The Girl that Stitches

T-shirt Rug Finish Awhile back, I shared the start on the t-shirt rug gift for my Sister's baby.  Laura is due at Christmas, so there is not long to go now!  The size of the rug ended up being about 89cm wide.  It's not as big as the one I made a few years ago, but it's a nice size for the nursery :) Last blog progress was up to here:   Progress over the last few months:   Angelica's Garden Butterfly Here is the butterfly for November!  There is one more butterfly design to release and the Kaleidoscope Collection will be complete.  At this point, the Samplers for this collection will most likely be released at the start of next year. Small Angelica's Garden Butterfly: 49 stitches high by 81 stitches wide, 26 DMC thread colours Angelica's Garden Butterfly: 111 stitches high by 181 stitches wide, 25 DMC thread colours  Threads in this chart: Happy Stitching & Diamond Painting! xxx

Rug Progress  The t-shirt rug is now finished! Here are some work in progress photos from where the last blog left off: Previous progress; 20 rounds, about 80cm wide: After 31 rounds; about 127cm wide: After 32 rounds; about 130 cm wide The Finished Rug The completed rug ended up having 35 rounds and measuring 144 cm wide!  It’s also quite heavy!  Which is not surprising since there has got to be at least 50 or so whole t-shirts of varying sizes in there.  I did end up needing more green t-shirts for the last couple of bands as I decided to go back to green before ending on black.  There were some t-shirts left over but I did use most of the yarn I had.   The great thing about the rug is it is hand washable.  I've found it’s better to spot wash if possible because it’s really thick which means it takes ages to dry. Underlay I purchased a non-slip rug grip underlay for underneath.  Although the rug so heavy that it doesn’t tend to...

A Circular Rug I've been busily making my t-shirt rug project and can now reveal the first part of the rug!  If you have been following along with previous blogs, it will now make sense as to why I was madly cutting up so many t-shirts!  After weeks of collecting, washing and cutting shirts it was super exciting to finally get stitching!      A rough template of the colour band order followed is pictured below, traveling from right to left with some lines of yarn doing more than one band.  The estimated gauge from my test swatches was about 2 cm per round.  The plan was for the finished rug to be between 120 to 150cm wide, a size that would work well for the room it would live in.  For the rug to be halfway between this range it would need approximately 33 rounds! (To estimate the number of rounds for a given size circular rug; find the radius and divide by the stitching gauge:  So for a rug diameter of 135cm, the radius= 135cm divided by...

Of Earth, Air, Water & Fire This week I finished the top page on the Phelan project.  The first column is now complete! Reminder of cropped version: Previous progress: Current progress: It's really tricky to capture the sparkle on camera.  It glitters more in person!  The metallic threads were not charted and have been added to the design.   Goals Update Now the Phelan pages are done I'm very very close to achieving my yearly goals!  There are still two pages left to finish for my 2016 goals.  The pages are almost there but both have a decent amount of confetti remaining, so fingers crossed they can be completed in time! Update on the T-shirt Yarn Project! After checking out how many t-shirts were used in similar projects,  I decided there was a need for more shirts!  The yarn pile has now multiplied from 29 to 51 balls! There are also some spare shirts to cut up if need be. The dark greens and blues are not displaying correctly... A...

Iris Keeper of the Rainbow Due to needing whole pages for participation in the HAED Challenges, I'd skipped ahead and completed page 4 and 5 on Iris.  So I've gone back to finish working on page 3.  The confetti has again gotten the better of me though and I've not yet gotten the page finish I'd hoped for! At this stage it's not looking like I will finish my yearly goals, but I'll keep stitching anyway! Previous progress: Some more progress: Current Progress:  T- Shirt Yarn I took a short break from stitching this week to work on a crafty side project. I've been making t-shirt yarn! A visit to several local Op Shops supplied a fantastic range of different coloured t-shirts to cut up. After washing them all I laid them out on the floor and there ended up being 29 t-shirts: T-shirt yarn is an awesome way to recycle used or old t-shirts lying around.  Not to mention any money spent at local Charity Shops goes to a great cause! The pla...