Turn around, Granny!

add this pattern to your ravelry queue

An, granny square! For years I loved to hate you. When I would try to make you, you were wonky, crooked and twisted. How could something so simple, so classic and so seemingly straight forward be so frustratingly difficult?

One day, a little bird whispered in my ear to turn the granny square after each row. Aha! That was the answer.

By turning on every row, the twisting disappeared. An added bonus is that the granny square does not have a “right” and a “wrong” side when it’s worked this way.

So turn, turn, turn and stay square, square, square!

Note: Yarn weight and hook size are up to you. Change colors at any row and make the square as small or large as you like.

With this method, you can make a Granny-ghan by continuing to crochet until you reach the desired size.

Chain 4, sl st to form loop

turn, sl stitch to the corner

Round 1 – ch 3 (ch 3 = dc throughout), 2dc, [ch 2, 3 dc], rep [ to ] 2 times, ch 2, join to the top of ch 3 with a sl st. TURN, sl st to ch 3 corner.

ch 3

Round 2 – Ch 3, 2 dc, ch 2, 3 dc in ch2 space. [ch 1, 3 dc, ch 2, 3 dc in ch 3 space], repeat [ to ] 2 times, ch 1, join to top of ch 3 with sl st. TURN, sl st in ch 1 space.

Round 3 – Ch 3, 2 dc, [ch 1, 3 dc, ch 2, 3 dc in ch 2 space; ch 1, 3 dc in ch space], repeat [ to ] 2 times. Ch 1, 3 dc, ch 2, 3 dc in ch 2 space, ch 1, join to top of ch 3 with sl st.

Finish as desired.

Granny Square close up

Granny-ghan for a baby, donated to The Linus Connection

Add your Sewhooked-related photos to my flickr group and you might be featured in a future post!

Photobucket

Sewhooked Shop | FB | SHFB | Flickr | Twitter

Guest Designer Spotlight: Cat Magraith

3 Replies

blocks designed by Cat Magraith
click on image for pattern

This week in the Guest Designer Spotlight is Catherine (Cat) Magraith.

I met Cat through the Harry Potter Crafts Yahoo group and then we briefly volunteered together for The Leaky Cauldron in the craft department.

We’ve known each other for over two years now and have become fast friends. Her amazing engineer’s brain is a natural for dissecting images and creating (and editing!) paper pieced patterns.

Photobucket

First name and where you’re from:
Cat from Adelaide, South Australia

Website/blog/online store or other place where your patterns or photos of your work can be found?
I have my ETSY store and then there’s my LJ.

How long have you been paper piecing and/or quilting?
How long have i known you?* I’m trying to think. Is it 2 years or longer? I have been doing other quilting though since primary school so about 25 years.

*Note from Jennifer: it’s been two years!

What do you use own your blocks for?
Cushion covers, totes and never quite finished quilts (lets just say quilt tops).

When did you start designing?
Pretty well much almost straight away after i started Paper Piecing.

Was there a particular inspiration to draw your first pattern?
I was inspired by hp_paperpiecing and your patterns and a desire to create my own custom patterns.

Do you remember what your first design was?
First design was my Dumbledore pattern.

Do you have a favorite among your own designs?
Dumbledore is my favourite still.

How has the online community changed the way you craft/quilt/design, etc.?
I had never seen the US style of PP method before i joined the online quilting community. It is not very common in Australia with most references to PP being the paper hexagons used in a lot of British quilting books and are all hand stitched. US PP has changed the way i design my patterns and has given it a new edge.

Find more of Cat’s free patterns on the Guest Designer Page on sewhooked

Happy Crafting!

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

5 Replies

Linus Heart, My Scrappy Heart,
My Scrappy Heart II, Broken Heart
click on image for pattern

What is it about hearts?

I doodle them on the edges of notes and the back of envelopes and just as often as not, they show up in my artwork and my quilts.

When I sign my name, I sign with a heart. It’s “with love, from Jennifer.”

For a not-very-girly-girl, it’s certainly a very girly thing to do. I don’t care, I like it. It shares a little of me, a little of my heart.

My paper piecing adventure began some years ago with Carol Doak’s Show Me How To Paper Piece. I read through the book, then tried the heart pattern. It took several tries and several more reads through the instructions before I got the hang of the technique.

That light bulb moment was the brightest I’ve ever had.

I decided that first effort would end in being a gift for my friend Alison. I searched out other blocks that represented our friendship. That was my first experience of not being able to find exactly what I wanted, but I used what I could find and my very next project, I started designing my own patterns.

Alison’s Wall Hanging

It was not long after this that The Linus Connection was looking to give thank you gifts to the sponsors of our first Annual Challenge. I was on the Board of Directors at the time and was closely involved with organizing that first challenge. Being the webmistress for Linus, as well as for Sewhooked, I see the Linus heart regularly. It’s on every page of the website and every paper label we attach to the quilts before giving them to the children.

It occurred to me then what a wonderful gift the Linus Heart in fabric would be, and what better than to use my new favorite technique, paper piecing? While it was not my very first pattern, it was one of the first, designed within a couple of months of my learning to paper piece. It’s still one of my favorites.

Photobucket

The Linus Connection Heart & it’s doppelganger in fabric
click on image for pattern

That same pattern eventually became part of my design for The Linus Connection banner, a project that I designed and organized in early 2006 with the blessing of the Board of Directors and help from many Linus volunteers.

The Linus Connection banner can be seen hanging by the sign-in table at every monthly meeting.
alphabet blocks from Carol Doak’s 300 Paper Pieced Quilt Blocks

In 2007, I was asked to demonstrate paper piecing for The Linus Connection’s volunteers during one of the monthly demos. This was my second paper piecing demonstration for Linus and I was really excited to have another opportunity to share my favorite quilting technique and some of the short cuts I’ve discovered.

I had not yet written my own paper piecing tutorial but I did have many patterns available on Sewhooked. What I did not have were many beginner’s patterns. A friend suggested the Hearts For Linus pattern as a starting place. It was a good suggestion and I designed two new hearts, each of increased difficulty, based on the original.

The demo was a success and from that came the writing of my paper piecing tutorial.

Heart Block Demo Quilt – November 2007
donated to The Linus Connection, January 2008

Where there are hearts, there will also be hearts that are broken. Though I am not sure why I decided to draw a broken heart, I do believe it had something to do with my love of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, my favorite of which is New Moon. I’d previously designed a wolf and a lamb, both inspired by Twilight, for my friend Alison to use in a wall hanging, which you can see here.

The broken heart represents the state that the main character, Bella, finds herself in for the majority of New Moon.

sample Lamb block pieced by Shae
click on image for pattern

Whatever the block is that I have designed, it’s part of my story. They remind me of where I was and what I was thinking when I made the original sketch. I know what prompted the design of every single one, and I think that is a very special gift.

Add your Sewhooked-related photos to my flickr group and you might be featured in a future post.

Photobucket

Crafts: Buy handmade for the holidays

Leave a reply

Shopping for handmade items can be daunting and if you’ve been to etsy recently, you know there are about a zillion people selling there, which can make it very hard to know where to start.

In a continuing effort to make, buy and give handmade, I’m collecting a list of my friends that sell handcrafted items.

In a few days, I will take all the collected names and post a big ole list of online shops with the hopes that my all friends will benefit.

If you make items to sell and would like to be in the “My Friends Sell Handmade Stuff” post, please comment with the following information:

Link to where items are for sale
Example List of items available
Price range (example $5 – $50)
Sample Photo, optional (just one please)
Other pertinent information

Please only share links to your own handmade items for sale. If you have friend that also sell their own handmade items and you think they’d like to participate, please direct them to this post so they can add their own information.

Happy Crafting!

also posted on my personal blog

Crochet Hogwarts Hat & Scarf for a Plushie

Leave a reply

At some time during 2005 or 2006 during a frenzied Harry Potter craft session which happened to coincide with the height of my children’s Build-A-Bear obsession, the thought occurred to me that my daughter’s lion needed to be, no must be, a Gryffindor.

Fun, fast and free crochet at it’s geeky best!

add this pattern to your ravelry queue:

Printable Pattern

Supplies:
2 colors worsted yarns (Red Heart used in example)
N – hook

Hat:
Crocheted with two strands of each yarn throughout.
Row 1 – with burgundy, ch 6. Sl st in first ch to form ring. Ch 3, 11 DC over ring, sl st to join. Finish off.
Row 2 – join gold to in any st, ch 3, DC in same st, 2 DC in each st around. Sl st to join. Finish off.
Row 3 – join burgundy in any st, ch 3, DC in next st and each st around. Finish off.
Row 4 – join gold in any st, ch 3, DC in next st, ch 3, sk 3 dc, dc in next 8 sts, ch 3, sk 3 st, dc in remaining sts. Finish off.
Row 5 – join burgundy in any st, sc in each st around, sc over ch 3s. Finish off, weave in ends.

Attach Pom-Pom (optional)

Scarf:
Crocheted with two strands of each yarn throughout.
ch 5
Row 1 – sc in 2nd ch from hook, sc across. Ch 1 turn.
Row 2 – sc across, ch 1 turn
Row 3 – sc across. Attach new color at top of last st. Ch 1, turn

Repeat 1-3 in alternating colors for a total of 13 blocks of color. Add fringe.

Ravenclaw Kitty

This pattern also available on The Leaky Cauldron

Happy Crafting!

Paper Piecing: Seeing Stars

Leave a reply

click on the image for the pattern, except Rising Sun, bottom right, which has 4 pattern pieces:
1, 2, 3, 4

I have been drawing a lot of stars lately. Some, like the Tone Tone Star and the Chubby Star, were for a quilt block swap I recently participated in. The Arkansas Snowflake, a very common and popular block, was drawn as a replica replacement for a quilt top that was a thrift store find.

After reworking and rearranging some of the patterns over on the sewhooked Paper Pieced Patterns page, I realized my count of star (or, in some cases, star-ish) patterns online was up to six and thought it would be a nice to present them all together.

As for the changes in organization over on sewhooked, you will find the “Miscellaneous” category has been broken up into two new sections: People, Places and Things & Shapes. As I create more varieties of patterns, I try to arrange them as logically as possible to make them easier to find. I hope this will help visitors to sewhooked to find what they’re looking for more easily.

If you make these or any sewhooked crafts, I’d love to see a photo! Email me or add it to the Friends of sewhooked flickr group.

Happy crafting!

Guest Designer Spotlight: Michelle Thompson

2 Replies

blocks designed by Michelle Thompson
click on the image for the pattern

The next up in the Guest Designer Spotlight is Michelle Thompson.

I met Michelle through hp_paperpiecing, where she has shared many photos of her finished blocks as well as her own beautiful Harry Potter inspired patterns.

Photobucket

First name and where you’re from: Michelle, Sydney Australia

Website/blog/online store or other place where your patterns or photos of your work can be found? just livejournal at the moment and there isn’t much there at the moment although I am working on that.

How long have you been paper piecing and/or quilting? since 1997

What do you use own your blocks for? quilts for my family (extended family included)

When did you start designing? about 2000 I started designing my own quilts using other peoples ideas. The first design of all my own was much more recent last year or the year before.

Was there a particular inspiration to draw your first pattern? usual reason – couldn’t find a pattern for what I wanted.

Do you remember what your first design was? Hagrid

Do you have a favorite among your own designs? my new patterns – the portrait series – i am really excited about them they turned out much better than I thought they would.

How has the online community changed the way you craft/quilt/design, etc.? its great for inspiration, ideas and of course the wonderful support and validation it enables.

What do you use to design your patterns? Paper and pencil, a specific software, etc. I start off with pen and paper, then i use quilt assistant – very basic. I probably wouldn’t use any programs if i wasn’t sharing – pencil and paper work just fine.

Anything else you’d like to add? I don’t nearly have enough time for quilting (what a surprise) and it also eats into my other passion cross-stitch, which I lament hasn’t had much of my time lately. I have been trying to finish existing projects – I only have two quilts to go. I have decided I hate quilting and it is not nearly as exciting as making the quilt top so I am looking to outsource the quilting process so I can make more quilts.

I have been sewing all my life. I got my first sewing machine at age 8 and have done dressmaking and pattern making courses in my late teens. Most of my sewing involved making clothes for myself and my children. However my greatest joy now is making quilts and dress up costumes for my children. If anyone is interested I can post some on my journal. I get lots of grief from other mothers. My latest costume was the stay-puft marshmallow man for a ghostbusters band night for my son.

Photobucket

Find more of Michelle’s patterns on the sewhooked Guest Designer Page

Michelle’s LiveJournal

Happy Crafting!

Paper Piecing: Mmmm, power pellets!

2 Replies

The first video game I ever played on a home console was at a friend’s house in third grade. She’d received an Atari 2600 for her birthday. Such a huge gift for one person was beyond my eight-year-old comprehension. My family was on a much different budget and something like that would have been, and eventually was, a gift for the whole family.

We played Pac-Man all night, eating up the dots of light and squealing when we got a Power Pellet. I remember too much sugar, too much caffeine and absolutely no sleep.

A couple of months back, I dreamed of Pac-Man (yes, I’m that geeky) and in the dream I was drawing the chomping-mouthed fellow.

Not just drawing though, designing…and turning him into a paper pieced pattern. Silly, probably, but it made me laugh, so I did it.

Pac-Man Paper Pieced Patterns
by Jennifer Ofenstein

click on each image for the pattern

with thanks to Shae, who made the sample blocks

Pacman
Ghost
Sad Ghost

I mentioned that I’m a geek, right?

Now, we can play Pac-Man for free online. The trademark music never fails to remind me of that first sugar-laden all-nighter my friends and I pulled sending a gold chomper around a maze and avoiding the ever present ghosts!

Find more awesome, fandom-themed patterns on my fandom Quilting website, Fandom In Stitches!

If you make these or any Sewhooked crafts (geeky or not!), I’d love to see a photo in the Sewhooked flickr group!

Happy crafting!

Coconut Candy Baby Blanket

Leave a reply

The striping in this blanket reminds me of Neapolitan coconut candy.

queue this pattern on ravelry!

Printable Pattern

Suggested hook: I

The finished size varies based on the weight of yarn and hook size used. The sample was made with 5 skeins of different colored sport weight yarn (sample uses purple, yellow, green and pink pastels along with a skein of white)

(pattern is a multiple of 6 + 3)

Chain 116

Row 1 – In 5th chain from hook, *(2dc, ch 1, 2dc) in 1 stitch, sk 2 sts, (1dc, ch 1, 1dc) in next stitch, skip 2 sts*, across , (2dc, ch 1 2dc) in 1 st, 1dc in last st.

Row 2 – Rep row 1, beginning with ch 3 and inserting hook in ch 1 spaces of prev. row.

Rep Row 2 for pattern.

For Coconut Candy Pattern: Crochet 5 rows in Pink, 5 Rows White, 5 Rows Green, 5 Rows Yellow, 5 Rows Lavender. Attach pink to BACK of beginning row and follow pattern going the opposite direction.

If desired, sc around with a single color.

When the blanket is complete, weave in all ends.

pattern detail

This pattern was created for The Linus Connection of Central Texas in 2005.

Happy Crafting!

Crochet Turkey

7 Replies

Printable Pattern

Download it from Craftsy!

The date I wrote on the original copy of the pattern for this cute turkey is November 1999. The creation of the turkey came right on the heels of the Jack-O-Lantern Finger Puppet. I still think this little guy is too cute to be allowed. His appearance can vary based on what color of yarn you choose for his feathers and body.

I made the one in the photo in a little under 10 minutes. Make one or a lot and share with your friends!

Makes a Fridgie, Pin, Finger Puppet or Pencil Topper

This is a very versatile pattern for a Thanksgiving Turkey. It works up very quickly and is cute, cute, cute!

worsted weight yarn – small amounts of tan, red, yellow, orange, dark orange (or seasonal colors of your choice)
H hook
pin back or magnet (optional)
2 small google eyes

Body – with tan, ch 4, 11 dc in 3rd ch from hook. Join with sl st. Finish Off

Back Feathers – with rust and orange together, join with sl st to back loop only of any dc, (ch 6, sl st in same st, sl st to next dc) rep until six feathers are made. On last feather, do not sl st to next dc. Finish off, 6 back feathers
made.

Front Feathers – with orange, sl st in front loop opposite back feathers, (ch 4, sl st in same st, sl st to next front loop) repeat to last feather, do not sl st in next loop. 6 front feathers made. Finish off.

Head – with tan, ch 2, 6 sc in second ch from hook, sl st in first sc. Leave several inches of yarn for sewing to body.

Wattle – join red to head with a sl st in back loop of any sc, ch 4, sl st in same loop, finish off.

Beak – using yarn needle, sew yellow directly above wattle in a “T” shape, leaving top half of head free for eyes. Finish off.

Assembly – placing head on top center of body, sew using yarn left on head. Finish off. Using low melt glue or Tacky Glue, attach 2 small google eyes.

For Fridgie or Pin – glue magnet or pin on the back after eyes have dried.

For Finger Puppet or pencil topper – crochet another body and attach to back of completed turkey by stitching around. Leave four dc open at the bottom for finger or pencil. Finish off.

Visit the Turkey Craft Round Up and the Turkey Craft Round Up flickr group for more fun Turkey crafts.

Happy crafting!

This is part of my “Way Back Craft” series; patterns, crafts, tutorials and general crafty memories before the days of the blog.