All Grown Up

Back in 2010, I crocheted socks for each of my female friends and family members. I was SO thrilled, and I thought they were the best gifts I'd ever given. Not only did I love crocheting socks, but who else had ever done such a cool thing???

Some of the recipients loved the gift. Some never said whether they liked their socks. A couple told me they were allergic to wool and never said thank you or anything appreciative. (That happens to most quilt-givers at least once, too.) One recipient told me her daughter quickly adopted her socks and asked if I might make one more pair... (Of course I would!!! And I did!!!)

I liked making socks SO much, I began making baby socks. One co-worker asked if I could make baby socks for her dog to wear in winter. I thought about all the quilts (including one I made) that wound up on the floor as a sleeping pad for a beloved dog. It wasn't my idea of how such a treasured gift should be used, but I tried to remember how much my mom has always loved her dog(s). The "child" who never talks back, who never sneaks out the window in the middle of the night, who never wrecks the car and who never runs up a $200 phone bill (LONG before cell phones).

I think I listed three pairs of handmade adult socks in my Etsy shop over the years. (My Etsy shop has been paused since Lizard's December 2019 total knee replacement because I have been so overwhelmed as a Parkinson's caregiver ever since.) (But I hope to re-stock and re-open my Etsy shop this summer...) But who wants to spend $30 (the cost of wool fingering at the time) for a pair of socks when you can get affordable footwear at Target and Walmart and you can get wool socks for $18ish at REI? To date, I've sold only baby socks (and four baby socks for a dog).

I designed a fingerless glove pattern to match my sock pattern. Both patterns were designed to match my hat pattern. I began making matched sets for Etsy and my annual office Christmas craft fair. (I also designed a key chain, cowl, phone cozy and even a snowflake to match...)

Again, I don't think I ever sold any of the sets. I did break up a lot of the sets, though, because buyers wanted only the fingerless gloves or only the hat. I tried to replenish the missing itens as I was able to replace the fingering yarn I'd used for each broken set.

I think most of the sets were given away as gifts after several years of no sales. No complaints. I got no complaints for these gifts. Perhaps I've become more selective in who gets handmade gifts from me... Ha ha ha!

One of the now-grown girls I taught way back during my sock days recently announced she will be serving a church mission in Finland. In two weeks!!! Her mother was looking for wool items to send along. I did NOT have enough time to make another set!!!

I kept thinking I might have at least one pair of adult socks left. They took a while to find because I haven't tried to sell any of my creations in the last five years except for a neighborhood craft fair back in December of 2022. (The reason I didn't try to do the 2023 neighborhood craft fair is I didn't sell anything but quilted table toppers and a couple of crocheted snowflakes at the first one. Definitely not worth leaving Lizard alone that long.)

I found the final pair of adult socks and was surprised to find a matching hat... complete with crocheted flowers I'd intended to sew onto the hat before listing it on Etsy. I never finished the embellishments because I couldn't find yarn to re-make the fingerless gloves (or the full-finger gloves!!!) that had sold at my last office craft fair back in about 2017.

I quickly attached the flowers and wrapped the set in snowflake wrapping paper. My gorgeous hat and socks are now on their way to Finland!

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Coated

What do you do with the old beloved but so worn-out handmade quilt when you replace it with a new handmade quilt (that surely also will be super worn out at some point)?

Well, you make a cozy winter jacket, of course!

Dancing Lizards was our main bedspread for at least 15 years. I'd started it as a twin-size quilt before Lizard and I got hitched, but emergency back surgery delayed the project, and he needed a larger quilt by the time he carried me across the threshold. I was so thrilled with the finished project, I entered it into the Denver National Quilt Festival, my first attempt ever at displaying my quilting, and actually got accepted. I remember being a bit hurt by the judge's comments at the time, but I learned a lot from that experience and have grown so much as a quilter since then.

By the time I finished Lizard Toes, the lizard toes on Dancing Lizards were quite tired and sore from all those years of dancing.

I didn't notice until I began cutting the quilt into coat pattern pieces how worn all four bindings were. So I used them as coat edges to complement with the well-frayed appliquéd lizards.

Cutting up the quilt into smaller pieces afforded me the opportunity to fix a few mistakes from the past with the domestic sewing machine, as well as perform long-overdue surgery on some ailing lizards. Except for the zigzag stitching around the lizards, all quilting originally was done by hand.

Cutting up a once-treasured quilt is pretty darned scary at first. I had to keep telling myself, "You're not going to hurt it! It's already pretty far gone!"

I had to cut the hood separately and piece it to the coat front because the quilt, although huge, was not long enough or wide enough to accomodate the very long hooded pattern. (The pattern includes a hoodless version, but how could I go without?!?) I also had to go with a shorter version of the pattern because the quilt wasn't big enough for the full-length coat I envisioned making. Darn it!

I still had a small amount of the backing material in my stash, and I used it to bind the front edges of the jacket. I was amazed by how much the backing had faded after all these years and probably a hundred trips through the washer.

I thought I could finish this project in one night, but I think I must have been sleepy when I put together the second-to-last seam. Oh, it would have been done in just one more hour!!!

Still not sure how I did it, but I had the lower right arm connected to the left side of the jacket. It took me three days to frog the zigzagging I used along both sides of seam edges to make the jacket reversible. Gosh, I knew I should have done French seams and finished by hand instead of using machine zigzag to harmonize with the lizards. Handwork would have taken much longer to finish the jacket, but ripping out the errant seam wouldn't have taken anywhere near as long! And perhaps I would have noticed the mistake sooner...

Post-surgery prognosis now calls for a very warm and snuggly winter!

Linking up with Alycia Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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