Inspiration

The best part of finishing a creative project for me is the anticipation of starting another one! I finished a big (for me) knitting project. This baby blanket:


I also made a couple of cute swaddling blankets using this as a guide.

Finally, I'm sewing the binding on a wall-hanging quilt to welcome home a very sweet baby boy adopted from the Congo. This one was a long-time coming and, like many projects had it share of grumbling (mostly, "what was I thinking" and "oh no, it's not working!!) and payoffs (as in, "this actually looks like a quilt!"). You know how that goes, right?

My biggest realization from making these last projects is how much I love the soft, reassuring feeling of a hand-made blanket spreading out around me. Or wrapping one around one of my sweet children. This is a heritage passed down from my great-grandmother. As a child, we had almost no "store bought" blankets in our home or on our beds. My great-grandma would hand cut and hand piece quilts all winter long, tie or hand quilt them, and give them to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Their beauty was not in their preciseness or perfect color coordination, but in their quirkiness, and their slight imperfections. I loved them more and felt more at home wrapped in their soft honesty.

Making this most recent quilt for a friend revealed my many flaws as a quilt-maker. It's far from square and precise and I thought that was a downfall, but it certainly makes the quilt unique. It is no less filled with love, for sure!

More on this idea soon, but in the mean time, here is a lovely flickr group with quilts in the spirit of a quilt artist named Denyse Schmidt who makes me smile and gives me hope I might be able to create art with fabric and bring a smile to someone else.

Fun Project

There are lots of new babies on the way or recently arrived around here. It's fun to celebrate these new lives. I've been wanting to make a special, personal, handmade gift for these little ones. But I'm a painfully slow knitter and I'm still plugging away at the February Lady sweater. And many of these babies are spring or summer babies. Hats or sweaters don't make a lot of sense.

Instead, I made my first felt block toy inspired by The Creative Family. The book was a little thin on directions for the decorations. I tried a sharpie pen and wasn't happy with the results. So I cut out some simple shapes that needed no detail and carefully sewed them on to each block. The trick was sewing them with enough margin to allow for seams on all sides. The second tricky part was sewing the last pieces of the block in the right order and closing the last seam by hand. Practice will make this easier, I think. Still, it was done in a day and I was happy with it. I put a few bells inside so it makes sounds when you shake it.

Here are some pictures in progress and the sweet baby boy.