amy a la mode

Quickie Chair Update

We have this awesome purple arm chair in our living room that we bought about five years. Unfortunately, the corduroy upholstery has taken a beating and is nearly worn through in the seat.

Since we aren’t in the mood to have the entire chair recovered at the moment, I decided a simple cushion for the seat would at least keep the stuffing from coming out. I thought of doing something fancy like a zippered cushion, but then decided that I didn’t want any closures that might rub on the upholstery anywhere else. So, I just made a basic envelope-style cushion cover and stuffed a pillow form in it.

Not bad for a quick project. And I was especially happy to find this upholstery fabric at Joann’s with the big gingko leaves on it. It reminds me of the beautiful old gingko tree that we had at our old house in Kentucky. It makes me smile every time I look at this.

Something Up My Sleeve

I have some other projects that I’ve finished in the last couple of weeks that I’ve been meaning to show you, but I just finished this one and I am so super excited about it that I decided I need to show it to you first!

My husband got a Mac Air recently, and he requested that I make him one of my laptop sleeves for it. When I asked him what kind of fabric he wanted, he said that he would like an “Amy a la Mode original.” And I couldn’t say no to that!

By the way, did you know that the Laptop Sleeve Tutorial is the second most popular page on my blog? (The Super Simple Holiday Card is the most popular page, in case you were wondering.)

And I realized recently that there was a problem with the calculations that was causing the lining to be a little shorter than the exterior. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where it was coming from, but I have edited the instructions to have you subtract 1″ from the exterior length, and that should fix it, no matter what size you are making.

Anyhow, I’ve been on a major kick of using up the fabric I have lying around lately, and I had a TON of 2″ squares leftover from making the first mosaic quilt. I thought these would be perfect for a little laptop case!

In the original tutorial, the quilted side is on the inside, but for this version I have put the pieced & quilted side on the exterior, where it will shine. And since this little laptop is so small and he doesn’t need to get anything else in this sleeve, I didn’t allow for any ease.

It took 140 of the 2″ squares to make this little case for a laptop that is about 7.5″ x 12″. Seems like a lot, doesn’t it?

I finished it off with a couple of vintage buttons. I think my sweet hubby was as excited by the finished product as I was!

Cozy Comfort for Chilly Hands

Two years ago, my awesome blogging friend Terri made me this great pair of fingerless gloves.

Flash forward to today, and these gloves have seen better days. I have worn them SO MUCH over the last couple of years, that they are actually felting around the edge at the fingers. And getting seriously worn out.

So, I decided it was time for a new pair, and what better to make them out of than the leftover Hazel Knits yarn from my mother’s cowl? I had been coveting this yarn and was very happy I bought the skein for my mother when I did, because about two days later someone bought all the other skeins of that colorway that we had in the shop. Seriously.

I opted for a free pattern I found on Ravelry, though I adapted it slightly to my purposes (or my laziness however you want to think of it). I just couldn’t bear to do cabling on every single row. Blech.

These knitted up really quickly and would have knitted up even faster if I hadn’t completely finished the thumb gusset on the second glove before noticing I had just done the right one again instead of making the left. Doh!

But I am loving them already. They are just the perfect size and I now get to look at this beautiful yarn all the time!!!

Christmas Cowl

Here’s the last Christmas gift I made that I promised to show you.

My mother requested a “scarf” that was a loop, but she didn’t want it to hang down very far and she didn’t want to have to double it up. That basically equated to looking for cowl patterns that were longer or could easily be made longer. I ended up using the Botanical Cowl pattern, which I found free on Ravelry.

This was a great little pattern. It came in a cowl length and a really long scarf length. I used the cowl version, but ended up lengthening it a bit to fit my mother’s specifications.

She also requested that it be fairly lightweight, but not too light. Not as light as the mohair scarf that I made her for her birthday, but not chunky like the alpaca scarf I gave her for Christmas last year.

That led me to the awesome selection of hand-dyed fingering weight yarns we have at the shop, and since she also requested browns and tans, I had the perfect excuse to buy Arroyo, one of the latest colorways of Hazel Knits Artisan Sock yarn. If you have not used this yarn, it is really great to work with. And as a bonus, there was enough left after the cowl (which used less than 200 yards) for me to make something for myself. (Photos of that project coming up soon as well, I promise!)

Anyhow, I hope she likes the cowl/scarf. If she doesn’t, I’d be happy to take it back!!

It’s been fabulous to have all my holiday gift making done so early this year. In fact, all the shopping is done as well, and all of our gifts were shipped on Nov. 28 to their respective giftees. The only thing left on my list to do since then has been to bake cookies as a host gift to take to a Yule party on Dec. 11. Other than that, I have basically sworn off all shopping other than food shopping until after the beginning of the year. You haven’t seen madness until you’ve seen an SF Bay Area mall between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Instead, I’ll be at my favorite coffee shop with tea and a scone knitting (I have tons of projects I would like to start!), reading, or doing a crossword puzzle. Hope to see you there!

Be Amazed

Yes, my father has hand pieced yet another giant quilt. That makes three in the last year or something like that. Feeling inadequate yet? Yeah. Me too.

Like the first one, this one was hand pieced by my father, quilted (beautifully) by the lovely ladies of Quilting Plus Amish Hand Quilting (I can not recommend them highly enough!), and bound by me. This quilt measures 95″ x 84″. Yeah. It’s HUGE.

I know this quilt is destined for my sister, so she may have had some say in the design of it. The last time there wasn’t an overall plan to the arrangement of the fabrics, but this time there clearly is. I love how he has alternated sections of florals with sections of stripes. Those stripes are just so yummy!

I took it to the shop the day before Thanksgiving to pick out fabric for the binding and everyone wanted to see it. Ev-ry-one. Lots of mouths hanging open and the like, because it’s just that amazing in person. All those little points lined up perfectly. Spectacular.

You can also view some photos of three quilts my father pieced, quilted, and bound entirely himself, entirely by hand, during the 1980′s here, here, and here. Enjoy!