Métiers d'Angela.

So... finally a post dedicated to all the craftiness of the fellow craft night cohort. I am so very excited about this one. There's so much damn good stuff you're gonna see here. ;-)

I mean, this chica really did it up for the holidays. She crafted like a mad-woman and made really awesome things - and she went the extra mile whenever possible (you'll see what I mean a little further in..). Some of these photos are from projects that were completed quite a while ago, so this will be some major fun catching up with Angelina.

A while back, we started adding some crocheted edging to our dishcloths, so the first pic is showing a couple dishcloths she made to go with some yummy soap for her sister's birthday. She always packages things up very prettily and this post will be especially good because she takes much better pictures than I. :D

The hat and scarf very handsomely modeled by Sir Tim was her very first knitting project - can you believe it? It turned out really great. Nice colors ta boot.

The hat was really special craftwise, since it was her very first pattern and first time in the round, first time on double-points, first time with ribbing,... lots o' firsts. I tried to help design the number of stitches for the pattern and think I inadvertently helped make it a little big, but I'm sure we can all agree that this is better than too small, and hey, no hat head for this guy - just better hang on in the wind. hahaha.

The hat was kind of a surprise for his birthday. The scarf was no surprise since he had to try it on several times before it was decided that the length was good and it was finito.

His outfit is so complete with the short-sleeves because his birthday is in August- whew, hot. Though, just in time for fall?!? :)

The lovely blueish/purpleish (I think it's more of a true purple in person) is modeled by Ang's lovely mother. It was her birthday gift this year. It was so dang soft. I tried it on a couple times and it was hard to pry from my neck each time. hehe. kidding (sort of).

It looks from the picture like her mom was relatively happy with it. ;) Great color on her, too!

Oh! Next are the clutches. She made four of them for Christmas!

Outstanding. The fabrics are all amazing. The one on the left is the one that I talked about in the previous post - she seriously surprised me with it at the beach. :D Hooray for surprises - I love it!!! Now we gotta get one going for her. Every girl needs a clutch, right?

This tote is living with Becky now. I can't remember if I know who Becky is, but that makes no difference of course. She adjusted the simple tote pattern from that Bend the Rules book to make it a bit bigger - more like a traditional tote size. The outer handles match the lining and vice versa. She also added a pocket on the inside - a little of that extra mile thing I was talking about. ;)

The apron is truly one of my favorite things she's made so far.

It turned out incredibly gorgeous and really shows off the extra mile factor with the embroidery she added to the pocket fabric. Great touch. Gorgeous main fabric that just pleads to be an apron. I'm pretty sure most of the fabrics are Anna Maria Horner - some aren't, I'll bet, but I know the apron fabric is for sure.

So now to show off some more of her embroidery from this past year. She really loved it and completely took off with every embroidery project. Each one had new and different stitches with neat design elements she came up with on the fly. This dishtowel on the right is the very first embroidery project. I really loved what she did with the margarita glasses - you can't see the stitching too well in the photo, but she improved on a basic satin stitch to bring margaritaness flowing through the glass. Very cool.

Oh, and each of her dishtowels is edged with handmade binding - the neat binding fabrics really make the the gifts one more level of special and unique! We used the continuous strip method described in an earlier post for all of her binding and mine, too.

The last towel is for Ang's little sis, Adrienne, and her husband, Tyler, for Christmas.

Most, if not all, of the pattern is from the Sublime Stitching "Rock-n-Roll" iron-on. It's perfect for them since they're in a band (a great band) - she plays guitar and sings, he plays drums. They live in cheese country and beer country and sausage country...

Anyhoo, I digress - back to the crafts. I was really blown away with this one - the lettering looks awesome and there was some rockin' details on the instruments. She ends up creating her own stitches a lot - gotta love that!

Well, let's hope it isn't quite so long before we see things from Angela again - I'll try to keep up better with her finished projects along the way with mine. We are both in the middle of several things, so there should be another post relatively soon - ya know, maybe before summer. ;)