Art, Craft and Needlework, September 2014

[FelineFriend]

[color=#800040][b]Harriet, Our Nana made those pillows, they were on their sofa in the 1970's, but I don't know how old they were. I often thought how pretty they looked.

[b]Elizabeth[/b], A Great Big Congratulations on earning those ribbons.

I'm doing DGS-3.5's Christmas afghan in 3-row different colors stripes. I just felt like crocheting one, which was regular, instead of having irregular bands of different lengths of rows, that I usually do. I wanted to see how one like this would "look" once it's finally finished and the border is on. I may stripe the border, as well, but if I get to that point and decide a striped border would be "too busy", then I'll do a single color.

I went to my calendar, put down beginning and deadline dates for the 15 Christmas crochet gifts I'm doing. I'm done with 1 afghan, nearly finished with 1 afghan, and have a little to go on Dfriend's kitchen potholders. [/color][/b]

[Nancy]

Taa daa! Wait for it another dish cloth done.

[Harriet]

Oh well, not the right photo and I'm running late. I'll see if I can get the one showing the side too up when I get back.

WeddingBellGiftWrapSmall2014.jpg

WeddingBellsGiftwrapSide2014.jpg

Here is the quick wrap I came up with for our minister's dd's wedding shower. Base is just a wedding gift bag from Tarjay with a pre-curled bow from Tarjay, so I did find some shortcuts. Searched for "bell DIY" ideas but never saw doilies - this idea was from a full "bow" made with 5 of these shapes around. I thought just 2 would look like wedding bells if I tucked the points under curls.

I sealed the bag at the top to make it a package, and got the bow to stand up high by slipping its rectangular paper tag down between front and back. (Bride can easily use it again.) The decoration of wedding bells is two halves (offset cut so that the bells are not exactly the same) of a paper doily. Each half is curled into a cone shape, taped closed, and then taped with double-sided tape to the package. It's hard to see, but I threaded curls from the bow inside the bells through doily-holes in the back. From a straight-on view it looks like there are little silver clappers in the bells.

The package stays rigid at the top because of the gift card inside, taped with double-sided tape across the top of the actual present. I believe paper stuffing would give the same look. I'll carry it in like a box, rather than grasping at the top, just in case it would lose its shape.

Christmas - I can envision doily halves as "bells" on Christmas presents, too. I saw one tutorial in which they were coloring white paper items with acrylic paint, and I imagine you could have red bells, magenta bells, silver, etc.

[FelineFriend]

THANKS FOR THE PAPER DOILIES BELLS idea, Harriet! I have a pkg. of paper doilies, which I use for collage cards. NOW I know how to "fancy-up" Dfriend's gift this year. She ALWAYS has gorgeous ribbons/wrap!

WTG on another dishcloth, Nancy!

[Nancy]

Trying to learn now to do another baby doll blanket in the. Corner to corner method via U-tube.

[Harriet]

Thanks I was hoping it might give some ideas, FFriend.

Finally got the other photo in there. It's too big but I just have to apologize and go on. It's taking a long time and confusing to get that right. Wondering why the photos look so different, too, but ... oh well! At least you can see the side view.

Nancy, the tutorials online help so much. I found one I thought everyone would like for when you need a bow but only have paper to work with. How to make a bow out of nearly nothing This one uses a paper that has something different on each side, but plain solid would be nice, or one with white on the back.

[FelineFriend]

WOW! [b]Harriet[/b], The paper bows are so cool! I have tons of background papers 12" x 12" in all sorts of colors, prints, and patterns and tons of glue sticks, too! I bought tons of scrapbooking supplies at Costco, in bulk, when they were on sale in 2005 - 2006, or so. I'll love to treat my BFF to a paper bow on her Christmas gift package! She'll be amazed, too. Thanks for sharing! I even bookmarked it!

I'm on row 10 on DGS-3.5's Christmas afghan. I need 114 rows. I'm doing 3-row single colors from beginning at random. I figured it out on my calculator. I'll need 38 bands of 3-row colors until I end with row 114. Then, I'll edge a large border around in 1 solid color. I don't know which color I'll pick yet, but I'm leaning towards a medium to dark blue instead of light blue or a green. It's looking so nice. I usually throw in wide bands of color, then have 2 rows, mixed in, and at the center, I repeat the pattern out from the middle to match the other side. It's real pretty to do that. But this time, I felt like striping it in rows of 3's to see what it'd look like. It's amazing how nice it does look.

I'm going to make DGD-21 months soon, a baby doll afghan in off-white MC, to match her MC Granny square butterflies afghan. Only the dolly's afghan will be a single Granny square, rather than several sewn together with a single butterfly in the middle of the granny and I'll do a border of pink, raspberry and white and then will scallop it. It's for her Jan. birthday gift. She's always holding the dolly, gives it "bites" of her cookies before she eats and gives her dolly a sip from her bottle at nap time or bedtime, before she puts the bottle in her own mouth. Cute, huh?

I finished my Seahawks colors beaded necklace today!

[FelineFriend]

I'm past the 1/3-finshed point on DGS-3.5's afghan now. When I held it up to show DD, she said "It's the Seahawks colors and Mariners colors rolled into one and you even have brown for the football!" It never dawned on me, until she said that, how true it is. Now I'm more excited than ever to get it done. Go Seahawks and go Mariners.

I showed DD my Seahawks colors beaded necklace and she really liked it. She said it was beautiful, how she loved the beads and asked if they were glass. I told her only the center 1-inch round cobalt blue bead at the bottom, was glass. Everything else was pony beads or plastic tri-point rounded sparkling beads with an iridescence, which makes them look like glass.

Happy Crafting everyone and needle-working, too!