Baby Sweater Done!

That's right, cast off a few hours before the shower started. But that wasn't the end of it naturally, because anyone who has ever tried to shove a shirt over a toddlers head knows - Cardigans are the way to go.

 So I washed and blocked it, laying it in the sun to hurry the process (Physics has no respect for crunch time!) The blocking fortunately smoothed out the lumpy colorwork bits, I guess my tension was a bit wonky.

 Then, using the techniques I learned in the class the day before I sewed two lines on either line of the center row. The sweater was knit with a pair of purl stitches in front to be guides. I learned the hard way that it is tricky to capture the carried threads, and that many knitters simply use all their yarns at once on these "steeking stitches" I'll have to do that next time!

 I crocheted the edges and added buttons. A trick from Joyuna - split a multi-ply down to use as thread for sewing the buttons on.

 I then went back in for another row of double crochet on the other face, with single crochet loops for the buttons. (Confession - I intended to use a zipper, never thought to get a separating zipper instead of one bound on both ends. Duh.)

And done! One hour before leaving for the shower! Now I can get to the matching hat I was supposed to have finished as well...

More Vintage Buttons

It so happens that my pile of estate sale finds always runneth over. My mother and I are always picking up little bundles of notions and fabric scraps from the basements of old crafty ladies. I recently was going thru them and found this lovely bag of fabric covered buttons, all appear to be handmade. After some debate as to whether or not I wanted to use them I decided to put them on cards and stick them up in my Etsy shop! It's nice to share the vintage love right?

More buttons!!

Mom is my hero. Once again hit the estate sale jackpot. 4 jars of buttons and a shoebox of 'em still on the cards. Woot! Now I can be destracted from actually sewing by the rainbow pile of buttons waiting to be sorted and paired up... Some of those on cards will be for sale in my etsy shop soon - I like to spread the joy around!