Nightgown Dismay

One of the nightgowns that I made for my granddaughters was a mishap.  The flannel was very soft, and I thought it would make a nice nightgown.  The problem was that the material kept falling apart at the seams and at the neck edge. It simply frayed apart.  Dot was so unhappy so I told her I would make her another one.  They don't take much time at all.  She wanted the doggie material.  I didn't think I had enough because that is what I used for Portia's. However, since I made the yoke and sleeves of Portia's out of pink, and since Portia's was smaller anyway, I was able to have enough material to make one for Dot out of the material she wanted.  I still needed to make the yoke pink and I cut out one of the doggies and appliqued it to the pink yoke.  I had just enough material and I think it came out really cute.

The new nightgown.

The first nightgown which she could only wear about once.

This shows how the material frayed at the neck edge.  This is also what it did at the seams.

As a side project, I have been working on the afghan for Keeping America Warm.  I need to knit 49 squares and I have finished about 30 of them.  Hope I get this thing done in time for this winter.  If not, then it will be for next winter.  Either way, I will still ship it off to the organization if they are still doing it.  I started this project last year and I haven't checked to see if they are still doing it.  If not, then I will have a nice gift for someone.

Nightgowns and Jammies

I just decided to make some nightgowns for my little girls.  Portia only wears nightgowns, and it seemed like she only had one when I was visiting just after Christmas.  Since I was making a couple for her, I decided I should make some for the other little girls around here.  Joey also wanted pajamas out of the material that I had used to make pajama bottoms for Ellis at Christmas time.  Here are the little ones in their new sleep clothes, except for Portia.  I will not be able to get them to her yet.

L to R: Dot, Joey, Lucy, Lexi

Above and below: Portia's without the model.

I also have finished another sewing project which I will show later.  I want to wait to get pictures with a model.  My son, Marty, asked me to convert graduation robes into Rocky style robes for a production that his high school is doing.  I had to cover the white yokes with red, add a hood, belt and belt loops.  I had to make twenty robes.  I started cutting out the pieces on Sunday and was able to get them all sewed by today.  Not bad, but I am glad they are finished.

Big Brother, Baby Brother

I just have to have something to work on.  I got the idea the other day to make a hat for Joey's teacher's four-year-old son.  I had already made the sweater for the baby to be and gave him the elephant hat that I made ages ago, but was too small for the intended baby.  I don't like the older sibling to not get anything, so I thought about making him an animal hat like I had made for my grand children for Christmas.  When I was deciding which hat to make, I came up with another idea to make the hat for the big brother and a matching toy for the baby brother.  Since I had patterns for a frog hat and a frog toy, I chose the frog hat and made the toy frog to go along with it.

The hat turned into a nightmare. I forgot when I made this hat for Ezra, that it was much smaller than the other hat patterns.  I got away with it with Ezra because he is so small, but I needed a bigger hat for this boy.  I started in making the largest size the pattern gives, but after getting well into the top of the hat, I could see that it was going to be way too small.  I measured across and it was only about twelve inches.  A hat needs to be at least twenty inches to stretch around a four-year-old head.  I took it all out (not without many struggles).  I was using double strand yarn and two different colors.  That meant that I was carrying across eight balls of yarn, just to get the changes needed in the two colors.  It is hard enough to knit with so many balls of yarn, but taking it out is even more of a challenge because of all the times the yarn is crossed to keep from having holes where the colors change.  Also, when you pull out double strands of yarn, they get all twisted in such a way that it is almost impossible to separate them.  Well, I managed to get it out, readjusted the stitch count and started in again.  Once again, after getting far enough along to see how wide it would be, I found out that it still would not be big enough.  Out came the work again.  This time, I almost doubled the number of stitches, but when I got done, it was what I needed.  Lucky for me, when I increased the stitches, I had added the right ratio of stitches to meet the decreasing needs.  Since eight stitches are decreased in a decrease row, I needed to add a multiple of eight stitches to get the pattern to work correctly.  Totally by accident, I had increased by a multiple of eight, so it was easy to make the decreases for the crown.  I was soooooo happy about that.  I couldn't even get all the face pieces on correctly the first time I did them.  The eyes were too high on the head and they were looking up, instead of forward.  They still are more than I would like, but I am not going to take them off a second time.  The nose buttons were supposed to be higher on the hat on the darker color.  I put them there, but they were almost invisible because the green was too dark for the black to show up on.  I took them off and placed them just at the top of the lighter green so they would be more visible. It took me three days to do a project that normally takes only one day to complete.

The toy was a joy to make.  It only took me half a day to finish it.  I finished the hat this morning and completed the whole toy this afternoon and evening.  The only thing I had to do over on the toy was the mouth.  I had done it in black like it showed, but again, because of the dark green color, the black did not show up.  I decided to just use the lighter green, and it looks better.  The two look very much alike, so they will make this project completed the way I had intended on having it.

Baby Brother's frog toy

Big brother's frog hat

Joey modeling the froggy hat

Big Brother, Baby Brother

Who knows what I will do next.  I know I will soon be converting graduation robes into "Rocky" robes for something Marty needs done for a high school production.  I think I need to do about seventeen of them.  I already made one to see what I would need to do.  By using the material from one robe, I can cover the white yoke of the gown so that it looks more like a boxer robe, than a graduation one.  I also made a hood, belt, and belt loops with some more of the material from that robe. When finished, I think it looked pretty good.  He needs to show it to his colleagues, to see if they like it.  When he brings me the robes, I will get to work on them.  He doesn't need them till March or April, but I never like to wait when I have a project to do.

Baby Afghan Finally Finished

I started making a baby afghan quite some time ago.  I was going to make it for a lady at church, but it was taking me too long, so I put it aside and decided it would be for someone else that would be having a boy.  I started in again after Christmas, intending on making it for Joey's teacher.  I took a trip to Maine and needed something to work on, but since the afghan needed to carry six balls of yarn across for each row, I knew it would be too much to try to keep straight in the car.  It is hard enough to keep six balls of yarn at once working without getting tangled, even when I have lots of room to do it in.  Anyway, I decided to once again abandon the afghan project for that baby, and made the sweater I showed last time, instead.  After I got back home and had finished the sweater, I decided to get back to the afghan, this time intending it to be for my friend's daughter who is having a boy.  I designed this afghan on my own.  I am quite pleased with the outcome, but it was a little difficult to do with so many balls of yarn being used at one time.  It took awhile to figure out, but after doing it so many times, I finally found a way to arrange my balls and cross them as I was going, to be sure they would not be tangled in a knot when I got to the end of each row.

Afghan is done all in once piece, except for the shapes.  I made them separately and sewed them onto the blocks.

 My biggest challenge with this was to make the shapes.  I had intended on making a circle, square, triangle, and rhombus.  However, when I finished my first shape, it was an octagon, instead of a circle.  I soon realized that it was easier to make straight edges, so I proceeded to make these shapes.  I was still going to make the square, but decided it would cover up too much of the background, so I changed it to the pentagon.  The rhombus was the only shape that turned out as I had envisioned it in the beginning.  The triangle had to be changed to the hour glass shape, using the two triangles, because I couldn't figure out how to get it tall enough with the number of stitches wide that I was limited to.  All in all, I think it looks fine this way.

Post Christmas Projects

Christmas is over, so I have a few pictures to post of people wearing some of the things I made.  I have also finished two more projects since Christmas.  I made a fox hat for Ellen and a baby sweater for my grandson's teacher.  I think I forgot to take a picture of the fox hat, so I may not be able to show that.  It really came out nice, so I wish I could show it.  However, it is in Maine, and I am not.

Zoe wearing her bunny hat as she checks out her other things from Grandma.

Joey in his monkey hat while he plays with other things from Grandma.

Isamu thinks his elephant hat is awesome.

Little froggy Ezra checks out other things with his mom.

Lucy makes a pretty cute little koala.

This little cat (Portia) and mouse (Dot) look like good friends.

This is the Iron Man costume I made for Ellis for Halloween.  He makes a powerful Iron Man.

Ellen modeling her Christmas sweater.

"Meow," says kitty Portia.

Sweater for Mrs. Bettencourt, Joey's teacher.

As I figured, I did forget to take a picture of the fox hat.  I also did not get pictures of all the ladies wearing their sweaters.  I should have because they all put them on to show me, but I wasn't thinking at the time.  I didn't get a picture of Ellis wearing his dog hat, but it was cute.  Jackson wouldn't let me get a front shot of his cow hat, so I didn't show it, either.  I already blogged a picture of Lexi wearing her chicken hat when I thought it was going to be for Portia.  It ended up fitting Lexi better, so I gave it to her instead.  That concludes the hats.  I know that TW and Tony got good use out of their slippers this past week while Tony and I were in Maine visiting.  It was really cold in the house because all they have is one wood stove to heat the whole house and the water pipes are frozen for the base board heat.  Temperatures were anywhere from ten above to twenty-five below zero outside.  The house never got above sixty degrees, so it was nice to have something warm on the feet.  Both of them wore their slippers constantly in the house.

Portia's Art Apron

I started the apron first thing this morning by designing a pattern that I thought would fit the bill for the request of an art apron for Portia; one that would hold her brushes.  I was fortunate enough to find some perfect material for the project.  One piece was actually an old curtain that someone had given to me with other scrap materials that they had no use for.  I can find a use for almost anything.  I searched my supply for something to use as a contrast material for the pockets.  I had in mind something different, but could not find what I was looking for.  I'm kind of glad, because the piece I found was even better than the other would have been.  I had planned on just using this material for the contrast, but I had so much of it that I decided to make the apron reversible so that one side was the solid blue and the other side was with the plaid material.  I made pockets of each material so that I could have the pockets in the contrast color for both sides.  Here is the final results.

Side one shows the stitching that gives the pockets little compartments for the brushes and other such things.

Side two with brushes.

A slightly larger model than the apron is intended for is not too happy about wearing the apron.

I managed to get a smile out of him modeling this side of the apron.

Do I dare say that I am done with Christmas projects.  Ooops, not yet.  I still have chocolates to make.  Maybe that will be for tomorrow.

Slacks Are Done

Since Cheryl did not want the sweater, I made her a pair of slacks that she can use for work at school.  The material is soft and it doesn't wrinkle, but it does fray at the edges.  That made for some pretty messy work.  I couldn't get two seams done without them fraying so much that I was getting frayed threads sewn in and some were even showing on the outside of the garment.  I had to do a lot of seam reinforcing with bias tape and zig zagging.  Even the zig zags still showed a lot of frayed strings which needed to be trimmed after I finished the sewing.  Both sides of the material looked exactly the same, so there seemed to be no right or wrong side.  That made things a little difficult, too.  I had to keep taking it out in the pockets, yoke, and zipper because I seemed to keep getting things reversed as far as the right side and the wrong side of the material, especially in the pocket area.  I am pleased that everything lays flat, with no puckering around the zipper and pocket area.  It was hard to keep everything exactly in the right place for sewing, especially with so much taking out and redoing, and with material that was fraying all over the place.  I had her try them on before I finished the yoke.  I ended up having to take it out just a tiny around the waist area.  Everything else fit well.  She only wanted a tiny hem because she likes her pants to cover her shoes and just be slightly off the ground.  I had some iron on hem tape which I used so that I only had to take it up half an inch.  That also made it easy to deal with the fraying.

This is a close up of the front. It doesn't hang as well as it lays flat, but I wanted to show the pocket and zipper area.

Full view again does not hang well, but it gives a general idea of how they look.

I worked on another small project today for Lexi and Joey to take to school for their classmates for Christmas, instead of sending cards. I made little green Christmas stockings (green because I didn't have any red felt and I had tons of green).  After I sewed them, Lexi and Joey got to decorate them with stick on foam decorations.  Then, they stuffed them with a Christmas pencil and a candy cane.

These are just three of Joey's to show as a sample of what they look like. They made 24 altogether.

Just when I thought I was finished with everything, my son called today and asked if I could make an art apron for Portia, who is: two going on ten, or there abouts.  She is so grown up for her age, and she just loves to paint.  She needs to have lots of pockets to hold her brushes.  I will get right on that tomorrow.  It is after midnight and way too late tonight to start another project.  I am just happy to have the pants all finished.  That is the last of the individual presents that I need to make.