Thursday, December 27, 2007

the finished cropped cardi! - and some more photos


i even did the leaves. Bring on the summer and the strappy dresses!


and another wraparound apron for p's granny, she was wearing the other one i made every day, so now she can have one for weekdays and one for the weekend...

our nativity scene! these figurines were in my dad's house when my mum moved in, so they were probably bought by my grandmother. We only have the family and one angel, poor baby jesus' head broke off when i was a child, we liked to take him out of his manger to play... the two chocolate reindeer are standing in for the ox and donkey that there usually would be. i think i will keep a lookout on ebay to try and find more kind of matching figures over the years! they are made from some kind of plaster or bakelite. Joseph is about 17.5 cm, the angel, which i thought was bought later as it is a little different, is 11.5 cm. Mary's face reminds me of my granny, it's the cheeks i think, and the look in prayer, my granny was quite holy, too, and named Maria!


this is the baby blanket my mum made for me when i was little, it's crochet, and yes, i was born in the seventies... does anybody have an idea how it's made? my mum can't remember, except for: it's two rows of purple and one row of orange. the stitches are worked into the row beneath creating a quite dense fabric. it'd love to find out the name of the pattern, i can see this working with a plain dark wool for the purple and a variegated brighter one for the orange. the other crochet stitch i want to try is the catherine wheel, i think that's the pattern moonstitches' scarf is made from.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

baby gifts

some rather late presents for two friends who had baby girls!
i used some of these thrifted napkins(?) to appliquee babygrows and to make bibs (pattern from bend the rules sewing). I especially like the babygrows, the embroidery looks great, something elaborate looking that only took 10 minutes to make! i also like the way the white thin cotton weave looks on the cotton knit.

The bibs gave me some trouble with the snap buttons, they are from a set from LIDL and i destroyed twice as many as i finally attached to the bibs... i wonder if i can get matching better quality snap buttons for the pliers or if i should just go back to using the sew on ones... also, i only had cream flannel for the back so they look a bit darker