Crafts

The sewing, knitting, paper, and fiber arts I do.

2017 Gift Guide! 🎄🎁

~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

Can you believe it’s going to be Thanksgiving this week?!

Excuse me? Has anyone seen 2017?

Anyways, it’s that time of the year when gift giving is a majority of our thoughts and it can be so stressful to find gifts that are meaningful, personal, unique, and of course affordable. Enter this blog post! I thought I could help get some ideas flowing for you gift list and hopefully make it a more fun gifting experience versus the mad dash for gifts that you aren’t very excited to give.  This is the time of the year that we can give thanks to those we know and to those in need and it should be inspiring!

Handmade crochet goodies from Frankly Hooked! 

Tannith makes the cutest crochet hats, blankets, cowls, and custom order items! Check out her IG to see more of the custom dreams she’s made come true!

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Custom + Gorgeous jewelry by VagabondSupplyCo

I have so many rings from Julie and I have to say, they are amazing. Everyone compliments them!  Beautiful jewelry with incredible quality.

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ReZip Eco-Friendly Bags

I love these ReZip bags!  I have been making a conscious effort to use less plastic and these have helped so much.  The bags are made out of food safe materials with NO BPA or harsh chemicals waiting to leech into your food.  They come in so many sizes and are durable, dishwasher safe, and really are an amazing gift.  Something people will never know they need but LOVE that you introduced them!

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dōTERRA wellness

Essential oils are such a great gift to give someone!  They are personal, meaningful, and so POWERFUL! dōTERRA is not only an amazing company, but provides certified pure therapeutic grade oils and supplements to unlock lives!  dōTERRA has radically changed my life and I’d love to help you see that power unlocked for yourself or a loved one or friend! With any purchase you get an hour session with me to maximize essential oils in your life!

You can find out more about essential oils here. You can also read more in depth about essential oils here! If you’re ready to buy, let me know or use my dōTERRA website!

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Lightbox with letters!

I love this little thing! It’s just so cute, would be perfect for anyone’s office, home, or dorm! Available here at Target. 

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Candylab Wooden Cars

Lois got me a Candylab wooden station wagon and trailer last month and I LOVE IT. It’s so adorable, super fun, and just so dang cute!  This would be a perfect gift from a child to adult and looks stylish and innovative!

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Well I hope those ideas get your brain churning with some new ideas! Comment below with what gifts you’ll be making or giving this year!

xxx

GFK

So Faded Sweater – Work in Prog

~ ghostfaceknitter ~ 1 Comment

I have a confession.  I’ve never finished a knit sweater.  I have started two vintage patterns, probably a dozen pet sweaters, and have completed the Heliopath – Luna’s vest from the Harry Potter Knitting book, but never actually successfully knitted something that wasn’t an accessory.

At any rate – I saw a Knitterly ad on Facebook for this sweater when I was in Iowa in May – I LOVED IT.  I quickly found Drea Renee’s website and now am a cult fan. I’m probably in 30 hours on this sweater in total.  I have 2 inches of ribbing on the body, 7 inches on each sleeve, and then the neck ribbing to complete. I’m guessing another 5-10 hours.

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Specs on Time/Cost during WIP

Supplies List

Random Comments about pattern:

  • super easy make one left/right increase pattern
  • loved the in-pattern commentary about color changing and tips for success
  • love the texture of the sleeves being garter stitch
  • I did have a confusion point on the sleeves, as written in the pattern I felt they were not symmetrical – but decided to make the sleeve location on the body symmetrical and feel that was the right thing.  It probably was what the pattern had meant, but of course I interpreted differently as there were no corrections online regarding this.
  • Drea Renee – available I reached out to her about the sleeves (albeit not helpful in my description!) but she replied.

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just ribbing, sleeves, and neckline to go!!

Snake Dress

~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

Another selfish sew! Look at that face! That’s someone who was super excited about some more new clothes.

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I found this snake fabric on Etsy a month ago and loved it. Only in hindsight I’m sure it’s kids fabric but still I love the colors and and how the design was.  I love the weight of the jersey fabric too – generally jersey is pretty see-thru but this was so thick and not see-thru. Since it was sturdy material I didn’t even use my serger as there was no tension issue.

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This was less than an hour project as I almost got thru 1 hour of the Roosevelt’s Doc from PBS. I love that documentary – I’ve seen it probably 4 times all together. I think I love it because it so radically changed my perspective on so much about that family. I especially love watching it now since our political climate has changed so severely.

I used this Pattern from McCall’s:

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Specs on Time/Cost

  • Total Time: < 1 hour
  • Total Cost:  $1.99 Pattern + $24 for 2 yards of jersey fabric on Etsy

Supplies List

Random Comments about pattern:

  • Have you ever bought the wrong sized pattern? I did here lol whoops! But i just shorted the smallest size by 2inches and aimed for 10-12. I didn’t want this one to be skin tight since I wanted to wear it to work, so I think it worked out perfectly.
  • Pattern was super easy.
  • I’ll be making the V-neck and the long sleeves for sure.
  • I only used 1 3/4 yards of fabric.

 

1947 Vogue V9126 Dress Pattern

~ ghostfaceknitter ~ 2 Comments

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I did a little selfish sewing last week.  Finally caught a tiny respite from the great baby making of 2017 😉 JK I love that all of you are having babies because baby stuff is my favorite kind of crafts to make.  However, I had another 1940s ball to attend so instead of buying my dress this year I decided to make one that was more traditional (less ‘retro’ stereotypical).  This is the Original 1947 Design of Vogue V9126 Dress Pattern.  Available at Vogue Patterns or Joanns.  I picked up this pattern for $5 on one of the ‘sale days’ at Joanns.

I know that Joann’s is sort of the anti-craft movement for a lot of people. I happen to find it really convenient, affordable and they do have a pretty nice selection of fabric, yarn, supplies. Plus and this is why it’s so hard to say no to Joann’s they always have a coupon(s) to use.

But I digress. I found the pattern and the Fabric (50% off that) at Joanns and decided to make this for the ball.

Specs on Time/Cost

  • Total Time: 7 hours including finishing
  • Toal cost: $45

Supplies List:

Random Comments about pattern:

  • The collar took quite some mulling over. It was not easy to create shape for that just from ‘folding it over.’  I ended up hand sewing the lapels to each other in the front to give it the shape I wanted.
  • The waist was too small for only a short bodice zipper – I had to let out the waist by 3 inches to get the waist over my shoulders (I’m not that big there). If I make this again I will put in a zipper that extends down thru the waist so that I can just zip it up and keep the shape once on.
  • Bust was taken in considerably. I used the 36in bust – (I’m a 34in) and it was like a burlap sack – I ended up taking in the pleats so significantly it was starting to distort the shape on the bodice. If I make this again I will use smaller bodice all together and then gather skirt in back if necessary.

Anyways enough of my bemoaning about having a small bust and big shoulders 😉

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the bodice and skirt connected by front feature

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Juanita Tolve’s Hawaii brooch ❤ 

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All and all it was a super fun, cute dress. I’ll be making more in the future!

 

Mateo’s Quilt

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What’s this? Another baby on the way?! Yes!

This time my cousins Oli and Matt are expecting their first – a baby boy named Mateo! I just love that name. I can’t wait for him to be here. 🙂

Typically, I stick with pretty traditional quilting.  Civil War quilts are my favorite, followed closely by The Farmer’s Wife (1930s).  But, I just couldn’t see myself giving Matt and Oli’s son a traditional quilt. I decided to go for something bold, modern, and way out of my comfort zone. Pretty much the entire time I made this quilt I asked two questions 1) is there something with more contrast? 2) is there something bolder?  I think I finally got the questions answered with ‘no’.

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Again, I didn’t use a pattern and I just used jelly rolls. It will be the last time I use jelly rolls though. They just aren’t consistent! Im pretty sure it’s the one time that a human is more consistent than a machine – plus they cut them between 2 3/4 inch and 3in and it just makes no sense. trying to match them up with anything is a nightmare.  If you look close you can see I used a lot of optical illusions on this quilt to adjust or the non-standard jelly roll strips. *shakes fist* never again jelly rolls! But I’m super happy with this quilt. It’s modern, fun, and super bold. It’s perfect.

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Quilt for Juanita’s daughter

~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

Over a week ago I got to attend my friend Juanita’s baby shower for her upcoming daughter! It was such a beautiful baby shower – the food, location and decorations were perfect! Not to mention I got to see so many people I haven’t seen in probably 5 years!

I decided to make a second version of a quilt I made my niece last summer, because I just love the pattern. This time I didn’t measure a thing – which was really dumb. But it worked out! I also used jelly rolls – thinking it would speed up my time.  The thing about jelly rolls is, they don’t save time because they aren’t identical. If I had cut these strips I would have been done a day sooner, I actually had to spend an hour at least readjusting the seams in the center once I got it all pieced. Jelly rolls just aren’t predictable. The time I saved not cutting I more than spend double in the end dealing with.  Long story short, I used jelly rolls on another quilt after…. more to come on that.

But!

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The quilt came out super adorable – I love it!

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Goes to show the things that give you the most grief are always the best.

Congrats Juanita and Mike! ❤

Western Floor Pouf

~ ghostfaceknitter ~ 2 Comments

A month or two ago, I got this western themed duck fabric for $6 a yard! SCORE.  I bought 3 yards of it because I knew I wanted to make an Amy Butler Floor Pouf with it. I finally got around to doing this last Saturday Afternoon – it took maybe 2 1/2 hours total (including a trip to the local craft store to buy 10lbs of polyfil).  I forgot how easy this pattern is – remember back to 2+ years ago when I made my first AB floor pouf.  Go ahead, click on the link and imagine the wavy lines and harp music as you travel back in time…..

Okay welcome back to 2016.  So I remembered one of my greatest complaints about this pattern was that you a) have to hand sew it shut and b) can’t really do anything once you get it dirty.  Sadly the floor pouf from 2014 was thrown away in the great migration west in 2015.  Well, to solve that issue – I decided to sew a zipper on the bottom of the pouf to prevent that from happening again.  Now if I need to wash it, I can just remove the polyfil and wash the pouf easy peasy!

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is that a cactus or are you just happy to see me? 
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zipper with polyfil coming out
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he’s sticking his tongue out at me.
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pretty boy and floor pouf

Astrodelic Quilt

~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

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I finished this quilt a few weeks ago, but finally delivered it to my new niece so I can finally go in depth with it here. 🙂

I found the Astrodelic Quilt on a great website of Fat Quarter Shop.  They have a ton of free patterns and really cute fabrics. I chose this quilt because it looks really stunning and actually is very simple.  The angle cuts are made with the same method of making binding so this is a true beginner quilt. Due to the large pieces it was also easy to line up and piece together.  I kept this incredibly simple with just a cross ‘x’ quilt.  I looked at other people’s quilting choices online and decided I wanted my fabric and clean lines to show more than the quilting so I literally did the bare minimum.  If I did it again, I would probably hand quilt or machine quilt the seams. Overall, it took 2 hours to iron/cut, 3 hours to piece/sew, and 3 hours to bind. So a wonderful weekend quilt. Here are my pics!

Feel free to ask question in the comments – I would also love to do a small class or tutorial of this online/in person if people are interested!

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prepping to join batting with front/back
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prewashed, post binding – it looks so good in my living room 😉
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this finished result! 

Quilt the day away

~ ghostfaceknitter ~ 3 Comments

I have a fever and the only prescription is more quilting!

Okay corny jokes aside – I finally made the leap into quilting this month and it may or may not be why I haven’t been updating my blog. (Sorry I’m not sorry!)

I first made two no-piecing quilts and then I dove right in to something that was actually made with squares.  I am having a blast.  I can’t believe how much fun it was.

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it’s always nice to see the things you make being used
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table runner for lois! 

yay quilting!