The Perfect Pear Pincushion

We like pincushions here and I just came across a cute pear pattern by Stacy that would be perfect for a pincushion. It would also be appropriate for Christmas ornaments or decorations. What fun!

Jessica

Ear Flap Hat for Emmy

Yesterday I knit a hat for Emily, and yes, she even kept it on long enough for me to take a few pictures of her. I enjoyed this quick project---being able to work on something and actually finish it was quite satisfying to me. Isn't Emmy adorable, dirty face and all? It was hilarious how Emmy went from crying to smiling in less than a minute while the pictures were being snapped.
Ruth




***Edit***
For this hat I adapted a pattern from www.cidermoon.com. The pattern is not sized for toddlers, so I experimented as I knit, making it smaller. For Emmy's hat I started with a cast-on of 63 stitches. I think I should have made it slightly bigger.

Chic Purses from Threads Magazine

In this month's eLetter from Threads Magazine a link for free instructions for 3 Chic Purses was given. I particularly like the Pleated Pouch Bag, pictured below. I don't dare add this project to my already overgrown list, but I surely do like it! Perhaps one day in the future I'll just sew up all the handbags that I've been collecting links and patterns for. As much as I am drawn to handmade bags you would think that I owned a whole collection of them. The truth is, lately I've been carrying an ordinary, non-descript brown leather purse. Hmmm.... maybe I should make one of these cute purses and add some zip to my life....
Ruth

Knit Maternity Top

I discovered again last night that I love to sew clothes. Clothing construction is so much more fun then all the home-dec stuff and craft stuff I've been doing. No long boring seams, no troublesome quilting issues, not rotery cutters and mats, and all the acessories, no projects that take weeks to finish and then have the "homemade" look. Just fun stuff like fitting and pressing, bindings and edgestitching, hemming, and then having an end product that looks like something I could buy in a store. It's so satisfying...

The pattern is McCalls 4880. It calls for woven fabrics, but seemed to work fine with my knit. The knit fabric I used below is a super cheap, thin knit that will probably pill and look horrible after a few washings, but I wanted to experiment with the fit and the look, and it was only $1 per yard. I have some nicer, light blue knit that I plan to use now that I know the pattern fits and works on my pregnany body!

The pattern doesn't actually have gathers across the front like my shirt does....I got the idea from the review of this pattern on Pattern Review. Basically I just added some extra inches to the center front along the fold of the lower piece, and then gathered the excess to fit between the notches when I sewed the lower front to the upper front pieces. The gathers are sort of different and trendy looking...and they certainly show off my tummy! I'm still trying to decide how much I like them.

The only issue I had was with some skipped stitches. I used a ball point needle, but I think it was the wrong size for such a lightweight knit because I didn't have any problems when the material was tripled (like on the binding). Also going slow and using a 2.5 stitch length seemed to help. I wish there were magic answers for all the tension and stitch issues I've been having lately. If anyone has experience sewing with knit fabrics, I'd love to hear any hints and tips!

Thanks for the comments...

Thanks for all the great comments trying to help me with my machine quilting on my table runner. Unfortunately I'm almost done, ( I have less then 1/4 of it to finish) so I don't want to pick it all out just to try a different thread for the bobbin thread. I need to figure out how to make the gold thread work, or just forget about the whole thing.

I am not giving up quite yet though. Here's my theory: At the point when I really started having problems, both the bobbin and the spool of thread were getting low. I think that perhaps as the thread was reaching the end of it's spool, it was changing the tension and creating the problems. So before I scrap the project, I'm going to buy a new spool of gold thread, start with a full bobbin, and see it I can't finish it. I'll let you know if I get it to work once I get the thread. I may also buy a metallic needle and see if that helps too.

Jessica

Progress on my living room!

Last weekend Justin's brother, Joshua (don't they look so much alike?), came and helped us get our living room plastered. This was a project that we'd been trying to do for months and months, and I was losing hope that it would ever get done...What a blessing it was for them to be able to finish the rest of the room in one day! Now we get to move on to painting! Yea!

Jessica

Creating Cardboard Houses

This week we have had fun making houses out of cardboard boxes. Ellen, Jacob, and I used house paint to cover the brown boxes, then we drew on the designs with markers. Since the markers smeared easily when touched, we sprayed the drawings with a matte finish. The kids have been having a lot of fun playing in their new houses, and I enjoyed the creating process, even though we're not great artists. :-)
Ruth


If you'd like to see the pictures close up, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/callmeruth/. You can also see Ellen's blog at http://learningon.homeschooljournal.net/ to see what she had to say.

Jacob lost a tooth last week. Don't you just love his toothless smile?

Emily even got in the act, "helping" as she could.
She got more markers on her feet and hand than on the box.
Take a look at her little orange piggies.