Completed Buffy the Vampire Slayer cross stitch

I'm happy to report that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cross stitch that I started in January has now been completed and given to its appreciative recipient. This is the second weelittlestitches pattern that I've completed and I love their style! Go Canadian pattern designers!

This project was my companion for many ferry trips and a few crafty get togethers with preschool moms. People usually didn't recognize the characters, but I knew that Janet would know who they were. Janet (pictured under a stack of stuffed animals and dinosaurs, provided by Sophia), is a Buffy nerd and plans to watch the entire series again starting this fall. I know my work will have a place of honour in her new home.

In case you're not as familiar with the Joss Whedon oeuvre, the characters from left to right are Spike, Willow, Angel, Buffy (complete with crucifix necklace and stake), Xander, and Giles.

And cause I'm always curious to see what the back of the work looks like, I'm throwing in this shot for you. 

Have you tried a weelittlestitches pattern? They have something for everyone from Star Wars to Pretty in Pink!

Pysanky 2012

It's Easter weekend and in my family that means it's time to write pysanky! Every Good Friday we have a huge egg decorating/baking/chocolate making party at my parents' place. Over the years, we've experimented with a variety of styles of egg decorating. Although we don't have any Ukrainian heritage, we've discovered the art of pysanky. It's a wax resist process where you write on the egg with a kistka, a tool that leaves a line of beeswax on your egg. I usually create the traditional designs but this year I wanted to try a quilting-based pattern. Here are our creations for 2012!

 This egg has tumbling blocks design which you're probably familiar with if you're a quilter! I used the step by step illustrations in the wonderful book Decorating Eggs: Exquisite Designs with Wax & Dye by Jane Pollak to create my egg.

 After the inital lines were applied. Ready for the first dye bath!

After the first dye bath, I applied wax to the diamonds to protect the light blue colour while dipping the egg into the dye again to get a darker blue. (sorry for the blurry photo!)

 My husband is a skilled pysanky writer as well and this year he went with chevrons, a very on-trend design.

He also made this striped egg. 

Have you ever tried pysanky? If you want to give it a try, I'd recommend Baba's Beeswax (based in Richmond, BC) for all the supplies you need. Did you decorate any eggs this week?

Canadian cross stitch

I'm a Canadian. As a typical Canadian, I'm not often overtly patriotic, but when I saw this Bob and Doug McKenzie cross stitch pattern, I knew I had to drop everything and stitch it up. Nothing says Canadian like these two hosers:

Bob & Doug McKenzie, pattern by weelittlestitches

If you're not familiar with these Canadian icons (I didn't know about them until my high-school-boyfriend-now-husband made me watch Strange Brew in the early 90s), they're SCTV characters created by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas in 1980. Bob and Doug are beer-drinking, donut-eating, hockey-playing, toque-wearing hosers. They went on to star in their very own version of Hamlet, a movie called Strange Brew. Here's the movie poster:

My husband and co-worker went as Doug and Bob for Halloween last year complete with donuts, accents and even stubby beer bottles with Elsinore brewery labels. They won third prize. Beauty, eh? The resemblance is uncanny!

Anyway, when I saw the cross stitch pattern I knew it would be perfect for Dean's desk at work. I found all the floss at Homecraft Importers, refreshed my memory on how to do cross stitch (it had been about fifteen years, but it's just like riding a bike), and stitched all weekend.

How's it goin' eh?

Bob and Doug fit perfectly into a regular 4x6 frame. The text reads: "Take off, you hoser!"

So go ahead, show your Canadian pride and stitch up Bob & Doug for yourself! If you prefer other pop culture icons, weelittlestitches has patterns for characters from Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pretty in Pink, the Golden Girls, Lord of the Rings, and so much more! Beauty, eh?

Potential

This photo from last Saturday shows all my cross stitch supplies ready to be put into use on a new and exciting project. I haven't cross stitched for over a decade, but it all came back to me quickly and I'll reveal the project I made very soon (just have to finish a few last details!). In the meantime, you can browse weelittlestitches' pattern shop and decide which pop culture pixel people you just have to make!

Thanks to Austen Gilliland of the make + do blog for the inspiration to post a crafty photo today!

Halloween Guild Meeting

It's the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild's October meeting tonight, hooray! I always look forward to these meetings and have a great time at them. Tonight will be my first meeting as guild president, wow! I thought I'd add a little seasonal decoration, so I made a VMQG mini pumpkin (It's proudly showing off on top of the sock monkey quilt the guild gave me last year). See you there!

Felt cupcakes as favours

I'd like to share one of my last crafting accomplishments that will happen before the baby is born (that mid-March due date is approaching fast!). Last weekend, we had a birthday party for my daughter and gave out "Make Your Own Cupcake" Kits as favours. Just a week before the party, I found a tutorial for making felt cupcakes by Rachel Meeks of Small Notebook on Alpha Mom and loved the idea. My daughter has been "baking" non-stop and I hope her little friends enjoyed these kits!

The mountain of felt scraps in my workspace after cutting out 32 cupcakes, 32 icing pieces, 32 baking cups and assorted decorations. I spaced out the cutting throughout the week and, surprisingly, my hands never got too sore!

Everything ready to be sorted into goody bags. Each child received 4 cupcakes (lemon, butter pecan (a family favourite), vanilla and chocolate), 4 types of icing (chocolate, purple, vanilla and light pink), 4 baking cups (light blue, hot pink, white and brown), and four decorations (birthday candle, star, heart and first letter of their name).

Cupcake components

The finished product!

The Snail and the Whale

Our house is full of books, especially kids' books, and a great one that we were introduced to by the lovely Mia is "The Snail and the Whale" by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. It's a lovely story of an adventurous snail who hitches a lift on the tail of a humpback whale in order to see the world.


When I bought Sophie some whale pajamas from the consignment store, she requested that I add a snail on the tail of the whale. This week, I finally pulled out my needle and thread and granted her wish.


We were both pleased with the results!

Holiday Traditions Exchange

This year, I participated in the Holiday Traditions Exchange organized by the creative and inspiring blogger Meg McElwee at Sew Liberated. In this exchange, you are matched with someone from around the world (most participants are in the US) and you are asked to send them:
1.) One handmade holiday decoration.
2.) Your family's favorite holiday recipe.
3.) A “Tradition” Tutorial. This is a description of one of your family’s special holiday traditions.

I know that my parcel has been received, so I can share what I sent to my partner (who, ironically, lives not too far away in Washington State!).


2 DVDs of Christmas Cartoon Classics, a Christmas Pop Mix CD, a copy of "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry, a fair trade chocolate bar, a sparkly Christmas necklace, and a recipe for Butterscotch Squares, plus:


The recipe for Aunt Lizzie's Peppermint Squares


Complete with diagram!


A pear ornament made using Retromama's pattern


A felt ornament with one of my first attempts at embroidery. Pattern from Fantastic Toys.

It was so much fun to reflect on my favourite holiday traditions while creating this package. Now I can't wait to see what arrives in the mail for me!

9. Personalize at least three onesies for new babies.

I have now personalized three onesies for some little ones that have entered the world in the past year. The most recent one was ironed on and then embroidered around the edges and I was quite pleased with the results. I also made a matching pair of booties (they turned out really tiny!) and a burp cloth (sent them off before remembering to take a photo!). Such easy and fun projects!

Patchwork mosaic

I've been quilting since 1994, back in the olden days when we didn't have digital cameras. Fortunately, we got ourselves a newfangled camera in 2003 and haven't looked back. Here's a sampling of my more recent quilts. I used the mosaic maker at BigHugeLabs.com to create this image. I'll try to add more quilts to my flickr set at some point.

From Canada to India

Not me, but one of my quilts. Over the weekend, I put together a small baby quilt to contribute to Craft Hope's Project #3. Craft Hope is a love inspired project designed to share handmade crafts with those less fortunate around the world.

I came across Craft Hope in my daily blog reading and wanted to contribute. My quilt will be going to help the babies at an Indian orphanage.


I wanted the fishy fat quarter to stay intact so you could see the large fish pattern, so I simply surrounded it with colourful squares.


Instead of using batting and creating a quilt that might be too warm for the climate, I simply sewed a snuggly flannel backing to the cotton top of the blanket and I'm happy with the light, yet cosy, result.


I'm sure the good folks at Craft Hope have more ideas and I'll be keeping my sewing machine at the ready for future projects.

11. Knit or crochet a hat.

This soft and sweet hat was delivered to a sleepy little three-week-old boy today. The pattern is called "simple hat" from "baby knits for beginners" by Debbie Bliss. I used US size 6 needles (4mm diameter) and just under one 50g ball of sage Rowan cashcotton dk (doubleknit) yarn that had 18% angora and 9% cashmere in it to make the hat super cosy.

I started this hat on double pointed needles about five times. I wasn't getting the results I wanted and I still haven't figured out how to use dpns. However, when I pretended the dpns were regular needles, all went well. I made the 6-9 month size because this baby was 9lbs 7oz at birth and I figured he'd be growing fast.

Now I can't wait to start another knitting project! (but I've got a quilt and a hanky in the works, so I'd better finish those up first!)

Hooray for pysanky!

For years and years, I've been writing pysanky at Eastertime. For those not in the know, pysanky are Ukrainian eggs decorated using a wax resist method. It requires patience, attention to detail and a good dose of persnickety-ness to do them well. Fortunately, I have all those qualities in spades (granted, the patience is an on-again, off-again thing with me!).

I made the egg in the above photo in March 2008 and I can't wait until Good Friday to do a new batch. I bought ten different coloured dyes from the local craft store and I just know some fabulous eggs are ready to be created!

Just in case you haven't seen enough pysanky yet, here's one with a rooster design that I did back in 2005 to share with my primary students. Yes, I have even taught pysanky to five-year-olds!

How (part of) Trisha's quilt went on a trip to Australia

Back in the fall, when I was working on Trish & Erik's wedding quilt, I ran across some photos of an amazing dress made of selvedges. (If you're not in the know, selvedges are the little strips at the edge of a bolt of fabric that show the designer and the colours used in the fabric.) I cut off the selvedges from the huge piece of green backing fabric because I had a feeling that the amazing dressmaker would be looking for more selvedges in future.

To most people, selvedges are to be thrown away. To Jodie, they are treasure. So, I'm packing up four metres of selvedges and sending them off to Australia so she can create another stunning piece like this:



Check out Jodie's blog for more selvedge projects and lots of photos of the amazing dress. P.S. Jodie, if you're reading this: "Hi! and thanks for getting me inspired to blog about my quilting!"