November WIPs

 

All this year I've been trying to be more organized with my various craft projects--including, you know, *actually* completing the projects that I start. 

I've been doing a fairly good job with it, too... until November. Things seem to have run off the rails a bit this month.

Here's what I'm currently working on, trying to finish, or at least determinedly not abandoning:

Skull Quilt Block

I actually sewed this skull quilt block back in October, a couple of weeks before Halloween. I was wanting a quick little homemade holiday thing to give to my teenager and put in my college student's care package, and I thought that this skull quilt block would be lovely as the front panel of a zippered pouch big enough to hold their ipads. And while I was at it, I could make one for my nook, as well!

Well, this little sucker was a LOT more challenging and fiddly to sew than I'd anticipated, and it took me two days of seam ripping and swearing to get this one wonky, crooked block.

I DO know what I did wrong, though--when a pattern tells you that the seam allowance is 1/4", they mean it!

Even though it's well past Halloween now, I'm determined not to abandon my project. After all, I have the kind of kids who'd welcome a patchwork skull ipad cozy in their Christmas stockings just as much as they would in their Halloween candy buckets!

Weaving Loom

This was also technically meant to be an October project. In early October, I taught a workshop to Girl Scout leaders on the topic of upcycled cardboard crafts. I'd wanted to include this simple corrugated cardboard weaving loom, but ran out of time to demo it and write/photograph a tutorial. 

I DO actually have plenty of process photos now, so at this point I could write the tutorial up, but now I've gotten wrapped up (ahem) in various weaving patterns, and I checked out a ton of pattern books from the library, and I want to make a few more long braids to use as hangers for all the Christmas ornaments I hope to make.

England Travel Journal

For Mother's Day, Matt and the kids gave me a beautiful blank book and some themed stickers and accessories so that I could keep a travel journal during our upcoming trip to England... which I did!

After I got home, though, I realized that I had plenty of room to intersperse many of my trip photos, as well as other embellishments I'm cutting out from old travel guides and National Geographics. It's... gotten a little out of hand, to be honest. I'm only about halfway done with it, and it's already so fat that Matt's talking about finding a larger set of book rings and rebinding it for me. 

Hand-Sewn Wool Felt Moveable Alphabet

This might be my most unwieldy project to date. I've had a partial package of very nice wool felt (I got it from this shop 11 years ago, and the shop is still in business!) kicking around my stash ever since I got on that Waldorf materials kick back when the kids were small, and I settled on the plan of using it to make a hand-stitched moveable alphabet for my three-year-old niece's Christmas present. 

While fabricating this plan, I conveniently forgot about my extreme myopia and my newly-middle-aged eyesight that means that there are a few specific distances at which I literally cannot focus my eyes... one of them being the distance to a piece of embroidery held in my hands. 

Nevertheless, I am nearsightedly soldiering on! I finished cutting out all the felt letters just a few nights ago, while Matt plied us with cocktails and read me crossword puzzle clues, and my benchmark goal is completing two letters per day--a couple of days ago, I completed three! Alas that currently, most of these letters are being sewn while the teenager and I listen to 12 Years a Slave, which is the most harrowing, saddest, emotional book I've read in I don't know how long. I can't think of a better book for making the human cost of slavery tangible, and it's the best possible book to read with a teenager, but I do feel a little weird sewing away on a three-year-old's toy while listening to Eliza's screams as she's torn away from her small daughter in the New Orleans slave market. 

Hopefully, all these WIPs will be finished by mid-December, and I will try very hard to discipline myself not to start anything new until they are!

I mean, though, I DO need to make some Team Mouse gifts for my own mouseling's fellow Nutcracker warriors, and I've got a couple more handmade Christmas gifts in mind, and we were thinking of really leaning into the Christmas cookie game this year, and I have some England photos that I want to print but first I need to thrift and makeover some frames for them...

Maybe I'll just start the Team Mouse gifts and the Christmas cookies...

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!