The last couple of weeks have been a sad time for us here at Kitty Cat Crafts. Our much loved, beautiful white cat, Grizzly passed away at the age of 18. He had been with us since we adopted him from the Cat Haven as a tiny kitten in 2000. Not just a beautiful cat, he was very curious and a sociable cat, helping me with all of my indoor tasks. He especially liked to be involved in my crafting ventures.
Grizzly loved to examine all of my quilting projects and would wake up from a nap in time to examine the next step of each project. He was very good at checking how well embellishments were stitched to a quilt or wall hanging. Of course he would "test" my sewing tools and notions any time he got the chance! One of his favourite tricks was to wait until I wasn't looking, jump on my sewing table and push spools of thread onto the floor. Apparently, if you use cat logic, any item that falls on the floor immediately becomes a cat toy.
As many of you will know, no quilt is complete until it has a liberal sprinkling of pet hairs on it. Grizzly loved the feel of quilting cottons and would lie on any fabric or quilt that he could possibly get to, even if it meant that he had to wriggle under the pillows on the spare bed!
As a white cat, he had a very serious duty to sprinkle white hairs on any black fabric that he could find.
His favourite time of year was Christmas. He loved to sit on my Christmas quilt and pretend that he was one of the Christmas ornaments. In addition to this he would spend many hours underneath the Christmas tree, stress testing all of the ornaments. He was always very excited at the beginning of December when the oversize cat toy was set up.
Grizzly was a very important part of our lives and was the inspiration behind the name Kitty Cat Crafts for my pattern line. In 2016 when we had the opportunity to move to the USA, we had to make the difficult decision not to bring him with us as we thought that the long journey and 3 changes of planes would be too stressful for him. He has spent the last 2 years living with my Mum and being very spoiled by his Grandma and Auntie Shanan. I am so sad that I did not have another chance to give him a cuddle before he went. Time was just not on our side. So rest in peace, my dear Kitty Cat and I will sew on in your honor.
A few days ago, I finished the sample and then the pattern for a cute little tote bag. It is my Spring Flowers Shopping Tote and the pattern is now in my Craftsy Store.
This bag brings me so much joy for a few reasons.
The crisp, clear greens and the bright pink are so fresh and happy after the last few months of grey days. Working on the applique in a brightly lit window has been so uplifting for my mood. It has also encouraged me to go for a walk outside and look for all of the hallmarks of the coming Spring. The days are getting longer. Trees now have little leaf buds on them. Bulbs are pushing through the soil in nearby gardens. Some brave Daffodils and Crocus are already in flower.
This is the first applique design that I have worked on in a little while. The design has been completely created in Electric Quilt. I love to work in this software. Spring Flowers Shopping Tote was created in version 7 of Electric Quilt, but version 8 is now available and has even more features than before. Seriously, if you like to design at all, it is a great program to try. I am still learning to use it, but have made some very nice virtual quilts just by following the built in tutorials. Just look at this one:
For me, the greatest joy has come from the fact that my Spring Flowers Shopping Tote is the last of my projects from 2017 that were works in progress at December 31, 2017. In actual fact, there were two projects that I started in 2017 and did not complete in that year. I thought that was a pretty good accomplishment until I realised that I had now finished them both. Of 97 projects started in 2017, I completed 95 of them before the end of the year. The two that were incomplete were my much loved Atlanticus Blanket (completed in January 2018) and my Spring Flowers Shopping Tote.
This is such a great accomplishment for me. I am great at coming up with ideas, selecting and combining materials and even starting projects. Getting them finished is a much more difficult task. This is the first time that I have ever completed all of the projects that I started in one year! The closest that I have come before was 2016 when I had seven projects still in progress by the end of the year. I have since completed five of these and the remaining two I am actively working on. I really like the idea of finishing what I started in the one calendar year, maybe this year I can achieve this.....
This past Christmas, I bought a tiny living Cyprus tree to use as a Christmas tree. It is really tiny, only about 18 inches tall and I don't have many decorations made (yet...). So at Christmas, my tiny tree looked like this:
Then when it was time to put the Christmas things away, the poor tree looked very plain. As it is still Winter, I decided to leave all of the crochet snowflakes on the tree.
This made me happy. I think that I will make some more snowflakes ready for next year though. Then, over the last few days, I was browsing Pinterest to find some heart designs to make my little tree a Heart Tree for Valentine's day. As I am enjoying crochet at the moment, I searched for Crochet Hearts and fell down that rabbit hole for a while. I found this cute crochet heart, complete with chart.
In my thread stash, I had these pretty Lizbeth crochet threads in both size 10 and size 20.
I picked up my trusty crochet hooks, using a size 1.5mm for the size 10 thread.
And a 1.25mm for the finer
size 20 thread.
The chart was pretty easy for me to figure out and a
short time later, I had some pretty hearts.
They looked pretty good to me straight off the hook, so I didn't block them and wove in the ends to form the hanger. Now they are making my tiny tree pretty!
Together with the Loving Hearts Door Hanger that I made last year, they are bringing some love and colour to my apartment.
So, 2017 has bid us goodbye. It was a bit of an up and down year for me. In amongst it all, I managed to find some time for crafts. I finished a grand total of 105 craft/sewing projects for the year. This is a record for me! The crafts included ranged from patchwork, sewing, knitting, crochet and even some tatting. My first project was completed on 11 January 2017 and the last one on 28 December 2017.
On working through my list of completed projects, it appears that 2017 was the year of the bag for me. I started out with the lovely Farmer's Market Gardening Bag completed in March. This bag has become my favorite bag to accompany me to the local library. I ended with the Trick or Treat Bag in October. One of my cats loves this bag almost as much as I do!
During April, I made a collection of drawstring bags, some of which became the samples for my pattern Jelly Roll Jewellery Pouch. The others made from a beautiful Moda Fabrics Jelly Roll have seen a great deal of use as project bags for small knitting projects.
After an August re-vamp of the cupboard I keep my craft supplies in (yep, they are pretty much all in the cupboard under the stairs), I made 5 pencil case size zipper pouches. I do actually use one for pencils. The others have been used for fabric safe markers, cables for crafting devices, knitting notions and I still have one to spare!
As with previous years, I knitted a lot this year. In addition to shawls, I made several hats, most of which were used as Christmas gifts, now that we celebrate Christmas at the cold time of year. I completed 11 shawls this year, including 10 by Boo Knits for the 2017 Boo Challenge. The Challenge was a lot of knitting from one designer, but I have lots of her patterns in my pattern stash, so it was a great opportunity to sit and knit them. Some of these shawls have become my go-to shawls to wear with my winter coat. It is amazing how warm a wisp of airy fluff can keep you!
I released a total of 18 patterns this year, my biggest release to date! I also sold more patterns than I did in 2016, so an enormous Thank You to all who purchased patterns from me.
In October and November, I took part in the on-line class Sulky Art, Fun & Home Fashion On-Line Teacher Certification. It was fun, with great videos and cool projects to make. Making 5 very different projects in 5 weeks became a bit of a challenge for me, when I got inspired by the techniques in this course and started some extra things.... most of which were finished by the end of the year. I still have some more ideas to work with, looking forward to experimenting with these in 2018.
Overall, 2017 was a great crafting year. I tried some new techniques and some new products. It is always good to learn about something new or to use a tool or product in a different way. This has given me some inspiration to tackle some kits that have been quietly waiting in the corner for my attention. As an added bonus, at the end of 2017, I only had 2 projects that were started in 2017, but not completed. One is an upcoming pattern for a tote bag (soon, I hope) and the other is a beautiful crochet Afghan, Atlanticus designed by Hooked on Sunshine. More on these projects another day.....
