Knot/Twist Pillow

The crochet part of this pillow was a breeze, but the sewing part was a slog at first. Luckily I picked up a few tricks along the way and by the end I daresay I was really enjoying the process!

Pattern: Knot & Twist pillow kit by Love Fest Fibers

New skills: n/a

Lessons: The crocheted panel is quite heavy, and seemed short by about 1/2"-3/4" compared to the size of the pillowcase but luckily it can be stretched into the correct shape. I did this by using a running stitch (through the pillowcase and the crocheted panel) about 2-3 inches in from the edge to thread baste the crocheted panel to the pillowcase. (I started out basting using a whip stitch which was really inefficient and messy.) After basting, then use a running stitch around the edge of the pillowcase to secure the crocheted panel around the edges.

What I'd do differently: Nothing.

Care: Spot clean

Crab Needlepoint

This was my first needlepoint piece.. It turned out to be a perfect quarantine companion; an easy pattern to follow with large blocks of color. Repetitive stitching on a counted grid provided gentle way to be creative during some of the worst weeks of quarantine.

With the needlepoint part of the project complete, I’m going to eventually sew this into a pillow, likely using fabric like a stiff cotton canvas / duck on the back panel to match the weight of the front panel.

Pattern: Tina the Crab kit by Emily Peacock

New skills: Needlepoint

Lessons: Worsted weight yarn can actually have a fair amount of variation in its thickness, which causes the canvas to slightly show. The kit used 2 different brands of yarn (Appletons and Anchor) so I suspect there might be a difference in consistency/quality between them.

How you position your blocks of stitches can matter a lot:

1. If there are no stitches to the left of a block, the first stitch will be slightly larger because it expands into the empty canvas square to its left. This isn’t an issue on the edge of a piece, but if the area to the left is later filled in, those earlier stitches will continue to appear a little larger. As a result, consistently working left to right when filling in a large block of color results in a cleaner final product.

2. A slight vertical seam tends to be visible between adjacent blocks of stitches. I haven’t done a lot of reading into how to prevent this, but it will be something I research more fully before a future project.

I practiced weaving in the beginning and end of each piece of yarn to keep the back of the piece clean and tidy. It was effort well-spent and I’ll keep doing this in the future.

What I’d do differently: There’s a single stitch in a dark section where I accidentally went over 2 squares instead of one, however it’s barely noticeable and wasn’t easily correctable.

Apply the knowledge above and do some research on how to successfully position blocks of stitches to get a clean, seamless look.

Care: Spot clean only, using warm water.