Category Archives: Hand Crafts

Birthdays and Blocks

Well, that embroidery business seems to be working out pretty well! I have finished Block one of the Bluebird Quilts BOM and have moved on to Block 2. There are five in all, so I have a feeling, being a girl that likes order and organization, I might have to do them all…

In other news, it’s my birthday! I’ve already received oodles of birthday wishes and a fantabulous birthday gift from friend Kerry that I just have to share here because I know you all will truly appreciate it’s awesomeness!

Awesome seam ripper of awesome doubles as a backup wand! It’s handmade by a local craftsman.

Thanks, Kerry, it’s too fun for words!

A small correction from yesterday’s post… ALL the free patterns posted yesterday now have numbers. In my excitement to get them online, I uploaded the wrong copy of the patterns. Oops!

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Bother, Bother, Bother

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For those of you that don’t follow my quilting adventures over on Harry Potter Paper Piecing, I could not resist sharing our “week off” patterns.

Members voted to have one week off of the Project of Doom, our HP block of the week. That doesn’t mean, of course, that my brain turns off or I stop drafting new patterns!

Update: All of my Project of Doom patterns plus many more can now be found on Fandom in Stitches!

Here for your entertainment are some of my favorites as depicted by the brilliant Neil Nicieregaas’ Potter Puppet Pals.

Each pattern is 5″ (5.5″ unfinished).

PPP Dumbledore

updated 2011

5″ paper pieced

PPP Snape

updated 2011

5″ paper pieced

PPP Harry

updated 2011

5″ paper pieced

PPP Ron

updated 2011

5″ paper pieced

PPP Hermione

updated 2011

5″ paper pieced

PPP Voldemort

updated 2011

5″ paper pieced

I have long been entertained by (read: giggled at) the work of Neil Cicierega, creator of the Potter Puppet Pals. I think part of what I love the most, aside from the humor and general cuteness is the fact that his mom made the puppets for him.

Looking for The Project of Doom? Week 15 is right this way! There are links to all previous weeks in each post.

The Project of Doom resumes next week on Harry Potter Paper Piecing.

Find more Harry Potter inspired patterns both here on Sewhooked & on Fandom in Stitches!

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Find Sunbonnet Sue’s Magical Friends – Monster Madness and more in my Etsy Pattern Shop!

In Which I Learn Something New

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It’s no secret that I love crafts. Sewing, crochet, DIY, you name it.

I love quilting…especially, most especially paper piecing.

In last week’s TTMT, I mentioned that I want to learn to embroider. It’s frankly getting too hot to crochet in the carpool line, which is how I usually while away my time waiting for my kids.

Also, there is a certain PROJECT that I would like use embroidery for, but I’d really like to get the hang of it before I jump in with both feet.

So, here we go.

After asking my lovely peeps over on Facebook for suggestions and opinions for getting started, I had two handy links to get going with.

First was Sublime Stitching’s How To. I have definitely been on this fabulous website before, but only to admire. The How-To was so wonderful and easy to follow, I printed it out…and then I *might* have laminated it. What? It’s fabulous, and I need to drag it along in the car with me. I also learned there are several stores in Austin that carry Sublime Stitching goodness….field trip!

The second useful link was Blue Bird Quilts’ Retro Nine Patch BOM, a lovely free pattern each month by Australian designer Lyn. I agree with her fans there, a Flickr group would be wonderful inspiration for a newbie like me! I printed month one and used my handy Sewline Ceramic Pencil (I have a green one…it’s fabulous!) to transfer the image onto a lovely swirly background.

After observing of friends that embroider, I decided to back my fabric with a piece of muslin. I love the way the thread pulls through both layers of fabric and feels nice and secure. So far, the stitching has felt very natural, even though I don’t do much hand sewing and it’s been ages since I picked up my hand quilting. It’s going smoothly, and hopefully will continue to do so. As of today, I’ve only practiced the Split Stitch and the Stem Stitch. Hopefully future stitches will go as nicely!

I don’t know if I’ll follow along with the entire Blue Bird BOM, but I do like the retro designs and today’s stitching was very enjoyable. Who knows, maybe I’ll keep it up. With another month of carpool ahead of me, I might even be able to get caught up!

Do you embroider? Do you have favorite sites, blogs, etc.? I’d love to hear your pointers!

And, you know what? I can draw… and I get the feeling that may come in very handy in the future…of DOOM.

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Upcycled Light Fixture

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How many Ofensteins does it take to change a light bulb?

In this case, two.

So, we had this light fixture. It was a super-cheap, builder installed glass globe. The problem was, the light hangs on a chain in our stairwell. The glass globe, attached to the fixture by screws. It takes a broom handle with a hook attached to the end just to reach it. It takes one person to hold it with the broom while the other gingerly removes the globe, swaps the bulb and then replaces the globe. All of this while trying desperately to not drop any of the breakable pieces to the concrete of the first floor below.

In short, changing the light bulb…pain in the rear end. And the thing was not even pretty.

Some time ago, I found a fabulous silk (or silk-like) lampshade at a thrift store. It cost $2. The shade was meant to be on a floor lamp, but I really wanted to use it in the stairwell. The problem was, I could never quite figure out how, so for over a year, it hung from a hook in my bedroom ceiling.

Then the stairwell light bulb went out.

The hubby and I went to work as described above. 15 minutes into the painful act of changing the stairwell light bulb, with two dropped screws and a lot of swearing, we took a break before putting the glass globe back on.

Then, epiphany. I finally figured out how to attach the shade to the fixture.

I used a small hole punch and made evenly spaced holes around the top of the shade. Into these, I attached short chain I made out of split rings, and then to that, S-hooks. The S-hooks went into the base of the original fixture where the glass globe was attached by screws.

Wallah! A thing of beauty…and no breakable parts.

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PoD Week 15

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This is your weekly reminder that The Project of Doom, A Harry Potter Block of the Week Mystery Quilt, is taking place over on Harry Potter Paper Piecing (hp_paperpiecing on Livejournal).

The Week 15 pattern is now online*! You haven’t started yet? No worry, all the patterns up to this point are still available and you can jump in at any time!

Please note: We’re taking a one week break between Week 15 and Week 16. The PoD will resume Wednesday May 4.

Want how other quilters are interpreting the PoD patterns? You can see related photo posts here.

Previous Patterns:

Links go straight to posts including block samples. If you do not wish to see photos of the blocks, click this link for previous posts.

Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten
Week Eleven + corrected alternative block
Week Twelve
Extra Credit
Week Thirteen
Week Fourteen

If you participate, and you’re part of the hp_paperpiecing community (it’s easy, you just need a Livejournal account), you’ll be eligible for awesome prizes every month! There are details on the site…so GO!

*New PoD pattern posts go to the PoD page, with the actual block behind a link to keep it a mystery!

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Sunbonnet Sue’s Magical Friends – Monster Madness, from the Sewhooked Shop

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Fabric Friday – Stars and Swirls

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I have a little bit of a reputation for loving tone on tone fabrics, specifically tone on tones with stars, swirls, stripes or dots. How can that be? Because I give a little squee of excitement when I see a perfect swirl for my next magical quilt project? Could it be because dots make me think of everything from dragon hide to bubbles? Maybe, maybe. Whatever it is, I know what fabric makes me happy!

This week’s Fabric Friday offering were gifts from friend and co-worker Sue. She was the hostess of Honey Bee’s bus trip to visit all 12 shops on the Bluebonnet Patchwork Trail Shop Hop. Since the rest of us were working, she very generously brought us all fabric back from her trip. She gave me the gift of magic inspiring fabric, which is my favorite kind of all! There is an extremely good chance that one or all of these fabrics will end up in my Project of Doom quilt!

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PoD Week 14

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This is your weekly reminder that The Project of Doom, A Harry Potter Block of the Week Mystery Quilt*, is taking place over on Harry Potter Paper Piecing (hp_paperpiecing on Livejournal).

The Week 14 pattern is now online! You haven’t started yet? No worry, all the patterns up to this point are still available and you can jump in at any time!

Want how other quilters are interpreting the PoD patterns? You can see related photo posts here.

Previous Patterns:

Links go straight to posts including block samples. If you do not wish to see photos of the blocks, click this link for previous posts.

Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten
Week Eleven + corrected alternative block
Week Twelve
Extra Credit
Week Thirteen

*New PoD pattern posts go to the PoD page, with the actual block behind a link to keep it a mystery!

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Sunbonnet Sue’s Magical Friends – Monster Madness, from the Sewhooked Shop

SEWHOOKED SHOP |SCHEDULE | SEWHOOKED FB
JEN FACEBOOK | TWITTER | FLICKR GROUP

PoD Week 13

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Today’s post is presented a little bit differently than prior weeks. Due to Livejournal outages created by DDoS attacks over the last week, I’m essentially posting a “backup” here on the Sewhooked Blog…just in case! Last week’s Wednesday post was inaccessible for most of the day and created a lot of frustrations for PoD participants. Better safe than sorry this week!

Week 13 comes after a difficult Week 12. Between Livejournal outages and confusion over what in the world that mystery object in the Week 12 block was, I think it’s safe to say you will enjoy today’s pattern!

If you would like to see a photo of today’s block, click here!

Pattern Link —> Block of the Week – Week 13 pattern (PDF) <—Pattern Link

Previous Patterns:

Links go straight to posts including block samples. If you do not wish to see photos of the blocks, click this link for previous posts.

Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten
Week Eleven *corrected alternative block*
Week Twelve
Extra Credit

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Sunbonnet Sue’s Magical Friends – Monster Madness, from the Sewhooked Shop

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JEN FACEBOOK | TWITTER | FLICKR GROUP

Fabric (Postcard!) Friday

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No fooling, fabric postcards!

Recently, one of my fabulous Talk To Me Tuesday friends, Clumsy Chord, organized a fabric postcard swap over on fabricpostcard

This is a summary of that swap with both what I received and what I sent. It was a huge amount of fun and I loved getting to experiment!

I’ll start with the postcards that I received, because they are FABULOUS! They all make me think of spring, which is lovely, because it’s just what I need right now.

Top (L-R) lovely sunrise inspired card from Kristel (clumsy chord), and gorgeous serged ribbon card from Erin

Bottom (L-R) sweet spring birds by Patti and a very plant/spring inspired card “grow” from Amanda

They’re all fabulous and I have them hanging on the wall in my sewing/craft room!

For my cards, I took the opportunity to play on a small scale with a few different ideas. I challenged myself to use different fabrics and techniques on each one. The results are what you see here!

Postcard backs, before addressing!

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One Cross Stitch To Rule Them All

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Some time ago, the amazing Shae (tumblr, blog, etsy) gifted me with an amazing piece of cross stitch that she designed not only for me, but for my family. She knows we’re big Lord of the Rings fans and ingeniously combined our name with a little fandom awesome and created the gorgeous piece of cross stitch you see.

The edges were unfinished when I received her awesome work and I knew I had to do something fabulous with it. The result is what you see in the top photo.

The fabrics I used were all Fairy Frost from Michael Miller. LOVE FF…love, love, love!

After starting with Shae’s amazing cross stitch, I was able to finish everything but the outside border in one sitting. I added the last border a little later so it would fit the frame of my choice.

I intentionally made the outside border larger than it needed to be. Then, using the glass from the frame I purchased as well as the grid on my cutting mat, I lined up the piece as evenly as possible.

Then, I trimmed!

Not shown – I also trimmed a piece of cotton batting to the same size to help hold the quilt in place inside the frame. The result is what you see above!

On the back of the frame, I made a note of who made each part of the project and when. It’s just a simple note, but it’ll be awesome for future generations of Ofensteins to know!

Before deciding on this layout, I played around with ideas in EQ7 as seen in my pre-retreat post! When it came down to it, what I really wanted were earth tones (with a little sparkle!) and triangles. I love triangles in quilts.