Baby Blanket #2

When I was a little girl I had a blanket that my Great-Grammie had crocheted (I believe it was my mom's first), and it was my FAVORITE blanket for AGES.  I still have it actually :) It's packed away now for when I (someday, maybe) have a little girl.  So when my nieces piggy blanket kept coming out of the wash with a slightly gray tinge to it (it's supposed to be pink and white...yikes!)  I decided to make her one as well :)  It's basically just a granny square that I've kept going, and I change periodically between pink and purple.  I have a feeling I'm going to have to buy yarn for it a couple more times, it's no where near big enough yet lol.  If you don't know how to do a granny square here's how:

1. Chain 4, slip stitch into the first chain.

2. Chain 2, 2 double crochet into hole formed by making the circle.

3.  Chain 1, 3 dc into hole, repeat 2 more times.

4. Chain 1, ss into first chain 2, turn.

5. Chain 2 (will count as 1st dc), dc 2 times into corner hole, chain 2, dc 3 times into same hole.

6. Chain 1.  DC into corner hole 3 times, chain 2, dc 3 more times into same hole.  Repeat all the way around.  

7. At end, chain 1, ss into first chain 2.  

This is your basic granny square.  These are so much fun to make by the dozens and then sew together into a scarf, blanket, whatever you want.  What I am doing for the blanket for my niece is to just keep the pattern going.  The pattern is the same no matter what row you're on, the only thing different is in all the rows after this you have to do a dc cluster (3 dc) in each chain one spot along the flat sides as well.  Here's what her blanket looks like so far.

I'm just alternating the colors I use every so often to get a pattern.  Once I get it as big as I want it I'm going to use both the pink and purple at the same time (you need a good size hook to do this) to create an edge for the blanket.  It'll be thicker than the blanket itself, but it will give it a nice finished look.  Depending on how ambitious I feel I may try to make a hood for this blanket because she likes the one on her piggy one so much, but I may decide not to so that she can use it as she gets older too.  I have plenty of time to decide that though, so for today I'm just going to keep going around, and around, and around...Oh, and to the store for more yarn haha!  Do you have anything passed down through your family that means a lot to you?

Earring Backs

When I first started making jewelry I got some things that looking back I probably should have avoided buying, but now I have them so I am trying to find ways to use them.  One of the things I got are these beauties, which are, plain and simple, a pain in the butt to wear once something is on them. 

So I decided to transform them into normal earring wires, and it works splendidly, so now I have about a gajillion more earring wires than I did previously :)  

If you find yourself in the same boat as me and wish to make these more useful and less annoying for the general populace here's what you do:

1. Cut off the little loopy part at the bottom.  It's useless.  

2. Squish the remaining loop (the part you attach the actual earring to) together, and slip a small gold bead and a gold crimping bead on from the back all the way to where it meets the loop.

3.  Crimp the crimping bead in place.  DONE!!  SOOOO easy, and you have a perfect earring wire.

Snip, Squish, and Crimp.  Now you can make as many earrings as you want, without the annoyance of the earring not actually staying in place while you try to find a loop behind your ear...  

This also (I would think) would be easy enough to accomplish if all you had is wire.  I haven't actually tried it yet, but I'm about to embark on a wire making journey and try to make lots of fun little findings for jewelry.  But that's for a later post :)  

Half Double Crochet Headband

I know I posted about a headband a long time ago, but for Christmas this year I made 1 for each of the girls in my family, and I decided to use some variety.  I did some with a regular hdc like in the mug hugger tutorial, some with a double crochet (for my Nana who doesn't like anything very thick and warm, would be a little too holey for my taste but she loves it) and some I did with hdc clusters.  These I did for the people who usually wear a hat anyway, but would appreciate a little extra something around their ears.  To start, you will need to chain 3 for every 1 hdc cluster you will make.

 You will need to have an even amount of hdc clusters for this pattern to work properly.  I decided to go with 4 clusters, so I chained a total of 12.

You need to chain one more, this makes a loop on the end, which you will be using in the second row.

 HDC 3x into the 4th chain from your hook.

 Chain 1.  Skip 2.  HDC 3x into the next chain.

 Repeat until the end of the row.  You should end up with your last hdc cluster in the first chain.

 Chain 3 and turn.

In the chain 1 spaces from the previous row you'll do a hdc cluster.

 That loop that we made at the beginning of the last row?  That will be your last hdc cluster.

 Same for all rows after this.  See how in the above picture the first row of hdc clusters have a big hole at the bottom where it pulled the chain up?  Once you get going that will start to disappear.

 Once you get it as long as you want it (keep pulling it as tight as you want it around your head, you don't want it too loose or too snug) slip stitch the ends together, just like the mug hugger tutorial.  This seam isn't nearly as noticable as the seam from the Tunisian Crochet Headband so I didn't make another little piece to cover it, but of course you can, or you can make a little flower or bow to hide it too :) Once you've slip stitched the ends together you can go out into the frozen arctic temperatures and be confident your ears at least will stay warm ;)

My Parent's 25th Anniversary Party

For the crafty side of their party :) I had so much fun making up the invitations and setting up the fellowship hall at my church!  Everyone else seemed to enjoy it too so I think I did ok ;)

For the invitations, I got silver cardstock, cut each piece in half width wise, and folded each one of those in half to form the card.  I then cut out each insert to fit with a 1/4" allowance around the edge and glued them together just along the backside of the fold.  I then cut a TINY slit about an inch from the top and bottom along the fold line to put a piece of red ribbon through, which I then tied on the outside.  My nana helped me cut the velum for the front with a 1/4" allowance all around.  I stamped "25th" on the front of each card, used a tiny piece of double sided tape on each corner of the velum to place it over the top of the stamped card, and then used glue dots to place tiny pearls over the corners to help hide the double sided tape, and also for more decoration.  The pearls came on a sheet with approximately a million on it (okay, maybe slightly less...) and the sheet itself was a clear sticky material, but it showed too much.  I popped each pearl off and used the glue dots instead to stick them on.  Tiny, meticulous work, but it was worth it.  On the back of the card (I forgot to take a picture of it) I stamped 1 Corinthians 13:7 "Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."

For the hall, I was blessed to be able to use the fellowship hall at my church without cost.  There are 3 pillars in the room, so I strung red and silver streamers in between them and from the outer ones to the walls, with 4 balloons on each pillar, 2 red and 2 silver.  I pushed 3 sets of 2 long folding tables together on one half of the room and on the other half I butted 2 together up against the wall for all the food.  Each table had a (plastic) silver tablecloth on the bottom, and then I cut a (plastic) red one in half and laid them on each table diagonally to create a diamond shape.  In the middle of each diamond I placed a mirror with 2 fake tea lights on top of it.  It gave the tables a little bit of elegance without going over the top.  The last, but not least, thing I did was set up a table for all the gifts at the back of the hall, where I also had my laptop going with a slideshow I made of pictures of my parents from the time they started dating (prom in the 80's...WOW!!)  through a few days before the party.  I snagged a LOT of pictures off social media, but I also had to sneak through all their shoe boxes of pictures to take some home to scan them and then sneak them back without them knowing anything.  That was a fun time haha.  Everybody loved the whole set up, the most common thing I heard was that it was beautiful without being overdone, which is exactly what I'd been aiming for!  The slideshow was a definite hit!  I still have it saved on my computer so I can watch it from time to time :)

Oh, and for the record, I got most of what I needed at the dollar store, or with coupons at Michaels.  There are benefits to planning things well in advance!  The mirrors were from the dollar store, they were framed but I just took the frame off and washed them and you'd never know the difference, the table cloths were all $1 or cheaper (I found the silver ones on sale for 50 cents a piece), the streamers and balloons were all $1, even the tea lights I think I only spent $5 on.  The velum, cardstock, and pearls, along with the different types of glue I used were all from Michaels and either on sale or I had coupons for.  Shout out to RetailMeNot, a fantastic little app that always has coupons for Michaels, check it out if you haven't yet.  I spent most of my money on food, typical of me haha.  Have you planned any fun parties that you'd like to share?

New Projects

So my boyfriend's mom got me a new sewing machine for Christmas, needless to say I was a tad excited ;)  I've already completed 2 projects on it, and will hopefully have another one done soon, which I will post at that time :)  The first project I did was a casserole dish carrier with 2 pot holders.  I sadly was so excited to give it to my best friend for her birthday it totally slipped my mind to take pictures of the one I made, but you can find the tutorial I followed for the carrier here and the potholders here.  The second project I made was a baby blanket for my boyfriend's cousin and fiance, who are expecting their first child.  I was actually given a bunch fabric last year at some point by my "aunt" (she's related somehow but it's too complicated for me to figure it out on a regular basis so I call her my aunt, I call everybody my aunt and uncle, I think it's a Maine thing haha).  Anywho, I dug through the fabric last week for a totally different project and came across cute little pre-cut flannel squares, perfect for a baby blanket!  And pre-cut...sign me up!  The squares were cut into 6.5" squares (a 1/4 seam allowance on each side so it would equal a 6" square when sewn).  I sewed 5 strips of 6 squares each, then sewed them together so the patterns alternated

.  I also found a yellow piece of flannel in the bag that matched the yellow in the moons perfectly and was big enough to be the back...score!

 I debated between batting and another piece of flannel to go in the middle and decided to go with flannel.  1) I had the flannel on hand and would have had to go shopping for the batting (just being honest lol) and 2) the baby is due in the spring and I wanted the blanket able to be used in the spring and summer too, not too hot and just for winter.  It's "heavier" but cooler.  Weird, but my Nana taught me that trick and it really does work.  Just like in the tutorial for the casserole dish carrier, I put the two right sides of the blanket (the pieces I wanted to be seen) together and the piece of flannel that was on the inside on top, squared up the edges, and sewed it all except for a gap on one side to turn the blanket right side out.  I trimmed the excess fabric from the seams (but not TOO much, because I wanted enough to catch with the top stitch), and cut the corners at an angle.  After I flipped it and got it all flattened out I sewed the gap shut and then kept going around the whole blanket one more time (a top stitch) to make it look like it was on purpose ;)  It also just makes it sturdier.

 I finished it off by tying the blanket in all the corners on the front of the blanket.

 SO much faster than trying to actually quilt it.  I've struggled enough with doing mine, I knew I'd never get it to the poor baby if I tried doing it to his blanket too haha.  The bottom picture is just so you can see that it barely shows through on the back.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, hopefully future Mumma and Daddy will be too! :)  Any baby projects you all have been working on that are super cute?