The first project I want to share is this cute little Captain America lovey I made. It's for someone in particular but shhh they haven't had their baby yet so I haven't given it to them yet. : ) I also sell this on my Etsy site too.
I got the pattern from here. This gentleman was very nice to let me use his pattern. He also has one that is a Batman lovey pattern. Very cute but I haven't made it yet.
The second project I wanted to share was a very involved filet crochet project I made for my sister. I started to explore filet crochet about a year ago and have made some things but decided to try something personal and more difficult. I made my sister a pouch to put her temple things in. So first I had to design it. I spent most of January working on the design before I even tried to make it. Then since I didn't have a pattern it was trial and error to get the right size of crochet thread and the right hook. I went through three different sizes of crochet thread and tried out three or four different hook sizes before I finally got the right match. Unfortunately I had the piece about a third of the way done before realizing that no it will not in fact work and so I restarted. But it just made the final piece better because of all the practice. : )
To explain one small piece of the symbolism here I have a close up of part of it. I found a stitch that looks like people holding hands. I put this in here to represent the generations of family that have gone before, family now, and family in the future. We hold the family very sacred and esteem it's importance very high. We also put high emphasis on family history for the past, present, and future members. It truly was a labor of love and I really enjoyed making it.
Next in line is this cute little elephant lovey for a friend's baby. It was really an easy work up and was a fun project to make.
I got the pattern from Ravelry here. If you haven't been on Ravelry before it is an amazing site with a HUGE amount of patterns. It does require you to sign up but it is FREE. There are a lot of patterns for free and also paid patterns.
My next project was for teacher appreciation day at school. I completely forgot to take pictures of what I made for all my kids' teachers but I did get a picture of one thing I made. This is a frog bookmark. As you can see it looks a little funny, it's squished! I found this on Pinterest and it cracked me up. I had to make it for my son's pre-k teacher because 1. she loves books and 2. she would crack up as much as I did.
Since she is a pre-k teacher I made it longer than a normal bookmark because children's books tend to be larger so I wanted her to be able to use it for anything she wanted to. I honestly had to do a lot of searching to get the pattern. As I said before I found it on Pinterest and it sent me to the author's Facebook page here. then I had to scroll down until I found a picture she had taken of the pattern and I was able to save it as pictures and put them into Word so I could print them. Here's the kicker, the pattern was in Italian!! Lol! So I got to expand my horizon's and I googled Italian/English translation and was able to find a website that I could type in phrases and it would translate them for me. It took about an hour but I was able to get the whole pattern translated enough where I could figure out the pattern. Overall it was a pretty easy pattern and pretty fun to make.
PS My son's teacher loved it!
Another filet crochet project that I worked on this month was for my husband's cousin. She is getting married and I wanted to make something personal for her too. She is getting married in the temple so I wanted to have that in the design. Cat is actually the one that created the design for the temple and she let me use it.
It was really a fun and easy project. I actually like to use Excel to create my designs for my filet crochet projects. It makes it so easy to change the pattern and get it exactly centered and right. I made another one of these last month but didn't even think about getting a picture. But I used Excel for that one too and it made it so easy to just trade out the letters to change the name. I used this alphabet and love it.
Here is my pattern. It's not the greatest picture but that's because of converting it from Excel to pdf and then pulling it into Photoshop and saving it as a jpeg. I love to use Excel since I can make all the squares small and the same size. Put in shaded boxes to make my pattern. And I also like to put in the number of filet crochet boxes I have to make. Whether they are open or closed boxes doesn't matter because the shading tells me that. I just make sure I know where I'm starting and then I can just follow the pattern. Anyway so I'll get off my soapbox about Excel. ; ) I just love it and wanted to share.
My last project to share is one I made for my soon to come little guy. It's a dragon lovey pattern that I found, where else, on Pinterest.
This lovey was fun and really easy to make. I did have a hard time getting my brain to wrap around doing the scales but I think it was more my brain than the pattern. But I eventually got it and I think it turned out so cute! It was a lot of fun seeing it come together once you get to the sewing it all together part. : ) This is another free pattern that is found on Ravelry here.
I have to tell you that my craft board on Pinterest is just bulging with projects that I would love to make! I just have to find a reason to make them and then the time. There is so much creativity out there and I love that people are willing to share!
I just had to share a bunch of the projects that I've been working on. It's been a lot of fun. I've also done some other projects like a mermaid tail afghan and I also did get to design and make fun new Dalek and Tardis tablet pouches for a lady for Christmas. Train tracks and roads for my son (Pattern came from here and I absolutely love her work!). Rather than make this post even longer I'll just put a few pictures up instead of talking about each one. These are projects that I did last fall and they were fun to make. I made the mermaid tail for my little girl for her birthday and she loved it.
What projects have you been busy working on? There is so much to choose from out there! Happy Crocheting!
~Heidi
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