I was trying to figure out a gift for P, who was turning 30 and was having a party and I have known since we were 13. I couldn’t think of anything to buy her, but then I had a brainwave: a celebratory patchwork wall hanging!

Inspiration for this comes from the gorgeously inspiring book quilted memories, which is full of bright, whimsical quilt ideas and I have always loved to look through. I should really buy myself a copy of it, now that I come to think about it. Ah well. This book has a birthday cake quilt and a smaller cupcake one. P had something like 100 cupcakes for her wedding cake, so I knew she liked them. Here’s how the process of making my one went.

Saturday last week: Picked out the fabrics. Choosing the base background was easy, P loves blue and the stars lend a celebratory aspect. The other colours were less easy to pick as I don’t really have fabrics which are a solid colour. Got there in the end though, and ironed everything.

Sunday: Trip to spotlight where I bought fusible webbing (which is like big sheets of fabric double sided tape) so that I could do applique. Drew my cupcake on the paper side of the webbing, ironed the pieces onto the different fabrics, cut them out, ironed them onto the backing. Started cutting out and sewing up the borders.

Monday: during DVD and TV watching time on Sunday and Monday I finished all the blanket stitching around the edges of the cupcake and cherry. I did this with embroidery floss for contrast and prettiness. Attached borders and assembled quilt with batting and backing. Began hand quilting.

Tuesday: hand quilting during roleplaying, decided on swirly lines around the cupcake, added buttons and an embroidery floss ‘30′ in commemoration, straight lines down the borders.

Wednesday: More hand quilting at afternoon tea, completed it in the evening and added hearts in the corners of the borders.

Thursday: No work done on quilt as at writing workshop. Anxiously hoped it would be finished in time.

Friday: Sewed binding strips onto two sides at lunchtime and started binding. Finished binding during Hellboy 2 movie night, added more buttons for interest, rick rack loops for hanging and a personalised message label on the back. Done, with a whole day to go!

Nom nom nom

So, I’m a total pro at making the sock monkeys now. I have given one to my friend Sophie and one to my workmate Sophia for her unborn baby.

monkey family

That’s a picture of all the monkeys I have in my house right now. To the right left you can see the pale brown monkey with the serial killer pale blue eyes. Lee is a bit scared of that one. Steve bonded with him the other day, though. Not too sure what this means.

In the middle is the weeny little monkey I made on craft Saturday out of socks for a 7 year old girl. He’s adorable! Like, so, so cute. It’s the newest best thing I’ve ever made since the rainbow sock monkey.

In fact, here’s his butt.

monkeybutt

I was inspired by the sock monkeys at Craft 2.0, but rather than buying one I figured I could try making one myself. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for years and years.

Using these instructions, I have the instructions for making one. It’s a pretty classic pattern, going back to the last big worldwide depression, the 1930s.

To start with I cleared out my sock drawer and took out a pile of socks I couldn’t remember the last time I wore. There were also a bunch of socks that the elastic was perishing on, so they make a crackling noise when you stretch them. It’s off putting when you’re getting dressed I can tell you.

To start with I chose a pair of green and white striped ankle socks. Sock Monkeys are suited to ankle socks, because the body and head shouldn’t be too much longer than the legs. I do have some taller socks which I could cut down to make a normal sized monkey or I could combine two pairs to make a more giant monkey.

It turns out sock monkeys are quick and easy to make. My sewing machine enjoys the weight and stretchiness of socks and is happy to sew ‘em without any issues. The ‘pattern’ is easy to follow and the hand sewing to assemble and finish the guy is fun. Of course, I am saying this with a long history of soft toy making behind me. I was obsessed with teddy bears as a tween-teen and I made a heap of my own. I even sold some at school. Then I moved on to doll making and there was even this one Easter where I made something like 40 soft toy rabbits. What I’m getting at is that I know how to do this kind of thing. I know how to attach arms so that they don’t fall off.

I failed a bit at stuffing though, I didn’t put enough in there. In my defense I actually ran out of stuffing and I was too desperate to finish the monkey to wait until I had more. So he’s a little on the thin and lumpy side. On the other hand, this makes him very huggable and kind of malleable.

Oh hi, I'm a sock monkey!

This sock monkey took me one evening.

I made my second sock monkey out of rainbow socks and stuffed him fatter. He is pretty much the best thing I have ever made (this week at least) and I don’t think I’m going to be able to give him away. I used faux boot-button animal eyes for the eyes this time, and I like the way they look more than the buttons. Lee still thinks they look ‘gimlet eyed’ but then I don’t know if Lee was ever going to love the sock monkeys anyway.

The neat thing about these, having shown them off at Giffy’s craft day, is that people can’t believe that it’s just two socks that go into them. The socks are nice and stretchy so your monkey can get quite fat and if you cut them right their legs and arms and good and long.

Sock monkey = love

I hadn’t been to Craft 2.0 since before Christmas, so I asked around and got some friends to go with me. It dawned a beautifully sunny day and the drive out to Lower Hutt was a joy. I’ve never been quite that early in the day before, it was really packed. Like, some stalls were three layers of browsers deep and I had to make mental notes to come back.

Here are my highlights….

Bad animals makes beautifully cute toys, badges and keyrings. I bought a little toast badge after much deliberating. I really love the look of the yetis and the cupcakes too.

Sock monkeys! I didn’t get one of these because I ran out of cash, but I love the way they look.

From Leila Loves handmade I got some cute little hair clips and a set of matching earrings. Red with white spots! Cute and retro.

My favourite local crafter (excluding those I know personally) Super very had some new designs. I initially wanted the pegasus again but in wood but I fell instead for the wooden bluebird. It’s lovely, and on a chunky, coppery looking chain. So pretty.

As modelled by the Lovely Giffy

I stayed up late last night and watched TV all morning to get this finished to take up the coast to visit Sam and meet her new Sophie. Sophie is 8 weeks old and a real cutie. This quilt was for her, although I didn’t manage to find time to add a label that said as much.

This quilt was a bit of a departure for me, as I had to learn blanket stitch to incorporate the applique. The turtles were purchased from Susan Claire who runs a patchwork shop out of her house up Otaki way. I used embroidery thread to pattern each one differently.

The border is made up of hour glass block and the whole idea is from the block-a-day patchwork calendar Zephfi gave me for my birthday last year. It was meant to be a patch with a penguin in checker-board alternating with the hour glasses. But I messed up the sizing and the turtle squares were much bigger. So I patched them together with the alphabet in between and used the hourglasses this way. The sizing was still off so I used more strips of ABC to make them fit.

The colours were all based on what went with the turtles, so all ended up being quite earthy, which is again something different for me, I’m usually all pastel or super brights.

toitles!

Some detail there for ya.

Thanks to Giffy for holding it up for me, to Ayla for wearing it like a dress and to Sam for saying nice things about it. Also, thanks much to all those who said nice things about the last baby quilt I posted on here. Your compliments are all appreciated!

now I know my...

Now that I have gifted this creation to my darling friend Zephfi for her first born, I feel like I can share it online. I bought the ABC fabric on Trade Me. When it arrived I was somewhat unimpressed to find that the alphabet was printed not-quite-in-order, so if I wanted to leave the entire alphabet intact I would have to stick it on a quilt with the letters out of order.

I was a librarian so long I could not stand the idea of that. So I had to cut it up, but then I realised that the individual letters came in three different sizes so I couldn’t just cut and paste. So to speak.

I sucked it up and log cabinned around each letter until they all matched height-wise. Then it was a simple matter of sewing them into strips. I had fun matching colours to the ones used in the pre-printed alphabet blocks. I knew that Zephfi wants things to be as gender neutral as possible, so I went with bright fun colours. I think it really pops. It’s totally fierce as well.

There’s a detail shot, so you can see how cute this fabric is.

The border one layer of bright green and then a wider one of white based ABC fabric with random pictures. Then I used spotty green on white with ladybugs for the binding to bring it all together. The backing is red with white hippo fabric from IKEA.