2013 Crafting for Charity: Blanket #2 and #3

I did it!  I took sort of the easy way out and did a couple of quick crochet around fleece blankets, but these are the last two blankets.  They are warm and soft and I hope it gives whoever receives them some comfort.

I'm preparing the package and sending it out soon to Project Linus. :)

Note to self:  Making the Crafting for charity month = to the shortest month of the year??? Maybe not such a good idea!

On to National Craft Month (March).

Happy Crafting everyone!

2013 Crafting for Charity - Blanket #1

Tomorrow is Make a Blanket Day for Project Linus.  I thought it would be a great time to update my status on my goal of 3 blankets.

I first started crocheting a blanket.  It was turning out nice and thick.  Unfortunately, I ran out of the yarn I had planned to use.  I know I could have kept on crocheting with a different yarn, or buy another yarn, but I scratched the blanket as my first and decided on making it a rug instead.  Check it out:

So, as of early this week I was at 0 of 3. :(

Luckily, I had a backup plan of an easy blanket to make using fleece.  Here it is:

It's a super simple method to make the finishing fringe.

1.  Cut the corners (I remove a 4" x 4" square from each corner )
2.  Cut strips.  I used a piece of painters tape 4 inches from the edge as a guide of how far to cut.  In this blanket I cut about 1.5" strips.
3.  After cutting the strips, snip a small hole just above the middle of each strip.  When you get to the corner, don't share the hole for the two corner strips.  IMO, it just doesn't look right.
4.  Fit the strip thru the hole from the bottom of the blanket and pull.  Now do that for each hole.

And there you have it.  Finished and super simple.  1 of 3.  I hope to create another one like this tomorrow for Make a Blanket Day.  How is your charity crafting going?

Crafting for Charity Month 2013

As you may have noticed, I didn't do the "Pledge for Beanies" this past season.  Mostly because I decided that the time of year was too busy for me to make what I could.  Upon evaluating it all, I decided  on a few changes.

1.  I will call it "Crafting for Charities Month" instead of "Pledging for Beanies."   This gives more variety on what I might do each year, as I can do Headhuggers one year and Project Linus the next.  Spread the Love, right?

2.  I decided to change the length of crafting for charities to one month instead of two.  This is more on a trial basis.  I may consider doing two non-consecutive months.

3.  The charity we will support or craft for will change from year to year (reason for name change).

4.  The Crafting for Charity month will be in February (at least this year, we'll see how it goes for next year).

With February off to it's start, I wanted to kick off the 1st Crafting for Charity month of Rad Linc Crafts.     This month, I will craft for Project Linus.  I'll be making various blankets to send to them.  I may look make some similar to the ones I've posted before.  My goal is to make at least three blankets before the month is over (February is kinda a short month).

I encourage you to join in with the crafting.  I'd love to hear who you are crafting for this month.  Feel free to send me a message (f t c a n o n AT g m a i l DOT c o m) (or you can post it on facebook) with what your crafting and I'll mention it on one of my future posts this month.

Happy Crafting for Charities. :)

Quilting Adventures

In the last few weeks I've decided to try a little quilting.  Quilting is something that I've always wanted to try, but have never really found the opportunity to try it, til now.

It started out with my friend asking me if I knew if there was a service that one can bring quilt squares to get assembled.  Her idea was that she was going to have her bible study class to decorate squares and to make a quilt for a fellow teacher/friend that is going to have a baby.  Since I've been thinking about trying my hand at quilting again and since I had a perfect quilt to make for my sister who will be having a baby soon, I went for it.  I went with a simple square checkered pattern and used flannel.  I used one piece of flannel for the backing and basically folded it to the front for the binding.

Here's my very first quilt.

Anyway, my friend decided to do an alphabet quilt by attaching the letters using heat and bond adhesive, and doing a blanket stitch with some fray check.  She had her students work on the blanket stitch for the letters.  They turned out awesome.  She gave me all of the fabric and I did the sewing to assemble the squares.  The front were squares of flannel with cotton letters attached.  The back was fleece, and the binding was flannel.  I got to learn how to blind-stitch for the binding.  :)  Overall, the quilt was pretty fun to make.  Here are some pictures:

Some tips that we learned:

1.  Youtube really does have everything. :)  I found lots of videos on blind stitching there, and my friend found lots of videos on the blanket stitching there.  If you want to learn something, check there first.

2.  Wash and iron your flannel before you cut and sew anything that will have to be washed.  Apparently, flannel shrinks quite a bit. If you're gonna make quilt squares, you don't want them to change size unexpectedly in a wash.

3.  Use those Joann's coupons because they can save you quite a bit.

Next thing I want to try??? Rag quilting.  Who doesn't love a blanket that gets softer as it ages and gets washed. :)

Crocheted: Happy Baby Blanket

So, I like to collect those little project pages that stores like Joann's and Michael's usually have near the yarn aisles.  Most times you can find them and more online by just visiting the project sites for the stores.  Anyway, this is one I picked up a while ago.  Finally had the opportunity to try it out when I found out my friend was preggers.  Anyway, I went to work on it, and with much frustration (all due to me), I managed to finish it.  

The blanket itself, is very easy to crochet, mainly using double crochets throughout the project.  The frustration in my part was due to the fact that the yarn I had wasn't enough to make it to the end -- and I couldn't find the yarn at the store anymore. Grrr...   I also made the mistake of using both ends of the yarn skein to work with a two yarns for the blanket -- this is actually what made me run out of yarn.  To resolve this, I ended up unraveling the entire blanket (or at least half of it which was where I realized I was going to run out) and start over and mix the colored yarn with white.

The outcome turned out to be better than I expected.  The white gave the color just a lighter hue, perfect for a new baby girl to enjoy.  Here's the pattern for it. Yup, I found the project sheet online. 

So... lessons learned.

1.  Buy the amount of yarn that you're going to need all at the same time.

2.  Don't use a skein from both ends unless your project is surely gonna fit the skein.

By the way, if you're new to crocheting or wanna give it a try check out this book.  It's how I learned. :)

Happy Crocheting!

Crochet Edged Fleece Blanket

This is a simple way to add a personal touch to a fleece blanket.  I found this video that does a really good job of explaining how to make the foundation trim around the fleece blanket. 





Here's what I did...

Materials:

Fleece - I cut the fleece into a square of 30 x 36
Yarn of a corresponding color

How to:

1. First you need to measure and cut the holes into the fleece, for the crochet hook. I used a small pair of scissors and just made a small snip.  3/8" apart about 1/2" in from the edge.  If you want to do these little cuts easier, Project Linus sells a rotary blade that does the trick.  I just recently bought one for future blankets.:)

As a note, Project Linus is a charity that gives handmade blankets to children that are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need. They are accepting new handmade blankets to give away.  A blanket like this would be a wonderful donation for such a needy cause.  In fact, the video above, was from Project Linus.

2.  Next, I crocheted in the foundation row, exactly as they showed in the video. (Except for the corner, I sc, ch and sc on the same hole the previous sc used).

3.  So, for the next two rows, crochet ch3, and slip stitch on 3rd from first ch or last slip stitch.  I used this pattern all the way around the blanket for two rows on the second row, I did the slip stitch in the ch 3 space.

4.  Last row, I made a fan design by doing 4 dc in the previous row's ch 3 space, then a slip stitch on the previous row's slip stitch.

That's it.  A simple border to make a fleece blanket a little more personal.  Don't forget to check out Project Linus.

Charity Baby Blanket - Granny Hexagon

Here is the second charity baby blanket I made for Project Night Night.  I call it a Granny Hexagon for the basic reason that I use a regular Granny Square pattern, but added a couple of side to make it a hexagon.

Here's the crochet pattern.

Ch 4. Join with slip st to form a ring.
Rnd 1: Ch. 3 (acts as first dc), 2 dc in ring, ch 2 (3 dc in ring, ch2) 5 times; join with slip st to first dc.
Rnd 2 and so on: Slip st in next 2 dc and in next ch-2 sp.  Ch 3 (2 dc, ch2, 3 dc) in same sp. (Ch 1, 3 dc) as many times as needed til you reach the next corner (on the round 2, this will only be 1 time). For all corners (except the starting corner), do (3 dc, 2 ch, 3dc ) in the same sp.  Continue round after round til you achieve the size of blanket you want.

That's it.  I hope this is right, as it is the first time I wrote down a pattern. Most of it was rewritten from a granny square pattern that I had.

I plan on sending these out in a the near future with the other blanket that I crocheted.
This bubble blanket also would have worked well for this charity.

Crocheted Bubble Baby Blanket

Last weekend was my cousin's baby shower. She's due in Feb and will be having a boy. As a baby shower gift, I decided to surprise her with a hand crocheted baby blanket for the newcomer. I found this pattern from a slew of patterns on a website aptly named crochet patterns central. Tons and tons of crochet patterns there. You should definitely check it out if you like to crochet. Due to a copyright issue, I can't republish the pattern here so you'll just have to click on the link to get to it (don't worry, it's free).

What I like about this pattern is the simplicity, the quickness, and the beautiful design at the end of it all. Below's a picture of the one I crocheted for my cousin. It didn't take me 3 hours like the pattern said... probably double that time, but I'm a slow crocheter. In the one for my cousin, I followed the pattern almost to the tee, with the same type of yarn, the same size hook, and holding two yarns at the same time. It did save me a lot of time doing it this way because each row was almost an inch in height, it seemed. I have also done a few others in the past holding only one yarn and using thinner baby yarn. The outcome came out nice in both ways, but the single thinner yarn took much much longer to make (one of these are pictured on the very top of this post).



The overall size for this one was about 27" by 30". :-) The proud parents-to-be seem to like it. If you have the time to do it, I think it's a really nice gift to give for a baby shower.

Update: 1/21/09 - My cousin had her baby last night. She and the baby is doing great. :-)