Betsy Made A Million Things This Year!

Betsy is super crafty and we love having her working here at Fancy Tiger Crafts. She inspires us with her amazing and prolific crafty style and thought you might like to see what she's been up to this year!

Betsy

One of the best parts of working at Fancy Tiger Crafts is being surrounded by inspiration everyday. Between the incredible customer projects and all the new fun yarn and fabric, we all have a mental list of a million projects that we would like to do. If only there was the time! I have to say this year turned out to be quite productive and fun. Here are a few of my favorite projects.

In January, I started my very first sweater in the My Favorite Sweater class here at the store. I used the Cascade Eco Wool, so soft and lovely to work with, and turned it into a custom sweater that fits like a glove.

This little shawl was a stash buster that I started on a plane trip. The Mizutama Shawl pattern by Olga Jazzy had caught my eye with it's simple geometric lace work. It was a perfect intro to lace and the pattern can be done top down or bottom up. By making it bottom up I was able to bind off when I was done with my skein and call it good. The little felt flower hair pin is something I whipped up for our holiday party.

My favorite project this year is the whisper cardigan that I knitted in the Habu Silk Tweed.  This light weight cardigan is perfect for the Denver weather and I absolutely love how the yarn knitted up!

Making the Whisper Cardigan got me hooked on Habu yarn and especially the patterns that are designed for it. I had been want to try the metal yarns they have and ended up pairing the Copper/Bamboo with some Alpaca lace that I had in my stash to make Kirsten Johnstone's Hakusa Scarf!

Since I started working at Fancy Tiger I had been watching fabric lines come in with the hope of finding the perfect inspiration for my first quilt. When French General's La Petite Ecole line came in I knew exactly what I had to do. Three charm packs, the adorable alphabet panel for the back and red stripes for the border and binding and I was set to go.

For my first quilt, I couldn't be happier about how this turned out. The charm packs made piecing so easy that the hardest part of the quilt top was deciding on the layout. Once I had it basted, Jessica Bridge, our quilting instructor at Fancy Tiger (and my personal Quilt Guru), talked me into getting creative with the quilting and I'm so glad that she did. The center of the quilt is a cross-hatch stitch, the white squares are a square spiral stitch, then there is a double echo stitch on the blue and grey, followed by 3 simple stripes through the reds. Doing all the extra quilting left me with a ton of knot to bury but it was completely worth it. I absolutely love this quilt and all that I put into it. But here is the secret, this baby is full of mistakes; squares that don't line up perfectly, quilted lines that look like drunk driving and even the binding has a few glitches if you look for them. But guess what? No one ever does.

I do love my quilt but I must say that my favorite sewn project of the year is my Button Flap Purse. It's been months now and I am still in love with it. The fabric is retro transistor radios from Melody Miller's Ruby Star Rising collection. I bought the fabric right away waiting for the right project and when we started carrying Jen Giddens' bag patterns, I knew had the winning combination with her Button Flap Purse.

This bag was a cinch to put together. I love how well the Echino dots work for the straps and an orange vintage Casein Button double as a radio dial for the snap. It is the perfect size to carry a book and the essentials.

 Thanks Betsy!