2012 finish-a-long

Have Eleven Doctors, Will Travel

Jan 272013

I finished my dad’s passport document folder! Huzzah! Because of the cross-stitching, I figure it took me about 47 hours. O_o

I used the Wanderlust Pocketbook pattern from Everyday Handmade. It makes a super cute document folder, but the instructions have a couple of errors in them. For one, it tells you to cut the exterior fabric and the exterior’s interfacing an inch too narrow. For two (heh), it only reminds you in the instructions about applying about half of the interfacing pieces — you have to remember yourself to apply the other ones. Fortunately, I always apply my interfacing before sewing anything, but if any novice sewerers just went through and followed the instructions, they’d be sad at the end when they had leftover interfacing pieces.

Anyhoo, the waste canvas that I used to get the cross-stitching done was so neat! I just had to spray it with water, and the canvas threads came out pretty easily. You may notice in the picture below that the Tardis is on a different side than in the finished passport document folder. I ended up having to cut it apart in order to get the Tardis in a better place, so that’s why I wasn’t too upset when I found out that I also had to add width to the exterior because of the error in the book.

The inside of the passport folder has a whole lot of cute pockets for all kinds of stuff. My dad figured out that his Nexus 7 fit into the ticket pocket!

I’m so glad this is done! I paid cash (er, PayPal) munee for that Dr. Who pattern, so I’m happy that it didn’t languish with the other patterns I’ve paid for and have yet to use. Thanks, Shanna and Melissa, for spurring me to finish this!

One picnic quilt to rule them all

Apr 302012

(Because it’s huge, yo. )

I finally finished my Made in Cherry quilt! I used I Spy charms collected over around four swaps and made the large size since it called for 5″ squares. It was supposed to end up being 90″x90″, but I think mine came out around 95″x95″.

I waited till my wonderful new Juki came to quilt it, and it was loads easier with all that throat space! Since it’s meant to be our picnic quilt, I had fun just practicing different fmq designs; in each of the blue parts, I did lines with loops, dogwood blossoms, pebbles, clouds, hearts and spirals, Mario vines, curvy keys, and lollipop flowers.

I made my binding a little bit ahead of time for once — since I’ve been trying to only use my Juki during the day, I wanted to make sure I could attach my binding right after I finished the quilting. I had some dry-cleaning hangers, so bent one sort of into the shape of a cord hanger.

Then when I was attaching the binding, I put my Juki’s lift on upside-down and hung the binding hanger from it! MacGyvered!

The quilt backing is a robot flannel that Cosmo wanted as soon as he saw it on the computer. I think it’s really cute and it was a great price, but I guess I got what I paid for because it stained the edges of my machine blue. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Oh well! I’m never going to clean it off — I’m lazy. Anyhoo, here’s one last picture with Cosmo for scale.