Boob Quilt

This is the biscuit or bubble quilt, or as many of my friends call it, the boob quilt. There's a few different ideas of how to do this, mine have simple pleats on each side with an 11cm base. Enjoy!

Cut out 15cm squares in the colours you want, these will be the top of the quilt (A rainbow or random patchwork design or similar works well, google will provide inspiration. My quilt had 9 squares in each of 7 colours). Cut the same number of squares in a scrap fabric, 11cm wide

Pin a small square to the WRONG side of the large square at the corners.

On each side, make a pleat roughly in the centre

 

and pin. repeat with each square

Sew pinned sections together, and the ends of the rows.

When you've got a whole row of squares pinned, place 2 pleated squares RIGHT side to right side. Repin pleats together and pin at the corners as well.

Sew all pinned bits together, and the ends of the row pleats need to be sewn down as well. For the FIRST row only, sew along the bottom, closing each square on 3 sides and sewing the pleats down. Repeat with the next row, NOT sewing the bottom.

Pin the next row of SEWN squares to your first row. I tacked the pleats in row 1 together, which made stuffing easier. Then pin the first and second rows together at the seams and at the pleats.

Stuff! When you finish stuffing a bubble, pin your heart out to attach the bubble to its backing and the next row.

Sew the very pinned stuffed bubble to the unstuffed bubble row. It gets a bit fiddly, but I managed with a normal foot and 3/8th of a inch seam allowance.

You should end up with it looking something like this. I missed a little bit of the fabric once or twice, but went over it again quite easily. Repeat this for every row, you may need to go in stages if, like me, you have a limited supply of sharp pins.

All in all, I found this worked very well for me. When you get to the last row, you just need to sew it all up without sewing it to another unstuffed row. You should get a lovely quilt top of bubbles and puffy stuff and they are so much fun to squeeze! Any questions/problems etc, you're welcome to email me at mara__day@hotmail.com, or leave a comment on here! If this tutorial isn't to your liking, I know its a bit hard to follow at times, Awaiting Ada has a couple of tutorials as well :)

Dearie me...

Well, Christmas was a disaster. I flew back from the UK on Christmas day, so was an absolute disaster for the next few days. I've been working steadily on a few projects, including an enormous jumper for a very close friend. She's about 6 feet tall, and it just seems to be all arm...

I've got a lot of crafty sewing projects coming up as well, so here's some more photos :)

A wonderful lady, Antonia, about to burst with baby, recipient of most of my summer knitting...

Titus, some of the softest pure wool I've ever felt, form Ramshambles in York. Its turning into a Fylleryd Shawl

3 lovely skeins of Cascade Heathers, which I'm not sure what its going to be yet!

Some bunting for work, going to be a nice sign telling people who we are :)

A cross-stitch announcement for above baby

My crowning glory, which is a biscuit quilt. I'm intending to post a nice tutorial later on, because I had a lot of issues finding a nice one online!

UK, Christmas, New Year, Melbourne

Lord its been busy busy busy. I've been in the UK, visiting family. Over the other side of the country in Melbourne, visiting family. And have had work, uni, christmas, and a million and one technology problems that mean my posts keep getting deleted *sigh*

So, hopefully we will get some things posted before another laptop failure.

My little corner of knitting in our hotel room

I may've done a bit of an oxfam shop tour...

Trees do get cold over there.

There was also a lot of exploring yarn shops

It was cold, wonderful, and full of family. Somewhere I will definately be going back to, but it will have to wait awhile. I'm too broke to afford anything at the moment, let alone overseas holidays!

We flew back on christmas day, at which point I fell asleep on a couch and only just managed wakefulness for dinner. After contracting some sort of horrible illness that caused pain and suffering through Oxford and the majority of London, I slept for a few days and was quite unwell, meaning that New Years Eve saw me sitting at home babysitting family while everyone else was drinking.

How do you spell veriagated?

So, I'm knitting away on a sweet little varigated cardigan for aforementioned baby. And I am a slow knitter, I'll gladly admit that, and its not helped by the complete lack of time I seem to have, but this is turning into a black hole of yarn.

I just seems to keep going, and I measured and knitted and measured and knitted and measured, and it never seemed to reach that 16cms I needed. Finally, I got onto the raglan sleeves. And its doing the same old thing again. But, I can finish this tonight. It doesn't matter that I have plenty of train knitting time tomorrow, or plenty of coffee knitting time, or that tomorrow is my only day off before I leave, or that I have a plane trip to knit on, or that this baby doesn't come until June, or that I'm exhausted, I HAVE to finish the back tonight.

I don't need to sleep, or to worry about the fact that I'm falling asleep at my laptop, I WILL finish, I HAVE to, and to be honest I am getting wholly sick of this pastel verigated colour, and starting to seriously wonder whether pink patches make it inappropriate for a possible boy baby, but after all the work and prac and packing, I think I'm allowed a little insanity.

Stop the press

Everything kitterly happening here has been put on hold. There's a baby coming. My boss at Oxfam is 3 months pregnant, so I need to get knitting. Having only finished 25 hexipuffs, it may take some time for that particular project to get moving. Twilight sparkle has a body and a nose, but again may be sleeping for a little while. My family and I are however going to the UK for a month, meaning that there will be long flights, midnight stopovers, train rides and taxis and cold nights in a hotel room. Viz, lots of knitting time! I'll take some twilight with me, seeing as I'm likely to go insane after trying to use so much tiny tiny yarn to make tiny tiny clothes for a tiny tiny human. I'm starting with a boring basic raglan sweater, just to get me used to the tiny tiny again.

In other news, I feel I should mention to the world that I'm studying nursing. This means that I'm interested in medical interesting things, and I have to say that necrotic pressure ulcers are pretty awesomely amazing. A friend of mine is in America at the moment, and is alive and well after flying out of New York just before the storms hit. As well as very overly excited about the new babies. I may've gone completly insane from lack of sleep occuring during prac, but I think its not too bad, I've just gone insane with the christmas baking and cleaning. Also this may be due to a medication change. From Fluoxetine (Prozac) to Escitalopram (Lexapro). This means I may be a little bit manic... However, it will hopefully end well :)

There is one project (a surprise for someone who might be reading this blog) who is not yet shelved, however there are only ends to weave in. Hopefully there will be photos when I get to see this special person on Thursday.

Quick Succession

Its been a busy week, I've cast on a few things for gifts (christmas is coming, afterall!) And I've been packing, because we're heading off to the UK in 2 weeks. eep! I need to do some catching up with photos, and explain the twilight sparkle some I think.

Well, an old friend of mine, who is now a renewed relationship, has a number of friends (~21 year old males) who are BIG fans of My little pony - Friendship is Magic. Kinda creepy, but each to their own I guess. When a birthday came around, this friend needed a dice bag for his weekly dungeons and dragons games. After a guage failure and a very, very small Dice bag of doom, I sewed a very plain and boring black one. This meant a realisation that I was crafty, and a discussion about the costs associated with buying online plushies (up to 250AUD). Hence, when the next birthday came, I said I'd make one for Ben. As such, I fished out an old book I had, Huggable Crochet, and tried a few of those patterns to see how my crochet skills were (I haven't croched since I was about 10, and I just couldn't face doing sooo many ponies with all that knitting, so a quick one was prefered). This produced:

Both of which have now gone to good homes, Byron on the left and Frankfurt on the right. There is a camera shy octopus, and a special present for a special lady as well. It was a good little book, gave me a chance to really practice reading crochet patterns and get used to a hook instead of needles again.. I picked it up for $20, and I've made 4 animals, failed at about 3, and have used a lot of what Lucas says to help with my new pony.

Speaking of, I changed my pattern slightly from last time, I crocheted 18 rnds straight, then reversed my increases, full body pattern here:

Rnd 1: Ch 4 and connect to form a loop. 10 hdc in centre of loop.

Rnd 2: Ch 2, 2 hdc in each st to end of rnd (20 sts)

Rnd 3: Ch 2, 2 hdc in every 2nd st to end of rnd

Rnd 4: Ch 2, 2 hdc in every 4th st to end of rnd

Rnd 5-22: Ch 2, 1 hdc in every st to end of rnd. Repeat 18 times. (36 sts)

Rnd 23: Ch 2, 4hdc, hdc 2tog* rep to end of rnd
    (I stuff around here)
Rnd 24: Ch 2, 3hdc, hdc 2tog* rep to end of rnd

Rnd 25: Ch 2, hdc 2tog to end of rnd. Run yarn through remaining sts, pulling tight.

Good luck!

And finially, awhile ago I started the Holden Shawlette, for my sister. Its now finished and blocked, with a Jenny Cloche done with my leftovers, which actually fits her head, which is a bit exciting :)

Delayed..

Sorry everybody! I've been a little flat out of late. I have finished my body, as you can see below.

Ignoring my mess behind that...

However, I've been having a lot of issues with the head. And while this was happening, pattern drafting was not.

Nothing tooo serious, just a little hospital excursion to work out my medication and fainting episodes.

THIS was.

As you can probably tell, that is an IV line in my arm, injecting iron. I've had a lot of medication changes and the stress of trying to work part time, do prac placements for 2 week lots that are all assessed and do assignments, catch up with friends, clean and cook and organise, my knitting has been falling slightly by the wayside. In response, I started a ferocious knitting job on my hexipuffs for The beekeepers quilt. Its a fun adventure, the quilt is fun to knit because you don't suffer the horror of never ending knitting and you also get an exciting chance to think about what colours go best together while you make them :) I've got about 20 so far, and wanted about 400, so it will be awhile until it starts to look like a quilt...

I've been doing some sewing as well, after my sister recently get an overlocker, our lives in the sewing world have improved so much!

 

Witches! in ORANGE!!

This magnificent fabric was $3 a metre, preparing for Halloween. So naturally I bought 4 metres and am going to make a rockabilly dress!! I'm using the Katjusha pattern from Burda, and after a quick redraft for girls with a bust, its looking ready to start! :)