christmas quilt

As soon as I saw the alphabet quilt in Stitch Magazine, I knew I had to make it for one of my favorite babies. The goal was to make it as her Christmas gift, which was slightly ambitious seeing as I was pregnant (read: tired) and had never actually made a quilt before. But it looked simple enough (usually the kiss of death for my craft projects) and used a lot of felt, which I feel relatively comfortable with.

The boxes and letters are cut out of wool felt--it's softer than regular felt that I have seen at craft stores. I was also able to buy it online in portions of yards so I was able to cut out some of the bigger letters and squares. First I sewed the letters onto the squares and then I used iron-on fusible web to stick the squares to the quilt top.

Here's the quilt all laid out and pinned up in front of the Christmas tree. I probably checked the order of the letters 25 times just to be sure.

I worked on the quilt slowly over the past couple of months and finished it on Christmas Eve--just in time! It's definitely not perfect, but for my first actual quilt, I feel like it came out pretty well. I can't wait to give it to h!

Here's the finished quilt with a peek at the comfy flannel backing...just don't look too closely at that mitered corner:


Wrapped and ready to go!

mini craftaganza

From time to time, members of the former knitting circle (when the triangle had more members) would get together at someone's house for a day of crafting (and wine and food, of course). We'd try to pick projects that could be completed during that one day. So a few weeks ago, S and I decided that instead of a normal knitting evening, we'd make Christmas stockings. S opted for Denise Schmidt's quilted stocking and I went for a felted sweater stocking, using the pattern from the book Warm Fuzzies. I like working with felted sweaters, although my husband hates having all the old sweaters and sweater pieces around the house. I need a craft storage plan, but that's another story entirely. But I have made a few baby blankets with felted sweaters in the past--the sweaters are easy to work with and projects go pretty quickly. I saw some really cool puppets made out of felted sweaters at Abodeon in Cambridge the other day and they definitely sparked my curiosity--I think I might have to try a puppet or two!

We each made one stocking that night, and I made a couple more before Christmas for the boy and the baby. Because we don't have a fireplace, here they are hanging on the stairway with care:

poinsettia wreath kit

Oh, Martha... I stumbled on a Martha Stewart poinsettia wreath kit at ACMoore last week, and debated buying it before talking myself out of it and leaving the store. I kept thinking about it, so went back to get three of them (the whole triangle needed one, obviously!) today and I'm pretty excited about it! I can't tell from the package how annoying it's going to be to make, but I'll keep you posted.

**update**
After a Greek feast of falafel, stuffed grape leaves, olives, and eggplant salad, the Knitting Triangle started working on the poinsettia wreaths. I'll be honest--there was some initial disappointment and concern when we opened the packages to find that lazy old Martha hadn't pre-cut the crepe paper for us. But baklava kept us going and we went ahead and wrapped the wreath shape with green crepe paper (while complaining that Martha could have given us a few extra inches of the paper so it wouldn't take three attempts to cover the white foam), cut out stacks of red and pink crepe paper into the poinsettia flower petals, and green leaves. For me, everything was going along fine and I was happy with the way the wreath was coming out until I got to what Martha refers to as "pips" (otherwise known as the little centers of the poinsettia flowers). These are tiny white pom poms that MS wants you to cover in crepe paper and then twist into little balls. Um. No thanks. I just went with the white pom poms and forgot about the colored centers.

Here it is hanging on the inside of my front door, looking very fun and Christmasy: