Design #1

This is the first shirt I recall doing without a pattern. I've altered things before, but I believe this was the first thing I started completely from scratch. I've got to say I'm still pretty pleased with it.


I'd done a lot of button down shirts and wanted to try something with a slanted opening, mainly to see if I could figure out how to do it. The rest of the design sort of grew out of the white grid fabric, which I reincarnated from its former life as a sheet. I love working with sheets, by the way. They've got great thread count and last so much longer than standard cotton.

<shoulder detail

darts

hem

There's also a red side zip, which you can kind of see in the shoulder pic, that I added because I wasn't sure how tight it'd be to get over my head. It turns out I don't need it, but I like it for the color accent. Same thing with the contrast thread. Always a fan of functional things doubling as decoration.

Chouette

mon petit hibou
pumpkin carving 2009

Greeting cards, take one

I made some of these for my mom for Christmas, since I was a little late getting started with the Christmas cards she asked for. I was still cardless as of the morning of 12/24, but I managed to carve the design and print twenty of these babies in just a few hours. Not too shabby for a first attempt, granted I got the paper and envelopes premade from the art store.

Anyway, she liked them so much that she ordered ten more for me to send to my aunt in Colorado, so it looks like I'll be making another trip to the post office.

**Credit is also due to my dad for remembering that my mom loves poppies and Laura for explaining over and over how to lock the door to her bedroom/my workshop so as to preserve the Christmas surprise factor. Twenty-seventh time's a charm!

baby quilt - check

So this is the reason I have been getting rusty on the banjo and taking a long time to return emails:


From the back:



And here's the man himself:


After a November of renting vids from Reel and hunkering down in my few hours at home, it is finally done! I have now outed myself as a "quilter" to my extended family as I worked on it between dinner and dessert on Thanksgiving. It's hard to tell whether people are being polite or whether they actually might want one of these things. If there's actually a demand for them, I might even be able to use a machine to make them.

Usually by the time I'm about half way through, I think of how I could do it better next time, or I think about how I'm making it simpler than I'd originally planned, so it's nice to have somewhere for these things to go since I already have a bunch on my bed and in the closet.

Now I'm in that lull that comes after the completion of some big project, fantasizing about other big blanket-shaped projects I could start, but I want to try to work on this banjo thing. And learning Icelandic. And clearing my apt of anything I don't like enough to keep in storage when I make it to Iceland.