12 Bags, Dresses, and Quilts That Show How Craft Skills Grow Over Time

I once tried knitting the Novita Tanssien pleated skirt pattern but hated how heavy it was getting in the recommended yarn. I also could not stop thinking about a whole knit dress with a pleated skirt.

Years later, I fell in love with Drops Flora, and figured it could work for this project, both in terms of composition and price. I needed 20 balls.

So I got to work last December, drafting the skirt with a little help from the Novita pattern but mostly on my own, and completely self-drafted the bodice. The skirt alone took 6 months to knit, and after that I had to take a few-month break. But it is finally done!!!

I’m so proud of my daughter. She finished her first quilt. She did every step herself except for using the rotary cutter and binding, which is hard. She’s 7 years old, and started sewing last year.

I asked her if there’s anything she wants to say to the community. “It’s so fun. I love it!”

I think her quilt visited every room in the house today, and now it’s on her bed.

My dad taught me to sew, too, when I was 8. Although I was 37 when I made my first quilt.

I recently found this sweater that I made about 30 years ago for my American Girl doll in my parents’ attic. Initially I chuckled at all the mistakes I made as a 7-year-old beginner knitter, especially in comparison to the kind of work I can produce now. Rowing out, accidental yarn overs, badly woven in ends.

But when I took the time and really looked at the sweater, I noticed some shaping around the neckline, finished with a crochet border. A little bit of sleeve shaping as well. The seams are mattress stitched together.

My mom taught me how to knit a rectangle, but the other techniques I must have come up with on my own. This was in the mid nineties, so well before any YouTube tutorials. I’m actually pretty proud of little me!

My niece just started playing with my American Girl doll. So the little sweater is back in the outfit rotation.

I started this project in February and it’s finally done. I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

Some of the paper piecing in the face and paws was challenging, since they were such small pieces. The pattern is by LittleTinyPiranha on Etsy.

I started a blanket 10 years ago and put it down shortly after starting. It was on 30-inch circulars and I just kept casting on until I couldn’t fit any more stitches. I was new to the hobby so I figured it would just be blanket sized.

I picked it back up about 6 months ago, determined to finally finish this thing. I transferred it to 60-inch circulars to give myself more working space, and during that transfer I counted 450ish stitches. But that would just be a big king sized blanket, right? So I kept going.

A single row took about an hour. That should’ve been my first sign.

After about 9 balls of yarn and only 2 feet in length finished, I gave up and decided I would just crochet the blanket instead. Halfway through the crocheted version I ran out of yarn and made the sad decision to frog the knitted project for salvage. After removing the needles, I thought it’d be interesting to see how wide it actually was.

It was almost a 300 square foot area rug. I am SO GLAD I did not finish this project as I would’ve cried at the monster I had brought into the world.

Rug hooking and needle felting and my pup thinks I spent 8 to 10 months of my life to make her a bespoke dog bed.

It was easy and fun, it just took a lot of time and hand stretches. It grew and changed throughout the project. I thought at first it would have a river, but it looked funny so I removed it.

One of the mushrooms has multicoloured gills. The rest are plain because my hands couldn’t take much more punching with a single needle.

We got engaged at golden hour in a grove of 500-year-old trees in the depths of the Olympic National Park, completely by ourselves with not even a photographer, and it was absolutely magical.

He calls me Strawberry, so I just HAD to knit the fruit sweater. He wanted a nice foundational wardrobe piece, so he got a deep green saddle-shoulder sweater. He has always deeply appreciated my knitting.

When we first started dating he was really intrigued and always asked so many questions, and when he got his first hat from me he marveled over it and wore it even though it was too tight. So 2 years later he was finally deemed sweater-worthy after many hats and socks.

I bound off the neck on the way to the airport and sewed in the ends on the plane. In the airport, a lady sitting across from me was spinning yarn, so of course we started yapping. When my then-boyfriend got up to get a coffee, she asked me, “Aren’t you worried about the sweater curse?” I said, “No, because I know there’s an engagement ring in his bag right now.” Her jaw dropped.

I started crocheting this January, and of course I started a giant sweater as my third ever piece. The amazing pattern is by rouxvincent_ on Etsy. I changed the measurements a bit so it’ll fit me better, and also added the spine detail on the back.

When I started I thought it would take about two weeks and three balls of yarn. BOY WAS I WRONG. It took at least five months, because I stopped working on it for a while, and COUNTLESS balls of yarn.

I finished with just 5cm left on my last ball of yarn. I now have unmeasurable respect for the people who crochet sweaters regularly.

The first is the GIRL dress by vertknit. I fell in love with the pattern right away and I am so happy with the end result, even though the skirt was a labor of love. I used pure silk on 2.75mm needles.

After that I self-drafted the Rama-Tee, made with leftover silk mohair. Apparently I was on a self-drafting spree, since I made yet another tee. I found this gorgeous aubergine deadstock cashmere cone yarn, which I knit on 2.5mm needles, and I feel so chic and cozy wearing it.

Last but not least, the campanula tee, in alpaca I bought while on tour in Stellenbosch.

I spent a lot of time on trains this year. Also, I don’t want to sell a kidney to afford my hobby, so my rationale is: if I use a tiny gauge, I get more hours of knitting per money spent.

A few years ago, another frog quilt I posted became pretty popular. The comments were so kind and encouraging that it pushed me to start making and selling my own patterns. I wanted to go back and make an homage to my first big paper-pieced quilt, and also to the growth I’ve had since then.

Self-drafted pattern, 679 pieces. Sewn AND quilted on my domestic machine. The background and backing are a linen blend, which turned out to be a huge challenge. So. Much. Starch.

I am incredibly proud of this quilt, even if the judges at the fair were not. But the people have spoken and I will treasure my pink ribbon.

Frogs are so magical. We take for granted that there are literally SHAPESHIFTERS living in swamps and roadside ditches. I hope my quilt helps other people see them how I see them.

I designed, or Frankensteined, this dress myself. I started it on a whim in late 2024, before we had even gotten engaged, so classically I did not buy nearly enough yarn. I knew that dye lot differences were a thing, but I didn’t expect white to be an issue.

Boy was I wrong. The shades of white couldn’t have been more different. After panicking and scouring the internet for the dye lot I needed, I turned to the yarn swap community and they really pulled through.

The skirt panels took 3 or 4 attempts of working and frogging to get them to look right. When I had a good portion of the pieces completed and blocked, my bridesmaids, my mom and I had a little fitting party. It was very surreal to see all the hard work starting to pay off.

Early on, both my mom and my mother-in-law separately approached me about using parts of their wedding dresses in mine. I ended up using lace from the bottom edge of my mother-in-law’s dress on the ends of the sleeves and skirt, and appliqués from my mom’s dress across the top of the bodice.

The hard part was keeping my husband from seeing it. My go-to method was barricading myself on the far end of the couch with pillows and old 3-ring binders.

I FINALLY got to wear it a few weeks ago.