Diamond Snow Baby Hat

So just a little show and tell today.  I've actually been really busy creating a lot of stuff, doing school (yuck, yuck, don't tell my kids on me), and taking care of the family.  This is the crochet hat that I made up for my daughter using Patton's Canadiana Yarn in White.  I love how this turned out.  I'm calling it my Diamond Snow Baby hat.  At this point, I don't have a pattern written up for this hat.  I sometimes write out patterns, but usually I just freestyle it.  This hat is actually fairly easy to do.  It's a three part hat worked from the bottom up.  Start with the band (blsc), then the diamond pattern, and finally double crochet rounds (w/dec) to the top.  Make a pom pom and you're done.

Okay, I know that I could have been a lot more descriptive,  but if I make another, I promise to write the pattern out while I'm doing it.

I hope to show you a few more hats and other crochet items in the near future.  I've been on a crochet kick lately for Christmas so I've got a lot done.  Plus, I'm thinking about doing a de-stashing giveaway or an exchange.  

Quilt Festival in France

Patchwork Festival Fun!

While we lived in Texas, and the last time I visited America, I got to go to the Houston International quilt festival almost every year.  I admit that I have become a bit spoiled since the Houston Festival is just incredible   It is always a great time, and I love going with my mother (and sometimes even my sister), but it just wasn't happening this year.  Houston is great, but there are some incredible quilt festivals all over the world.  Because I live in Europe, I want to take advantage of at least some of the wonderful quilt festivals that they offer here.  This year, I got to go to the Carrefour European du Patchwork Festival in France.  It was a blissful two days filled with fabric, notions, vendors, and other men and women who share my love of all things sewing and crocheting.

It is an interesting show, because it is separated out between different locations in four different towns.  I started out in Sainte Marie-aux-Mines.  Each location featured a different category of quilts.

A church offered a selection of Canadian quilts, the geology museum featured mini quilts, the theater displayed antique quilts, the list went on and on.   You would walk to each location, and then could catch the shuttle to each different town.

I loved this quilt so much.  It's by Inge Hueber of Germany, and it is made with the seam allowance showing on the right side.  The way that she did the color wash here is just gorgeous.

I never knew that seam allowances could look so good.

The vendors were also amazing!  I even won some Aurifil thread!  And I might have picked up a few FQs and other little tidbits from vendors all over Europe and even some from America.  I also got to play with some wonderful sewing machines.  I'm still trying to figure out how I can save up for an HQ sweet 16 (just on the table not as a longarm machine).  I don't know how my hubby would feel about it if he knew how much one costs.  I'd better start saving my pennies now :)

This festival was really well done and worth the trip for anyone thinking about going next year!  If you want to see some more of my trip photos, feel free to visit my Flickr page.

Fabric bundle Giveaway at the Little Pink Rose

Marcia at The Little Pink Rose is having a giveaway on her blog.  There are many different ways to enter, and you could win a  Chevron Fat Quarter Bundle from Riley Blake Designs with 24 Fat Quarters.  Go and enter to win!!!   Giveaway closes at Midnight on November 23.  Good luck :)  

Fall Wreath & an update on past holiday wreaths

Wow, I have to salute all those dedicated bloggers out there who produce quality posts week after week.  It's just too easy to miss a few posts and before you know it, you haven't blogged in weeks or months.  I have been creating fun and pretty things for my family and for others, but I've neglected blogging about them :(  So now, a tiny update on my holiday wreaths.

I love making new wreaths for my apartment's front door.  It's one of the only things that I'm allowed to do to the exterior of my home, so I really enjoy changing them out every month/season.  Here are a few of the wreaths that I've made over the last few months starting from the most recent.

This is my Fall/Thanksgiving wreath.  My family collected tons of acorns for a project last month, and I reused the acorn caps to make this wreath.  I also re-used the Chinese lanterns that were part of a Halloween flower arrangement too.  I love getting two uses out of supplies.

      
To make this wreath, I first wrapped the form in garden twine.  Then I hot glued each cap on.  It took hours longer than I anticipated, but I really like the finished product.  I thought about adding a neat olive green ribbon at the top and not putting the lanterns on for a more modern look, but my craft store was sold out of all the nice fall colors so used a scrap of fabric that was in my stash and the color came from the lanterns.

Last months wreath was for Halloween.  I wanted to make something spooky for the kids.  So I wrapped the form in purple yarn and cut out a haunted house with a graveyard and bats from black paper and accented it with a cheap skeleton from the $1 bin.  I also had to add just a bit of sparkle with the silver ribbon.  It was a big hit with the kids and neighbors.

The last wreath that I going to share with you today is our back to school wreath made from crayons and paper.  I'm sure that many of you have seen crayon wreaths on Pinterest.  Instead of just choosing the crayons randomly I grouped them by color and then did a gradient pattern around the wreath.  I had the kids color and cut out some school themed coloring pages and my oldest made a kid chain portrait.  We glued it all on for a fun and fab September wreath.  Sorry about the picture quality on the crayon wreath, but in truth the carpet color is no worse than my door color.

I'm going to try to do some more updates on past projects in the near future and maybe post a few things that I'm working on for the winter holidays.  Wish me luck. :)