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Knit Floor Mat

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It has been more than a week since I officially moved into my new home…. YAY…. finally!!! I knitted this simple garter stitch floor mat / rug with braided cotton clothesline rope some times ago in preparation for the new house, I am glad that I can put it on the floor of my entrance at last. The floor mat gave the room an instant warmth and coziness (see the photo below), I love it!!!

The rope is exactly the same as the one I used to crochet the Giant Doily Rug, but you can substitute it with other similar material like super chunky yarn or T-shirt yarn (Tarn) as long as they are knit-able and crochet-able. Find a suitable needle to knit the project. Size of the floor mat will change according to your tension and yarn or rope diameter, so, take these attributes into account for the variation.

After you have completed the project, block it by wetting the mat, adjust the knit so that the shape resembles it rectangle-ness, let it dry on the floor with dry towel at the bottom. This rope mat is heavy when wash, so be prepared for this too.

You can always change the number of stitches and rows to adapt to your intended mat size.

Happy Knitting!

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Secret Garden Trapunto Quilt Pattern

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I spent almost a year to get it up here and on my daughter’s bed, from idea to drawing, to the actual quilt then to this pattern and tutorial sharing. The reason behind this long stretch of time is because I have too many tasks on hand. I was being carried away with and lost my sense of priority. In early last year, we bought a new condominium (yes, we are moving from a landed double story house to a condo, crazy!) so that we could have a place of our own. The quilting idea emerging into my mind and I told myself that I am going to make each of my kids at least a quilted blanket for their new bedrooms. A quilt that they can remember for their whole life and perhaps can make it a heirloom piece to show the next generation “See, this is designed and made by your grandma.”… ok, may be just a photo to show if the quilt is too tattered to display…

I bought a Bernina B550 QE (quilter’s edition) from Bernina Malaysia and million thanks to Kelvin who came all the way up to Penang to demonstrate how to use the machine to the fullest. I really love this machine as it has a cruise control on the sewing speed, the BSR stitch regulator, the hand-free foot lifter and many more….. not to mention the reliability of the machine which is well known to be able to pass down for generations. Love love love it!

Hope you will quilt one soon. I am almost finished with my son’s quilt, the “Road Runner”…… stay tuned!

{Get full pattern and tutorial on next page.}

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Secret Garden Font Applique Patterns

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This is the last part of the “Secret Garden Quilt” applique patterns before we get into the how-to-quilt section. If you have missed out the previous applique patterns, here are the links:

1. Flower Applique Patterns
2. Ladybug, Butterfly & Snail Applique Patterns
3. Songbird, Tree & Sun Applique Patterns

It has been months since I finished quilting this Secret Garden Quilt for my daughter’s bedroom of our new house. I didn’t meant to drag it this long and as anxiously as you are, I wanted to share it out as soon as I can. Time is running fast and 24 hours a day, 7 days a week seems a little hectic for my super long to-do list.

When I rushed, I made more mistakes in many decisions and processes. Apart those from the renovations, one of the mistakes related to this post is I saved the photos into a newly yet wrongly formatted external hard disk. It was really frustrated when I was unable to retrieve the photos in the wrong format external hard disk, where I can only be able to open the photos in MAC and not the Windows PC in my office. So, I have to wait until I am back home, copy all the photos from the hard disk (more than thousand of them which are huge RAW files) to another temporary hard disk, reformat the hard disk so that it works on both MAC and WIN systems, then copy all the files back to it. It took me a night and a morning to do it….. really a great lesson to learn.

After showing all the 4 sets of applique patterns above, I am sure you already be able to guess how the quilt will look like. I hope that I can update the how-to-quilt tutorial by next week. Please stay tuned!

{Get full pattern and tutorials on next page.}

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Songbird Tree Sun Applique Patterns

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Count down to the Secret Garden Quilt pattern and tutorial, here is another group of applique pattern: the Songbird, Tree and Sun. From “Flowers“, “Ladybug, Butterfly & Snail“, this, and one more applique to go before we move into the final assembly of the quilt. Can’t wait to share it as soon as possible.

Have I told you before that due to the considerable bountiful design of the Secret Garden Quilt, I have to split the tutorial into a few parts. By doing so, it also gives me more time to prepare the proper pattern in downloadable and printable pdf form. Besides the huge quilt I’d design and quilt, this is also my biggest challenge in pattern and tutorial sharing. Hope it gets more “LIKES” and “LOVES” from you all!!!

Ciao, need to prepare the next tutorial of the quilt [font for the Secret Garden word] and prepare my new house for moving in More updates coming your way!

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Candlestick Tower Stand

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This is an easy and quick project to build, all you need to do is glue all the parts and distressed it to add some antique look. Not only that, it is cheap to make too, range from $3 to $6 each.

Besides using the tower stand as candlestick, it can be used as a display stand for small festive items, e.g. pine cones, small Christmas ornaments, Easter eggs, small pumpkins, cup cakes, cake pops etc.

Happy making!!!

{Get full tutorial on next page.}

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Quilted Patchwork Oven Mitt For Christmas

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You may adapt the tutorial to make oven mitt to suit other festive, just go by color theme and prints, develop from the basic and you will be able to create lots of mitts to sew as gifts too. Please note that my mitten pattern could be a little smaller for you since I have a small hand, please print out the pattern, check the size and adjust the size accordingly if necessary. Otherwise, you can trace the pattern from your favorite oven mitt. The mitten is thick, so give more allowance for the size of the pattern too.

Just now, I was talking to a friend of mine about how my parents used to celebrate Christmas during my childhood… it sure is a piece of great memory to keep. I always wanted to give great memories for my kids to keep and I hope all my crafts will help me to achieve this mission.

Merry Christmas and happy sewing!

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Homey Placemats & Coasters Holder

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The concept is simple, combine a clipboard to a wire clothes hanger, sew a roof awning cover and wear it down onto the hanger like the way you hang your clothes. Clip the placemats onto the clip board and hang the coasters on the buttons. You may change the color theme to suit the festive and your placemat and coaster sets, even adapt the design to have your own taste. Click next page to get the detail tutorials.

More Christmas Crafts coming up next. I begin to have more time to prepare and share more tutorials as the Christmas day is approaching. So please stay tuned!

Before flipping to the next page, Happy Thanksgiving!!! I will be putting up my Christmas tree this weekend, decorating Christmas tree with Christmas songs playing is one of my favorite event of the year.

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Baby Quilt Panel

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If you have been a fan on Craft Passion Facebook’s page, perhaps you already knew that I just bought a Bernina quilting sewing machine. This trapunto baby quilt blanket is the first project I did with this superb machine I have ever owned.

Before decided on Bernina, I have been eyeing for a good quilting sewing machine with long arm space and durable for my kind of usage, where, I sew from thin to very thick fabric. My departed sewing machine might not heavy duty enough to go through my torture, it gave ways and died on me when I was just started with this baby blanket. I was disappointed and up-set because I need to haul off at this early stage of my new interest. With desperation, I went for a test drive on my friend’s Bernina and when she showed me the Stitch Regulator (BSR), I fell in love with this little gadget the moment I tried on free hand motion with it. Wow… that’s amazing, I never thought that free hand motion can be done so smoothly with so little practice. The stitch is so perfect that I can’t hardly archive it with my retired machine. Immediately, I called up our local Bernina and they sent up a B 550 QE to me 3 days later. I was so happy as I was able to continue with the baby blanket for my distant best friend who is expecting a baby boy [If you are in Malaysia and would like to know more about Bernina, contact me for reference.]

If you are curious what’s so special about this baby quilt, I used trapunto technique to quilt this baby blanket. The trapunto makes the prints on the fabric “pop up” or inflated to make it looks more dimensional. The technique is quite easy but required more steps and works. See the sun that “float out” off the blanket at the photo below, that’s the effect trapunto quilting is giving. I wish I can show you the before and the work in progress photo, but stupid me, formated my camera’s SD card before knowing that I haven’t transferred them to my computer. Hope that my descriptions are clear enough for you to understand, otherwise, I will make another detail tutorial when I finished my kids’ blanket.

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Giant Doily Rug

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The pattern I used is a modified 8-Point Poinsettia Doily from a Japanese crochet book, but basically you can use your favorite doily pattern to make it. Personally, I like my rug to be denser (lesser holes) with more double crochet stitches, so I chose this doily pattern. The crochet hook to do this giant doily rug is size 10mm (N hook), it come in a set of 4 by Susan Bates Multi-Pack-Contains Sizes L,M,N,P. The joining up of this Ace braided cotton clothesline rope took part of the time since it comes in 200 feet each and I used 7 of them to make this. If you can get a long roll of continuous of similar rope that is able to crochet, by all means, use it!

The total working hour to complete this doily rug is approximately 16 hours. It is easy and fast to make but might need some arms, wrists and fingers strengths since the rope is fat and rigid compare to yarn. Well… I do have one problem, it is heavy and warm when I put it on my laps while working towards the end of the rug. I tried to put it on the floor, but bending down and crochet isn’t comfortable at all. Perhaps a chair in front of you would be a good idea to put the rug on while you crochet.

Let’s jump to the crochet pattern after this and watch me how to join the braided cotton clothesline rope that has fiber core in it.

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DIY Faux Brick Wall

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Some times, in order to make my photos more impressive, I will bring my handmad to other places for photography, such as beach, restaurant, park, jetty etc… That’s why you may notice that I need more time to prepare my tutorial which is normally 1 or 2 weeks of lagging. But, if I have a choice, I prefer to do the photography in the comfort of my home. With that in practice, that means I need some portable backdrops… fabrics and wooden backdrops came easily, but real brick is impossible to be “portable” due to it’s weight.

I have put off the idea of having brick wall in my home till I renovated my new condominium to purposely make a painted old brick wall at one of the corners…. until… I shop in my local Ace Hardware Store…… I was searching for some aerosol paints for repainting my old wicker basket when I saw the “make it stone!” texture paint on the shelf. I was so impressed with the effect shown on the cap of the aerosol can. I bought it back and thinking of “stoning” my old plastic wall-hung planter. That night on my bed, just before I fell asleep, I suddenly came out with the idea of making a faux brick wall with this paint after recalling that I saw a video using polystyrene foam panel to make similar backdrops for the stage. Guess what? I was insomnia that night because the processes of making this faux brick wall kept me awake, I was very excited and can’t wait till the next morning!!!!

I am glad that I had a sudden inspiration of making it and see how I did it after the jump….. There after, you will see it appears in my photos more often too.

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