Category: making stuff is good

Secrets! Revealed!

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 14/02/2011

And other stuff too, I haven’t stopped being busy this week, not even once.

First, as we know, Ali had her baby, who goes by Baby Clay. Or Babby Clay. And because she refused to tell anyone the gender before he was born, I was hoping for a girl so I could pass on the pink/orange/black zigzag quilt I made a while ago. Well.  The good news is that she had him on a Monday, which is also my day off from work, so as soon as I got the good news, I got to work on a baby quilt. I had limited options but navy, green, black and grey seemed good for a boy.

There. Completely made in one day. It’s already been mailed and received.

Next up was my dear friend Libs’ birthday. I’d already made myself a pincushion using a block from knitty.com so I made a second and put a small quilt block on the back and called it good. This one is hers, front and back:

The yarn is mini mochi. It’s nice and soft and very cute. This one is mine, front and back:

Koigu yarn is the bomb. Ditto echino fabric. Delicious. And both were gifts from Libs!

Also, I made throw pillow covers to match my green quilt:

Made with scraps, mostly, a little new (the centre blocks) and the fabrics I’m using for binding (the orange pieces). The backs will be purple batik.

ALLLLLso, I made a couple toys out of an Aranzi Aronzo book, the middle 2 fellows:

Shannon got me thinking about toys and I’m glad I gave that book a second chance. I had to get new poly filler stuffing and I’m not in love with the new brand. I just don’t know where to get decent stuffing around here.

Valentine’s Day snuck up on me, so I hastily made a gift for my Valentine:

If you can’t tell, it’s a mini quilt, about 2′ by 3′,  of an 8 bit picture of him. We’d been very much enjoying 8 bit art by Andy Rash and so I used his formula as the starting point. I mostly used scraps I had laying around here, but also got a couple fat quarters from Walmart (the blue backgrounds and the beige sand, dark brown beard/hair).  I spent a lot of time looking at it and laughing my head off. And yelling at everyone to stop spying on me and my secret presents!

(Also an apology about flopping around and switching blog themes. I hate that,  I get all confused when a blog I frequent suddenly looks different. The one I used for about a day-almost exactly like this one but purple and green-I loved and wanted to stick with but it didn’t have categories or a blog roll so I switched back to this one. Yes, I’m sure there’s an easy way to add those to a theme but I’m too old to start learning tricky stuff like that).

Green quilt

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 05/02/2011

Well, I’ve been a busy bee, it’s true. And much busier and productive than I can post about. Here’s what’s poo, when you make something for someone as a gift and it’s finished and you’ve taken pictures but you can’t post them because they haven’t received them yet. Ali, I’m talking to you. And Libs. It’s torturous.

So between them and the shirts I’ve also put together a scrappy back for my green quilt. It’s not quite finished, I’m planning on getting some yardage tomorrow at the workroom to put a band at the bottom to fill it out to the right size. Or maybe a strip at the top and at the bottom, who knows. I’ve also made the binding for it, it’s also scrappy (surprise surprise!) different orange pattern fabrics.

The bottom edge has been evened out too. I’m very psyched for this quilt to be finished, then I can start thinking about my next big project.

I also organized my sewing area a little. There was peg board laying around here, in the laundry room, so I hung it up and Shannon got me a bunch of pegs and it’s fantastic. So nice to have easy access to thread and bobbins and everything useful.

Now I want more thread. MORE THREAD PLEASE!

On aging.

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 05/02/2011

I noticed the other day that if I lean my arm on my bent leg it squeezes the veins and makes my hand look scary/old. I was trying to pretend that it’s from lifting weights but even my imagination is limited.

Pretty, eh? Pretty SCARY. I am almost 40. And no, if you wondered, that’s not the hand that was injured. Although, at this point, they do look remarkably similar. Not a scar in sight.

The last couple days I have been hacking and slashing at tshirts. I own a shit-ton of tshirts and I wish I liked them more but I’ve finally admitted that I don’t. The best ones, the ones with a cool silkscreen on the front, are always tight and binding and they ride up on my gut and drive me crazy.  I was saying to Shannon how much I wished that all those shirt printing guys did them on tank tops so he suggested I cut a couple tshirts up and see what happens.

So this is what happens:

Yes. I suck at self portraits.

It’s a Threadless shirt, I think I got it for $5. And I love the print (“I’ve wanted this for so long”) and I love it even more now.  I used an existing tank top I like for a pattern and literally just laid it on top and snipped around the edges. And then I let down the hem, which adds about half an inch, and voila! I think I’ve done this to 6 shits so far.

Ooh, and if you’re in Toronto, City of Craft is having their third annual Love and Rummage Trunk Show at The Workroom tomorrow. It’s also the last day of a 4 day sale on fabrics, so I’m checking that out too. (I’m at a birthday party in the late morning and will try to get to the wr by 2pm. And I mean it when I say let’s have coffee if you go and you know me and all that jazz). I’ll be wearing my snakeskin leggings.

Haha! Yay!

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 31/01/2011

So less than 13 hours after she last commented on my blog, my dear friend Ali had her damn baby! Daniel Clayton Mooney, born January 31 at 6:34 am, 6lbs 14oz, 20″ long.

Ali, you are going to be a GREAT MOM!!! You are going to ace this, I know it! I wish I could be there to help out more. And I hope your address hasn’t changed, ok?

Love you!

Watch out where the huskies go!

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 17/01/2011

And don’t you eat that yellow icicle. Seriously, don’t eat it. I wouldn’t even walk too close to it, there’s a good chance it will fall onto you and kill you to death. And no one would ever know how you died because the ice would melt and the evidence would disappear.

Holy big, right? I couldn’t even fit it into the whole picture, it’s so big.

Tilt your head 45 degrees to the right, that’s a 2 story icicle, son. It kicks your baby icicle’s ass. It’s an FBI: a Fucking Big Icicle! Super cool.

Got lots of work done today, I have only 6 more quilt blocks to sew. AND I took out 4 enormous bags of recycling that have been sitting around since last year. You read correctly:  LAST YEAR.

OH, and I started a wee knitting project too. So there! (Gosh, I love Knitty! KISS ME KNITTY!)

A sore back can only mean one thing…

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 15/01/2011

I’m done cutting my blocks! Woo! It took 2 days and 2 rotary cutter blades and lots of swear words but I did it. I’m doing a basic 9 patch because, frankly, I like it’s simplicity. It’s classic and it looks great, especially with nice fabrics that deserve showcasing. Each block will have 2 6.5″ squares and 2 2.5″x9 squares. Because I’m using the heart block I already made for the centre, I needed 24 different fabrics, a little math and voila, nothing is repeated!

So, I don’t know if you can tell right away, but I labeled each block with a number/letter, then went through them and shifted everything by 1 twice (oh, how can this already be confusing?) so block A has A, B, C in it, block B is B, C, D, block C is C, D, E and so on to the end where block X goes back to X, A, B.

Now does it make more sense? I might even start sewing tomorrow, we’ll see how I feel.

In gaming news, I’m in the middle of Lego Harry Potter on DS (it’s not great, Batman and Indiana Jones were way better), Lego Batman on PS3 (love it!) and the latest Mystery Case Files on this, my laptop. I subscribe to the emails so when I found out the latest case had been released, I sucked it up and threw it onto PayPal. It was awesome, unsurprisingly, and I finished it in record time. Then I somehow erased it, BOO!

I made something today

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 09/01/2011

It will be the centre block of my future quilt.

The pattern is by Anna Maria Horner (that’s a pdf file, fyi). It was hard, I mean, each square was so twonky, such a stupid shape, I had to trim trim trim to make them even vaguely square, then I zigged the heart on top, then trimmed some more. Then I ironed it onto some fusable stuff to make it stay. Ugh. Whatever, it will look amazing once everything is put together.

I’ll also hand embroider our initials on it.

Ya know? If I’d had any idea that sewing with someone’s retired boxer shorts would be so difficult, I might not have done it at all!

Practice makes perfect

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 02/01/2011

I don’t have basting pins (or I don’t until tomorrow when I head to DFO) so I’ve finished sewing the backs of both parental quilts, but haven’t started the quilting process yet. It will happen, I’m feeling motivated.

Until then, I’ve been drooling over amazing quilts on flickr to try to figure out how to piece my own quilt. I think I’ve kind of figured it out, at least for now, here’s my mock up, using scraps I had.

The largest square is 6″, mid size are 4″ and smallest are 2″. It makes a 10″ square (duh). Plus seam allowance, 1/4″ per side. Then I am planning on 2″ sashing between each block. I think I can get away with making 36 blocks, then the sashing, then a 4″ border, then binding, it should be big enough to snuggle with Shannon under.

And, unless it’s not super obvious, I’m using fabrics previously blogged. And a couple more rarities I found and bought on etsy last night. Oops!

The next delicious thing

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 29/12/2010

When I am done-completely done including binding-both of my parent’s quilts, I’m going to move on and start one for Shannon and I. It hadn’t really occurred to me to make one for us until he said something a couple weeks ago. So the fabric collecting started, but I didn’t really know where I was going with it (colour wise) until I went to The Workroom and saw the dark brown Castle Peeps. I love it. There are greens and golds and purples, so I went largely with green.

It’s going to be green with smatterings of brown and purple. Here is what I have to work with, so far:

I can’t name everything, but other than Castle Peeps I got It’s a Hoot by Moda, Parisville by Tula Pink (if you quilt, get this, it’s gorgeous and the spotty colourway I got is already sold out-RUN), Far Far Away 2 by Heather Ross, a huge stack of Libs’ destash, and lots of other loveliness abounding. When I get to Target in the spring (and to Joanne’s Fabrics) hopefully the top will be finished and I’ll figure out the back/binding.

And no, I have no idea what pattern I’m doing. I like pinwheels and I love a good, old fashioned log cabin, but I’m thinking about doing a sampler type quilt with a bunch of different blocks all tied together. We’ll see!

Vrooom! Vrrrrooooooommmm!!!

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 29/11/2010

Someone who lives in my building had fun Saturday night with their motorcycle. Or did something deeply regrettable, I’m not sure. What I do know is that loud revving could be easily heard and that the perfume of burnt rubber was in the air. At 1:30am.

Lucky us.

But check the damage done to the tire, it’s almost worn right through. The asphalt beneath is worn through and melted too.

Someone has a big weiner. You can tell.

I made another squid:

Albino rabbit eyes.