And back to knitting again....

This is another older hat I never got around to posting about.  It's actually the hat full of black thread that caused all the problems I talked about in this post back here.  If I ever use Sugar 'n Cream's black yarn again (and I do have about half of it left over!), I'm definitely doing a vinegar bath or something.

I still think it's cute, though... but obviously this photo is pre-washing:

Knit in the round, size 10 needles with Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn--I forget the color names, but it's basic black, white and yellow. I did an I-cord for the antennae (which I can vaguely remember not liking to make), and I winged (lame amirite?) the design for the wings.

After washing, it  turned out to be grey, yellow, and off-white. :(  I think it just passed being donate-able!

Finished!

Finally!  Save for one or two one-off stockings, I'm done sewing for the holidays. Just in time, these need to get in the mail soon, anyway. :) Not to mention, I was getting soooo bored of sewing Christmas stuff, only Black Sabbath and Slayer could keep me interested!

Unfortunately there was no sun at all today, so my photos might look extra shadowy.

Here's the first set of stockings that I didn't get photos of before (the last one might look extra funny because it's a bit full already!):

And a detail shot, maybe this will be better than the first one:

Now, if you remember, the insides of these stockings as well as my Horde stockings look like this:

But the other eight stockings (the ones in the last post, and the ones I'm about to write about next) have a lining and a backing that looks like this, which is quite a bit more busy!

You see, the fabric I bought before wasn't on sale again when I figured out I bought way too little, so this Christmas fabric ended up being a bit cheaper.

Anyway, the last set of stockings were particularly inspired by my dad, who loves old Christmas stuff. I made what I thought looked like some old-ish ornament shapes and cut out my pieces--I just appliqued them on freely using an almost-satin stitch and my metallic thread.  I say almost-satin because I didn't want to pull the fabric too much, as I didn't use any stabilizer, fusing or starch, and I didn't want the pieces to stretch out of shape.  So instead of using a zig-zag stitch at "0", I used it halfway between 0 and 1.   To make them look like they were hanging, I used the same stitch to make lines (before I appliqued the pieces on, of course).  There's even a line on top of the big center ornament, but unfortunately the fur covers it up--that's a lack of planning on my part!

Aaaaaaand that's all for now. :)

More Stockings!

Here's my second set of four stockings, all completed.   The last set of four is halfway done, and I still need to take pictures of the full first set that I gave a preview of in my last post (I got a new camera as an early Christmas present, by the way, so hopefully my pictures will improve!)





The toes look a little funny in these photos, but it's mostly the angle and my fiddling with them to make them all lie in a nice direction to photograph. They're not all 100% the same shape, either, but they're supposed to be all unique, so that's ok!

As with the first set, I laid out the pattern pieces I made on top of my stack of four fabrics, and cut out the pieces for all four stockings in one go with the rotary cutter. :)

I added some gold ric-rac and trim to these, so they're a little more bling-y than my first set. The hanging tabs also have ric-rac on them, as you can kind of see in the first photo!

And my favorite part--I added some hexagon appliques!



I'm particularly thrilled with how they came out--I just cut out the shapes and ironed down the edges by eye, then sewed as close to the edge as I could manage. The only thing I would do differently again, however, is not use two threads on the top! You see, my metallic thread is a little more prone to breaking under stress, so I wanted to reinforce it by threading a strand of metallic and a strand of red thread through my machine at the same time... but I nearly caused tension and alignment issues when the red thread got too loose compared to the metallic and started bunching up in the bobbin area. Does that even make sense? I don't know, I'm just glad they look ok! You can see that stitching on the last two hexagons in the top picture look much more metallic--that's because I finally got fed up and took out the red top thread.

I'm also pretty impressed with these last macro photos: they're taken on my new camera with no flash! I'm not used to having the ability to toggle the flash on macros. Usually, I'm so shaky that without flash, macros come out a blurry mess. They were taken in quite blue-ish natural daylight (not quite sunny, but not overcast), so I did have to color edit them a bit to get them to look a little more true.

And now, for something different...

This is a hint as to what I've been doing lately: a whole lot of sewing!


(Disclaimer: I still don't have a good camera, and I now live in a place with few ceiling mounted lights or large, airy windows.  So instead of photos with bad incandescent lighting, I now have photos with varied angles of bad incandescent lighting.)

Actually, this isn't my biggest project, but I put that one aside to finish these sets of stockings up in time to ship off to my family for the holidays.  Since I'm not at home this year, I wanted to send my family something neat.

I say "these sets" and I only have photos of one stocking... oops.  I drafted the patterns on these and layered up my fabrics so I could cut out four stockings at once, and also so that each one would have a unique combination of fabrics.  I made all four of this style, but I only have photos of the first one so far.  I'm halfway done with a second "set" of four in a wonky stripe style, and a third set I'm planning to do with applique pieces... not fully sure how yet, though.  I didn't put batting or quilting on them, which I was kind of torn over doing, but I did try some metallic decorative stitching, and I did line them fully:



In addition to those, I also made these for my boyfriend's younger cousins:
HORDE STOCKINGS!



All I can say is, he better be right about his cousins playing Horde-side, too, because 1) he is known to have some faulty memory errors here and there, 2) it would be really hard to applique that little lion crest thing, and 3) why would you play Alliance anyway?

So anyway, onto the details.  I always wanted to make some geeky-like applique, and this was the perfect chance.  I used a method that I think is called reverse applique, and I left the edges raw, because I felt it fit in style with the Horde--I even roughed the edges up with my fingernails.  To make the design, I printed the insignia on some freezer paper, then cut it out  with an xacto and ironed it onto my stocking pattern that I had backed with some black scrap fabric.  I then carefully sewed OUTSIDE of the pattern, and then cut right about on the edges of the pattern itself, but only through the red part of the fabric.  After I sewed the rest of the stocking up, I thought it looked kind of plain, so that was when I added the gold "rustic" top-stitching, to make it look a bit more like, say, the banners in Orgrimmar.  Ideally, I should have done this before sewing everything together; I ended up pulling the black fabric a bit weirdly since I could not hold it flat properly when sewing. 

I tried taking some detail shots, but keep in mind, low quality camera + reds + metallics = not so great macros.  I still wanted to keep some documentation of what I did, though!





And there you go! Hopefully I'll have more stockings to post, soon.  Sheesh, and I'm not even religious.

Happy Halloween... wait... Dia de los Muertes?

Well, it's a bit late for Halloween, and it is technically November 1st here.

I've been doing so many other kinds of projects lately (more than one of them have to do with Halloween--it is my favorite holiday, after all). But I've taken no photos.

I DID, however, manage to get pictures of the one most important Halloween project of all:  pumpkin carving!

I actually really like traditional simple pumpkin carving, but I tried to expand my horizons (and capabilities) a bit with the second one.





I've been playing just a little bit too much World of Warcraft lately (wait, no, it's not just lately...) So they're both a bit inspired. The second one is based on a murloc. :)

I have a few more old hats I haven't posted about yet, but I'll get to those later.

Ribbit! Ribbit!

Once again, I feel like it's been forever... because it has.  I've moved, I had a disaster with some yarn from Sugar 'n Cream, and between that all, I haven't felt like knitting.  I've started picking up some other crafts again (mainly sewing), but no pictures of anything else as of yet.  So this is another piece that's pretty old, and I was so proud of it... until I tell you my story.



Look how awesome that is, right?! I made the design for the tongue and the eyes freehand--the eyes are basically rectangular shapes with a decrease in the middle, sewn in half and embroidered with some black.  It's made with all Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarns in Black, Red, Yellow and Hot  Green, if I remember all the color names correctly. 

I started out trying to do an ombre sort of pattern--starting with more rows of yellow at the bottom of the hat, and interspacing them with the green until it was solid green at the top.  I'm not sure if that worked out as good as it seemed in my head, and it looked plain afterwards, so I decided to use the base of the hat for a frog idea that was floating around in my head. 

Then I washed it...

And I found out Sugar 'n Cream does not set their black dyes properly.  I tried to take into account some fabric bleeding, and I washed my batch of hats separately.  I even changed the water on the ones with black yarn about five times (it bled that much, but I thought it was done bleeding). But oh, no: this hat--and another hat with more black in it--got stacked together with some other hats when they were half dry. I thought everything would be ok.  FAIL.  Even after I washed the hats repeatedly, and even after they were half dry, the black still bled like a... well... something I shouldn't type here.  My whole batch of four or five hats had black dye on it.  It took a lot of chemicals, cleaning, bluing, soaking, and rewashing to get my hats clean again.  Even now, the batch I washed and screwed up are a little pill-y from all the washing, and a bit more dull than my glorious before-washing pictures. 


So yeah, that's why I haven't felt like knitting lately.  I'm still getting over my rage, let me tell you, internets.

Purple Cables.... Sort of.

Long time no see, internets! Unfortunately, I've been moving around, and I haven't felt like posting or even knitting for a while. :(  I better get back into it soon, but in the mean time, here's another one that's been waiting to be posted online (and sent out):



This one was kind of simple, I wanted to try out cable knitting more, but I didn't do my math quite right, so it came out looking more like some kind of medallions (there's one on each side of the hat) rather than cable knit stripes.  I don't think it photographed very well because of the stitching, either.  I still hope someone will be able to enjoy it, though!

This was made with Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn in either Hot Purple or Soft Violet... I can't exactly remember what color anymore.