Baby Quilt

As you may remember, about a year ago I started my first quilt.  Well, I have not finished that quilt yet, but I did start and finish my first baby quilt! Both of my sister-in-laws recently had babies and my Mom had the idea to make a baby quilt for one of them.  We went shopping at a quilting store in Annapolis and saw an adorable quilt by Kati Cupcake and decided to buy the pattern. 

I ended up taking over the project, because my Mom is just like me (or maybe it's that I'm just like her) and has a ton of projects.  Below is the completed quilt.

The quality of the picture is not great (I took it with my camera phone), but the main colors are purples with some blue, greens and pinks and there are two ruffles in it.  This quilt was not difficult.  The only part I really had trouble with was the ruffle, but I think my issue there was that I was not using a strong enough thread when pulling the ruffle. 

I'm starting to think - since this is one of very few completed projects - that I should always make things for babies - they are much quicker!

Re-Caning Chairs: Final Post

So I finally finished re-caning one of my chairs. It took me longer than I thought, but I have been a lot busier than usually the last few weeks.



Re-Caned Chair



I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  My husband and I did a "test sit", just to make sure that we wouldn't fall through. It feels very sturdy!  I would definitely recommend re-caning your own chairs if you have the time.  It costs significantly less than paying someone else do it and it feels very rewarding once it is complete. Now I need to order more supplies for the other chairs and teach my husband how to do it!



Re-caning Chairs: Part Two

I'm slowly coming along on my re-caning project.  Since my last post, I completed the second row of verticals, the second row of horizontals (which requires weaving under and over the verticals) and have started the diagonal rows (which requires weaving under and over verticals and horizontals).



Second row of verticals and horizontals completed.



Beginning of diagonals.

 
I am going up to Connecticut this evening, so I won't have a chance to work on my chair until probably the beginning of next week, but I'm hoping I'll be finished with it by the end of next week!

Chair Re-Caning

It's been a long time since I have posted on this blog, but I've started a new project and I thought it would be fun to write about it on here.  I got these beautiful chairs from my Aunt a few weeks ago, but the seats need to be re-caned.

I thought at most it would $100 a seat to be re-caned, but boy was I wrong.  I called around and the average price was $3 per hole. My chairs have an average of 75 holes, so that is $225 per chair! That was WAY above my spending limit, so I looked into doing it myself.  There are a few different ways of re-caning, all depending on the type of chair you have.  These chairs are all hand-woven. Hand-woven caned chairs have holes around the perimeter of the seat. Cane is woven back and forth through the holes, which creates a sturdy seat to sit on.  After some research and watching a few youtube videos, I found many sites that offered kits to re-cane chairs yourself. The kits are about $15 (shipping is $10), with enough supplies to re-cane one chair. I decided to go for it and spend the $25 and take on another project!

Last night I started my new project. Here is the chair before the cane has been removed:

The first step is to soak your cane in some cool water for at least 20 mins. While it is soaking you can remove the cane from you seat.To remove the cane, I just used some scissors to cut around the seat.  The rest of the cane was removed by cutting the loops on the bottom of the chair.  Some of the cane was stuck in the holes, so I used a small screwdriver to poke it through.

Once all the cane has been removed you can begin the weaving process. I won't go into detail of the weaving process (the kit and youtube videos give great instructions), but basically you first weave back and forth vertically:

The next step is to weave the cane back and forth horizontally.

This was as far as I got last night, but once I do more I'll post my progress.  If this works out, I plan on buying more cane and finishing the remaining three chairs.  From there, who knows, maybe I'll started my own side business!

Piecing my Quilt

So I finished cutting out my colored fabric. Before I moved onto my white fabric I measured it and calculated which was the best way to cut it, so that I could get the most amount of pieces from it.  I figured out that if I cut it the long way I would get more pieces, HOWEVER, I also figured out that I don't have enough white.  I was supposed to get 90 pieces from the white, but I only got 61!  I also don't remember the dye lot for the white, so I need to call the quilting store to see if they have a record of it. I really hope they do and that they have fabric from the same dye lot left.


In the meantime, I've been piecing and sewing together the fabric that I do have.  So far I've sewn 4 strips (out of 25) and I pinned together 3 more strips last night that I will sew tonight.  Pictures to come...

I am almost finished cutting out my colored fabric - 6 more colors to go!  I didn't even think of this until I was halfway through cutting the colored fabric, but I've started folding the pieces so that I can cut more than 1 strip at a time. I don't know why I didn't think of that before.  I'm hoping to finish the last 6 pieces tonight :)

My first Quilt: Day 2

Not much to report except for more cutting of fabric!  When I have a bigger pile I'll post some more pictures.

My first quilt: Day 1

On Day 1 of my first quilt I began by washing and ironing all of my fabric. As you can see, I went to greens, blues and purples instead of pink, orange and yellow.

Then I had to calculate what size to cut my pieces out, since the Purl Bee's pattern is for a double bed and I am making a king size.  After some help from my wonderful husband, I decided to make the pieces 1.5 times larger than what the Purl Bee says.  So, instead of 3.5"x12.5", I did 5.25"x18.75".  I thought this was easier than having to reconfigure the pattern with 1.5 times the number of pieces.

After that was figured out I began cutting my fabric!

Another Day, Another Hobby

Today's hobby is Quilting! I found this adorable quilt from the PurlBee website.  I've been wanting to try quilting, but have been afraid.  When I saw this quilt I thought it looked like a good first-time quilter project, especially if I decide to send the pieced together top to get quilted together. (I know it's cheating, but at least it's letting me start another project!)

So onto my new adventure...I will be posting pictures of my work in progress. We'll see how long it takes me to finish (King Size) - my mom says it will be finished in 2040.

Tin Jack o lanterns

I was just checking out the Martha Stewart website and I found this Halloween project and it involves recycling! This project is really simple. All you have to do is

1. Take a clean used coffee or soup can
2. Fit with water & freeze
3. Take the frozen can and lay it across a bag of rice to steady it
4. Punch holes using an awl and hammer into any pattern you want
5. Paint the can using oil based enamel & let dry. If the holes become covered, use a toothpick to clear them.

You can then add a votive candle and you get a tin jack o lantern!

Source: http://www.marthastewart.com/good-things/tin-can-jack-o-lanterns?lnc=a7367dbc53cee010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&rsc=taxonomylist_crafts_recycling-crafts

#5 Plastic and Bottle Caps

Here I go again about my dislike for throwing things away. Sometime ago, I learned that most recycling centers do not recycle plastic bottle caps, so whenever I went to throw mine away I felt so guilty. I began searching for crafts where I could reuse bottle caps and I found these from http://howaboutorange.blogspot.com/:

I seriously love these, they are just too cute - but how many mini pincushions can a person make? So after some more research, I learned that Aveda has a plastic cap recycling program - YAY! I set up a bin in my office and offered to drop off the caps at my local Aveda store and so far everyone's been doing a great job.

If you'd like to setup something similar, go here to learn more: http://aveda.aveda.com/aboutaveda/caps.asp

On a similar topic, I was having trouble finding uses for my #5 plastics, since my local recycling center only takes #1 & #2 plastics, but then I found this: http://www.recycline.com/gimme5.html Recycline is a great company, and now it's even greater. You can send in all your #5 plastics and they'll recycle them for you into one of their products!

Anyway, I think I get too excited about recycling - but it feels so good to know that you don't have to throw everything away.

GOOS Paper

If you know me, then you know I hate throwing things away. Especially things that I know have not gotten as much use out of them as I would have liked. For instance, I have a huge folder full of GOOS paper (Good On One Side). I try to use it for taking notes, making to do lists, etc. but let's face it, it's not very pretty to look at. So, I found these websites which offer great ideas on ways to use that GOOS paper, while keeping it pretty at the same time.

The first website shows you how to make notepads using padding compound:

http://www.blogger.com/thesmallobject.com/stenopad/wordpress/?p=1646

I looked on amazon for the padding compound and I found a quart for $9.41

The second website shows you how to make little notebooks out of old cards:
http://www.craftypod.com/?p=485

Now I need to go home to make these cute things!

My first post

I'm not really sure what I am going to use this blog for, but I think my first one is going to be to get people to go to my mom's ETSY site:

Crafty

I've been having craft fever. Here is a list of projects that I am either working on, or want to work on:

1. Cardigan - I've been working on this project for 2+ years. Don't you think it's about time I finished it?


2. Short sleeved sweater - This has been a six month project, but I've only done about 2 inches.

3. Embroidery - this is a small project, maybe 3 x 4 inches. I don't even know how long ago I started it

4. Rug hooking - this is a small (9 X 12 in) beginner project I started a few months ago. It's an easy project to pick up every once in awhile. I have been wanting to design my own pattern though.

I guess the point of this post was to remind myself of how much I slacker I am with my projects - or is it that I'm just insanely busy with work, school, and wedding planning?