Two last projects for 2013

Now that Christmas is over, I can show one of my more recent secret projects! And even though most of my "craft" time since then has been "completely reorganize the craft room" time, I did take a break from it on Saturday night to knock out another project. So I thought I'd share.

First up are these placemats, which I (partially) made for my mother-in-law. I can't take credit for too much on here--making them in the first place was Doug's idea, and I honestly would not have been able to get these done even remotely on time without some greatly appreciated help from my own mom. I did the quilting and cutting, but she cut and sewed on all of the binding strips and also did the majority of the hand-sewing for that. Thanks, Mom!













A close-up of the fabrics. The penguins are because my mother-in-law is pretty much obsessed with them--seriously, she loves anything with a penguin on it! And Doug thought this would be more practical than another figurine. The flip side with the Christmas puppies are because the lighter one in particular strongly resembles the older of our two dogs, which she also loves a lot. It's really hard to find penguin fabric that isn't blatantly Christmas, but I'm glad I succeeded, because then she can use them more often.

The other project I finished over the weekend was for the #SewGreenDecember sewalong that the Sewcialists on Twitter have been doing. It's another Renfrew, my third one now, so there's not too terribly much to say, other than this:

1. This was my first time doing the V-neck. It's not quite as crisp of a V as I would have preferred, due to the fabric, but I'm proud of how it turned out nonetheless.

2. The fabric itself is a very drape-y, more or less a textured slinky knit. Thus the not-crisp V. The other effect that this had was that this one seems to have ended up a little longer than my other ones. The sleeves in particular do bunch around my wrists a bit, and pull down to handwarmer length. I don't mind this, actually, since my hands do get cold frequently. My only regret is that I didn't think to add thumb holes until after I tried it on! As for the print, all I can think when I look at it is that it's like a closeup of Impressionist shrubbery. Which is probably what this shirt will end up being called on the sidebar, because I'm not-clever like that.

3. Since it was already cut out, this was super-quick. It's really nice to have a TNT pattern that I can knock out in a few hours while watching tv. It's also nice that I was able to use up a piece of fabric that has been sitting in the stash since before I started this blog!

So now I've done all 3 neckline options, and two of the three sleeve lengths on this pattern. I'm sure there will be more, though I don't have any more planned for the semi-immediate future.

I do have one more end-of-year post I'll need to do, since I did get some fun crafty/handmade things for Christmas that I wanted to show off. I'm also in the middle of inventorying my fabric (on a spreadsheet) and my yarn (on Ravelry), to give me something tangible to track in my stashbusting efforts. I do have to say that the numbers on my fabric are embarrassing at the moment--I haven't quite finished due to finding some things in unexpected places (and another fabric purchase that Gillian and Heather completely enabled me on, when I commented on Twitter that I had an Archer pattern and literally nothing to use for it), but at last count, I was over 320 yards! And that's not even counting scraps! Yikes!