Anyway, I had a great excuse to get a couple of yards of minky: K & N were having a baby!

In  a previous Joann’s trip I had found a cute Winnie the Pooh fat quarter bundle in various colors. As they decided to not find out the gender of the baby until it was born, this would be perfect for my fabric addiction and schemes…er I mean blanket!

Compared to the smaller knit blanket I made for Jess’ baby, I made this quilt top 35″x45″.

I lined the inside with the stripped minky fabric I had purchased and added a bias edge instead of the fancier quilt ribbon I had bought. It just didn’t feel right to use the ribbon.

While the knit blanket had me continuously asking Thad “Honey, does this look too small?” this blanket meant that he was instead bombarded with “I think this will be too big”.

Ok, so it might be too large for a newborn, but then, they’ll grow into it right?

Call me crazy, but since I had a couple of squares left for each color I went wild and made a little bag to go with the gifts. I’ve been going a little nuts making drawstring bags with French seams lately…

So this is Sophie’s quilt…She’s now a smiley almost-4 month old and growing fast. I hope she enjoys it!

That I was tempted to make another one in the same table runner?

Well, I liked it so much I had to make yet another one…this time the butterfly is going to be in a napkin that will be wrapping bread/tortillas in my table! Aren’t butterflies pretty?

Here is the finished Butterfly bread napkin…

Jeannette, one of the wonderful knitting ladies in my Stitch & Bitch, was making a lot of these cute booties around the time I was making the blanket. She was pregnant and wanted to make these for her daughter, but instead kept on giving them to friends that were also due soon.

She shared the link to the pattern, Sullivan’s baby booties, with the knitting group, and I started making them right away. In no time I had two pairs of booties, which was perfect to go with the two blankets ready to be gift wrapped!

These baby booties are extremely easy; just follow the link and see for yourself. They didn’t really make a dent on the remaining Pound of Love ball, so I’m guessing i’m going to have to make another baby blanket!

Also, because I was asked on Flickr, I am translating the pattern into Spanish below:

Este patrón de botitas de bebe es super fácil; alguien, via Flickr, me pidió el traducir el patrón, asi que aquí esta:

Botitas de bebé de Sullivans Knitting Yarns:

Materiales:

• 1 bolita de 50g de Sullivans Baby soft knitting yarn
• 1 par de agujas de 3.25mm, y otro de 3.75mm (UK 10-11, 5)(US 3-4).

Tamaños:

• 0-6 meses: 9cm o 3.5 pulgadas — 1 bolita
• 6-12 months: 10cm o 4 pulgadas — 1 bolita

Con las agujas de 3.75mm  (UK 5, US 3) montar 33 (37) puntos.

(H1) 1p. al derecho, aumentar 1, 13(15)p. der., aumentar 1, 2p. der.
(H2) Al derecho.
(H3) 1p. der., aum 1, 15(17)p. der., aum 1, 2p. der.
(H4) Al derecho.
(H5) 1p. der, aum 1, 17(19)p. der. aum 1, 2p. der. (45-49 puntos)
Trabajar 8 (9) hileras al derecho (punto musgo)
La próxima hilera: 26(29)p. der., 2p. juntos der.,  voltear, dejando el resto de los puntos en la aguja.
(H1) deslizar 1p, 6(8)p. reves, 2p juntos rev., voltear.
(H2) deslizar 1p., 6(8)p. der, 2p juntos tog der., voltear.

Repitiendo las últimas dos hileras trabajar hasta que queden 33(37)p., deslizar 1p., tejer al derecho hasta el final de la hilera.

La hilera siguente, tejer al reves.

Cambiar a las agujas de 3.25mm (UK 10-11, US 3-4)
(1) 1p. der. *(laz, 2p. juntos der.) repetir de * hasta el final.

Tejer al reves la hilera siguiente.

Trabajar 6 hileras en punto resorte. Terminar.

Hacer I-cord para las agujetas.

I scoured the internets for a project; something pretty, something not too girlie (Jess didn’t know the gender yet) and something not too complicated as I wanted to complete the project before the baby was born.

I also wanted to start using a recently purchased a “stitchionary”, Lace & eyelets, that I had gotten with a gift certificate Boombadeus’ mom had given me for my birthday…but I was still intimidated by the eyelets…but the eyelets and lace look so pretty! Oh, what to do?

I started looking at baby blanket patterns on Ravelry, but most had hearts, bears, and simple squares. Don’t get me wrong, I like hearts, bears and simple squares…but Jess has lots of crochet/knitting relatives…I wanted to do something that was going to be different…then I found this blanket by maggiecrafts. I was saved! Not only did it look beautiful, she mentioned that she had whipped it up in no time. Well, I was new at the eyelet/lace thing…but heck, it looked so pretty, how about I give eyelets and lace a try?

I chose Tulip Lace from my stitchionary, and off I went. I can’t remember how many stitches I cast…probably whatever they recommended in the ball of yarn (Pound of love) and I started.

At the beginning I was knitting on two needles; a few inches after I started it was getting heavy. My wrists were starting to hurt from holding all the weight with only one hand…so off I went to Rosie’s and purchased 36″ circulars. Oh, what a difference that made!! I loved it!

Less than two months later it was done! Since I tend to mostly knit on Tuesdays, at the knitting group, the timing wasn’t so bad for a first timer at lace, right? If you’d like to download the pattern, click here.

I’ve been working on a few projects that I couldn’t upload right away; also known as baby shower gifts. There were also projects that I completely forgot to take pictures of…oh well!

Besides the crafts I’ve also been getting organized. While Ravelry helped me get my yarns organized this past winter, in the form of pictures and amounts of yarn, I still needed to do something desperately about my needles. They were just… everywhere!

I had seen pencil cases being used for paint brush and knitting needle storage; and I had already made some over a year ago; gifts for the cute flower girl and ring bearer in our wedding. So, why not make one for my needles?

Armed with a cute green cotton fabric found at Joann’s, some linen in my fabric stash and some adorable leftovers, a Japanese fabric purchased last year from Purl Soho, I went ahead and made one…

While I knew which size needles I had (once again, thanks to Ravelry), I couldn’t find them easily. Some were in half started projects I was going to unravel, the remainder in their original packaging somewhere in my “crafts box” in the living room.

I needed them to be more accessible,  ready in case I needed them at a moment’s notice. Why at a moment’s notice? Because of the Stitch & Bitch* (we meet weekly, see details below)!

I was working on baby projects which are tiny and often I finished them as soon as I got there. Since I needed to start new projects away from home, I really  needed to make sure I had my needles with me.

Here is the finished product! Since then, the collection has grown a little bit. I might have to make another one!

*Stitch & Bitch at St. Stephen’s Green*

Tuesdays, 7pm — 1701 Green Street (in the Art Museum/Spring Garden area), Philadelphia PA

Monarch butterflies are another icon of México, and boy are they amazing little things. A few days later after seeing it, I printed out Will’s picture, and  worked up a little pattern to draw this pretty little lady.

Males of the Monarch butterfly have two spots on the lower wings, on the black “vein” closest to the abdomen, and the black lines in these wings are much thinner than the females, so I knew the picture Will had taken was of a female.

A little more biology: Some of these beauties migrate from the US and Canada to central México; in specific they travel to the border between the states of Michoacán and México to winter on the oyamel trees of these mountains.  That is where where the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve, a world heritage site, is located.

Around winter time the trees get completely covered with the monarchs to the point that branches bend down (think of how pine trees look after a heavy snow storm) and visitors have said that the wings of the butterflies create a soft rain-like sound. I can’t wait to visit this reserve some day!

Back to the embroidery, I went shopping as I had no orange or black thread and started. The idea was to use double threaded stem stitch for the veins and single thread satin stitch for the thicker lines, also the abdomen had to be padded for it to look round.

After the outline was done I was amazed. I liked what i saw so far:

I wanted to add more butterflies everywhere! But not so fast, let’s finish the first one:

So far so good, but now I needed to fill the body! For some reason the color confused me…I had always thought of these butterflies as yellower…but the color in pictures is definitely orange. I chose something in between…My childhood memories must be getting fuzzy huh?

After the body was filled (satin stitch, single thread), the white detail had to be done. I used french knots for the dots and just a straight stitch to create the stripes on the abdomen.

Notice that instead of using stem stitch i used simple satin stitch for the abdomen. In nature, if these abdomen stripes aren’t clear stripes, it means the butterfly is sick! Can’t have sick butterflies on an embroidery right?

I stopped the project at this point (last September/October) for various reasons but I intend to pick it up now that i have a little bit more time. So what do you think?

Not much progress has been made on the runner as I keep on finding things I’d like to add to it so it never seems to want to be done!

Last time I blogged, we left off with the dahlias; both were done in satin stitch, one with the two colors separate and the second one with the colors blending with short and long stitch…well, let’s move onto bouillons and dessert, shall we? But before, some biology:

–

If you are lucky to live in southern climates, you might have noticed that bougainvilleas are a lot like Poinsettias; the red/colorful “petals” are actually leaves, the flowers are the tiny yellow/white centers!

So how would you portray that in embroidery? Well i chose to use bouillons in a light yellow color…what do you think?

And after adding the yellow bouillons, AKA the flowers, the flower ovaries were done. These were done with double thread, in brown, because that is what I have noticed in these flowers.

–

And now we have this:

I still needed to add some stuff to the blank space, so I decided to add another Mexican native: Vainilla! I knew this one was going to be hard, I personally didn’t grow up seeing these orchids…but I love vanilla, so I had to try.

And….this is when, while browsing pictures by my Flickr contacts, I saw this pretty monarch butterfly. Forget about the “flower only” theme…it had to be added!

Let’s focus on the vanilla blossom for now: Sadly the color of the flower is close to the fabric so, in order for the flower to be noticed, I had to add some foliage.

So far I’ve only done one leaf but i intend to add some more at the end, when I will probably fix the first leaf anyway. I’m afraid that instead of appearing like an elongated leaf, it looks more like a blade of grass.

For the center of the flower I went with a hint of darker yellow to show some “shading”. I am afraid the orchid did not come out as well as I wanted, but hey, maybe in the future I’ll try and do another project and do a better drawing of one…didn’t I mention this was going to be hard?

–

And this is what we have so far:

Next up: the butterfly! (that will be in a couple of days!)

*No, I did not misspell vanilla. I just chose to spell it in Spanish!

First Dahlia finished

So the first bunch of bougainvilleas was finished…i moved onto the dahlias. First Dahlia was done with satin stitch only.

As you can see, the edges were done in a darker pink than the middle…at some point i tried blending it in, but voted against it…I can’t remember why.

For the second Dahlia I wanted to try something different: I wanted hints of color rather than a bold edge. It had to be one of those cream/white ones, with a hint of pink (you can tell that pink is one of my favorite colors in flowers can’t you?)

This was done by using button hole stitch on the already satin-stitch filled second dahlia.

perhaps bouillons might have also worked here.

I could not decide on what to do for the middle in the second dahlia. Should I do bouillons? Should I just fill in with satin stitch? Should I use button hole? I felt like the Wordpress spell check, which right know must be in Spanish mode, as it is highlighting basic words in the English language.

After realizing that perhaps buttonhole might get lost if placed in the middle (as it did on the first bougainvillea bunch, which was re-done) so i went for satin, just made sure they were not on top of each other as that might make them look quite messy….

And here is the second update!

so this is what it looks like after the dahlias!

The yellowish fabric scraps are from a Purl Soho order placed a few months back. It is yuwa’s tiny daisies (i managed to grab the last yard I think! I wish i had been able to grab more like 4 yards, it’s a very cute fabric!).

Most of this fabric became a blouse, and some of the remainder became this pincushion that I am now using for my embroidery stuff…isn’t it cute?

The pink leafy fabric is from some fat quarters I bought in Lancaster a couple of years back. I don’t even know where I got the ribbon from, but i’m guessing it was from the wedding planning…

Anyway, I think my sewing projects need another pin cushion like this. What do you think?

Well, my aunt’s birthday was coming up and I was about to send her copies of our wedding pictures when I though, why not make  something special? maybe something like the album that I made for Windi? I called mom and she liked the idea so it was a go.

I had ran out of linen, that meant a having to get fabric. Not wanting to wait until Saturday to go to Fabric Row, I ran to Karlin’s after work and bought some gabardine which matched closely our “wedding color”. It also would be easier to work with than linen.

I also decided to make my life easier, sewing wise, this time around. Remember how I had used two bands of cream colored fabric? Well, it was quite difficult to make them match, so this time I decided to use the cream fabric for an embroidery applique instead.

Another change I made was to make the cover flaps longer; so that they would go all the way to the binding/spine of the album instead of half way. This would allow me to “hide” extra photo pages that didn’t have pictures and would make the album look neater. The embroidery was the same as before, inspired by the LOVE statue by Robert Indiana; as this was also part of our wedding invitations, but this time centered and with a border.

And here is the finished product:

I printed in beige/tan color paper, the description for each photo as she was not able to make it. Here you can’t see it because, for her, I placed a little  birthday card.

So what do you think? I have to make a few more of these…I really like the final product and would like to make one for each of mom’s sisters!