>Felt Ornament Heart

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felt ornament heart, originally uploaded by sunshine’s creations.

If you are thinking of Valentine’s Day and want a simple ornament or gift tag, you can always make one of these hearts; follow the last link to the tutorial. If you do make one, please feel free to join flickr felt creations group and add your photo; I would love to see them.

This would be real cute with tatted flowers, too, instead of embroidered ones. I may have to try that. If you make a tatted version, join “the mad tatter” group on flicker and add tatting ones there. If you have no idea what tatting is, check out this site the 25 motif tatting challenge.

>Colorados

>

My daughters were playing with my oldest Colorados the other night and decided to make a picture of my fairy girl (oldest daughter). They got a little bored waiting for grandparents to come and visit; they, the grandparents, were a little late due to unforeseen circumstances. A few days prior my oldest two daughters had a piano recital that the grandparents were not able to go to through no fault of their own. So they where coming over for a private recital from the girls.

In the process of waiting, this idea came into my daughters’ heads — to make the oldest out of blocks. It is actually a real cool toy; I’m just not sure if I think that really looks like my daughter. But at least the eyes are blue and the image has short hair like she does. I am just thinking she doesn’t have a green nose and purple cheeks or bright red lips. I don’t know what do you think (rhetorical question).

>Between midnight and 8am

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That is when all this snow fell onto our back deck. We didn’t haul any up the stairs; this was already there. The kids are excited to make a snowman. They received a gift of an instant snowman in a box at Christmas, and they have been waiting for one really good snow fall so they could make him on the deck ,so this is the day. The instant snow man is pretty cool; he came with eyes, corn cob pipe and mouth, a carrot nose, buttons and scarf and hat.

In the process of making this post I discovered there is a turkey in the box, too. How funny!

Update

While I was posting, they changed their mind to make a snow cave instead. Funny because they have been waiting for almost four weeks to make a snowman.

All Done!

They made a snowman after all. He is sort of the Mount Rushmore of snowmen, I guess. Go figure, kids! They stayed out so long that their little bodies got so cold they couldn’t feel themselves. But, they made the snowman, so that is all that mattered.

>Other hexes and thread

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As you can see, I have another started afghan that I get the fun of making into something else. The funny thing is, it is the same pattern as the other. I understand why this afghan was never finished; the person who made it wasn’t able to keep her tension the same, or she forgot what hook she was using, and there are three sizes of block. The large and the small could no way work in the same afghan without puckering strangely.

So, I am having to take the entire afghan apart to be able to use the blocks. The smallest blocks are still larger than the other afghan’s blocks. So I am thinking I will make a few shirts for adults with this; maybe a skirt, scarf, hat, baby bonnet. Who knows, it is whatever strikes my fancy. This one did come with supplies; too bad the original maker didn’t have her blocks all the same size, I would have finished the blanket for my children because that was my original goal. But, as you can see, I have started a shirt, and yes the blocks are matched so they will work together.

>Aqua Shirt

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Aqua shirt now in store.

>Shirts now in store more coming soon

>These two shirts are now in the store. Hope to finish another and place in store later today.

I have another antique afghan with this same pattern that has larger hexes. So I plan on making a few shirts for adults, too, in the near future. That one will be a little harder to take apart because of the way the blocks have been joined.

>The tops are assembled

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OK, I have assembled the tops. Now the question is, do I go on with my original idea of making dresses, or do I just make them available as tops for a child size 4-5. My daughter is a size 6, so these are a little small for her, in our opinion. But it does show a size 6 can wear them, too. I am still planing on adding embellishments to these as dress or shirt. The reason I ask if they should just be shirts is, as a shirt they are approximately $40.00 to $60.00 each. Where, if I make them into dresses, the price would go up in the hundreds. I want things to be affordable; but, to make these into dresses, I am looking at tons of hours more per dress to make the crochet skirt part.

In the photo, my daughter is wearing a long, white undershirt that goes over her hips because the undershirt belongs to her 10-year old sister. These crocheted shirts actually would hit the waist of a size 4-5; on a size 6 ,the belly button shows right in the middle ,which embarrasses my daughter, so we made sure not to do that with the undershirt. I will be adding an edging which should correct that problem.

There are two shirts of the top photo and one of the bottom photo.

I can make sleeves for the second one in a different color if someone so desires that, too, like I did for my daughter’s dress in the bottom of this post.

>Flickr issues

>Because most of my photos are hosted on flickr I am at their mercy. If you haven’t noticed, the last few days my blog takes forever to load. It is because flickr is having issues with image hosting. So some photos just are not loading, which causes the site to never finish loading and to keep trying. Sorry for any inconvenience this causes any one. Between that and the background being white, not my first choice, my site is even hard for me to look at right now.

>What to do with found Hexes

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So I was thrift shopping a few weeks ago and found this bag of what I guess was the start of a blanket, table cloth or table runner. I have seen the pattern before it comes from the 1930’s-1940. So these are more than likely 70+ years old. What ever it was supposed to be it wasn’t finished and it had no supplies with it. So I decided I would buy it and make something from it sad that nothing was done to finish it. Since the hexes where already stitched into 5 pieces I had to disassemble to reassemble parts of it. Total 70 hexes what I really wanted was 72 hexes but I figured that one out. So above is what I came up with.

Well actually I have the start of three dresses. These when done will fit little girls between the size of 4-5. Two of the dresses have sleeves the last one will have cap sleeves as there wasn’t enough of the hexes to make all three have full sleeves, I was two short so cap sleeves it is. The sleeves look funny when not on a person but I had my daughter try it on and it looks fine on a little girl. They will also have mother of pearl buttons on the back as a closure. Of course there will be satin roses or ribbons on these two when done. I plan on each having a different color skirt to go with it. So this way no two will be exactly the same when completed. I am kicking myself for not taking a before photo. The top right photo is right side out the other two are still wrong side out as I am attaching the pieces together.

I will probably put these in the store when I am done with them, As the size they will be will not fit my older two daughters and would only fit the youngest for about 4 more months. As these are all one of a kind dresses I won’t get them in the store again when done.

Below are two from awhile back of one I did for my daughter that was salvaged from a table cloth that had holes and stains I saved the good parts and made the bottom dress for my youngest daughter for Easter one year. Boy they are bad photos with an ugly green towel but the dress was nice.

The ugly green towel was to hid the ugly pink carper in my old bedroom at my old house. explain to me how a person who dislikes pink as much as I do had a bedroom with pink carpet. Old photos

>Post to answer another Question

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There was a question on another blog that I read, and I am trying to answer the post here with visuals. This is sort of how it would be used because I am right handed. This should really hang from my right wrist so it feeds directly into my hand that holds my hook; I can crochet lefty, too, just don’t do it much. Anyway, because of that I use my right hand to take photos, too, so it is on my left in the picture.

This is a wrist thread-ball holder. They where popular when crochet and knitting where in the height of fashion. I have patterns for these from 1880-1920. In the center is a cabone ring on each side (not always used). This is where the thread is fed through the item, so that when you are traveling your ball does not end up on the floor and get dirty. This was a common item in most ladies’ traveling knitting/crochet bags. When a lady wanted to crochet, she would pull out the lace from the top of the bag and pull out her needle or hook that she had stabbed into the ball, and would start to work. When done, she would place the lace back into the top of the bag and re-stab her ball with needle or hook. This is also a bag that tatters would carry and do the same thing with it, except they wouldn’t stab their work, they would just place the shuttle inside the bag. Of course, for tatting the ball bag would hang on the opposite wrist than it would for crochet. So when I tat, this is the wrist it hangs on. For any of these techniques it is best to use a center-pull ball, but it’s not required.

The bag pictured above is not antique; it is one I made from an antique pattern.

Coming out of this is a piece of lace I am currently making. The pattern is from Leisure arts 111 Easy Edgings; in case anyone else wants to make it, pattern number 75. The hook size I am using is 10 this is roughly size 30 thread. The lace is actually a light khaki color and is a boil fast thread, meaning it is vintage to antique thread.