First Appliqué...

I recently received a commission for 2 hats.  A fade from light to dark with a small heart and a fade from gray to blue with a moose.  The first one was simple!  Turned out great and the client loves it!  The second one presented several challenges.

 First I was going to blend the gray and blue then fade to brown with a moose pattern I designed built into the stitches.  But the blue/gray combo didn't pop like I'd hoped for.  So I pulled out all the rows and started again.  This time with just gray at the top and fade to blue with the brown as the moose pattern stitches.  But, in the way of round worked crochet, all the stitches were slanting and didn't line up!  So I pulled it out again! and started fresh.  Gray at the top, fade to blue, and finish with ear flaps.  Then I tried to cross stitch the moose pattern into the hat.  Epic fail!  Pulling the cross stitch out, I decided to make an appliqué of sorts.  I crocheted several small pieces and sewed them together to create a moose!  Then sewed the moose onto the hat.  The end result is pretty good.  And the client loves it too!

While these hats were fun to make they were a little stressful because I had to on the fly make up some patterns for the moose I was going to originally use and the moose appliqué too.  But I needed the stress, because the best things are created when you are working on the fly :)

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Not too long ago I put up a post about how slow LBD had been.  Well, that must have been the trick to start the ball rolling again because it sure has been busy!  I received 3 commissions back to back to back!  While that is fantastic and I appreciate the business but dang! Five hats and an amigurumi bunny later I am finally back to working on my own Christmas presents.  Not only do I only have seven days to finish all my projects, but I keep adding stuff to the list!  I hope and pray to have everything done and wrapped by Tuesday, but that may be optimistic.  Hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a shiny New Year!

Harper's Bella Bunny

Seans Hat

Another Completed Commission

This time it was actually for boys!  I was so excited to be making something that wasn't all girlie in pinks and purples :)

My job was to make ear flap hats that looked like frogs rather than bears.  I already knew I wanted big bulging eyes, but other than that I wasn't sure how to proceed.  Making the hat itself was simple enough.  I have had plenty of practice.  The embellishments were the stumpers.  I modified a hat pattern to be super small to make two half balls, or bowls if you will.  From there I added little safety eyes and some stuffing.  There, eyes done.  The nose was easy enough also.  Just a little "embroidery" and done...again.  The mouth gave me a little trouble.  I started with a large mouth but that ended up looking incredibly stupid and poorly done.  I tried about 3 different options before settling on a simple "V" in red.  I think it looks cute.  I only added the mouth to one of the hats to give both the boys the same feeling hat with subtle differences.

Ayden's Frog Hat, as modeled by Jason

Sean's Frog Hat, as modeled by Styrofoam Head :)

Thank you!

Just a little THANK YOU to all my followers!  I would like to congratulate "Incognito" on being our November drawing winner!  You will be contacted with details of your prize.

Just know I appreciate all my followers and wanted to say thank you just to them by having a drawing for a custom made piece of jewelry this month.  Without you all my blog would just be a random journal about my crafting misadventures, but YOU give this blog meaning... So THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart!