January, 2008

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've just been so busy! My niece turned three, and I really wanted to make her something special and girly. After four nephews (plus my son), she's our first and only girl in the family right now. And since she was three, I knew I could make something a bit nicer and not worry about her eating it.

I pored over all my knitting patterns, looked at all my animal patterns, but decided what I really wanted to make was a doll. And so I made the Maisy doll! It's inspired by a '40s cloth doll pattern, but I made quite a few changes to make it more like what I had in mind. Here she is:

She has a hand embroidered face with hand sewn wool yarn hair that's styled in a cute little bob. She's made of heavy cotton fabric with safety jointed arms and legs. This is her purple outfit, complete with cotton blouse, heavy wool jumper, and wool shoes. Of course, she needed more outfits than that, so I sewed more:

A white blouse with a red cotton dress and a soft camel-colored wool coat with hand knit red scarf (seed stitch pattern). I also gave Maisy her own dolly with bead eyes and embroidery thread hair sewed into braids, and I sewed up a little pink striped dress for it. So cute!

I have to say, as much as I like the doll, I equally, if not more, love the case I made for her. I found a vintage-looking suitcase, added a strap to hold the doll in, a peg for hanging up the clothes, and a small box with a latch at the bottom for holding all the doll's accessories. Everything is really secure in it too. I loaded it up, then shook it really good, and everything stayed in the right spots! It really makes the whole kit and caboodle feel like an heirloom, passed down from a grandmother. Maybe it will become one!

When I create a custom order purse or bag completely from scratch, I often will send along sketches or possible fabric choices to the recipient. This way, they can see what I'm working on and also can be involved in the process. It is after all, their custom bag.

When I was working on the Star Purse (I showed everyone a few weeks ago), I worked up several different shapes and styles:

In the end, we went with the top left shape with the above all over star design. But the bottom design has stuck with me, and I think I may have to make it:

I've even worked out a possible color scheme that I like:

or this:

I can't decide if I like white or yellow stars and moon. I'll play around with it, and I'm sure one or the other will jump out at me. So far, this is just using paper for the trees and stars, just to get a rough idea. I'm thinking this would be a fabulous design on the flap of a small messenger style bag. Since I need a black utilitarian bag (for knitting projects and what not), I may end up keeping this bag for myself! We'll see. I'm tossing around the idea of a robot messenger bag for myself as well, so I may have a difficult decision to make in the future.

Here's a wee chicken custom order made for a little one. I hope they like it! He's super soft—made of cuddle fleece with cotton wings and comb and hand knit cotton legs.

The little birdies are so much fun to make, and this was a nice tweak of the pattern in a new direction.

If you wanted to learn the art of needle felting but missed the November class at Crafty Planet, you're in luck! Crafty Planet has asked me to teach another two-part needle felting class on February 3 and 10 from 1 to 3 pm. I'll be mainly demonstrating my techniques for making birds, but I'll give pointers on other animals as well. Visit Crafty Planet for more details.

Even if you don't plan to take the class, Matt and Trish stock tons of great fabric, yarns, and other crafty goodness (as well as being sweet and supportive), so go give 'em some love!

Still crummy weather, so no pictures of Gabe's sweater. But as I mentioned in my last post, I spun all the yarn for it. I began spinning all because of this:

Two years ago about this time of year, Jessica and I took spinning lessons. We wanted to learn how to spin fiber so that when we owned alpacas someday, we could spin all our own yarn from our own alpacas. Well, we don't have the alpacas yet, but we did learn how to spin and we got our own wheels (each from our respective sweeties—they're so nice!). Here's mine:

It's an Ashford Joy, doulble treadle, and I just adore it. It's great for traveling and the type of spinning I like to do. Jessica's wheel is a Joy too, but a single treadle.

So now we can spin yarn. I will say that once you learn how to spin, you don't look at yarn the same way. You really start to get a feel for the differences between all the fibers; why one felts, why another has sheen, why this one is so expensive, which ones stretch, and so on. And to clear up any misconceptions out there, you don't save that much money spinning your own yarn. In fact, sometimes it's more expensive. And it takes a LOT of time to spin a sweater's worth of yarn. However, it's so worth it—if nothing else than for the fact that you created something (sweater, hat, scarf) from nothing more then a pile of fluff!

Whew! Now that the craft shows and holidays are over (for a bit), I've been taking a breather from sewing like a mad woman and paying attention to my other crafts that have been languishing on the sidelines the last few months. I had knit several scarves and sweaters for my animals to sell, but nothing for my own family. So I'm now tackling a few personal items. I've finally finished my son's sweater—I started it nearly two years ago! I spun the yarn from so very lovely hand-dyed wool and mohair cloud, making a little heavier then normal 2 ply worsted yarn. I then knit it up into a fun sweater with a front pocket, like a hoody sweatshirt. The sweater was supposed to have a hood, too, in fact. However, I ran out of fiber and since I purchased it so long ago, there was no hope of getting more. So it has a crew neck. I think it still looks cute on him, though! He looks a little like a street urchin in it—hand-spun and hand-knit sweaters look about as far from commercial sweaters as you can get. At least mine do!

When the weather cooperates and it's sunny, maybe I'll snap some pictures.

The holidays are past, so I'm now free to show a few pictures of custom orders that I worked on the last month or so. Today I'll share a couple of the purses I made. The first was a mushroom purse. Mushroom purses have to be one of my favorite bags to make, and also the most admired and requested of all the designs I've made in the past.

I started with the inside. This is a pair of pockets. A larger patch pocket, and a smaller zipper pocket. I just adore the deer and mushroom fabric. It's so sweet!

Once I finished up the pocket, I tackled the outside. The outside is wool with cotton background for the appliqued design. Wool mushrooms, courderoy grass, and wool snail and dragonfly. It's lots of little pieces of fabric, and slow going because I'm constantly having to swap thread colors, but I just love how it turns out. This purse was the first time I had made a mushroom showing its underside; a nice detail that I'll do again.

And here's the finished purse. I sewed in the lining and added some nice green leather handles. I loved this so much, I made a bag similar in style for my sister, but using a different color scheme (charcoal grey wool outside, different inside fabric, etc.). I forgot to take pictures of it, though! The grey wool was a dream to work with; though—I think I'm going to have to make myself a bag using it.

The next purse I'll show you is a new pattern for my purses. So we'll call it this week's New Pattern Reveal!

This is a small evening purse with a fun shape and a single fabric handle arching across the top. Black cotton blend exterior, with metal rectangular "rings" to attach the handle.

The purse features soft gold wool star and moon appliques with machine and hand embroidery. I just scattered them across the front, with many different types of stars.

The cotton interior features a snap closure, and several pockets for small items.

I hope the recipients loved their new purses!