Illusion Knitting

I have been wanting to try this for a while as I was intrigued as to how it worked and now I've tried it to be honest I still have no idea how or why it works but it looks really cool!!

The idea of illusion knitting is that when you look at it straight on you just see the stripes but when you look at it from an angle a picture or words emerge from the knitting.

I made a cushion for my brother for his birthday. His favourite musical is Les Miserables and after a quick search on Ravelry I found an illusion pattern that was perfect for it.

It didn't take too long to knit up once I had got into the swing of following the pattern.

This is what the front of the cushion looks like from straight on:

But when you look at it from below a recognisable image appears...

Pretty clever no?!

I decided to embroider some lyrics from the musical on the back of the cushion from the song Red and Black as it fitted in with the colour scheme of the cushion.

When it was made into a cushion it was harder to picture the illusion but it was still there!

 

 I definitely want to try more illusion knitting maybe on a scarf or something!

Mum's finished birthday present

This should have been Mum's Christmas present but it was no where near finished then so I made sure it was finished in time for her birthday on the 13th February.

I've decided I'm much more productive if I have a couple of projects on the go at the same time but just work on one in the mornings in bed and one in the evenings on the sofa! This was my morning project. As I do a later shift at work every day I don't have to get up and ready until 9am so I wake up at 7am so I can get in a few hours stitching done in the mornings.

My mum plays bowls in the summer and is the ladies captain of the local bowls club so when I found this chart in an old CrossStitcher from a charity shop I thought it would be perfect. It is from issue 32 (July 1995) and is a bowler from the 1900s. I can't imagine it was very easy to bowl in this skirt!!

I didn't use the exact colours in the chart as it would have been too expensive to have to buy them all so just used ones I already had in my box that were close to the picture. I think she will go into the study so I mounted her into a black frame to match the other pictures in there.

I haven't mounted with a border before but I'm pretty impressed with the result. Thought I would even sign it!! I won't be giving her the picture until Sunday, this is possibly the most I have ever been prepared with a handmade present- but there is still time to misplace it before the day!!

Finished Friday

This weeks Finished Friday is going to attempt to be a bit of a 'how to...' post. It is for a union jack bag I decided to make a friend for her birthday that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago on a Work in Progress Wednesday post.

Here is the finished bag:

And now how to make your very own in 14 stages! (I did forget to take pictures for some of the stages as I got carried away with making the bag)

Step 1: Choose your fabrics. I chose to go with a gingham background, cream, and blue and pink in the flower fabric. They were all bits of fabric I had in my stash so raid your stash and see what you can find- you'll be surprised!

Step 2: Mark up and cut out your bag shape from the background fabric. My size is 40cm wide by 50cm tall for front and back pieces.

And NEVER let your cat help you with this stage!!

Step 3: Cut out the strips. I made the cream fabric 2cm wider than the flowery fabric to give it a nice sized boarder. Remember to cut the strips about 4cm wider than you want to finished strip to be and you will press the rough edges under before sewing them on to give a nice neat egde.

Step 4: Press all pieces. I know this is boring and time consuming but it really does make a difference. And remember to press a double hem in your main fabric for the opening of the bag. Then I liked to lay mine out to get an idea of what the finished product would look like.

Step 5: I stitch along the double hem pressed earlier and sewed on all the cream strips to create the background for the flowery strips.



Step 6: I used bondaweb to stick the flowery strips onto the cream ones and then machined over the very edge of these with a zig zag stitch to make sure they were secured.

Step 7 I decided to embroider a blanket stitch along the outside of the cream strips just to make them stand out a bit more. I chose a dark purple embroidery thread for mine.

Here is where I stopped taking pictures!

Step 8: Make the bag. Put right sides together and sew around 3 edges (leaving your double hemed side open) and turn right sides out.

Step 9: Make the lining. For this I measured the finished size of the bag and cut out 2 pieces of fabric that size. I pressed a hem again for the opening of the bag. Then sew along 3 sides again.

Step 10: Make 2 handles. Cut a piece of fabric 3 times as wide as you would like them to end up and however long you would like them adding about 5cm for sewing in place. Press the long raw edges to the middle and then press the strip in half again. Sew a line of straight stitching along the folds and you have a bag handle.

Step 11: Place the lining inside the bag so you can see the right side of the fabric.

Step 12: Pin the handles into place between the bag and the lining so the short raw edges cannot be seen. I like to make sure the bag hangs straight and that the handles are both in the same position.

Step 13: Pin the lining to the inside of the bag making sure the top edges meet but the lining doesn't come over the top.

Step 14: Machine a line of straight stitches along the top of the bag as close as you dare the the edge. The will sew the lining to the bag and the handles in place and then you have one completed union jack bag.

But there is one more surprise...the bag can be reversed!!!

This was not the intention when I was making the bag but I like it!

If you have problems following the step by step guide just let me know and I will try to make it clearer.


Xxx

Work in progress Wednesday

Today for my Work in Progress Wednesday is a bag I am making for a friends birthday present.

She is obsessed with Union Jacks and last year I stitched her a tapestry Union Jack cushion pictured below. It was my first ever attempt at tapestry and looking back it was a bit ambitious as I didn't even have a chart to follow! I worked out that it probably took me over 90 hours to stitch the front and its a bit wonky as I didn't realise I needed a frame to hold it straight but I was so pleased with the end result and so was my friend I think!

So this year I had to think of something equally as good to make her! I thought I would go with the Union Jack theme again and decided on a bag. I have used some fabric from my stash to make a patchwork flag and stitched it onto a background of blue gingham.

This is as much as I have done so far. I decided to use embroidery thread to blanket stitch around the edge. And you can probably see that the blue cross is wonky and doesn't match up but that is the charm of handmade right?! I need to do some handles and I was thinking of a bag organiser inside as she is quite unorganised! But I need to get a wriggle on as her birthday is the 17th!

I'll have to start thinking of another present for next year soon!

Happy crafting!

xxx