m most proud of, too.  Here are the finished pictures.

I hope you like it as much as I do!  Now off to make some tea…

done joining squares!

I’m finished joining my afghan squares!  Turns out it is a little smaller than I thought it would be, probably due to my usage of a smaller hook to sc the squares together (which was done on the back of the piece).  I meant to have nice tight joins but I overdid it a bit and it shrunk the overall size of the thing.  I have a feeling it will stretch out with usage — it’s a very heavy blanket!  I still have to add the border, so I’m not finished yet, but I wanted to share my progress with you because I’m excited to be done with joining the squares (usually the most tedious part of afghans, in my opinion).  So here are the pictures!

You can see in that first one where I’ve been sitting on the edge, listening to The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey on iTunes (which is a very good book, by the way).

And there you can see the joins close up!  I think it looks pretty neat, if I do say so myself.  🙂  Now on to put on the border!

FINISHED WITH SQUARES

I’m so excited that I’m done with my blanket squares!  Here they are all laid out on our queen size futon/bed so you can get a good perspective.  I’m so pumped to share with you!

Aren’t they great?  I’m so proud!  I’ll crochet the ends in when I slip stitch the squares together, and I’m also planning on adding a decent sized border.  The blanket was only supposed to cover a double bed, but I think it’ll cover the queen nicely, don’t you?

Hopefully I’ll get started on putting the squares together soon — I can’t wait to finish!