Filet crochet tablecloth

So, I forgot to post this in between weather events (we are on our third or fourth week of daily storms).  In fact, this has been done for almost a month now!  It even has stains already - pickled beet brine and ice tea, to be exact.  Oh yeah ... this was made to be on our table, not as a gift.

Fleur-de-Lis filet crochet tablecloth

It may block out a bit larger.  I still have not blocked it for lack of a place to lay it out, much less pin it out ... but it is about time to clear the table again and give it a nice soak-wash in the dishwater.  My mom discovered early on with me that dish soap/detergent works best for getting food stains out of cotton.  For the record, ketchup, barbecue sauce, soy sauce, and any red juice or wine WILL end up on my shirt still.

The wool blanket and the cold front

First, my son is "celebrating" his first snow day of the winter by sleeping in.  What started as rain on Monday turned to snow yesterday in the space of only a couple hours as a nasty cold front blew in, including a twenty-degree drop (Fahrenheit) in temperature over lunchtime.  I know it was this sudden because my dear thin-coated doggie wanted out before the drop, then again two hours later to play in the snow (until the wind blew directly on his butt).

It's a good thing I actually flat-felled the wool I bought for hubby last week!  Okay, a true flat-fell seam is a bit of a pain to sew - especially on 60 inch wide wool - but it does look great ... hubby even said so.  Here he is holding it up folded in half ... I probably should have let him have at least one cup of coffee before snapping the pic.  Bad me.

Hubby holding his new wool blanket

He's holding it sideways, as the brown/burnt sienna panels are at the top and bottom of the blanket, each half a yard long.  The pretty plaid is in the middle of the blanket and is one yard uncut.  I have each raw edge of the brown straight-stitched one inch in, and our next step is to pull the cross-yarns to fringe it, then I'll find some embroidery floss to match or complement and make mini-tassels outside the straight-stitching and try my needle at some pulled/drawn embroidery just inside of the stitching.  I'm also debating whether I want to embroider a decorative band over the straight stitch line as well, as the yarns in the wool are just big enough to see.

Flat-fell seam closeup - and wool yarn big enough to see

The focus is a bit fuzzy, but so is the wool after a bit of air-fluffing in the dryer with some damp uniforms.  After I snapped the third pic (the first one he was really making a face) hubby said he could feel the warmth just holding it up like that ... which means the Terrorist Kitty WILL find her way onto his lap at every opportunity as she may possibly love wool more than I do.  Just for the record, she also sheds more than I do.

So hubby has a pretty two-wool blanket of nice warm FabricMart Shetland wool, and because I bought it on sale the whole 72"x60" blanket cost only $19 plus a little of my time ... so very superior to the plain piece of probably-poorly-serged 72x56 inch piece of wool he was about to spend $25-30 for before shipping ... and I still have a little over two yards of each color to make him a matching wool coat.  Too bad I can't just wiggle my nose and have the coat sew itself ...

Useful things for the kitchen

So the dreaded oven/hot mitt is finally finished ... I was stalling because I have learned I truly detest sewing together the fabric-batting-muslin sandwiches.  Now I understand why people pay the asking price for prequilted fabrics!  (Note: If you enjoy diagonal machine-quilting layers of batting and fabric together, all the power to y'all and I wish you bliss .. this just is NOT my thing.)

It won't win any awards, and I will definitely be buying my next hot pad and oven mitt at the store rather than make another, but this one does match my apron perfectly:

Hot/oven mitt done

Oh yes, for a certain chat regular: hot mitt = oven mitt.  Ovens tend to be hot.  This project also has ruined my sense of humor temporarily.

Logistical note on construction: make the inside layer smaller than the outside one.  (Should I make that a Sgt Obvious tip as well?)  Have an extra sewing needle on hand - the batting dulls a needle faster than topstitching canvas and buckram do!

While procrastinating on sewing the hot mitt, I have also been using my crochet hooks to make useful kitchen items:

Lumpy (textured) dishcloths

Bobble/Pop scrubbers

Swiffer pad with textured bottom

Swiffer pad, top

These crochet up fast, are a great way to practice the new stitches I had to learn to make them ... and hubby says we need multiples (the second scrubber and dishcloth are already given away) not just for our house but to give to family as gifts.  I also made a ridged textured dishcloth that ended up being tested in my son's bathroom.  He says it works "very good" and sounded a little surprised about it.

Block party crochet style

Not that kind of block party - the crochet kind, where I've hooked up 6 lace things and need to block (shape) them.  I'm only going to post pics of two of these items, as the remaining four are intended as gifts for a family member who is subscribed via email.  Whether or not those emails get read, I am not taking chances.

OK, item number one: a doily coaster for my desk that does NOT contain a counting error!  I have one already for my coffee cup that has a counting oopsie, but wanted a correct one for my water glass.  Here it is, pinned out after a short hot water bath.

Lace doily coaster blocked and pinned

It looks a whole heap better now that it's pinned out.  For the record, I did adjust a couple pins after gimping the pic.

Now for a little fun item: a crochet lace snowflake.  This one turned out right with six points ... I already pulled out the counting oops with seven points.  It's a little difficult to see since the foam board is white, so I'll probably snap another pic with a dark background after it dries and gets a starching.

White crochet lace snowflake pinned out

Hubby suggested putting a hang loop on it and use it as a tree ornament.  I told him I left the loop off since I wasn't sure how it would turn out!  LOL - this is definitely my preferred version of a snowflake, since the real kind is accompanied by COLD.

I'm working on multiple items for use in the kitchen, so that will get its own post soon.

Kitchen hot mitt: Return of the sewing mojo!

For a few weeks now, I have been saying I need to replace my hot mitt and hot pads since they come out of the wash looking bedraggled ... I am sure hubby was beginning to think I was just talking, but the sewing mojo has returned this morning alongside that proverbial wild hair!  I'm classifying this as a knockoff like my pillowcases since I literally grabbed the old hot mitt, set it on some wrap-paper from Hobby Lobby (they wrapped my glass candle in it), and traced around it with an ink pen.

Hot mitt pattern

I suppose it might be possible to achieve "easier" another way, but for me this was the most convenient.  I added about a 1/4 inch seam allowance around all but the wrist area since I intend to simply use binding to cover that up.

For those who find my handwriting difficult to read: I cut two for the outside fabric, two for the inside fabric, 4 layers of cotton batting, and four layers of thin cheapy cotton muslin to keep the batting out of my feed dogs.  I even cut it out immediately:

Hot mitt layers cut

Now ... which machine to pull out and stitch the fabric and batting layer sandwiches?  I did think of having hubby or son man-handle the Anchor onto the table for me, since Anchor had no problem ripping through linen and buckram ... but I still have black thread in the bobbin and really prefer a drop-in bobbin over wrestling with getting a metal vertical in properly.  Same issue with Timex - vertical bobbin.  So I'll probably grab another low-priced workhorse of mine: my Brother CE5500-PRW computerized that has gone through 8 layers of canvas (and is another one where I don't sew delicate fabrics with).  I've reviewed it over at PatternReview, but haven't posted a pic here on the blog.  I'll try to remember to snap a pic while quilting together the layers before assembly.

Speaking of quilting ... this batting ain't cheap!  And I even waited for the 50% off sale to buy mine.  Then again, neither is the quilting cotton section fabric.  It is also a pain in the (*donkey*) to lay out - the crib sheet sized piece I bought wasn't folded perfectly straight before packaging.  I'm saving every last scrap of it in a zippy baggie to stuff stuff, like maybe a cat toy or a bumroll.

Finally, my inside fabric came out of my scrap bag, which holds more canvas and duck pieces so it will most likely contribute more to the hot mitt/hot pad project as inspiration strikes.

Torn table runner

This is from my grandma, given to me by my sister who ended up with it even though she had no idea what to do with it.  It's an old table runner, and not in the best of shape (large pic alert):

Grandma's old table runner

Here's the mystery: This grandmother was not the packrat - that's the other side of the family.  Along with the table runner were cloth napkins, and a couple are "orphans" without matches, so she didn't keep things just because.  So why did she hold onto this damaged, torn, and fraying table runner?  Was it made especially for her?  Was it a special occasion gift?  Did someone special give it to her?  I need to email my aunt and ask ...

So why am I so thrilled to have a torn and unraveling table runner?  At one point in time, this was a very beautiful thing!  It has cutwork embroidery all through the cloth section and is bound by what I now recognize as crocheted lace.  I'm not sure if it's linen or not (duh, have NOT done a burn test) but it feels possible.  I'm not sure if the cutwork embroidery is done by machine or by hand, but here is a closeup of it:

Cutwork embroidery closeup

If this was done by hand, the work was very meticulous.  The back side looks very similar to the front, although I can tell a difference between the two.  Now, for a closeup of the damage:

Damage to fabric and lace

I don't think I can repair the damage to this ... but I am wanting to make a replica of it!  I'll need to get a lot better with surface embroidery, practice cutwork satin stitches ... and figure out how to crochet lace.  Here's the funny part - last night I was watching YouTube videos for beginners how-to-crochet, and can't help but feel I have done several of the demonstrated stitches.  I know my mom crocheted, as well as knitted ... in fact there aren't too many textile crafts that Mom hasn't at least learned how to do.  While all the crochet tutorials feel familiar, I cannot for my life remember any object I crocheted.  I do know it was never lace ... I might have kept at it if I had learned to do lace.

So I have a long-term goal of learning enough to make a replica of this table runner.  This should make for an interesting adventure!

Pillowcases: Fast instant gratification

This was the true instant gratification project I was looking for last week: knocking off store-bought pillowcases.  If I realized they really ARE this easy, I'd have done them up a lot sooner.  Seriously, grab up a pillowcase or two and take a peek at its construction ... meanwhile here are my three:

I started on this idea after a late lunch ... about 2:30 in the afternoon when I started measuring my store-bought example.  I finished them a few minutes ago, clocking in three pillowcases in less than two and a half hours.  My intention (once I realized how fast the first one went) was to have all three done and on the pillows before hubby got home from work, but they let him out of his cage early today so he walked in as I was putting the last two together.

I made these two inches wider and about three inches longer than the store-bought examples, because our memory foam pillows are slightly larger than standard pillows and we need to wrestle them into the standard sized cases ... these slide in nicely, with enough overhang neither of us wake up with only half the pillow cased.  Victory!

Meanwhile, it seems I have been tagged by Rebecca from Wannabe for the "Stylish Blogger Award" ... quit snickering.  So I need to think of seven things to tell folks, then tag seven new victims ... and it should get its own post, of course ... once I figure out what seven things y'all might actually want to read about.