Doors of Dublin

Dublin has very pretty doors.
They come in yellow.

 Or in red.

 Some are blue.

 And others are black.

But all are beautiful.

The Rug (Or, It Used To Be A T-Shirt)

Last year in February, I cut up a couple of my old t-shirts and made them into a rug for the bathroom. As an experiment it was okay, but there were a few things I wasn't 100% happy with, so now for T-Shirt Rug No.2.

 This time I cut the t-shirts in 2 inch wide stripes and then crocheted around the stripes using old cotton yarn (using a 4.5mm hook)

I used about five t-shirts in total and 4 1/2 skeins of the cotton yarn (all from my stash).
I totally love the result (even if this one is ALSO not laying 100% flat). It's a bit more ... squishy than the first rug and it feels really good on my feet when I get out of the shower.
I've still got a couple of t-shirts I've already have cut up, so I guess I'll make a second one, maybe for the bedroom.

Pincushions

I've now finished 15 blocks for the trellis quilt, but have to take a break, as I've run out of the white fabric (I do need 2 inches WOF for each block, so I've ordered 2 more meters --> 20 more blocks, only, I think I will need 21)
In the search for more usable scraps I dumped out my crumbs scrap baskets (basically, everything I deem to be too small to be worth saving with the bigger scraps, but still big enough NOT to end up in the stuffing bag). There I found a lot of small triangle cut offs, which I then turned into small (1 1/4 inch) half square triangle blocks. And those HSTs I then turned into pincushions.
 First one was from the green scraps basket and turned out 3 x 3 3/4 inches (one of the HSTs is 3/4 of an inch after sewing)

Second one is from the blue basket and has a five by five grid (3 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches)

 The third one in reds and neutrals is again 3 x 3 3/4 inches, but I made it into a tiny mattrass 1 inch high.

They are all stuffed with more scraps, those too small be be useful for anything sewn.
I'm quite pleased with the results and also that I found something useful to do with those tiny scraps.

Book Covers

During my my most recent trip to the fabric shop, I came across this great cork leather fabric/material. I bought a roll (roughly the size of a fat quarter) and following the pattern I bought with it, I made a book cover for a note book.
And because it was so damn simple to do, I made another book cover in leather (and a third one in black leather, but no picture as I've run out of note books to cover)

The cork material is made with natural cork which is bonded to a fabric backing and it's a pleasure a use and touch. So soft.
I also love the brilliant way for the closure of the book. Just stick a pen or pencil through the three loops and the book is held closed. And you never have to search for a writing utensil.

Scrappy Trellis

New Year, new quilting project(s).

This one is another attempt to manage all the scraps I've got.

I've searched through my scrap drawer and pulled out all the scraps that are at least 3 inches wide and between 1 and 2 1/2 inches wide and sorted them by color groups.

This here is only a part of what I've found, by the way.

Using adding machine paper I sewed the scraps into long stripes (I did cut the adding machine paper to 21 1/2 inch as this worked out best for me)

I then trimmed the stripes to 2 3/4 inch width (the adding machine paper is 2 1/4, so I added 1/4 inch to both sides)

To both sides of the stripes, I sewed a white stripe 1 inch wide (coming out as 1/2 inch) and two gray triangles.
After trimming that block down to 6 1/2 inches it looks like this.

 And after sewing a couple of them they look like this.

I've got now 8 blocks á 4 sub-blocks. I'm aiming for a total of 30 or 36 blocks, which should give me a 60 x 72 inch (or a 72 x 72 inch) wide quilt.

I'll have to see how far my scraps can get me.