I'm currently taking a humanities seminar called Cultural Approaches to Tourist Arts. For our final project we have to do something (anything really) that has to do with one of the course objectives.

I sew and have dabbled in small quilted things, so I decided to do an almost-Amish quilt for my project and talk about how nowadays quilts are made more "touristy" and how its a border crossing to have an Amish quilt done in a slightly modern way. I've been through several Amish sections of the US (Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana) and have seen both quilt stores and fabric stores where both modern and Amish people buy their goods.

So here's my plan:
Make a Diamond in a Square pattern using traditional colors of red, purple, and black, but instead of solids use patterned fabrics. Also, I'm machine piecing this.

I'm making a 3' x 3' quilt as I only have 1 month to complete this.

This is the quilt I'm modeling mine after:




What advice do you have for this project? I'm still debating whether or not I'm going to hand quilt it or machine quilt it on a basic sewing machine (I have confidence it's small enough of a project I can do it on my Singer).

Relatively new to sewing, but set out to make a purse the other night with some of the squares from one of those "100 4"x4" squares!" deals off ebay. Used 44 squares in total, all with the same pattern but various color variations.



The outside.



The inside. Lined with zipper pocket that is as big as one side of the purse, plus two mini pockets made with the same squares from the inside.

Needed to make up some baby hats for a craft fair I'm selling at soon, so I sat down and whittled this out:



A strawberry hat that goes down over the ears and ties loosely.



With a fun little leafy top

Last night I decided to finally finish two designs that have been on my needles awhile and post up their patterns.

The first is a t-shirt kind of deal called Jorah Hadley that I've had hiding in my dorm room for 4 months, waiting for me to complete only 15 rows of a sleeve. So I finally had to stop being a procrastinator last night and finished.



Bustband detail...



Body detail...



The second is a glove design called the Murray Gloves.









What do you think?

Just made a basic cropped pullover that can be modified to fit any sort of lace, ribbing, or cable pattern someone may want to try out without having to work with the designs already going on in another pullover pattern.


Don't know if you can tell in the picture, but the second skein of Araucania Magallanes was somewhat darker than the first and had a lot less gray/light blue areas. Makes an interesting transition...

My friend wanted me to make her a pair of fingerless gloves. However, we live in Florida... so the warmth of most of the glove patterns available is not only unnecessary, but causes great misery.


So I made my own. First pattern I've entirely improvised.




A close-up of the detailing:



What do you think?

So I finished my first turtle, and I must say I love it. Please ignore the blurry pictures... cheap cell phones have bad cameras.





I did a few modifications from the pattern. Namely I made him a tail. And avoided the i-cording to put the shell pieces together, instead opting for single crochet.


This pattern has probably been posted before, but it's so fricken cute and easy that I thought I'd spread the love. It's Sheldon from Knitty.

Knit a turtle. Really.

I definitely recommend it It's very calming and you get that fuzzy proud feeling inside when you realize these fun little swirls and lace are coming from your own fingertips.

I've only been tatting for a week or so now, and here's three things I've done:


My first piece ever:


A piece with chains:


First multi-colored piece:


I'm still working with the last one, putting another layer around it.

Friday night I finally found somewhere online with videos to teach cables, double knitting, etc etc. (www.knittinghelp.co m is great)

So I decided to try double knitting out.


I wanted to make a bag, so I didn't do too many little designs after the very bottom, so I can open it.

When I got to the end, I binded off the colors seperately so it's open.

Inside:


Blue Side:


Red Side:





So awhile after I posted this, I was sitting at the computer, bag next to me, attempting to do my homework like a good kid.

I got bored.

And plopped that thing right on my head, looked in the mirror, ran for some hair ties, and made the corners ears.

The result:





My mother has dared me to wear this to school. We're allowed to wear hats on Fridays.

I'm debating whether or not to make myself look like a bloody idiot. But then again, I go to an arts school... and we all look like idiots all the times.

But in the meantime, if I decide to keep it as a hat (cause I really have no use for a bag this size and stretchyish) I'm going to un-bind each side and re-bind it using elastic cord. Cause it kind of hurts the forehead after awhile.

Alright, so I was cleaning my room and found quite a few things from the days when I was just learning to crochet. It was 8th grade, and I didn't know how to read a pattern (nor did I have the patience to follow one).

So this is just a bunch of my random creations. I just added stuff as I went along, with no real plan to begin with...


First we have...
a yamaka. Which I'm sure is spelled wrong, but I don't know how to spell it right, so there...
It's in Michigan colors.
The top:

The side:




Then we have...
an acorn!
The top (the stem does stick out, you just can't really see it):

The side:




Mittens... (Note that I had no pattern and had no idea how to make mittens, so I just kind of added here and there... they do fit kind of well, surprisingly)




A pouch I made for Ren Faire. I actually really like this bag. It's got a loop (shown) to put a sash through, and holes in the top that one can thread a string through to tie it tight so nothing falls out. I adore this bag.

The top edge:

With string threaded through:




A strange strange hat.
The top:

The side:

Being modeled by my giraffe since using a flash in the mirror on myself isn't a good idea:




A.. uh... well, I don't know what this is. In US History with my friends, we laid out beads in a strange pattern to kind of sort of look like an ugly woman. And then I started crocheting and put the beads in as I went. Right now it's current use is holding my hair clips.




Something sort of like arm warmers or whatever you wanna call them.
Laying out:
(yes it has a section that goes across your back. It's one big piece.)

The hands:

On me (oh god):




A rose:

One day I intend to put leaves and such on the stem. And right now the actual rose is hallow, so maybe I'll make it look like a rose from the top view as well.


Windsock?
I kinda like this too, it's been hanging from my fan pull for about 2 years now...





The moral of this story is:
Friends don't let friends crochet without patterns or some idea of how to make things look decent.