Memory pillow

When my father-in-law died in 2019, one of his daughters, my sister-in-law Linda, saved one of his heavy plaid flannel Wrangler shirts with the idea of making it into a memory pillow, and I was honored when Linda asked me if I would be willing to make the pillow for her.

With a quick Google search for "memory pillow" or "how to make memory pillow," you will easily find many examples and tutorials for how to make one like this.

I was fairly sure how to go about it, but I watched this video tutorial by Lesley Chandler on YouTube to have the steps clear in my mind before starting.

To make one of these, you need to know the basic skills for working with a sewing machine. You're basically cutting two squares out of the shirt and then sewing them together to make a cover that will fit a square pillow form. If you're using a button-front shirt like I did, you don't even need to leave a gap in the sewing for turning the pieces right-side out, because the shirt's button front can serve that purpose. And, in the future, you can also open the buttons to remove the pillow form any time you want to launder the pillow cover, so it's a win-win.

Begin by laying the shirt out flat, with all the buttons buttoned, on a large tabletop. Iron the shirt to help the fabric lie evenly if it has any wrinkles. I measured the distance across the front between the sleeve seams to get an idea of what the largest size pillow cover that the shirt would make. It was about 18 inches between the sleeve seams across the front. 

I had an extra 18-inch square Ikea feather pillow form on hand that I wanted to use for this project. Knowing that the finished pillow cover will be less than the full dimensions of the cut fabric (because of the amount taken up by the seam allowances), I figured that my finished pillow cover would juuuust barely be large enough to work with that pillow form. But square pillow forms come in different sizes, so you should be able to find one that will fit your particular pillow cover.

You can make the cutting easier by first cutting a piece of newspaper into the shape/dimensions to act as the pattern. Since the distance between the sleeve seams was 18 inches, I decided to cut an 18-inch square to be my pattern. 

I laid the shirt out flat on a cutting mat on my work table and positioned the pattern on top. I adjusted the position of the pattern until I had it where I wanted it, using the placement of the shirt pockets as a guide to where the pattern should be placed. When I was happy with the placement, I pinned the pattern in place and used my fabric scissors to carefully cut around the pattern. You could use a rotary cutter and ruler if you're comfortable with those. I have those tools but didn't want to risk making a bad cut on this precious shirt.

After the pieces are cut, set aside the pattern and excess fabric. Turn the pillow cover squares so the right sides are facing each other and pin them together. Then sew them together using an appropriate seam allowance, carefully easing the machine through the bulkier areas across the button placket. I used about a 1/4-inch seam allowance for this.

 

After sewing all the way around, trim the excess fabric at the corners. Then unbutton the shirt's buttons and turn the pillow cover right-side out, using a blunt tool to help poke out the corners. Rebutton the buttons and press the sewn pillow cover again to smooth the seams.

The final step is to open the buttons again and place the pillow form inside. Button the buttons, and you now have a wonderful memory pillow of your loved one's shirt that you can hug whenever you want to.

In her video tutorial, Lesley Chandler shared that there are sellers on Etsy who make custom iron-on patches with a lovely little verse that can be added to a memory pillow project. She suggested this one and placed it on a bottom-front corner of her pillow. I think the patch would also work on a bottom corner of the back side of the pillow. 

I wasn't sure if Linda would want a patch like that on her pillow, however, so I sent her a link to it so she could see what it was and read about it, and then decide if she wanted it. She could always opt to add a patch to her pillow cover later, because the only equipment needed to add it is an iron.

After completing the memory pillow, I looked at the fabric scraps left over and decided there was plenty of fabric left to make a small memento for each of my father-in-law's four children, including Linda, my husband, and their other two sisters. I figured a keychain wristlet would be lovely and useful, and I already had the clasp hardware on hand.

I like this tutorial by Devi Therkildsen on YouTube for making "seamless" fabric wristlets that work with the type of clasp hardware I have on hand. Each wristlet requires a piece of fabric that's 12 inches long by 4 inches wide, and also a piece of lightweight interfacing of the same size if your fabric is lightweight. (I didn't use interfacing on these flannel wristlets because the fabric itself was already heavy enough to be durable.) You can see the four finished wristlets next to the finished memory pillow in the lead photo of this post.

The Granny Merge blanket

I was looking for an idea of a different way to work a center-out blanket when I came across this video by Fiber Spider showing how to use the granny merge stitch sequence to make a shawl. I like the way this looks, and so I'm adjusting the instructions just slightly to use them to make a center-out square blanket.

The repeating sequence I'm using is 3 granny rows followed by 2 solid rows. After 25 rows, the blanket measures about 30 inches on a side, which if I stopped now would be the right size to make a nice lap blanket. But I believe I will continue working to make this into a throw-sized afghan.

I wanted to make a new blanket for my grandniece Charlotte, and when I saw how long it was taking me to finish this one (which I started on Jan. 30 ... that was 10 months ago!!), I realized that if I was going to give Charlotte a blanket this Christmas, it would need to be this one (even if it isn't her first choice of colors). My ability to crochet blankets has slowed way, way down, to the point where apparently I'm only able to finish one blanket per year anymore. Sigh! I hope Charlotte will like this one.

Finished at 45 pattern rounds plus 1 round of RSC (crab stitch) edging. Total yarn weight: 1,223 grams.

A new blanket for Wendy

I started making this blanket without a recipient in mind just because I had the yarn on hand and felt like using it because it is a very pretty colorway. (Originally I bought this yarn for a different project but then lost interest in that one.) And the Red Heart Ombre yarns lend themselves nicely to the Which Way Filet blanket pattern by Fiber Spider.

As the blanket was coming together I started to think that it might be a nice one for Wendy, since she's now a teenager and had outgrown the more "baby style" blanket I previously made her. This blanket pattern, with the limitless potential and endless possibilities suggested by its winding paths, is perfect for a brilliant teen like Wendy. 

My only worry was that I didn't know whether turquoise was a color that Wendy liked. But then I got to sit beside Wendy at dinner early in December, and I don't know how we got on the subject, but I was able to ask her what her favorite color was, and I was THRILLED when she said TURQUOISE!! Woo-hoo!! So now I know that she's going to love this new blanket.

I made her older sister a more grown-up-looking blanket last Christmas, and now it's Wendy's turn to get a new, grown-up-style blanket to last her for many years to come. Finished it just in the nick of time to give it to her for Christmas this year.

Nifty crochet spiral square

An idea popped into my head for crocheting a square-bottomed tote bag, but I wanted to make it in a continuous spiral (like I've done with some round bags I've made) to avoid having an ugly join at the end of each round. So that got me wondering if there was an easy way to crochet a square in a continuous spiral. If so, all I'd have to do is crochet the square bottom until it was as big as I wanted it to be (I'm thinking about a 12-inch-square base would make a good size for a tote), and then stop increasing but just continue working until the sides were as tall as I wanted.

I googled "crochet spiral square" and this video tutorial (below) popped up. It's exactly what I was hoping to find - a quick, easy way to crochet a square shape in a continuous spiral. So nifty! This could work for lots of different things ... coasters, tote bags, placemats, trivets, blankets, cushion covers ... the list goes on and on.

I'm working with stash yarn for this project. I started the spiral square in the Dark Sage yarn then switched to the green vintage Pingouin yarn when the Dark Sage ran out. When the spiral square was about 11 inches on each side I decided the base was plenty big to be a tote bag, which meant it was time to stop increasing and start working the sides of the tote.

I do admire the vintage look of crocheted totes worked in a ripple stitch, so instead of working straight sides I decided to make rippled sides instead. To do that I had to count the stitches on each side to identify the midpoint, which is where the ripple "pinches" or "valleys." The corners I already had from working the square base become the "peaks" in the ripple pattern.

Each side is 32 stitches, not counting the extra stitch at the top of each peak. I stopped working the five-stitch increasing corners used in the spiral square base and started working three-stitch corners for the entirety of the tote bag's sides. So the sides are worked, starting from the top of a peak/corner; DC 15 then work 2 DC2tog (double crochet decrease; you have one decrease on each side of the center of the tote bag's side (this creates the "valley"); DC 15 until the next corner; 3 DC in center-corner stitch from previous row. Continue this way until the sides are as tall as you want.

Six rows after starting the sides of the tote the Pingouin green ran out and I switched to an unlabeled royal blue yarn from my stash. After five blue rows the blue yarn ran out, so I switched to a purple yarn from my stash. I worked six rows in the purple.

To stabilize the top edge of the bag I continued in purple by working a row of SC. Then I turned the bag to work the next row of SC in the opposite direction (to prevent the edge from curling) and added a ch 1 at the top of each peak. I turned the bag again and worked one more round of SC, placing 3 stitches in the ch 1 space at the top of each peak. I finished off and weaved in the ends. So the finished bag is made with a total of about 25 rows.

I added a set of brown microfiber braid purse handles from Everything Mary, which have been sitting in my sewing room for nearly 10 years waiting for the right project to come along to attach them to. I most likely bought the handles at Joann or Michaels.

I ended up gifting this bag to my sister, Linda.

I decided that if I make another bag like this someday, I think next time I would keep the 5-stitch peaks and offset them with two DC3togs in the valleys to make the peak and valley shapes sharper. But overall I think this project turned out well as is.

 

And it wasn't long before I made another one using some leftover Zebra colorway yarn from Red Heart. At first I finished this bag using a set of faux bamboo handles, which looked kind of cute, but the rigidity of those handles made it uncomfortable to wear the bag over my shoulder. 

 

So instead I found these nifty black faux leather 16-inch purse handles on Amazon that have lobster clasps at the ends, making it possible to easily put the straps on/off and use them on another bag, if the need arises. It would have been even better if I could have found these in a 24-inch length (like the straps I used on Linda's bag), so I'll be watching to see if I can find some longer straps eventually. (Update: Found some 24-inch ones at Amazon here.)

The Fairy Slippers Blanket free pattern

This free Fairy Slippers Banket pattern is a variation on the Which Way Filet blanket by Fiber Spider that works up quickly and easily from the center outward.

This Lion Brand Mandala yarn is soft and light, and the colorway is reminiscent of soft rainbow colors that would make a precious, cuddly keepsake blanket for a “rainbow baby.”

I had been hearing the term “rainbow baby” getting used a lot around knitting and crocheting circles, but I didn’t know what it meant, so I finally decided to look it up. According to Google, “A rainbow baby is a name coined for a healthy baby born after losing a baby due to miscarriage, infant loss, stillbirth, or neonatal death. The name ‘rainbow baby’ comes from the idea of a rainbow appearing in the sky after a storm, or after a dark and turbulent time.”

Which means that I am a rainbow baby myself, according to the modern parlance, because my mother delivered me after previously enduring seven miscarriages. I had no idea that I was born under this lovely, colorful label. Ha! 🌈

This filet blanket pattern is also ideal for a rainbow baby because the infinite paths winding and spiraling outward from the center symbolize the infinite potential contained within each new life.

This also means that maybe instead of giving away this baby blanket when it’s done I should just keep it for my rainbow-baby self. 😁 I could get another skein of this Honeydukes colorway, whip up another blanket just like this one, and then sew them together to make a nice and light but colorful, funky, and boxy rainbow poncho!

If I finish this as a baby blanket, I’ll edge it with 1 round SC followed by 1 round RSC. But if I keep this to be a poncho, I’ll end with 1 round SC before sewing the panels together.

Granny Squared Into Highlighter Hell Throw free pattern

I found a couple more skeins of the unidentified colorway aka “Highlighter Hell” (what I call it) by Red Heart, so I decided to use it along with some plain white to make an infinite granny square throw for my daughter who loooves these (horrifically) bright colors. 😉

After trying to work this continuous granny square in full rounds of a single color, I discovered that there was not a good way to carry the next color up for the subsequent round without leaving a long loop on the reverse side where I changed colors (see below). I was afraid that the only way to “fix” this would be to add a lightweight flannel backing to cover the reverse side and hide the loops.

I pondered this problem for a while and concluded that the best way to avoid it would be to use a two-color spiral method, so I went searching for a pattern and found The Continuous 2 Color Granny Crochet Tutorial by Fiber Spider on YouTube. Ta-da!! This method is an absolutely brilliant way to work a two-color continuous granny stitch blanket without having to tie off after every single round (and have eleventy-bazillion ends to weave in when you’re done, plus all those ends would equal a lot of wasted inches of yarn), and it eliminates the big-loop-from-carrying-up-the-yarn problem I was having. Like I said: Brilliant!!

Here's a comparison of the obverse view of working the blanket in full rounds of each color (left) vs. the half-rounds used in the Fiber Spider method (right). As you can see, the different methods are undetectable to the eye, but Fiber Spider's method results in a blanket that is fully reversible and looks tidy on both sides:

I just kept working rounds on the throw until I ran out of the Highlighter Hell color. Then I used some highlighter orange yarn from my stash to work a border of one round SC followed by one round RSC or crab stitch. Finished size is about 44 inches square.

Works when they were still in progress ...

Crochet sharing

Today my friend Christine shared some of the beautiful crochet pieces her mother-in-law is working on. So creative and lovely!! I especially love the 3-D sunflower square!

Trying filet crochet

If you're ever in the mood to mix things up a little, try filet crochet.

This Heart Filet Block 2 free crochet pattern by Belle Tracy is just one example of the endless possibilities to be found in the filet crochet genre.

The block above measures about 10 by 10.5 inches with 1 round of sc border.

Rather than making a lot of individual squares and then assembling them to form a blanket, one could conceivably do a foundation row that's long enough to allow for multiple "squares" to be worked contiguously, which would be a bit of a brain-bender in the beginning but would save a lot of work on the finishing end of the job.

Sock Monkey Blanket free pattern

I used the free pattern by Linda Cyr, available at the Yarnspirations website, to make this cute hooded Sock Monkey Blanket for baby Caleb. Here is my boyfriend modeling it:

I followed the pattern as written, but since I tend to be a tight crocheter, the finished blanket turned out way too stiff for my liking, so, sadly, I ended up frogging the yarn to use for another project.

This design IS super cute, though, so hopefully I'll try it again sometime, knowing that I definitely need to work with a larger hook.