Felted Sweater Slippers!

I dearly love my annual pajama project for my grandkids, carrying on the family Grandma Christmas Pajama tradition for the third generation. And I seem to have an parallel annual tradition--the one where I tell myself, "This year I'll just have that all finished early and be ready." And then find myself sewing madly in the middle of December.

This week, I'm sewing like crazy. (Family, avert your eyes!)

This year I thought I might change it up a bit--I've been collecting and felting wool thrift-store sweaters for projects, and thought they'd make warm and festive slippers. Martha Stewart Crafts has a great on-line pattern for slippers made of felt, which seemed adaptable (you can make any size pattern by enlarging with a photocopier). I added the cuff.

One big concern: this plan sounds slippery. Thinking of non-slip soles, I found a vinyl upholstery remnant at Hancock's ($6.00 a yard) in a very neutral gray-beige that seems durable and goes with other colors well, and also appeared less slippery than the others. My test pair proved it was a good choice.


Martha's pattern worked very well--I added an insole of felted sweater, basting the it to the vinyl sole right sides together, and the contrast band is stitched to the top of the slipper, right sides together. The seam allowance is then turned down inside and stitched in place.

I feel a tutorial coming up--but not this week!

Birthday Quilt for T!

Grand-daughter T recently celebrated her birthday, and it was her turn for a quilt from Grandma. I have at last dipped into my I-Spy hoard (collected with Care's assistance) and created my first I-Spy project!

It was fun choosing just the right spies to delight T--since she has limited vision, we tried to choose pictures that are fairly good sized, bright colored, and crisply drawn. Lots of contrast works for T, and we found many of her favorite things in our piles! I used Care's excellent Disappearing Four Patch instructions found here, and the top went together smoothly.

As often happens, time grew short, and I took the top to Care's for quilting--she's much faster than I--and we worked on the borders and binding together. (Thanks, Aunt Care!) And check out the fabulous backing she had in her stash:

I love how the hippos march between the I-spies! There's a blue scrap border on the front, with a red scrap binding.

I'm happy to report that T loves her quilt, and was able to identify all the I-Spies with only a very little coaching--not surprisingly, the broccoli (a great T favorite) eluded her a bit.

Don't miss another of T's delightful gifts on Care's blog--Happy Birthday, T!!

Two Curtain Rod Finials--$.33!

I've at last carried out a very small project I have been anticipating happily--new finials for my much-updated living room curtain rod. Recognize them?

This is actually the original rod I hung in the living room years ago, and has had many incarnations over the years:

--a brown traverse drapery rod with plastic 'wood' finials (70's)
--a plain rod covered with a puffy valance, traverse works removed (80's)
--spray-painted gold, then supported by 'new' gold wood thrift-store brackets (90's)

Along the way it lost its dated finials, and since the rod is a hollow tube, the difficulty has been in attaching any new (or 'new') finials to its ends.

Earlier this year,inspiration struck, and I have been happily anticipating the advent of the Christmas decorations at the dollar store. A tube of six plastic ornaments for $1.00, and I'm set! I snipped off the nub holding the hook, cut a one inch circle in the ball with my kitchen shears, and put it over the end of the rod. I think I'm so smart!

And I still have 4 more ornaments!