Pillow and Blanket

I acquired some lovely needlepoint pieces from Debra, including this one, which is a vintage pillow cover stitched from the back on velvet.  The pillow inside is a thrifted feather pillow, which Debra also tipped me off to.  There are almost always feather pillows in the thrift stores, she explained.  They usually have removable covers, and although they might say dry clean only, I've washed my feather duvet for years, so these go through the wash too.

The stitchery was a little smaller than the pillow, so I pieced scraps of upholstery fabric in dark colors for the border and backing. 

 I love the way this looks in my living room.

My niece Maria gave me pieces of pink fabrics she'd bought to make cloth masks, back when we were all making them.  I thought I'd make a baby quilt for her sister Nina's now-arrived baby girl.  I'd been admiring this cross pattern online, and there are multiple ways to execute it, but I picked the one that fit the fabric pieces I was working with.

For each block of this quilt I cut 4-4.5" and 2-2.5" squares of background fabric and 2-2.5" and 1-6.5" pieces from the feature fabric.  The pieces go together very easily, with minimal seams to match.

 Another baby quilt in the world warms a new baby.  I'm definitely in the baby quilt groove these days.

Baby Sweater Round Up

When I moved I had to face the true scope of my yarn stash.  As a consequence, this is the year of the baby sweater.  These little projects are using up small quantities of yarn, especially odd single balls, and they will be donated through the For the Children of Pine Ridge group on Ravelry.  This little red sweater was knit from a large ball of recycled yarn, and it's a size 2-4 years.  The pattern, the Roma Baby Cardigan, is free, but the design is flawed with a large neck opening that many knitters have re-engineered. I don't do gauge swatches for these sweaters, so when it came out bigger than the pattern specifies, I just made it longer in the body and sleeves to compensate.

My stash busting for these sweaters includes trim for the button band backs, and the buttons, which so far have all been from my collection.  For the next sweater I stitched two thin pieces of trim together to make the button band backing.

I've made two sweaters so far using the Fuss Free Baby Cardigan pattern and a bag of leftover dk superwash yarn.  

The beanies were stitched from the cast-on numbers in a children's knitwear pattern book.  

All the socks in this post are knit from the same free pattern, Ribbed Far-Away Baby Socks.  The pattern is for newborn socks, but I make them longer for a 6-month size.

This last set is from a classic, and also free pattern, the Baby Boy 5 Hour Sweater.  The pattern is pretty gender neutral, so I used up a special ball of pink yarn.  The lovely old-fashioned bonnet is Debutant by Sweet Paprika Designs.
 

Even Bigger Scrappy (70 x80)

I finished my scrappy quilt top.  I decided to add another round of borders, and I used some smaller scraps to make paper pieced 4.5" blocks.

 

Before I retired I used the office paper cutter to cut an old professional journal into 4.5" pieces.  It seemed fitting to use them in this project.

 

 Now it's done, and the top will rest for awhile until I either get up the gumption to quilt it myself, or send it to be quilted.

 

I have to decide on the backing and batting options.  I'm kind of interested in attaching it to a piece of fleece, so it can be used as a casual utility quilt, but I'm still thinking on this.