cashmere lap throw

I made that!

For her!

(Carrie Sue, my luxurious sister-in-law...we were in Switzerland for her birthday).

Of all the things I've made with my swifty new(ish) sewing machine I'm most stoked about this.:)

The idea and pattern came from the book on the right

which was a birthday gift from her:

my other beautiful sister-in-law, Elee, Woody's sister.

(Yes, I will take any opportunity to insert photos from my wedding day. Our photographer kicked booty (Ash, seriously, thanks again!) and captured it so beautifully. 

Bam, here's another of my favs:

Anyway. Onto the throw. You start with some 100% cashmere sweaters. The cool part is that you find these beauties @ goodwill or your favorite thrift store and buy them for 5 bucks instead of 100. Wash, dry, cut. I found these four colors that I thought would look good together.

So, you cut them into all the same width (15 inches is what I did) but they'll be different lengths depending on how much fabric you get from the sweater.

Then arrange them all on your bed to get a groovy mix of colors...

then sew each square together in a column, then sew the columns together...

And then you have one big piece...

Next, you sew the piece of you've created onto organic cotton bamboo velour, right sides together. 

So, being I live in super crafty Portland, I figured I'd have no trouble buying some locally. I was wrong. Lame. I had to order it online. The whole point of this project is to reduce material consumption but I found a cool company that answered my questions quickly and sweetly and the whole process was nice. However, in the future (and I do see many of these in my future), I'm going to find something super comfy here in PDX. Velour is ideal because it's uber-soft and gives the throw body, but lots of things could work I do say.

So after I sewed the right sides together, leaving a 10 inch-ish opening I put it aside for awhile. Because you are then to turn it right side out and hand sew the opening shut with a whipstitch. 

Hand sew! 

No thanks. I'll ruin it. 

I can't tie tiny knots. Great, the whole project is ruined. 

But then it got closer to us leaving on our trip and it was sitting on my desk taunting me so I sucked it up (poured a beer) and decided to deal with it. 

And it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be...

OK, so after it's all sewed together, you sew a 1/4 inch topstitch around the whole thing.

You can kinda see that the velour and cashmere didn't exactly meet up precisely so the velour kind of wraps to the front. Learning experience. Velour is tough, cashmere too. They're sensitive to being pulled but if you don't pull enough it won't work. 

But, it's pretty and oh-so-soft and I had fun.

Thanks Carrie Sue & Elee for getting me to this project:)

more from Switzerland...

One of the very best things about visiting my brother is knowing that there will be good food aplenty. Whether he cooks something at home or we go out it is always delicious. Real delicious. 

When he lived in Singapore he took us to super yummy casual Indian food restaurants where we ate with our hands off of banana leaves and to super fancy Indian food restaurants with proper table linens. And to delicious Vietnamese food restaurants and really good American restaurants too.

Switzerland didn't disappoint either. We went to a cute (every single town in Switzerland is adorable so cute is sort of superfluous) ski town (Champery) and ate this scrumptious fondue. 

We of course are familiar with regular cheese fondue served with bread (they don't do crudite in S'land) and I actually have a recipe I like a lot. We weren't, however, familiar with the tomato fondue. Wow! The basket with the red top is filled with boiled potatoes that you eat with it. Brilliant. Tangy tomatoes, swiss-y cheeses and the humble boiled potato is a perfect pairing.

This is Champery...

Maisie found some snow and couldn't resist pelting her dad a couple times.

These next ones are from the town of Montreux, located on the shore of Lake Geneva.

We were walking to that castle back there, the Chateau de Chillon.

We also went to Bern, Switzerland, a German-speaking part of the country (they speak French in Michael's town).

About to board the train in Sion heading to Vevey.

Cheers! I mean, sante!

Vevey's giant fork...

Me, Charlie Chaplin, Carrie Sue and Maisie. (Charlie spent the last part of his life in Vevey).

Je t'aime Swiss Family Hinson! Thanks for the amazing trip!!!

Paris, France

Day 1: Checked out the E.Tower and had the highlight of our trip, probably of our life, while @ a French-speaking restaurant trying to order a bottle of wine. My belly still aches from laughing so hard.

Day 2: The Louvre. Our favorite so far...

this one is kind of sad but we both liked how realistic it was...

Woody and Aphrodite.

Day 3: Versailles and Musee de Orsay. No photos allowed @ Orsay so we just have a couple from Versailles.

We've been trying to decide how to improve our landscaping @ home so we're drawing our inspiration from Louis XIV and now want to turn our grass into a fleur de lis. :)

Walking back to our (extremely petite) hotel after Orsay:

Tomorrow we'll try and get up the E.Tower and then get back on the train to Switzerland for another weekend with Swiss Family Hinson. :)