Christmas Stocking Cap Half Done

I have knit 27 inches of the red yarn this beauty so far.  It's going a little quicker than I thought it would.  I knit on this hat every time I get a chance to sit down.  This is so much fun.  I can't wait to wear it this Christmas.   This will be getting a pom pom and jingle bells added when I finally finish.

Sewing Project to Say Thank You So Much

   I wanted to let dear daughter know how much I appreciated her help a couple of weeks ago, so I ordered four yards of pretty fabric from Thousand of Bolts (their fabrics are cheap and they have a nice selection) to make 16 fabric napkins for her home.  She loves them.

   I made the napkins but cutting the yard of fabric into four pieces, cut off the selvedges, and I followed this tutorial to hem and sew them.  Such an easy project.

My First Successful Serger Project

    I made my first headbands.  I bought a yard of pretty floral knit jersey (along with several other knit jersey prints) from Fabric.com.  I made three headbands and I have enough fabric left over to make a couple of scarves with this material, which I'm going to make up after I finish making my headbands up.  I used the Crafty Gemini video tutorial make up these headbands or turbands as she calls them.  The tutorial is here.

I Changed My Mind

    I have a love/hate relationship with sergers.  I bought a Juki serger about three years ago that worked well for about a year and then the tension went wonky and I couldn't fix it.  I took that machine to Goodwill about a year ago and I thought I would be through with sergers forever.

     I really love what you can do with sergers, rolled hems, seam finishing, etc., so every once in a while I try to work out a way to own one without spending a boatload of money.  I wish I could afford a machine with air threading and all the fancy stitches, but that's not happening now.  So I spent the last weekend trying to find a machine I could afford and I settled on the Singer14T968DC, Professional 5, five thread serger that comes with 7 presser feet. I bought it from Allbrands.com.  I have made four purchases from Allbrands.com and I have been happy with all four purchases.

    I received the machine on Thursday (it was ordered on the previous Saturday) and took it out of the box.  I also downloaded the owner's manual/workbook from the Singer website and that is on my computer now.

    Here she is: 

   In the bottom picture the machine is threaded for 3 thread overlock stitching.  You can do a variety of stitching  styles with this machine.  It took me a little while to thread the machine last night, but threading this machine was a little more involved than it was on the Juki.  This machine has a few more levers and and knobs to adjust when you are threading for a certain type of stitching.  It's all laid out in the workbook, which is really handy. The 3 thread overlock stitching is actually working and I'm getting ready to make some headbands with some lovely knit jersey I bought.   I'll be sharing those when I finish them.

    I started another knitting project.  I watch several knitting podcasts on Youtube and several knitters are making trying to knit one or two dishcloths each week this year so they can use them for Christmas gift giving.  I love this idea, but I'm not going to make so many.  I'm just going to make as many dishcloths as I can from the four balls of KnitPicks Dishie yarn that I have in the Jalapeno colorway.  I bought this yarn last year to crochet dishcloths, I really like the knitted dishcloths but they take so much longer than crochet, but if I give myself a year, I should be able to get this yarn knitted up.  I'm using a size 8, 24" Bamboo ChiaoGoo circular needles to make Grandmother's Favorite Dishcloth.  I found this super easy dishcloth pattern on Ravelry years ago, but if you're not a member of Ravelry, you can find the pattern here. 

    Here's my first dishcloth in the works:

 

Embroidery Hoop Wall Art

   I bought three sizes of embroidery hoops a couple of weeks ago.  I wanted to make some wall art with some cute fabrics I have.   Here are three of the animal prints I found in my stash.

    I will finish the back with a piece of white fabric hand sewn to the fabric sticking out of the hoop.  I did this for another project and it worked really well and it doesn't take that long to do.   I have to get some plain white fabric, I'm all out.

A Little Sewing And A Lot Of Knitting

     
       I made some zipper pouches for dear daughter for her to use as travel organization.  She has a couple of trips planned in the next few months and I wanted to thank her for helping me out with something recently.  So I made three pretty quilted zipper pouches for her.   She has quite of few of these in her collection, she loves them.  This is a quick and easy project. 

        I use the Crafty Gemini zipper pouch video tutorial on Youtube for the directions. Here is the link.  The only thing I need the tutorial for is how to put the zipper in and where to add the wrist strap if I'm putting one on my bag. 

       I did not put a wrist strap on these bags.  I make my pouches whatever size I can made from the fabric I have, I just have to make sure I have the zipper that is long enough for what I want to make.  I used 12" zippers for these.  When I add a wrist strap, I make mine wider. 

      You can't really see it in the pictures but these are a very soft aqua color with tiny white polka dots.  This is one of my favorite fabrics.  I was proud of myself for giving it up to make something for someone else.  Zipper pouches are a great way to use up small pieces of fabric.

    I'd like to try to make some boxy pouches.  I found a few video tutorials for those.  They are pretty simple, you just have to box the corners which I have done on other projects before.

        I also did a lot of knitting on my ribbed stocking cap.  The red section is now 15" long.  I'm not sure I have enough yarn to get to the 48" of red that I want, but I'm going to give it a shot.  It doesn't look like much, but the white cuff fits perfectly and that's exactly what I needed.

    No progress on my hexie quilt top.  I pulled out the box with the pieces in it and I'm planning on getting started on it again this weekend.