b is for…

…bling.  I was inspired to do a bit of work on my Bink drapo and sequined the “B.”  I started doing it in an acid green then realized the blue would look much better with the blue tint of the halo.  The light is bad today so I couldn’t get a good picture of the full banner.  Once I finish off the tail, I can start filling in the background.  I have some copper-colored square sequins for the background (ignore the big hearts drawn with a sharpie as I don’t like that design).  How long will it take me to finish this bad boy?

…beef.  I am cooking this recipe from smitten kitchen right now in my new crockpot and the smell is unbelievable.  I can hardly think straight and it will be hard not to eat it before Friday.  I’ll probably freeze it to be on the safe side, and hope it doesn’t hurt the texture too much.  (Any thoughts?)

…brrrr!  I’m making the beef for this coming weekend, when I am going cabin camping with a couple of friends up north of here.  Presumably, it will be cold — though it’s like spring in Troy today so I don’t know what to expect.  I’m hoping there’s snow up there because I was planning to go snow-shoeing for the first time in my life.

….blah.  I’m so out of it today and I’ve barely gotten any work done.  I could blame the beef — it smells soo good! — but I think my head is just in the wrong place.  I’m giving a guest lecture in one of my professor’s classes on Thursday, though, so tomorrow will have to be a better day.

….bye, now.

 

rainbow connection

My sweet niece has been getting into jewelry-making (yay, crafty!), so for her birthday she requested a little pouch to hold her tools.  (As a side note, can I mention how much I love it when friends and family ask me to make something specific?  Sometimes I run out of ideas and I also like knowing that I’m making something they’ll really use.) 

She mentioned that she likes bright colors, so I decided to go for the rainbow effect.  I love this pouch!  Love it!  The bright colors are like candy against the linen.

I made use of more of the kelly green mini-dot that first made its appearance in my nephew’s playmat, a smidge of the purple fabric I got from Portugal, and some of the Obama fabric I bought a while back but hadn’t used yet.  The style of this pouch is similar to the one popularized by Amy Karol but I made a triangular flap for a different look.  I forgot to measure it, but I’d say it’s about 5″ x 8″ when folded shut.

Turns out it was a bit too small for her tools (she had more than I thought), so she’s using this one for some odds-n-ends in her purse, and I’ll make a larger version for her tools.  I’m gonna have to make one for myself while I’m at it.

 

ufo sightings

Well, here it is February 5th and I still haven’t completed my UFO for January.  But making my niece’s birthday present has reignited my desire to get some sewing done (which had mysteriously waned over the past month), so I’m hoping to finish up my scrappy market bags within the next week.  This will leave me with 2 weeks to finish a UFO for February, but I am still committed to this resolution, despite the rocky start to the year.  Have you finished a UFO lately?

This is my niece’s present, wrapped up and ready to be delivered tomorrow.  I wanted to spice up the wrapping a bit, so I cut some hearts out of scrapbook paper and cut some small slices in them, then strung them onto the raffia tying the present.  I love the way this prezzie looks and I’m even more excited about what’s inside.  I’ll show pics in the next couple of days.

I hear tell the mid-Atlantic will get slammed again this weekend — it’ll be the fifth storm of the season to pass us by.  It’s been a crazy winter, weather-wise.  Be safe and stay warm.

 

make your own good fortune

Here are the instructions for making a Good Fortune card and envelope.  As always, let me know if anything is unclear and send me a pic or a link if you make one — I’d love to see what you come up with!

To make this project, you will need an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of white cardstock, three small pieces of light brown scrapbooking paper, a piece of regular 8.5″ x 11″ printer paper, a smidge of glue, assorted Chinese-themed stamps, and a red ink stamp pad.

Download the envelope template here:
Good Fortune Envelope.

This is a pdf file so you will need the free Adobe Acrobat reader to open and print the template.  (If you have trouble printing this file, make sure you have the most current version of the Acrobat reader installed.)  When you print the pattern, make sure your printer doesn’t “scale” the pages (i.e., “shrink to fit”) or the pattern will come out a bit on the small side.   This template fits exactly on an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper — if your printer won’t print all the way to the edges of the paper, you may have to sketch them in by hand.

1. Print out the template.  If you don’t want the fold lines printed on your cardstock, print the template on a regular piece of paper and use this as a pattern to trace onto the cardstock with pencil that you will erase later.  If you don’t mind the fold lines, print the template directly onto the cardstock.

2. Stamp the template as desired.  If you don’t have stamps (I found these at Jo-Ann’s), you could print images from the internet, draw images by hand, or carve stamps of your own.  Since the flaps will fold over to create the envelope, you need to stamp them upside-down when the envelope is unfolded (see pic).

3. Cut out the envelope, score the fold lines, and erase any pencil marks.

4. If you have a hard time getting the interlocking tabs to hook together, you may need to shave a tiny bit off of the inside of the “hook.”  Don’t shave off too much though, or your envelope won’t close fully.

5. To make the cookies, cut out circles that are approximately 2.75″ diameter from the brown paper — I traced around a jar lid.

6. Use a toothpick to put a thin smidge of glue along the outside of 1/3 of the circle (refer to picture below), then glue the two sides together, leaving a gap for the fortune.  Pinch one end of the circle but don’t fold it completely in half, so it retains a bit of of a cookie shape.  Use clothespins or paper clips to hold the circles until dry. 

7. Type up your fortunes on the computer with whatever messages you want to send.  The easiest way to make correctly-aligned two-sided slips is to center the text.  You can google “Chinese translation” and the desired phrase for the “Learn Chinese” part on the back.  I used my niece’s birthdate and her current birthday and age for her “Lucky Numbers.” 

8. Tuck the slips into the cookies.  (Since I was mailing her card, I put a smidge of glue on each to hold them in place but it held them too well, so I don’t recommend doing this!  If you are mailing your card, I’d recommend wrapping it in tissue paper and using a box so it doesn’t get smashed flat.)  Put the cookies in the envelope and voila!  You are done!

 

good fortune

My dear niece turned 16 today!

I made an envelope shaped like a Chinese-food takeout container.

Inside were three fortune cookies.

 

I got the Chinese translations off the internet, so I can’t attest to their accuracy.

This was a fun project and she loved it.  If you think you’d like to make your own good fortune card — it would be a swell Valentine! — let me know and I’ll post a template for the envelope and tutorial.  (I don’t want to go through the trouble if no one’s interested!)

Good fortune to you as well, dear reader.

 

hoop dreams

How to explain my absence, dear reader?  I notice that a lot of crafty bloggers are having a slow January, so let’s blame the weather, shall we?  But the end of the month is fast approaching, which means I had best get back to sewing if I plan to reach my goal of completing a ufo every month. 

My niece’s birthday is coming up and I have been working on her birthday card and giftie, but I cannot show them yet.  I am pretty excited about the card and may offer it to you as a free pattern once I get the kinks worked out.

Leah turned me onto this great flea market in Ravena and although I was only able to spend a little bit of time there the other day, I bought a great pair of shoes for 2 bucks, some vintage juice glasses for 35-50 cents each, and these awesome metal embroidery hoops — four for a buck.  I want to do some kind of industrial embroidery and use these as frames.  We’ll see — add it to the pile of projects-to-be in my craft room.

In the meantime, I’ve got a dissertation to write.  Hope you are having a craftier month than I am!

 

red in tooth and claw

It’s been an unproductive week all around.  No sewing but no real progress on my writing either.  I did get a lot of cooking done but that hardly counts.  Meatballs, tortillas, borscht – all delicious. 

Otherwise, I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and thinking about Haiti — like many of you, I’m sure.  I lived for a number of years on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, where there is a large West Indian population and a sizable number of Haitians.  I remember so well the election of Aristide to the presidency in 1990.  The Haitian radio station on the corner of Franklin put huge speakers outside on the sidewalk and when Aristide’s victory was announced, the intersection came to a standstill as dozens, if not hundreds, of Haitians danced and cheered in the streets.  It was a time of such optimism but the euphoria did not last.  Aristide was ousted in a coup the following year and though he was reinstated later in the nineties, there were charges of corruption and the use of violence against his foes.  His critics accused him of becoming the very kind of politician he had once opposed.  Meanwhile, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, and political corruption has only exacerbated the hurricanes that constantly hit the small island.

But Haiti is more than just political and environmental disaster.  It has a rich history as the first black republic in the world, but also an incredible tradition of art and food and music.  In 1998-1999, the American Museum of Natural History in NYC mounted an exhibition, “Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou,” that completely blew me away.  The most amazing of the ritual objects were the ritual flags (drapos), images of saints and sacred objects made out of fabric, beads, and sequins — hundreds and hundreds of sequins.  If you ever get a chance to see these in person, do it, as photographs to not do them justice.  I saw the AMNH exhibit at least twice and was inspired to begin making my own drapo of my cat, Bink.

This has been in the works for 10 years now.  Every couple of years, I add some more sequins and beads to it.  Poor Bink is no longer with us, having left this world in 2004, but I like to see his saintly image hanging on my wall.  I admit this is a project that only a crazy person would take on, but the results are fantastic.

I hope all of you have made some sort of donation in support of Haiti.  The easiest thing is to text “HAITI” to 90999 and ten dollars will be donated to the International Red Cross and charged to your phone bill.  (You can do this more than once, of course!)  Or send a check to the IRC, Doctors without Borders, Catholic Relief Services, or some other reputable organization doing work down there.  You can find more information on ways to donate at the White House Haitian Earthquake Relief site.

Edited to add:  Victoria from Ex Libris Handmade has started an Etsy shop with donations from other crafters.  Check it out — all proceeds, less Etsy & Paypal fees, are going to Doctors without Borders.  Nice job, Victoria!

 

simply striped

before

I think it’s safe to say that in 42 years, the phrase, “I love my bathmat,” has never crossed my lips.  Bathmats are functional and not much more.  My old one was getting pretty ratty and all of the non-stick stuff on the back had crumbled away.  I have this old clawfoot tub and climbing out of it can be a little dangerous if the floor gets wet and the bathmat goes sliding across the slippery floor.  (I hate to just toss the old one in a landfill but I think it’s too ratty for donation….any ideas on what to do with it??)

At Jo-ann’s, I came across this “Grip-Tight” fabric (in the “Utility Fabrics” section) which is coated with rubber dots.  I think it’s intended for making footie-pajamas, but it occurred to me that it would make a good base for a new bathmat, so I decided to try making my own.  You could also use one of those non-slip rug pads.  Either way, you’ll get a much longer life out of it if you don’t put it in the dryer. 

after

If you’d like to make a bathmat of your own, I’ve included a tutorial below.  I used muted colors and batiks so it would go with my bathtowels, but this would be fun in bright prints or solids as well.  This project is simple and satisfying — you will be able to finish it in a couple of evenings.  I’m not sure how durable this will be so if you have a large household, you will want to use more heavy-duty fabrics than I have used here.  But I am so pleased with the results that I can actually say that I love my bathmat — go figure.

*****************************************************

Simple striped bathmat
These instructions will make a bathmat that is approximately 22″ by 30″ but you can easily change the dimensions with a little math.  As always, let me know if anything is unclear!

For this project, you will need:

• Assuming your fabric is at least 44″ wide, 1/3 yard each of light- and medium-toned fabric and 1/4 yard of dark fabric (you will have some leftovers of each after you cut).
• An old terrycloth bathtowel or a piece of terrycloth that is at least 22″ x 30″ (you can piece this together since it will not be visible).
• Grip-Tight is only 15″ wide, so if you use this, you will need to purchase two yards and piece it together; otherwise, purchase a non-slip rug mat that is at least 22″ x 30″.
• At least 115″ of double-fold bias tape — if you purchase tape, one pack (4 yards) will be plenty.  The width depends on how thick your layers are.  Wider binding is easier to work with, so if you’ve never used binding before or are using a thick terrycloth layer, go for the 1″ or 1 and 1 /2″ binding.
• Don’t forget thread!  There is a tiny bit of quilting involved so you’ll want some corresponding thread.

Cut four 4″ x 22″ pieces from the light fabric;  three 4″ x 22″ pieces from the medium fabric; and six 1.5″ x 22″ pieces from the dark fabric.  Wait to cut the middle and backing layers until you have pieced the top in case your stitches are not perfectly measured and it comes out a bit longer or shorter than you expected. 

Using a 1/4″ seam, sew the top pieces together then press your seams.  I pressed mine open as I wanted them to lay completely flat, but you can press them to the side if that is your preference.  (The quickest, easiest way to piece the top is to first sew three darks and three mediums together, and three darks and three lights together.  Feed them through the machine one after the other then clip them apart afterwards.  Press the seams, then join these pieces together, making sure to do so in the correct order.  Finish by pressing the second set of seams.)

I added a middle layer of terrycloth so the mat would be absorbent and have a bit of cush under my feet.  Ideally, you would recycle an old towel for the middle layer, but I didn’t have any so I purchased some new terrycloth.  Pin your top to the terrycloth and trim to size.  Quilt as desired.  I just did a couple of straight lines through the medium strips (almost impossible to see in the above pic, sorry).

If you are using Grip-Tight, cut and join the fabric so you end up with a large enough piece.  Grip-Tight is very thick, so I sewed the edges of the seam down to keep them flat.  (Ok, here’s the dirty little secret of this project: Grip-Tight is not the easiest fabric to work with.  Those little dots are tough!  Perservere and be patient, you can do this!)

Place the top-middle layers right-side up on top of your bottom layer (right-side down) and pin it together.  Stitch around the outside edge, close enough to the edge that these stitches will be hidden by the binding, then trim the bottom layer to size.

For the final step, attach the binding.  Now there are a couple of ways to do this.  The first is the method I used — attaching the binding to the front by machine, then sewing it to the back by hand.  Heather Bailey offers a printable guide to this method here.  This method is more time-consuming and hand-stitching through the rubber dots has the potential to make you a bit crazy (with very sore fingers), so feel free to do it all by machine as is wonderfully demonstrated in this video tutorial from Amy Karol of the Angry Chicken.

Hey look — you’re done!  Whoo hoo!  A new bathmat!