Current Project: Wool Eater Blanket

My current project is crocheting a Wool Eater blanket.  The pattern makes a very close and textured fabric.  I discovered the project as part of a crochet-a-long.  I'm getting started on the crochet-a-long a little late, but I am making great progress on the blanket.

I am using this project as a way to use up some of the partial skeins of wool yarn I have hanging around.  I used the red yarn to knit my very first pair of socks.  The variegated pink and brown yarn was leftover from making my sister-in-law a pair of socks.  The brown yarn was remnants from making a hat for my dad...  And so on.  This project also gives me a chance to buy a few new skeins of yarn that I know will get used right away!

For the next colors I am thinking about using tan (the stuff I dyed with Black Walnut in the summer), gray, dark magenta, and red.  Any suggestions on what colors to use after that?

Valentines Goodie Bags

I made these goodie bags for the kids in the after school swing dance group I work with.  The kids are in 5th-7th grade and I wanted to do something special for them at our practice on Valentine's Day.

The bags have pretty pencils, cupcake shaped erasers, heart shaped suckers, candy hearts, and small handmade notebooks.  I made the books out of lined paper and colorful cardstock sewn together with a pamphlet stitch.

I put all the goodies in a paper lunch bag and decorated the bag with red construction paper punched with different sized hearts.  The heart punches became confetti for the inside of the bags.

Black Walnut and Indigo Dyeing

Last week my copy of Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess arrived in the mail.  It is a fantastic book about dyeing fabric and yarn using plants.  Not only does the book tell you how to create different colors of dye from different plants, it has great information about keeping colors from fading using mordants.  I wanted to get started right away, so I chose two kinds of dye that did not require treating the yarn with a mordant before dyeing: Black Walnut, and Powdered Indigo.  As an added bonus, my internship already had those dyes cooked up so they were ready to go.

First I tackled Black Walnut dye.  To make this dye from scratch you collect black walnuts (with gloves on, because they really will turn your hands black), put them in a pot of water for a few weeks to ferment, and then boil.  Since my dye was already prepared, all I needed to do was heat the dye in a pot until almost boiling.

Then I soaked my yarn in warm water until all the air bubbles were out, and put it in the pot to cook for an hour or two.  After cooking the fibers I took them out of the dye pot and rinsed them until the water ran clear.

The result was a beautiful light brown yarn.  If the dye had been fresh and never used, the color probably would have been darker.

Next I used the powdered Indigo dye bath that was already mixed up.  The indigo dye is very messy, and very sensitive to oxygen.  So please, WEAR GLOVES if you do any kind of dyeing.  The powdered indigo is mixed with water, soda ash, and a chemical called Thiox.

You can also make indigo dye from the leaves of the indigo plant, but indigo does not grow around here and the seeds need to be ordered special from overseas.

Once the dye bath is prepared and the yarn is wet, dip the yarn into the dye bath and hold under for around 3 minutes.  Gently squeeze the yarn and slowly swish it around in the dye.  Then lift the yarn out of the dye and put it in a bucket for the color to develop.

After about 15 minutes rinse out the dye until the color runs clear.  If you want a darker color, dip the yarn again and repeat the process until the yarn is the desired color.  Mine came out a lovely medium blue.

Dress Refashion

I got this pink jersey dress from Target earlier this summer.  I love the ease of jersey dresses, but this one was a little on the plain side.  So I pulled out my trusty freezer paper to jazz it up a little bit!

I decided to add a stenciled border along the neckline and the bottom of the dress.  After measuring how long my stencil needed to be I cut two pieces of freezer paper and taped them down to my cutting mat.  I always cut two stencils at once, even if I don't need both right away.  Then I used a pen to draw a floral design for my stencil, and went at it with an x-acto knife.

Several hours of cutting (and numerous Netflix tv episodes) later I had four completed stencils!  The next step was ironing the freezer paper to my dress.  If you have never done freezer paper stencils before, this is a link to a great step-by-step tutorial.

I attempted to mix up some pink and purple fabric paint... But it ended up more as a nice brown, blue, and gray.  After the ink dried I peeled off the freezer paper and heat set the ink with an iron.  Now the pattern is permenant, washable, and ready to wear!

Christmas in July

I'm having a Christmas in July sale over on Etsy!  That means 10% off everything between July 21st and July 31st.  Just enter the coupon code CHRISTMASINJULY at checkout.

Check out my selection of handmade books.  From Japanese Stab style to Coptic both large and small.  I even have some mini books!  (I am Minimeg after all.)

I also have fine art photographs ranging from animals to architectural details.

 And don't forget about accessories!  Recycled purses and pouches featured in previous blog posts along with eclectic jewelry made from found objects.

T-Shirt Shorts

This week I found a great tutorial about making your own shorts pattern based on measurements.  The weather has been so hot lately that I have been planning on making myself another pair of pajama shorts.  So I pulled out some newspaper for pattern making, and a couple old t-shirts from my fabric bin.  I took some measurements and whipped up a pattern on yesterday's newspaper.  After seeing the size of the pattern I pulled out two standard t-shirts (think Jerzees, event t-shirts, not baby doll tees) and I happened to have two of the exact same shade of goldenrod yellow.  I made a second pair using two red t-shirts and remembered to take some pictures of the process!

The shorts were really easy to make and took maybe a half hour of sewing.  I used a three step zig-zag stitch instead of a straight stitch.  This stitch uses three straight stitches for every zig and zag, and is excellent for stretchy fabrics like t-shirts.  When I cut the fabric I lined up the finished shirt edge with the bottom of the pattern.  This meant I didn't need to hem the legs, and the final shorts kept a professional detail.  Instead of adding elastic to the waist I folded over the top edge about two inches to make a channel for a drawstring.  I made a drawstring out of a strip of the t-shirt, stretched so it rolled over on itself.

The yellow shorts turned out great BUT the shorts were a couple sizes too big.  They have a drawstring, so not unwearable...  However, for the red shorts I cut about an inch off the side seam of each pattern piece and a little off the top edge.  This made a world of difference!  The shorts fit perfectly.

 I am helping a friend make a t-shirt quilt, so I am sure to have plenty of scraps once the logos have been cut out of all 22 shirts!  Possibilities for next time include cutting each pattern piece out of a different color shirt, using shirt logos instead of blank shirt material, and freezer paper stenciling on the finished product.

Hardcover Books

Recently I made my first hardcover books!  It was an adventure into the Coptic style of binding.  Coptic binding leaves an exposed book spine and allows the book to open flat for easy drawing and writing.

The first step to making a hardcover book is creating the covers.  The base of the covers are pieces of mat board leftover from cutting windows out of mats.  After cutting the mat board down to size I chose strips of paper that overlapped the mat board by around an inch on each side.  Then, apply a thin coat of PVA glue to the front of the cover and apply the paper.  Trim the corners, apply glue to the other side of the board, and fold over the paper edges.  Then glue a piece of decorative paper over the back of the board to cover up the folded edges.  Repeat for the back cover!

The next step is punching holes in the covers.  Then fold all the pages in half and line up with the covers.  Mark the pages and punch holes that line up with the holes on the cover.  Then it is a matter of sewing the pages to each other and assembling the book.  The groups of pages (called signatures) are attached one at a time to the book, making it easy to create large books.  This site has a good tutorial on Coptic binding with lots of photographs of the sewing process.  This is one of those processes that seems very difficult when writing the instructions, but turns out to be very easy once you actually do it.