Miscellaneous Crafty Projects 2024

 As I try to catch up on quilts, I've realized there are a bunch of small crafty projects from this year I also haven't shared, so today is a roundup of those.  

Up first are a pair of book covers, the first is out of my favorite star wars fabric for one of my work notebooks.  I added some fun purple sequin trim that's been in my stash forever and that I had no idea what I was ever going to do with.

A little more sophisticated is this pieced leather book cover I made for my mom.  She and my dad had a catastrophic fire early this summer in which they lost their camper and big truck.  It was really really awful, and among many other things, my mom lost her national geographic US National Park Sites book.  She'd been collecting the National Park Passport stamps in that book for many many years.  My sister and I bought her a new book and then called all the National Parks after looking up the dates of my parents' travels and asked them to send us a replacement passport cancellation stamp.  We wound up collecting over 90 different NPS sites.  The book is a large hardcover and I made a cover for it out of some leftover leather scraps I had in my stash.  The fun trim on the front is because I had to sort of piece/applique the leather scraps together because I didn't have enough big pieces left.  The inner flaps are my favorite yellow hippo fabric I got years ago to make a wallet for mom.  

Last year I made a boxy bag for my nephew Alex and more recently I also made one for my niece Anna.  I like the boxy bags, they're pretty capacious and they go together easily.  The one I made from Anna used some super fun agate fabric I ordered from spoonflower and a really cool zipper with fun woven trim as the zipper tape.  I have no idea where it came from but it was great for this kind of project where the zipper could be really visible.

My nephew Alex turned 11 this summer, and he's always been a guinea pig lover.  He doesn't have any pet guinea pigs anymore, but he and my niece and brother-in-law volunteer as often as they can at a local guinea pig rescue.  I decided to make Alex a guinea pig throw pillow as part of his birhtday present.  I used the free-motion couching technique,  another technique I illustrated for Quilting Arts TV.  The whole surface of the pillow is covered with yarn.  I think it turned out cute.

I haven't accomplished very much knitting this year, but I did manage to finish one pair of ankle socks.  I like these socks for summer especially when the regular tall handknit socks are just too warm.  I like the color-  I wear a lot of turquoise and purple so these fit into the wardrobe rotation fairly well.

Finally, the most recent crafty project was this small embroidery I made for my friend Tamas who got married this summer.  I was super excited to get to attend his wedding while I was in Hungary just a few weeks ago.  The design is loosely inspired by their wedding invitation.  I really like the colors, but the letters could definitely have been better.  I guess it turned out ok.