Don't read this entry, Jessi!

Not until Evan is here and Becca has come to see you, anyhow. :)

I am so very proud of this little knitting project. So proud.  I love it.

I felt like such a schmoe when I took store-bought items to Jessi's baby shower this summer.  I love to make things for babies, and I really didn't think I'd have a chance to get anything finished for Evan before he came into the world.  But since he's currently apparently very satisfied with his womb without a view, I managed to finish this little hat for him.

It's my first knitting project in the round, and it's my first attempt at striping something.  I think it went well on both accounts.

The stalk on the top isn't quite as large as it appears in the picture.  It's just the angle, I think.  And I stuck my hand in the photo for a size reference.

I have a couple of other projects in the works at this point, but I probably won't have photos up for a while.  Both projects are scarves, and both are taking much, much longer to complete than I anticipated.  I'll get them done, though.  Two more weeks.  :)

Scarves and Curtains and Skirts, Oh, My!

So I have been doing a lot of knitting lately. I'm getting ready to start on my first non-square-or-rectangle project, so I'll post that in a few weeks when I'm done.

In the meantime, here's a look at three scarves I've done recently. I currently have two more on needles waiting to be completed.

I also recently completed a few projects for my kitchen. I used to have little shutters in the set of double windows in the kitchen eating area. Bill really wanted them to go and be replaced by curtains, and we found these great shower curtains at HomeGoods. We bought two, thinking that we'd be able to use one for the double window, and I could cut up the other one to make a valance for the window over the sink and a skirt to go around the craft cart to hide all its messy crafty goodness.

Yeah, well, the best laid plans. I needed both curtains for the double window, and when I went back to HomeGoods the other three were all gone. I checked out clearance curtains at Pier 1 and several other places as well as clearance fabric at JoAnn and Hobby Lobby. Nothing was quite as nice. Then, when my mom was visiting, we took a chance on the HomeGoods in Carmel (I had gone to the one in Castleton), and lo and behold! There was one more curtain.

So I made my valance and cart-hiding skirt. And the bonus of using something that's already finished? The sides and bottom or top were already finished for me. SCORE!

Now, technically, I didn't make the curtains for the double window. But I did hang up the curtain rod--something I'm becoming very, very good at.

Annika's Birthday

Yup, I'm at it again.

Actually, I've been knitting quite a bit lately, but I haven't photographed either of my other complete scarves (yes, there are two!) because I haven't woven the loose yarn ends in yet. I also have two other scarves in the works. I'm a knitting maniac!

But tomorrow we head to Chicago for my niece Annika's birthday. I made her brother a hooded towel for his birthday (not sure if I posted that...), and Traci (her mother) said Annika really liked his. So, I give you Birthday Gift #1:

Yeah, it's a hooded towel. I wrapped just the outside of the hood in a fun, colorful fabric (Annika likes polka dots, so Emma chose the fabric based on that), and I used the tutorial over at Little Birdie Secrets. If you like to sew, she's a great reference page. Lots of tutorials for relatively simple projects. You do have to know a few sewing terms, though.

I also embroidered(ish) a funky A on the back in the center. I didn't do that on James's towel, so I hope it's not a problem.

In addition to the hooded towel, I also knitted her a scarf. She doesn't have a winter coat yet, so I went for a multi-colored yarn. I give you, Birthday Gift #2:

:

It's important to add at this point that this is actually the second scarf I started for Annika. I started another one with a fun, bright yarn that was a mixture of orange, yellow, pink, and light green (I know it sounds awful, but it's not). When I came to the end of the partial skein I started with, I realized that I didn't have another skein of the same yarn to continue with. It was close to 10 p.m. when I made this rather horrifying discovery.

So on Wednesday night, I stayed up until 1 a.m. knitting like the wind (and watching terrible movies of Bill's choice: Blades of Glory, Nacho Libre, and Running Scared), and did the whole scarf in one sitting. It took about 3 1/2 hours, which I suppose isn't too bad.

More Baby Projects

I have two baby showers this weekend. I made the little blanket in the previous post for the one for tomorrow, and last night I made this bag and nursing cover for the one on Sunday. My friends Kristi is having twins!


Both the bag and the cover are made of leftover fabric from Christmas. I used almost every last bit of both fabrics. It feels good to make use of something so completely.















Anyhow, the bag has long handles and six pockets on the inside. I don't expect Kristi to use it as a real diaper bag, but it should come in handy when taking all three of her kids places.

Knitting "Projects"

I put projects in parentheses because two of these little numbers are just practices for real projects. I'll start with the real project because I am actually really happy with how it turned out.

This is a baby blanket for Katy Walters's baby shower this weekend. It's small because I intended it to be a little lovie--a blanket little Miss Zoe can carry with her everywhere. It's small enough to pack in a diaper bag or stroller without having to leave other essentials at home. I hope Zoe loves it so much that it falls apart in a few years. :)

It's a lumpy, soft yarn knitted on extra long #8 needles. I started with 60 stitches, somehow worked my way up to 65 at one point, and gradually worked my way back down. The yarn was so lumpy that sometimes I would catch an extra stitch and not realize it. It's soft, beautiful yarn, but the texture made it a slow project--the yarn doesn't slide through the knit easily and gets stuck often. The finished product is worth the extra effort, though.

I hand-stitched satin blanket binding around the edge. It gives the blanket a finished look, it allowed me to put a tag on, and it covers up the unevenness of one of my knitted edges. It took several tries, though, to figure out the best way to attach it. I started by sewing it on with a big zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine, but the satin bunched up and looked terrible. So I tried a straight stitch on the machine. That didn't work, either, so I lowered the tension. That also didn't work. So I ripped stitched carefully for about an hour and just did the sewing by hand. I'm guessing that there's a way to attach the binding with the machine, but I don't know what it is.

The tag is made out of the blanket binding.

On to the boring stuff:

These are a couple of practice stretches of knitting.

This is my first attempt at knitting. It's one skein of yarn. Maybe I should take a vote: Is it a really long potholder or a really short table runner?


I can't seem to make this next section of text move down. Sorry that it's not lining up correctly...

This is a practice go at several different patterns for an upcoming project. I gave this piece to Georgia, who is thrilled to have what would otherwise be sort of a useless piece.

So there you have it. More sewing projects will follow in the next few days. I need to make a bag and nursing smock for another baby shower this weekend. Busy, busy, busy. :)

Long time, no sew!

I haven't been sewing much lately, but that trend is about to stop. I have several projects I need to work on. Last week, I hosted sewing night, and Becca, Christa, and I repaired a beautiful old rug she got from her grandmother's house. Here we are with it:

I am disturbed by how bad I look in this photos, but the rug looks great. It looks even better in Christa's family room, which is getting a new coat of paint. It's a really awesome rug.

Here's what's coming up soon here at Brandie, In Stitches:

• two aprons (one for Thea, one for Vanessa)
• curtains for my kitchen
• a matching drape for around the craft/puzzle/games cart in my kitchen
• curtains for the master bedroom
• a tote bag of sorts for me

I can't promise when these things will be done, but I'm getting there! Also, I'm going to add my knitting to the blog. It's a type of stitching, right?

For a Little Ballerina

I made a tutu for Audra for her birthday. I found a tutorial online, and it was easy to follow. So easy, in fact, that I read the directions and then did the work by memory. Really easy.

The project went well, but it did take a lot of time (about four hours). If I were to do it again, I think I would attach the tutu directly to a lycra leotard instead of to a band to pull on over the leotard. That's how the tutorial had it done, and that seems like it would be a good idea.

Anyhow, the tutu as modeled by Emma is the standard use. If you're looking to make your spouse look like some sort of exotic breed of chicken, however, you may use it as follows:

Some background and finished projects...

Thanks to the inspiration of Jessi, I've started a little blog of my sewing projects. Like her, I felt like my family blog wasn't the place to keep track of all this stuff, and I wanted a place I could put just my sewing projects so that in five or ten years I can (I hope) look back and say, "Wow, I was really bad at sewing back then!"


On the left is the first apron I made. It was for my nephew James, and I "embroidered" his name at the top. He really loves airplanes, so I used some Air Force fabric for the ties and pocket. I also made pockets for the ties to slide through so that it would be completely adjustable, even the neck strap. I probably won't do that again because 1. it was a huge pain in the butt, and 2. it didn't look as good as I would have liked when it was done.

I've made three other aprons, two of which I have photos of (above). The one without a person in it is for my neice Annika. When I finished it, I had quite a bit of fabric left over. I knew I also wanted to make an apron for my mom, and her favorite color is blue, so I used some of the remaining fabric for her apron instead of buying something else.

My mom's name is Linda, and when I cut out the "L" for her apron, Bill said sarcastically, "Who gets the LaVerne L?" I shot him a look, told him mom my would get that "L," and he replied, "She's gonna love that." And she did.

With these aprons, I used D-rings to make the necks adjustable. Much easier than running the straps through long pockets!

I also made purses for Christmas gifts. Unfortunately, I only took pictures of one. Grrr! I'll get photos of the one I made for my grandmother and the one I gave my sister-in-law sometime to post. Here's the one I made for my mom, though.

I quilted it on the sewing machine, which was a lengthy process, but it was worth it because I got exactly to combination of fabrics I was looking for (you can buy pre-quilted fabric, but it's really expensive, and you're stuck with whatever fabric combination is already chosen). The quilting was made easier by the fact that my sewing machine has a quilting tool, which is basically a little rod that you line up with your last stitch to make sure all the lines are exactly the same distance apart--wonderful tool!

My only regret on this project was the lack of pockets in the purse. Because I quilted it, I didn't have a separate lining, so I couldn't sew pockets in without the seams showing on the other side of the purse. I thought about doing pockets on the inside and outside of exactly the same size, but it was going to be such a PITA that I decided against it.

You can sort of see the quilting in the bottom picture. Lots of time, but truly worth the effort.

Moving beyond Christmas...

Christa, Becca, and I recently collaborated on a pajama-making project for Theo's third birthday present. It was the first time since I was a kid that I've used a pattern. Luckily, my mom was here that night to help us out! As you can see, the pajamas turned out great, and we even had enough fabric left over to make a blanket for the birthday boy.

The toughest thing about this project was making sense of the directions. On a couple of occasions, we had to read, reread, and reread the directions. Again, my mom was a big help (she made her own wedding dress, so she's fairly skilled).

The blanket was just a double layer of the fabric sewn together, turned right-side out, and stitched up. We also added little embellishments to keep the two layers from separating.

Finally, here are some curtains I've done recently. The pretty one in my dining room are from clearance fabric that I got for $3/yard. Pretty sweet deal. I got all the fabric I needed for these curtains, and I'm planning to do cornice boxes for the living room as soon as Bill gets the boxes built for me. I should also have enough fabric left over to recover the cushions on the dining room chairs, but I'm going to hold off on that project until I get a new dining room set (one that isn't really a hand-me-down kitchen set). I'll have that fabric for quite a while...

The curtains are lined, which was more difficult than I really anticipated. It was another completely worthwhile big effort, though, as the curtains are a fantastic insulator!

These, my friends, are garage curtains for our huge garage windows. There's another one on the other side of the storage rack, but it's just as hideous as this one.

The reason these are so ugly is that I wanted a fabric that was black on one side to keep everyone on the street from being able to peer directly into our garage. I also wanted something cheap. I didn't want to put much money into garage curtains, for goodness sake.

This fabric was--I kid you not--50 cents a yard. I bought all they had left, for a grand total of $2.88. And after doing two fairly large curtains, I still have fabric left over. And I have no idea whatsoever what I will do with such awful fabric.

On a side note, there was almost no skill involved in the construction of these curtains. The sides and bottoms are not finished. I just stitched a rod pocket at the top. That's it.

The beauty of the fabric, though, is that is is solid black on the other side, so here's what the garage now looks like from the street:

And that's it for now. Next projects:

• Cutting up and rehemming a bunch of old towels for dish towels and various rags. I'm trying to go a little greener by not buying paper towels, but that requires a lot of regular towels.


• Cornice boxes for the living room.


• Pajamas for Emma.


• Pajama bottoms for Georgia.


• A house scarf for Emma.

Tune in later for more!