Animal – Hopefully Creative

Mystery Stitch Along – Tea Party

Cute stitch-along with a tea party theme.

In July, I signed up for a Mystery Stitch Along called Twigs & Tea by Fine Frog Stitching. We only knew the general theme, tea party, that it was going to start August 8 and be completed in 14 installments on December 5. I just bought the pattern and got all the updates along the way.

We started with the frames and then added on different bits each week. Either one of the animals in the frames, the items on the shelves, the landscape, the table cloth and the items on the table. Most of these were fun and exciting little projects. There’s a bit too much pink in it, and this was especially apparent in the awful boring-to-complete-not-to-look-at table cloth. I finished all but the last two clues in the time frame they were intended.

An unironed big cross stitch with 5 characters in picture frames (owl, fox, raccoon, goose and bear), and a table set with a tea pot cups, cake and flowers.

A big cross stitch with 5 characters in picture frames (owl, fox, raccoon, goose and bear), and a table set with a tea pot cups, cake and flowers.

Then I had to give myself a kick up the backside and finally finish the bear and the flower pot on December 24. I was so excited that it was done, that I didn’t even iron it before sending a picture to my friend who was also doing the stitch along. You can clearly see all the creases from my hoop, and it looks so much better when it’s ironed!

Yet more evidence that breaking large projects up into smaller sections and adding an arbitrary timeline increases my completion rate. At some point I’m going to have to sign up for a quilt along, don’t I..

Safari Animals

Making the little safari themed animals that dangle beneath a mobile.

It’s been a while, but I have been making things every now and again.

My colleague is going on maternity leave soon and she wanted to make a little Safari themed mobile for the crib. She asked me if I could make some safari animals and she would assemble the mobile. So I looked around on the internet and found a lot of options. I was especially inspired by the Puzzle Animals from ‘Felt with love designs‘ but I didn’t really like those specific patterns. So down the pinterest rabbit hole I went. The plan was to create some puzzle animals with two different colours of felt, with one colour being the main outside colour, and other being the middle layer that would appear in some small area(s). In the end, I made a lion, a giraffe, a zebra, an elephant and a rhino.

There was still a large amount of felt in the stash, so I looked around for the colours that seemed most suitable for each animal. The lion was of course yellow, with an orange mane. The giraffe was brown with less bright orange spots on its back. The zebra was white with black stripes. Since I didn’t want to double colours, I had to make some less realistic choices for the elephant and the zebra. The elephant ended up in a darker grey with blue ears, and the rhino was light purple with light grey horns. There was some faffing about with cutting outsides and insides and adhering them together. Then I sewed around the outline for some extra strength. The legs and elephant ears were connected to the bodies with a little extra thread, for security. Those can still be removed if someone wants to play ‘exchange the legs’.

The example mobiles also had some leaves, so I looked around for leaf templates. Luckily there are a lot of those around and I found some cute ones. Some monstera leaves were cut from a light green felt. Some more temperate leaves were cut from dark green felt. All the little green strings you see were there to indicate the midpoint, weight-wise, for the little leaves and critters.

My colleague has since finished the mobile and I hope it’ll bring all of them much joy!

Dragon or Egg?

Making a little reversible gift in the shape of another dragon.

It’s always nice when I get to make something that will have a special purpose rather then just for my own enjoyment. So I was super exited when I heard that someone needed a birthday gift for their child and they like the stuffed animals I’ve made in the past. The kid’s favourite colour is orange and he likes dragons. Easy right? I decided to buy a new pattern for this project. This reversible dragon that turns into an egg, made by CholyKnight/SewDesuNe.

I’d bought some weird almost striped stuff on a fabric market that didn’t have a goal but I just thought it was cool. I decided it would probably work pretty well for the egg portion of the dragon. It was a little thin, so I did put some fusible interfacing on it and got on with sewing the spots and other markings on the different pieces. The pattern is very clear and explains what you need to do in great detail. I always love how CholyKnight makes patterns as both the free and the paid for versions are really good.

The dragon came together nicely and it does turn into a egg pretty well. I’ve recorded a little video how he goes from dragon to egg. You can find it here. It does feel a little weird when you are actively stuffing something into itself. But it’s a lot of fun to be able to actually do it and then put the little loop around the orange button and have a completed egg or dragon.

The pattern has different options for horns, wings and different types of spikes. I chose to mainly do the spiky spikes and pointy horns. The dragon wings where the most obvious option for me as I didn’t really think butterfly wings were appropriate in this specific case. I think I want to make another one of these for me, but perhaps not yet. Need to first empty out the bin of plushies some way or another.

Nautical Box Quilt

This time it’s a small quilt with animal appliques!

With an impending addition to the family of friends of mine, I needed gifts. I asked them what they wouldn’t mind receiving that I could make and they said a box quilt. So I set to work on the planning stages, while making a lot of other things too. I have no self-control I guess.

I’d acquired a bunch of nautical themed fabrics ages ago, when I was online shopping for my cute animals quilt. I figured nautical would fit because my friend was already creating a whale toy at the time. So I set off to find a pattern on the internet. Eventually I came across the ‘Babe in the Woods quilt, 42 x 50″, free pattern at Maywood Studio‘, and decided that I liked it a lot. To fit the theme, I replaced the three animals with more aquatic versions from shutterstock, where I amended the whale to be a little cuter. I got some suplemental fabrics from the local market and set to work.

The pattern was first scaled a little further down to create an end format of around 100x80cm. Apart from that I followed the pattern pretty exactly. The appliques were made with a sticky cotton that was stitched down. Not sure that was the right choice because it does look a little Jack Skellington. I sewed the whole thing together on the treadle. For the back, I chose a yellow whale-fabric because whales. It was a little thin though, so I fused some of the same cotton that formed the animals to the back.

The edging was one of the squares from the quilt pattern, I just happened to choose a fabric with tiny stripes. This turned out to be very handy because that meant I could achieve a very constant distance between my stitches without having to pay much attention. Now, when it was finished, I was afraid that it would be a little dark and not to their taste. Soon up, the other one I made..

Overenthusiastic Masks

Since I still had blue fabric left, I decided to make a few masks.

Sadly, I got carried away, and I now have 17 more masks for my one-person-household. They do all have wonderful images on them, which is the reason there are so many. I got trapped in a cute images hole on Pinterest and just wanted them all. Since I had the capability, I made them all.

From left to right and top to bottom: Up, Meow, Fish, Sheep, Not Today Cat, Cactus, Bear & Hedgehog, Combined Snow Globe, Rabbit, Triceratops, Free the Bird, Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tea Rex, Sleepy Panda, Pterodactyl, Plesiosaur

They are effectively the same as the six I made previously, the only difference being that I eliminated the middle layer. Sewing the chin seam 35 times was enough – I accidentally made a lining to many, which is why there are 35 chin seams. I enjoyed locating my other fabric markers and playing around with them. The plesiosaur and the little triceratops are my favourites. Although Not Today Cat is a mood that happens a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever dare to wear the meow one, but the font was so funny that I had to use it too.

The pattern I used comes in different sizes, I made the size S for me. However, I’m unsure if people around me have the right amount of face if I ever wanted to gift one (or more) of these. As of today, they are mandatory in public transport in the Netherlands – not in everyday life though. But I’m sure I’ve got enough to see me through plenty a rail-journey.

O.O. the Octopus I

Sometimes you (re)find something that you just cannot ignore anymore.

Eye Right Eye

This happened to me at the start of April. I had found the free Octo the Octopus pattern on Ravelry (posted on Knitty here) way before this time, but I was afraid that it would take too long and would be too many stitches for me to actually finish. Since the first discovery I made some dinosaurs, some dragons and some other large projects. Then, my office wanted to have a knitting project for themselves. They really liked the Allosaurus even though it looked quite angry and wanted something for their own office that could be a group project. I suggested this Octopus that I’d found ages before. Everyone can knit a leg and I can join them to a head at the end with Kitchener stitch.

Starting this project in the office gave me some real craving to make one for myself. I didn’t want to make it in the same colours as the office one, but they had picked all the fun colours: blue on top but the entire rainbow for the bottom of the – legs? arms? – tentacles. This meant that I had a choice to make!

Flat Spread

I decided to buy a grey and brown ball of yarn and make a striped octopus. I googled ‘striped octopus’ after I’d already knit 4 stripes and found that there is a striped octopus, but it has white too. So off to the shoppy I went again and got some white. The stripes at the top were very regular, so I sewed in a line of white stitches to break it up a little. Then I just went and did completely irregular stripes. All the tentacles follow the same stripe composition and the bottom of the tentacles and his belly are blue. I followed the pattern closely (including errata), however, I did not want to knit with fingering weight yarn. So I substituted with some thicker yarn not knit double and changing the knitting of the eyelids. Google pictures told me that there is an octopus with white eyelid edges, so I chose to do that to get an even edge.

It went a lot quicker than expected. I finished him in under three weeks with most of my free time knitting him. You can find my notes on Ravelry here, they are quite limited *cough*. The reason why this post is posted a little bit after he was finished was mostly because he didn’t really have a name yet. After extensive discussion, we have come up with something…

We are pleased to hereby introduce O.O. Octopus I, Otto Octopuff Octopus The First, to the world. He was finished on April 21, weighs 539 grams, and measures 88 centimeters from head to tentacle. He will rest throughout working hours.

To scale

Otto will live on a stool in my living room, actually the black one you see on the left of the picture above. In the picture I’m holding him for scale (note, I am 1.58 m tall), he is quite big! Right now, I do believe that O.O. and the Dragon tie for first spot of most awesome knitted animal..

Knitted Plesiosaur!

Last Christmas I got the book “Gebreide Dino’s” by Tina Barrett (“Knitted Dinosaurs”).
The patterns are quite fun, although they do not always resemble the original dinosaur that much. For some reason I decided I wanted to knit something fun last Saturday, so I decided to grab the book from my shelf and choose the one I liked the most. That turned out to be the plesiosaur. Now, I like the idea of the book, but either my version is crappily translated, or the patterns don’t match the pictures that well. I documented my problems on ravelry, here. But I’ll also state somethings here.

My dinosaur is 50 cm long from head to tail, the pattern indicated that it should be about 27 cm. However, I did make some changes that influenced its length and I think my translation caused some problems. From other people’s versions, I’m fairly certain that some part of the in- and decreases for the back are supposed to be in every row, but my pattern didn’t say that. I also wanted it’s head to be a little longer, so I added twenty rows to the neck. I also wanted it to have a more pointed tail, so I added some rows between the decreases there. Below a picture of me with Plessy, for scale.

Some of the bits have been in contact with sand. On Sunday I decided I wanted to knit the light green back fins in another location. So I put on my rollerskates and skated to the beach, where I proceeded to get some weird looks, but finished the back fins. I did modify the back fins a little. The picture with the pattern shows that the back fins are much smaller than the front fins. However, following the pattern the back fins would just be 2 rows shorter, without any other changes. I decided that would not do and knit the back fins until (non-existing in my pattern) row 13.

The instructions wanted me to add sequins to the back, but sequins and I are not friends. I decided so cross stitch some spots on his back with the belly yarn. I like this effect.

So while the instructions also state to sew the body first and attach the flippers afterwards after they’d been stuffed. This seemed like a stupid idea to me, so I attached the flippers to the body first and then sewed all around the outside. This worked really well, and I think it looks a little better.

I chose to stitch the eye-whites on as my fabric glue wouldn’t stick very well. I also used safety eyes, not buttons. I think it has the cutest face. I did want it to have a slightly more upward pointing neck, so I added some stitches in the neck to pull it together. If I put a glass under it as I did above, it almost looks like Nessy. As I’ve now finished my first dinosaur, it’s on to the second. The friend who gifted me the book is in love with the pterodactyl, and I just happen to have the perfect yarn already! But last and most certainly not least, that face!

Gifts – 3

The last series of gifts was for four friends who celebrated their birthdays and moving house. I only knew two of the four, but I thought it was not very nice not to fix presents for all four. So I decided to make a series of zippered animal pouches. I’d seen this blogpost when it first came out, and was immediately in love. I decided to do a cat face pouch. That left me with 3 more animals (since I wanted different ones). I pinterested and found this one. Two down, two to go. I thought some more, googled a bit and thought ‘I want a rabbit’! So that was number three. Lastly I figured I wanted a frog, since frogs are awesome and I still had a green bedsheet that could be used.

I first sketched what I wanted and then used paint to draw all my designs. Yes, I know that paint isn’t the fancy tool to use for this sort of thing, but I happen to love paint and know how to work with it, so that’s what I did.

Click this image for a bigger version

After I drew all of them, I went upstairs to find all the scraps I could. I managed to eke out all my design in those scraps (and the green sheet I’d already allocated to the frog). I’m going to post a tutorial of how I made the frog tomorrow. Even if you guys don’t find it interesting at all, I want to practice with tutorials and it’s my blog so I can do what I want, right?

Anyway, I proceeded to put together a frog, a cat with fish, a whale and a rabbit with carrot in one evening and one morning. It didn’t take me as much time as I thought it would, so that was nice. Here they are:

This is the whale, made of a couple of scraps of Mondriaan-esque fabric. The scraps were not large enough to accommodate the whole whale, so his back is pieced. His tail is stuffed, because it fell down and just looked sad. All the pouches have a red back lining (only back) to hide most of the seams and to give an impression of an open mouth when they are opened. I also added loops so they can hang somewhere.

Second was the rabbit. Since it is a rabbit, it required a carrot of course, and big front teeth. I also added a nose to this one. The orange and green was scraps from the scraps of the cat.

This is the cat. The cat has a fish and is made from scraps of my frog dress. Which is why there is a frog and and leg on the front and back respectively. I actually really like this one, it’s my favourite.

This is the frog (I forgot to take a picture of the back, but it’s identical to the front but without the zipper and eyes). The frog you’ll see more of in the next post. His birth was fully documented. The closed fronts of all the pouches are seen to the right.

They are a fairly colourful bunch together, and I like them all. Tomorrow the frogorial.

New Project

I am officially going to graduate on the 31st of July. That doesn’t mean that I get my diploma then, but I will be allowed to put MSc. behind my name. I find this fairly exiting. I handed in my thesis on the 3rd of July, got my grade on the 4th of July and have had holiday since then. I haven’t done much in the way of job hunting. In combination with some other struggles it’s to difficult to even try.

So, when I went to the market on the Friday before last, I found myself a new hobby. The fabric guy had a table of 3 euro/m fabrics. Including some that screamed quilting to me. I invested in a yard each of 4 different fabrics. Three fabrics were the same print in a different colourway (scooters, motorbikes and gears), and the last was another print (farm animals). I looked through the library the following day for some intriguing patterns and eventually decided on one based on a pillow case.

The plan is the following:

quilt Fabrics

The colours in the picture correspond roughly to the colours of the fabrics I chose. I have since finished making the brown/grey/dark blocks and I now have to cut the red strips and attach them. It’s going to be big, this thing. The brown bits are 10×10 cm cut, so ~8.6 by 8.6 cm sewn. The strips are 4 cm cut and 2.6 cm sewn. I hope it’s going to look nice. However, I don’t know yet. Below are the blocks that I’ve done.

This is my first attempt at quilting/patchwork. I enjoy doing it, although I do think it would be really nice to have a rotary cutter. I’ve now been hand cutting with scissors and marking each individual bit. That certainly took a while.

I might embroider some of the central animals in the brown panels with yellow and blue thread to break it up a bit. I’ll have to see how that looks though. I’ve also been following the Craftsy class on pant fitting, in hopes of finally producing good pants. I’ve started the muslin. I hope I get some good pants now… Enjoy the summer (or winter, or other season)!

Tag: Animal