My slight obsession with baby booties goes on.  I found the most adorable crocheted booties on Etsy, and couldn't resist buying the pattern.  I wanted a more unisex version, so I used white and tan, and replaced the flower button with a simple round one.  They are so cute!

I thought I'd try and create some cross-stitch to hang up on the wall after seeing a 3-pack of wooden photo frames for just £1.69 in IKEA.  This is my own design.  At the moment there's just one but I think that it could work better as a series.  What do you think?

My husband's two cousins have both had babies recently. Before Christmas, while at a craft fair, I saw a couple of the most adorable cloche-style hats and bought a couple for the impending arrivals.  Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures.  At the time I thought that they were knitted, but while packing up the second hat I noticed that it was actually crocheted.  If you've read any of my earlier posts, you'll know that crochet is my latest hobby, and as the hats were so sweet I made a note of the pattern so that I could try my own later.

The lady who made the hats used quite chunky wool, but I only had DK weight yarn to hand, so although I think that I did reproduce the pattern pretty faithfully, the final hat, while very sweet, was really dinky; it would have fitted a medium-sized doll maybe.

Obviously I couldn't leave it at that so attempted scaling up the pattern to the right size, but instead ended up with a hat that would be way too big for a baby! It was, however about my son's size so rather than unravel it, I decided to continue making it.  However being on the brink of summer, it didn't feel quite right to make a wintry woolly hat so it became a sun hat. In theory.

Of course, I wasn't following a pattern, so the brim of the hat was complete guesswork.  I didn't know how many stitches to increase by and as it turned out I guessed too high, which resulted in a rather frilly finish. 

Overall, the hat itself is not bad - too girly for my son even though I made him model it :), and not really suitable as a sun hat because of the acrylic yarn.  It acually fits me, and with a few embellishments maybe it could become a much-loved accessory.

I recently came across this blog post from Handy Home Projects about how to make easy trousers for children: http://handyprojects.blogspot.com/2005/04/how-to-make-easy-kids-pants.html. With summer on the way and my son's  love affair with shorts, I decided to see if I could make him some new ones.  Ordinarily, I would not have considered making trousers or shorts.  I have made them successfully in the past, but I remember it as a fairly laborious process, and this tutorial really did look quite quick and easy, so I decided to give it a go.  I've shown my progress below, but you might want to take a look at the original post.  (Apologies for the photo quality - I took them on my phone.)

I used a pair of my old trousers for material, which I cut along one seam, and a pair of my son's old trousers, which still fit around the waist and bum but were too short, as a template.  I turned up the legs to get the right length for shorts and lined them up along the outside leg seam.  (I had actually cut down the leg seam to get two separate pieces, but if you are using old trousers as a template, just cut each leg down the inside leg seam and open it out along the outer seam). 

You'll need two pieces of material (or in this case both old trouser legs).  Lay them out with right sides together and pin the template on top. Then cut around the template. Remember to leave a seam allowance and extra room to fold down the waistband if the template hasn't allowed for that.

The great thing about using an old pair of my trousers is that you can make use of the outer leg seam and the existing hem. (Unfortunately the hem on my old trousers was quite worn as you can see below so I ended having to sew a new hem.)

Sew along the crotch on both sides...

Rearrange the trousers up so that newly sewn crotch seams are now in the centre...

Line up the inside leg edges, and sew those up...

New, turned up straight hem...

Turn over the waistband (ironing as you go) and sew in place, leaving a small gap so that you can thread the elastic through.  I used 22mm-wide elastic, so the waistband is 25mm thick; and my son's waist is 21", so the elastic is 22" long to allow a 1" overlap.

Attach a safety pin to one end of the elastic, and ease that through the waistband.

Overlap the ends of the elastic and sew together using a zigzag stitch. (I sewed two lines, close to each loose end.)  Then close the gap in the waistband.

Sew the hems in place, and then you're done!  Because I used old trousers as the template, the finished shorts do have a front and back, whereas the pattern in the original blog post is the same for front an back.  So it's worth bearing that in mind.

At this stage I wanted to add a pocket to the outside, but realised that I should have done that between stages 3 and 4 (before starting to sew the two sides together) as I couldn't rotate the completed shorts to machine stitch the pocket on.  So in the end I machine stiched the side that I could (i.e. along the bottom) and hand stitched the rest.  It doesn't look half bad, if I say so myself.

Finished shorts (complete with pocket):

While rummaging through my stacks of fabric and haberdashery, I came across some Aida fabric and waste canvas, which put me in mind to try out some cross stitch again.   At about the same time several pairs of my son's jeans had worn through at the knees so I decided to make some knee patches and embroider them in cross stich with trains and cars to make them a bit more interesting.  

I underestimated the amount of work required to make the train (for a while I was worried that he'd have outgrown the trousers before I finished!) but it turned out pretty well.  The cars were a much quicker affair, although I did cheat a bit and filled them in with satin stitch instead of cross stitch.  

I'm sure there will come a time when wearing patched trousers will be the height of uncool, but right now, he seems to think they're great - especially with the embellishments.

I recently came across a website organising a Knit-In - a chance for knitters of all abilities to get together and knit squares to be used for making blankets for the homeless (http://www.theborrowers.co.uk/borrowers-news-blog/26-04-2011/join-combwich-knit).  The aim is to knit as many 10" x 10" squares as possible.  It takes 18 squares to make one blanket.  It's taking place tomorrow, 2nd May, at the Anchor Inn, Combwich, Somerset between 11am and 4pm.  There'll be tea and biscuits and a free packet of seeds for every completed square.

Unfortunately, I don't live in the area so I won't be dropping by, but if like me you like the idea, you can still help out by knitting or crocheting your a square at home and sending it on by 16th May.

I've decided to crochet my square with some old yarn that I've had lying around for about 5 years.  It's pretty thin stuff so I've ended up using a 3mm hook and completing the rows in double crochet stitch.  Although that means a lot more stitches than I bargained for, it's a great way to practice.  After all, what better way to hone a skill than to do the same thing over and over again, many, many times.  I'm up to row 22 (of 50) and I can see (and feel) the improvement. 

I have a bit of a weakness when it comes to material.  Most of the time I can control my urges, but every once in a while I fall off the wagon and buy lots of material, always with the intention of making something with it.  The net result is that I have drawers/bags/baskets full of unused material and half-finished projects cluttering up my house.  So I recently decided that I would not allow myself to buy a single scrap more of material until I had used up some of the existing supplies.  

But what to do?  It should be something small so I'd have less of an excuse not to finish. Also, as I don't have a work area for my sewing machine apart from the kitchen, I wanted something I could do in the living room, which meant sewing by hand.  In the end I settled on baby booties - small enough to sew by hand and also a chance to practice some embroidery.  So far I've made three pairs, based on Simplicity pattern 2867 (A).

Here's the first pair - made from red felt for the body and brown felt for the soles.  For this pair I followed the pattern exactly, apart from the embroidery, which I tweaked a little (out of laziness more than anything else!) .

My husband said that he thought they'd look better with the outer edge turned in, so for the next pair that's what I did.  Made with green felt on the top, and brown felt for the soles.

With the edges turned in, I thought that the opening on the second pair was now too large and the booties didn't hold their shape as well, so for the third pair I modified the pattern slightly to reduce the opening, and that seemed to work quite well.  I actually gave these away to a neighbour.

I'm now on to my next pair, which I thought I'd make out of denim this time.  I also have some pinstripe material and thought it would be cute to make a dressy pair for occasions.  If I keep churning them out, I'll make a special booties gallery and post that.

OK, so I may have jumped the gun a bit in choosing my first project!  Apart from a very advanced stitch design, crocheting with raffia, was not as easy as I thought it would be.   The raffia I have is not a continous roll, but separate strands, which meant having to work in new lengths quite often; and the strands are not the same thickness along their length, and from strand to strand, which gave a bit of ragged appearance to the overall design.  In the end, I think I got the spacing of the stitches in the final round all wrong and ended up with more of a raffia basket than a coaster!  More practice is definitely in order.

I was inspired to take up crochet after spending a day sitting next to a lady making crocheted scarves at a craft fair.  In no time at all , and seemingly effortlessly she whipped up several pretty scarves.  

The thing that I find really attractive about crochet compared with knitting is its versatility.  It seems that you can create a whole range of different things, in lots of shapes and sizes, using just a few stitches.  I've only been doing it for a few weeks, and I'm really pleased with what I've been able to do.  

The cluster circle in the picture was done after I'd been crocheting about a week.  It was  probably a bit advanced for me, but always eager to move on to the next level, I  thought I'd give it a go.  The red circle is a picture of what it should look like, and the cream circle is my attempt.  Some of the stitches are a bit uneven (I hadn't got to grips with maintaining a constant tension), and in the wrong place (I'm still learning how to distinguish the stitches, and where to place the hook), but overall, I think it's pretty impressive for a novice!  

Since then I've been practising different patterns, and the quality and consistency of my stitches have really improved.  I've decided to try the cluster pattern again, using raffia to make a set of coasters.  I'll post the results when they're done.  Wish me luck!

Following on from the scented sachets post, I decided to try to make some Christmas tree decorations.  

Several years ago I bought some gold and silver spider's web paper, which got pushed to the back of a drawer and forgotten until I rediscovered it in a recent clear-out.  That became the casing for the decorations.  I used hearts and stars that I traced out using biscuit cutters as the template, and filled them with crushed Christmas spices - Cassia Bark (cinnamon-like), cardamom, star anise and cloves.  Placing the decorations near a radiator or fire fills the room with a lovely festive aroma.

At first I used coloured embroidery thread - red and purple - with the gold, and blanket stitch around the edge.  (I must just point out that my sewing is rusty to say the least.)  However, I think that they looked a little tacky; not how I envisaged them.  But then I got hold of some metallic gold thread, and used a simple whip stitch instead of the blanket stitch, and the overall result was much more pleasing - plus it took much less time to make each decoration.  You have to take care though - spider's web paper + metallic thread = lots of tangling!