Jungle Friends Soft Book

Pattern/Technique: Jungle Friends fabric panel by Stacy Iest Hsu for Moda Fabrics (purchased from Stitch Supply Co.)

Modifications: none

New skills: n/a

Lessons/Notes: The grain on the fabric panel was quite off in places, making some of the pages warped. For the large pages I compensated for this by cutting out the page, folding it in half so that the short edges were aligned, then ironing toward the folded edge (essentially a version of the Harriet Hargrave method for straightening fabric grain in Quilters Academy vol. 1).

Note: I’m now realizing that maybe it would have made more sense to try straightening the grain for the whole panel before cutting out any pieces, though I didn’t notice it was so far off until after cutting - definitely a thing to pay attention to if I make another one of these.

This project called for a lot of interfacing and fusible fleece so I got to use up a bunch of that weird papery Pellon Featherweight I bought a while ago. I may have misread the instructions for the cover page, and interfaced the interior side with single-sided interfacing, but I don’t think the extra stability hurt anything.

Sewing both sides of the pages together was a little tricky with the non-stabilized fabric side up (quite a bit of shifting/stretching), but much easier with the fusible fleece side up.

Used my trick of marking the start/stop point of my seam with red pins.

Sewing around tight corners is a skill I’m trying to improve and I saw better results when sewing at a slow but steady pace (vs. stopping frequently) and really bossing the fabric around curves. Just have to continue to practice.

What I’d do differently: Check panel grain distortion before cutting out pieces. Overall this was a really quick and satisfying little project - I’d love to make another one in the future.

Care: Machine wash, dry flat

Grey Baby Booties

Pattern/Technique: Baby Boots by Appalachian Baby Design, size 6 months

Modifications: None

Materials: Mountain Meadow Worsted Laramie: 1 skein Medium Grey, 1 skein Dark Grey

US7 circular needle (diameter didn’t matter as the pattern is knit flat and seamed)

Pencil

New skills: Loop stitch

Lessons/Notes: I was pretty impressed by the softness of the Mountain Meadow yarn, especially for a 100% wool. I’d consider this a contender for a future sweater project.

The loop stitch was a bit tricky, but I found that getting even loops was easier if I kept a few stitches on the pencil at a time (I think I ended up carrying up to 11-12). Then after purling the next row, I pulled at the loops once more to stretch them out and really lock them in place.

On the instep section where you pick up and knit, I tried picking up and knitting into the edge stitches (leaves a visible line on the front of the work) and picking up 1/2 stitch from the edge (leaves a purl row / negative space on the front of the work). I found that the edge stitches were easier to pick up and the line blended in nicely with the rest of the ribbing.

I had to think a bit about how to knit in to the bar of the garter section to make the sole, but I figured out that it was a pretty standard pick up and knit, where you go under the bar with your active (right) needle, wrap the yarn and pull it through. It also helped that all of the bars I was knitting into were the contrast color.

I ended up using the tails from the color swaps to seam the sole and back of the boots, which was super handy. As per the pattern, I didn’t seam the dark grey loop section at the top of the boot. When seaming up the back of the boot I used a mattress stitch, which gave me a neat stripe of 2 knit stitches that is a pretty cute contrast to the 1x1 ribbing.

What I'd do differently: My soles were a lil wonky when I seamed them and I would have been happy if they were a liiiiitle neater. I suppose if I were really finicky I’d also do a SSK for one of the decreases on the sole to make them symmetrical, but I’m trying to get over those perfectionist tendencies (It’s literally on the bottom of a foot - nobody’s going to see it)

Care: Hand wash, dry flat