Blankets for the Homeless

A friend of mine coordinates a project to provide blankets to the homeless or those staying in shelters. She recently put out a plea to get more squares knitted or crocheted, these could be in any yarn and just needed to be 6 x 6 inches in size. I was happy to oblige and raided my cupboard for all left overs that I had and began to crochet. I still have not mastered the art of being able to do a decent granny square so stuck to a simple double crochet stitch.  It was satisfying and quite quick to produce a handful for her although I was struggling to get them to be exactly 6 inches. hopefully she will have other odd sizes she can use up at some point.

This has been a great in car project when I am waiting around for the school pick up, much better than my usual routine of endless checking of e-mails and social networks!

Thought this year I would also keep track of how much I do as a bit of internal competition, I am counting at the point at which I pass things to Mrs BFTH. So far I am up to 4 blankets edged and 13 squares. My crochet techniques has improved quite a bit since I started doing this, the squares are so small that you can finish one and then try a new technique out on the next. I have just started to crochet in my starting ends as I go which saves on having to stitch them in later. 

Here is hopefully a link to the Facebook page and the website that is in the process of being built:

https://www.facebook.com/blanketsforthehomelesspeople/

http://blanketforthehomeless.weebly.com/

Enjoy 😀

Crochet Jumper

See, I knew if I wrote a list of my outstanding projects I may actually finish one and it worked!  Over the last couple of days I have finally finished my first crochet jumper.....and possibly my last :(

If I saw this jumper in a shop I would not give it a second glance, if I actually tried it on I would never buy it as it is so poorly fitting and yet this is what I have ended up with.


I used a pattern from the book "Crochet in no time" by Melody Griffiths, it was taken me a couple of years complete.  The pattern was the Frill-Edged Sweater.  I used SMC Select Brioletto yarn in burgandy which was a blend of Wool (60%) and Polyester (40%). It wasn't quite the same as what the pattern asked for but close enough.

Unfortunately I had really poor tension and was utterly rubbish at following a pattern so the jumper looks nothing like it is meant to, the neck is too big, the jumper too wide and the length not long enough.  All that combined with ridiculously shaped sleeves and the jumper is barely wearable.

I say barely wearable as despite all its faults I have put too much into this jumper not to use it so it will be my slop around the house sweater.

Quilt number 11 - Triangles

This quilt was for a colleague at work who had just had a baby.  I kept the cutting simple by using triangles, I made 6 1/2 inch squares (conveniently the width of my large ruler) and then cut them diagonally.

The fabric had to be gender neutral as as I didn't know the sex of the baby before it was born and wanted to get a head start on making it, not that is made much difference to the finishing time as it was still only completed a couple of months after the birth!

The printed fabric is from Lewis and Irenes's spring 2015 collection "Safari". I added solids of green and yellow with some makower spraytime which is my go to fabric when I need a plain fabric but want it to be just a little more interesting. It ended up being quite a low density quilt but hopefully that will be mice a soothing for the baby.

I struggled for a little while to get happy with the layout of the pieces as I was making it up as I went along but also had directional fabric.

I also added a strip of patchwork to the back as I had some squares left over. To speed up the quilting I machine quilted it in a meandering free motion style and then used did some in the ditch quilting for the first time round the border using my special foot.

Reverse of the quilt

In the ditch quilting

Table mats and table runner

This has been made for a gift for a house we are staying at in the summer in Ibiza.  Ibiza has lots of gifts with lizards on them as they can be found all over the place so I wanted to find some fabric with them one. I finally tracked down this one by Robert Kaufman and so promptly order a couple of metres of it.

I kept the design of the mats simple and could make several at a time just by cutting the dimensions across the widths of the fabrics, then piecing and cutting again.  I needed to be sure that I could get this done in time for the holiday!

Having recently been on a free motion quilting course at Hometown in Rochester I was also keen to try out some of the techniques shown, hence the row of hearts down the strips.