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Friday, June 25, 2010

Purse

I remembered to sew a cell phone pocket....after I installed the lining. Added another hour onto a 30 minute project. But, the pocket is definitely worth the trouble to add.

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Thursday, June 24, 2010

Friendship

Everyone is in their jammies making friendship bracelets. I think it's a girl thing.


"A" of GAIN knows how to make about seven different patterns, while "I" of GAIN owns all the embroidery floss in the world (an inheritance or bequeathal). They talked about using rope to make a belt instead of a bracelet, too. LOL


Here is the tiny start of a bracelet. Everyone finished and had nice color combos. They made a basic diagonal line pattern. The sample on the right is the chevron pattern.

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Pin cushion

I have made a few pin cushions, such as this one. I've thought about wrist pin cushions, too (the cool people on Project Runway use them), but all thoughts of making a wrist pin cushion left my mind when the girls and I visited the Millinery Shop at Walnut Hill (Living History Farms). I found the PERFECT pin cushion there, modeled by my oldest -- it's a ring. How brilliant!

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Homemade tubular yarn

Experiment time from last week: homemade tubular yarn



This last year has been full of t-shirt yarn tutorials. (Go ahead, do a google searh for 't-shirt yarn tutorial.' You'll get a gazillion results.) I purchased a few skeins of tubular yarn for a pattern, and it was pricey. So it's fun to recycle old t-shirts into yarn (I'm all about free!), but what do you do with it?  Since said pattern didn't work out, I now have expensive stash sitting in my trunk. It's been there since LYS Purls closed, over a two years ago.

I found only one use for the yarn so far -- a dishcloth. Cotton t-shirt yarn makes very sturdy fabric with a nice texture. Glampyre Knits, aka Stefanie Japel, created shrug and scarf patterns for this yarn. The photos on her website (haven't bought the classes or patterns) seem to use dyed t-shirts, and I don't know that I want a dye job right now. I understand why you would dye, but I'm not in that situation at the moment.

I decided a dishcloth would benefit from the stretch and texture of the fabric the t-shirt knitted up.


Post Script: Making the yarn and knitting with it leaves a lot of little 'crumbs' around. As this dishcloth sits on my table, it is leaving more little blue crumbs. I am hoping that as it is used, this will stop. I may do a swagbucks search on this to find prevention techniques, see how long this will last, see if I'm just abnormal when I make the yarn, etc.

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Wednesday, June 9, 2010

My Hooray for Headbands

My fingers got itchy yesterday, and I knew I'd need to be crafting something. I spent the morning cutting out a few pieces for my magazine rack (see top picture here). The glue is drying on them currently.

Later, as I was cleaning out a folder of forgotten downloads, I searched around for small projects. I came up Hooray for Headbands by Heather Bailey. Who knows how long I've held onto the file without using it.

"I" of GAIN chose fabric for a tester, and the headband turned out great. She chose a fabric that I was considering for myself. (You may remember seeing it in my yo-yo necklace.) The pattern calls for 1/2" elastic, but I used 3/8" elastic because that is what I had at 8:30 p.m. It was extremely quick to make and I don't think you could make a mistake while constructing it. It uses only 1/8 yd. of fabric.

Here is the back. You can see the black elastic peeking out above left of the knot. The elastic is key to the ease of this headband's look. And "I" of GAIN and I appreciate it. I considered not making a knot in order to have tails, because the 5th grade girls that I taught last year all wore headbands with long tails. But maybe that is so 2009. "I" doesn't care anyway. Her hair covers them. However, longer tails would be very easy to accommodate.

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Sunday, June 6, 2010

Graduation Cards

May of every year means graduation parties. I knew I'd need to make cards, so I settled down this morning in front of bloggerland on my laptop. My research yielded these two ideas at Rainy Day Creations and  Thinking Inking. I adapted the designs to my supplies at hand, a Close To My Heart hexagon, an untouched denim scrap pad, and generic card and envelope set from JoAnn Fabrics. Oh, and a tiny bit of Rowan yarn. Love that yarn. I'll have to figure out something small to knit up with it. I think I originally used it for fingerless mitts.

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Friday, June 4, 2010

Cutest. purse. ever.

Remember when I received a giveaway of a Layer Cake from the Fat Quarter Shop via Adventures in Dressmaking (she has the most clever ideas)? I've turned two of my Freebird fabrics into the cutest purse ever. As soon as I finished the crazy wonky house quilt, I took a quick break, glued some other craftiness together, then started work on this purse. I made the boxy version, with a 1.5" square cutout. Observe the quickest purse pattern in the U.S.

Laptops are great when you can have them right by the sewing machine.


I love my Tim Holtz ruler. Friend Donna made a group purchase for my scrapbooking group. It's a regular 12" ruler on one side. The other side is a 12" ruler that's got a 0 at the center. Symmetry, quilting, scrapbooking, they all meld in my life.


I finished before dark! Just in time to get a shot of this on the yews at sunset. I had all of the supplies at hand -- magnetic snap, handles, thread, fabric, and interfacing. I substituted Dur-O spray adhesive for fusible interfacing because that is what I had in my stash.


The lining is yellow. I had this fabric left from Christmas ornaments (links here and here). If I'd had enough, I would have made a pocket for my cell phone.


I am so very pleased with myself and this purse.

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Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Oven Squirrel

Last month, my grandparents moved. We've visited a few times since, and noticed their Oven Squirrel.



"A" of GAIN traced it for me, and "G" of GAIN found an old board in the garage and cut this out and filed the edges for me last week. It's 8 3/4" long (per "I" of GAIN's measurement) and not nearly as cute as Grandma's squirrel, but that's OK. I don't need ribbon around the neck or stain.

You are probably wondering what an Oven Squirrel is. It's a handy dandy tool to pull and push hot oven racks. Here is G pulling our rack out. (It's not hot. We're just pretending. Or acting.) When you pull a rack out, the squirrel is upside down, hooking the rack with its ears.



When you push the rack in, the squirrel is right-side up, pushing with near its neck. "I" of GAIN took this photo, and I am not editing right now because that would require switching computers. And I am very comfortable in this spot with my laptop, thank you. (How does my new oven look?) You can still figure out what I'm saying without my editing.


I am guessing that someone who spends about 45 minutes could make a more finished squirrel that would be worthy of a craft fair. Unless you used a sander, then this project would take less than 30 minutes.

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