Sewing Tutorial: Baby Sleep Mittens

No matter how much we turn up the heat in the house, our bedroom always feels much colder than the rest of the hosue.  Lots of covers and warm jammies keep us warm, but we have a new roommate. And despite Tommy's layers and warm blanket sleeper, his poor little hands would become ice cubes by the time he woke up next to nurse.

So I made him a pair of baby mittens from an old felted sweater.  Here's how I did it:

I folded my felted wool fabric in half lengthwise and drew a mitten shape with chalk, eyeballing the size.  (If you're smart, you'll either generously trace your baby's hand, or measure the circumference of his wrist, or ideally both.  Eyeballing it wasn't my most shining moment in the fit department, but I was short on time, the baby was asleep and he needed to wear the mittens the same evening.  Sewing time is scant these days!)  I then cut out two of the mitten shapes, keeping in mind the need for a 1/8- to 1/4-inch seam allowance.

 

I cut a piece of elastic about 3/4 the length of the wristband and sewed it to the wrong side of the wristband, stretching it as I sewed.

Next, I folded the mitten in half lengthwise, right sides together and stitched as close to the edge as possible.  Be sure to stitch through the elastic when you get to the wristband, and not alongside it.

Turn mittens right side out and fit them onto your baby's chilly paws.  Hopefully yours fit your baby better than mine do!

Check my night vision -- I love the arms-over-head look.

 

 

Along the same vein, I made a pair of slippers for Nathan using this tutorial from Collecting the Moments. 

 

I used puffy paint to make the bottoms non-slip, or less slip, anyway.  I couldn't get this kid to stand still if I paid him!

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Robins, Robins Everywhere – How to Install Glass Eyes

I looked out my kitchen window a few weeks ago and saw more than fifteen robins searching for worms in my front lawn.  Fifteen!  How I wish I’d had my camera handy.  But later that day Nathan and I went out for a walk and I captured this photo of a robin near our driveway.

Then I was inspired to make this needle felted robin with glass eyes:

What better way to celebrate the coming of spring each year than with an almost life-sized needle felted robin?

The glass eyes add a touch of realism thanks to the way they reflect light.  I get them from glasseyes.com (Etsy shop: JNCSHOP).  

Here’s how I install glass eyes on my needle felted creations:

Gather your materials:

Do you see an orange and black theme here?  Unintentional, but enjoyed none the less.

Needle felted object

Needle felting tool

Glass eyes

X-Acto knife

Wire cutting tool

Pins with balls on the ends in contrasting colors (for marking)

Superglue (accidentally omitted from photo) – Note: Don’t use superglue for colored eyes (meaning colors other than black). I’ve read that superglue reacts with the eyes' colors and brightens them significantly.

  

Get started:

1. Carefully decide where you want to install the eyes and, with your needle felting tool, needle eye sockets so the eyes aren’t resting on top of the object’s head.

2. Test out your socket placement with the pins.  This will give you an idea on whether or not your placement is symmetrical.

Other than the fact that these orange pins make my robin look very evil, the eye placement looks good. I wish I’d taken a look at my robin from this angle earlier when I was adding white around her eyes.  I’ll have to go back and fix that later.

3. Cut a slit in the eye sockets with the knife so you can slide the eyes into place.  (They don’t go in as easily as the pins with their tapered, sharp points.)

4. Cut the eyes’ wire to separate them; shorten the wire so it’s a reasonable length for your piece.

5. Test the eyes in their sockets, being sure to match the angles of the eye wires.  Like what you see?  Now it’s time to glue them in.

6. Working with one eye at a time, put a dab of superglue on the end of each eye wire and push it through the socket.  For a little extra insurance, you can add some glue directly to the glass eye – recommended for black eyes only.  (The glue may react with non-black eyes and change the color.)  I like LocTite’s Super Glue Control Gel because it’s easy to squeeze out the right amount and it stays where I put it.

The eyes after gluing:

Now it’s time for a beak, yes?

Wait until you see what I have planned for these friendly eyes:

They’re sewn in instead of glued in, so I’ll explain how I install those when the time comes.  The piece needs to be kept secret (it’s a gift!), so I’ll post the tutorial after it’s been done and gifted, sometime next month.

  
 

 

Felted Leaves Table Runner; Wool Felting Tips

I just finished up my felted leaves table runner and napkin rings for my Thanksgiving table.  As I did the somewhat boring task hand felting, I thought about all the things I’ve learned about felting over the years and thought I’d share them here.  If anyone has any wool felting tips to add, please share them your comments!

Here goes:

1. Machine felting is perfect for objects that won’t get distorted by all the agitation in the washing machine.  (Loosely knit or crocheted objects and things with long straps, like some purses, are most likely to distort in the wash.)  I hand felted my table runner pieces before stitching them together.  Here are a few machine felting tips:
    
1. If your washing machine water doesn’t get hot enough on the hot cycle, add a kettleful of near-boiling water.  If you can comfortably leave your hand in the stream of water that fills up your washer, it’s not hot enough.
    
2. Put your wool pieces in a pillowcase and tie it shut to keep the inside of your washing machine free of wool fibers and to minimize distortion.
    
3. Toss a towel (I’ve heard old jeans work, too, but I still wear my old jeans and care if they fit!) in alongside the pillowcase and set the washer to the smallest hot setting available.
    
4. Check the pieces often, especially if there is a risk of distortion.  Don’t let them go through the rinse or spin cycles.  The cold rinse halts the felting process and spinning can distort and cause deep creases in your pieces
    
2. When hand felting in the sink, wear rubber gloves for more friction during the felting process.  I’ve found that wool felts faster when rubbed against rubber gloves than when rubbed against itself or other wool pieces.  Also, rubber gloves help your hands tolerate hotter water.
    
3. Add near-boiling water to hot water from the tap for faster felting.
    
4. Pre-soak your objects in really hot water before starting to felt them.  This helps the wool fibers relax and open so objects felt faster when you start agitating them.  You can do this on the stovetop for the hottest near-boiling water possible; fish out your pieces with a pair of tongs.
    
5. This is my favorite tip yet, something I did for the first time with my napkin rings: For small objects that aren’t too loosely knit or crocheted, machine felt them first in a pillowcase, and THEN hand felt them to lose stitch definition.

In the washing machine, my napkin rings shrunk and tightened up very nicely, but didn’t lose any stitch definition.  At all.  So I sighed, broke out my rubber gloves and put on the kettle.  I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they lost stitch definition – and I didn’t have to wait for them to shrink and tighten up!  It was awesome, and quite the revelation.  Before putting these bad boys in the washing machine I presoaked them in a pot of near-boiling water on the stovetop, which I think helped with the shrinkage, but clearly not the loss of stitch definition.  The problem was they were too small to feel any of the agitation going on in the washing machine.



This is the first time I’ve felted something crocheted.  Crocheted fabric doesn’t lose stitch definition as nicely as knit fabric does.  Also, these were crocheted so loosely that I had to felt them more gently than I would have liked.  The napkin rings came out better, since they got tightened up in the washing machine and I could felt them more vigorously. Photos coming soon.

 I hope you find these tips useful for your next felting project.

Enjoy the weekend!

Planning my Thanksgiving Table; a New Family Tradition

With Thanksgiving just a month away, it’s time to start planning my Thanksgiving table. Now that we have a family of our own, gone are the days of traveling to our parents’ houses for dinner and trying to see both of our families in one or two days—a new tradition is born. This year we’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner, a new tradition for our little family and a great way to bring both sets of grandparents together.

I’m making Lion Brand’s felted leaves table runner and fall leaves napkin rings. All I need to do is assemble a bowl of gourds, make another fall leaf garland, dig out the beeswax candles and buy a new tablecloth and my Thanksgiving table will be complete! Now to decide on the menu. I love how I worry about crafts and decorating before the meal itself.

I’m looking forward to gathering with family to celebrate the things I’m thankful for all year long.

I’m Having a Yarn Dilemma. Which option would you choose? WWYHD?

So I cast on Knit Picks’ Gallatin Sweater a week ago, and I’m enjoying it so far. Lured by the pattern’s seamless design (this is the second time in my blog’s short life where I mention that I hate seaming) and ability to increase the length of the sweater to mid-thigh with the amount of yarn included in the kit (it even shows you where to add length and gives two options on how to go about doing it), I am happy with the motif options and surprised that I’m even enjoying the stranded colorwork. I’ve knitted from the bottom of the sweater up to the hip, and everything’s looking good so far.

And then it hit me today – things are looking too good. I had the panicked thought – what if I run out of the fawn-colored yarn (CC1)? Am I adding length the way the pattern expects me to? This is where reading a pattern can get a little tricky, especially if it’s not very well-written. Patterns can be vague and confusing – or flat-out wrong – and I usually find grammatical and spelling errors and typos, and I swear I’m not actually looking for them.

So the pattern says I can add langth (yes, langth) to the sweater by knitting more rows of bare (undyed, MC1) Wool of the Andes Bulky within the patterned bands.  But for the cool arrowhead-looking motif I selected, I think it would ruin its coolness to add more rows of white within the two dark brown (CC2) rows, leaving the arrowhead things floating in white, disconnected from the dark brown stripes.

The second option is to add more patterned bands within the fawn-colored background. So that’s what I chose to do, and got busy doing to the math to avoid having to knit that same patterned band four times in a row – three would look better and be easier to work.

However, all that math made me use more fawn-colored yarn than I think I should have…the pattern says “the yardage requirements in this pattern are sufficient to lengthen the piece to mid-thigh, or add a total of 40 additional rows of knitting to the piece as written.” Since the pattern spells out only the first option (explained in the paragraph above), does that mean I’m screwed? Will I run out of fawn-colored yarn?

I’d hate to get to the shoulders of this thing and find out I should have gone back and changed my approach from the beginning. But I’ve been knitting it on and off for the past week, and the stranded colorwork is coming out so nicely. I’d hate to rip it back now. The hopeful little voice in the back of my head tells me I could always buy another skein of the fawn-colored yarn, but the knitting stickler in me says I know it will be from a different dye lot. Sigh.

Here are my options:

A)      Ignore the knitting stickler in me and keep knitting, hoping that because I’m knitting the third size (medium) and the kit includes yarn for a sweater three sizes bigger I’ll be in the clear.
 

B)      Listen to the knitting stickler in me and rip back and knit four patterned bands with less fawn-colored background in between.
 

C)      Tune into the hopeful little voice and pretend dye lots don’t exist. Maybe the way the pattern stripes work out the slight color change won’t be so noticeable if I need to buy another skein.
 

D)      Stifle all the voices and shove the sweater, needles and all, into my bin of UFOs.

Note: I’ll never really choose D, as this yarn was an early Christmas gift from my husband, so don’t pick D.

Which option would you choose?

And better yet, what would the Yarn Harlot do?  (WWYHD)

Handmade Birthday

Even though I love making things myself, I’m not averse to buying things, and that includes birthday cards. But when 10-month-old Nathan couldn’t take another minute of shopping, I had to bag the birthday card search for my mom (why on Earth were the mom-themed birthday cards so hard to find?!) and head home cardless.

Once Nathan was napping I looked around my craft room for ideas. I had Hello Kitty stickers in one hand…and in the other….yarn. No, roving! I ditched the stickers, rifled through my roving bin and found a piece of cardstock. And then I made this:

I don’t know if it’s sacrilege to glue wool to paper, but I made up my own rules that day, and it paid off. Happy Birthday, Mom.
 

WIP: A Sweater for Nathan

It’s almost finished!  This cardigan sweater was both a joy and a pain to knit.  I love the cables and how the yoke is constructed so it can be knit in one piece (I hate seaming), but I don’t like how the pattern is written.  The shawl collar came out wonky, and after ripping it back and trying something different (did I mention the how badly it was written?) I’m just going to fold it under and stitch it so it looks the way I want it to. 

The sleeves are really narrow in the forearms, so I might try to undo the cast-on edges and make them a little wider.  Other than that, I just need to kitchener stitch the armpits closed, block it and add some buttons.

I think he knows it's a Mr. Rogers sweater.

On a fall decorating note, my family room mantle is complete!  Rebecca from Bending Birches showed me how to create fall garland from colorful fall leaves.  It adds the finishing touch to my fall home and I love how it came out. Thanks, Rebecca!