Friday, January 20, 2012


AT LAST - RAIN!

Warm sewing rooms are nice for napping on rainy days (and all other days too).


An email from my local sewing guild came around asking if people could sew up various types of blankets and cat beds. Cat beds. I was all over it. Leftover flannel from other projects along with a bolt of fiberfill for padding that was a gift from friend Emmy. A little of my time, and voila! 14 cat beds.



Finally. Done. I decided to make my Canadian cousin, who is having some health issues, a pair of happy house boots. The sewing together of the boots was easy but getting the bottoms to fit gave me conniptions. I kept having other projects take priority so it was a long time from starting to finishing of this particular project. I didn't like the commercial bottoms available so I bought some deer skin and sewed up my own. Lily, my sewing machine, was put to the test. I tried the leather needle and struggled. I had much better results with a wing needle but finally, a fairly small needle gave the best results. There was some issue with the thread breaking but overall, not that bad.

Gail was more than generous with giving me her foot measurements (she has the smallest feet of any of my friends and my cousin has small feet). Thank you Gail! The actual sewing of the bottoms after the fitting issue was resolved wasn't technically hard but very tiring. My fingers hurt. For those of you with eagle eyes, yes, that is some of the double faced wool that I made an overly large coat from (and unpicked and resewed for a much better fit).

Funny aside: I paid around $3.50 to mail the package to Canada. A few months ago I mailed my sister-in-law the tennis shoes she left at my house. It cost me nearly $11 and she lives down in Sacramento. Go figure.


The fingerless gloves are done and will be gifted next week. A nice quick project


Bright Star- photo courtesy of The Twist Collective (I guess I could have scanned it from my purchased pattern but this was so much easier.)


Progress is being made and I am liking it a lot. I decided to go down a needle and pattern size because I tend to knit loosely and turn out garments that are too large. Bright Star calls out to be a bit on the snug side. Classic Elite Waterlily on size 4's. I will likely use up all 8 skeins. I plan to drop the pattern line down below my bust a couple of inches and make the garment longer if I have enough yarn.

3 Comments:

At 8:55 AM, Anonymous Suzy said...

Olive looks so contented on her blankie. Makes you want to join her.

 
At 8:11 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love how the boots turned out! --Sharon

 
At 12:29 PM, Blogger Valerie Polichar said...

Bright Star is so cute! I don't think I'm slim enough for it at the moment but I could use it if I lost a little. Hrm.

Love the house boots!! I'm very impressed.

 

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