Chart P

Last one!!!!!!! :-D   The one on the bottom is my favorite too :-)

Chart P (click to enlarge)

Chart O

I'm almost caught up! :-D

Chart O (click to enlarge)

Chart N

So close...so close...

Chart N (click to enlarge)

Chart M

Could it be? Am I really down to the last row??? Halleluiah! Last placement refresher, yay! personal use only please :-)

Chart M (click to enlarge)

Chart L

Blah...fell behind again...stupid real life getting in the way :-P

Chart L (click to enlarge)

Chart K

Must not give up...so close...fingers so sore...

Chart K (click to enlarge)

Chart J

Sloooooooooooowly getting there...

Chart J (click to enlarge)

Chart I

Half way there!!!! 16 more to go!!! :-D  Another refresher on pattern placement, still personal use only please :-)

Chart I (click to enlarge)

Chart H

Almost there!

Chart H (click to enlarge)

Chart F

The thread doesn't like me today, it does nothing but tangle and knot :-(

Chart F (click to enlarge)

Chart G

*sigh* falling behind again...

Chart G (click to enlarge)

Chart E

Hooray! We've made it through the top row! Only 24 more patterns to go! Here's a refresher of the placement, pattern is personal use only please :-)

Chart E (click to enlarge)

Chart D

Slowly...catching...up...

Chart D (click to enlarge)

Chart C

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Chart C (click to enlarge)

Chart B

Geez, I'm already behind...oh well.

Chart B (click to enlarge)

Blackwork Checkerboard Sampler

A few years back while browsing through a stack of Gram's old needlework books I came upon an interesting idea.  They had turned a simple blackwork sampler into a checkerboard.  I found this quite ingenious, because really, what the heck do you do with a sampler once it's done? So I snapped a photo of it and moved on to other things.  I came across the photo recently and thought "wow...still a neat idea". 

The thing with photos is that while you get the general idea of how the needlework should look, it's reeeeeally hard to distinguish the actual pattern.  So I browsed through some books I had at hand, surfed the web, and even made up a few of my own to create this blackwork checkerboard. 

Time for some specs:  The pattern is 216x216 squares on 18ct Aida cloth (60.96x60.96cm).  The checkerboard consists of 64 squares, each of which is 26x26 squares.  If you're doing the math, that leaves a 4 square boarder around your project. Feel free to leave more.  32 of those squares are left black, leaving 32 to be filled in.  Blackwork is usually worked in black...hence the name.  I, however, rebel that I am, will be using DMC 3362 (it's a nice dark green color). I'm also going to be working it with 1 strand.

I"m going to post parts of the pattern about every other day in the hopes that it will motivate me to keep up the pace.  Haven't decided if I'll work in order, but I'll post them in order in the event anyone else wants to use this pattern so you're not too confused or skipping wildly around.  Personal use only please. 

So yay! Here we go :-)

A preview of what the end result should look like

Broken into 16 parts

Chart A (click to enlarge)

Project Saturn

The end results of Ry's family Saturn project.  The assignment was to pick a planet and research it, answering 9 provided questions and adding more of your own to fill a file folder/lapbook.

The front

Lifting the flap reveals the questions answer

Open one side...

and then the other

All flaps opened to reveal the answers

The Saturn pop-up

From the side you see the pop-up part better

This portion showed all of Saturn's named moons

 

And removable cards that detail Saturn's rings

And there you have a report on Saturn.  We got a lot of the pictures from the NASA website, so thanks NASA!

Origamic Architecture

So we have another family learning project with Ry, this time a lapbook on a planet.  He's chosen Saturn.  He is fairly determined that he will have a pop-up/pop-out of the planet, which while definitely a creative idea, is a tad beyond my knowledge.  So while I was cruising round the internet looking for instructions on how to achieve a planetary pop-up I came across the most amazing site.

 

 http://www.baudandbui.fr.st/

(click on the origamic architecture link in the first paragraph)

How awesome is that???  The site's bilingual, so don't worry if you find yourself staring at a bunch of French (unless of course you read French, which is a bonus for you, now isn't it?) just scroll until you find the English parts.  There's a ton of instructions on how to do these, it's basically a .pdf page that has all your cut and fold lines marked (cut the solids, fold the dashed).  It really can't get much simpler than that I think.  

So go have fun and make some awesome pop-out art.

S is for Spoonflower

Spoonflower is a fabric lovers dream website.  I ran across it a few years ago when it was just starting out and fell in love with it.  It sells custom, printed on demand fabric created by you.  Not feeling up to the task of creating your own fabric?  That's okay, you can browse through other member's gallery until you find that design that screams buy me.

I know what your thinking.  If any bum on the internet can create a fabric design, then obviously the standards aren't that great.  But no.  The standards are pretty high actually.  And the designs are often amazing.  The lovely thing that keeps the creative designing fresh and new are the weekly fabric contests.  All members are given the opportunity to submit one design each week into a contest revolving around a specific theme.  You can see past winners and themes here.  Just be prepared for a cute and awesome overload : )

P is for Project

My nephew had to do a report on an animal.  It was an interesting project.  The directions were to create a vest, out of paper bags or material, and on the vest place a minimum of 5 facts and 3 pictures about the animal they chose.  It was one of his monthly family projects, so we got to help...yay!

He's became fascinated with the Harry Potter series and had just finished the first book when this project was announced.  He decided to do the snowy owl...wonder where he got that animal from?  He decided that he wanted a vest out of material, and he wanted a huge flying owl on the back of it.  It had to be white with black "spots" and have huge yellow eyes.  So naturally I did my best to comply.  He read through 3 different books to find his 5 facts, and helped pick out the pictures to go along with it.

And here's the finished vest:

 

I couldn't find a free vest pattern for kids that I liked, so I drafted my own using the lining and then cut out the blue polar fleece to match.  I didn't realize how much polar fleece stretched until I went to sew the bottom and had to make these little tucks to get the fabric to match up.

 We had him write out his facts and then scanned them into the computer and "attached" them to the pictures they went with, printed them on photo transfer paper and then used iron on heat bond to attach them to the vest.

 

 For the owl I found a coloring page of Hedwig from Harry Potter online and scaled it to the size of the vest.  I traced the image onto white felt with a lt. gray marker before cutting them out.  I created layers of felt to give it a more 3 dimensional look.  Once the pieces were cut I used the marker to mark where the black "spots" would be and then he used black paint to go over them.  We used fabri-tac to glue the pieces together and then to the vest itself.  The eyes were 20mm yellow google eyes.  we cut slits in the eye "layer" and inserted them a bit to cover the eyes slightly.

The beak and talons are cut from black felt and layered in.

The owl winds up covering most of his back.  He was pretty excited to try it on : )