fabric fancy

I have a shelf in the corner of my living room that holds my vinyl and cds and movies.  I made the shelf about 10 or 15 years ago and though it is functional — it has dividers for keeping my vinyl upright — it is actually a bit of a mess.  I’ve been debating painting the whole thing, which would mean sanding it, which I didn’t want to deal with right now.  I decided to make curtains to cover the front and hide the mess.  I couldn’t think of buying any more fabric but didn’t really have anything in my stash (huge though it is) that worked, so I decided to make my own with fabric paint and some natural cotton that I inherited several yards of.

I call my decorating style “Victorian Mod” because I combine vintage pieces from my grandmother with pop & modern art elements, so I thought I would take a Victorian element and blow it up to give it that modern edge.  I decided to go with the look of rattan weave because a) it’s easy to do with painter’s tape and b) it reminds me of some funky wallpaper/linens I remember from the 70s.  Plus it’s just awesome.

This was so easy to lay out, though I wish I had figured out the measurements a bit more carefully so that the sides of the octagons were equal.  I cut the fabric roughly to size first, then laid it on my dining room table on a piece of tarp, then taped off the pattern.

I used my quilter’s ruler to measure the horizontal and vertical lines then eye-balled the diagonals.  Once I had it all taped off, I used acrylic paint mixed with textile medium and a 99-cent roller to paint on the color.

I pulled off the tape almost immediately because I was so impatient, then hung the fabric over a laundry rack to dry.

So awesome!

Now I actually want to paint the shelf because I think the fabric would look better paired with paint instead of the wood. I’m not entirely sure what color to paint it.  Just off-white?  Pale blue?  Taupe?  I won’t get around to it for months, so I’ve got plenty of time to decide.  Now I just need to make cozies for my tiny tv and stereo…

I love love love this fabric.

*Note: I realize my pictures have been completely sub-par lately.  Is it me?  My camera?  We’ll work on improving the quality.

 

 

 

cook it up

Hello, friends.  This blog has dwindled from daily to monthly but such is the state of my life these days.  But I wanted to pop in and show you this curtain I made for a friend’s kitchen.  She was inspired by my office curtain that says “work.”  I did a better job stitching the reverse-appliqué letters on this one though there is a slight puckering around the edges (a little tear-away stabilizer would have done the trick but I didn’t have any).  It looks nifty in her kitchen, as you can see in this snapshot.

Speaking of work, I need to get back to it.  Hope you are cooking up something crafty yourself.

 

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.

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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!

 

dishtowel mania

It seems like all it takes are the words “free pattern” and “hanging dishtowel” to start a teeny-weeny wave on this here thing they call the web.  Who knew the world was so desperate for a fabric-topped hanging dishtowels?!

A big THANK YOU to the following websites for featuring my little project:

Craftzine, who started it all!  (Also on facebook.)

Jo-ann Fabrics, who recognized their cute Apples + Pears fabric.  (Yeah, everyone is on facebook these days!)

Craft Gossip — I confess I had not seen this site before, but I like it!  So many projects!

And THANK YOU to a bunch of bloggers who linked here as well…It really made my day!

edited to add:

Planet Green has also run a post about my pattern…all hail the mighty dishtowel!

 

christmas prezzies 6 + 1 for you!

For years, my Grandma Annie and Aunt Ruth would give me those crocheted hanging dishtowels every Christmas, so they hold a special place in my heart.  The hanging dishtowels you find at craft fairs tend towards the “country kitchen” style, so when my mom said that she had seen some fabric ones and thought it would be a great Christmas gift,  it seemed like a good opportunity to make something more contemporary.  I played dumb and told my mom to snap a picture of the one she had bought so I could see what she meant, but I went ahead and designed my own.   

It was funny on Christmas Eve day when I arrived at my parents’ house and saw the hanging dishtowel she had purchased in the kitchen.  “Oh, so that’s what you meant,” I said, “I wish you had remembered to send me a picture.”  Darn.  I had to turn away so she wouldn’t see me smiling, because little did she know that two sets of dishtowels were wrapped up under the tree.  She was pretty happy with them because the fabric colors and designs are more in tune with her own style. 

I have a couple of friends who are learning to sew, so I’m drawing up some simple patterns of the things I make.  Since I couldn’t find a tutorial or pattern for this style of hanging dishtowel on the web, I thought I would also make my pattern available to all of you as a little belated holiday gift.  It’s a pdf file so you will need the free Adobe Acrobat reader to open and print the pattern, which includes all of the instructions written below (without the pictures).  

If you are not planning on making a hanging dishtowel, you’ll want to stop reading now because what follows are pretty detailed instructions.  Since I’m trying to help out my newbie sewist friends, I tried to be pretty explicit about the steps, but if anything at all is unclear, please do let me know! 

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Download pattern here: Hanging dishtowel pattern2.
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.   

To make two hanging dishtowels, I used one purchased 24” x 15” dishtowel, 2 pieces of 7” x 12” fabric, one piece of 7” x 12” flannel, and two buttons.  Don’t forget to pre-wash and dry everything to pre-shrink it! 

Edited to add:  It’s come up in the comments, so I want to mention here that you don’t need to use the flannel interfacing if you don’t want to.  I wanted these to be extra sturdy, hence the added layer, but you can just go ahead and make it without if you prefer.  Have fun!

Preparing the dishtowel: 

1. Cut your purchased dishtowel in half so there are two 12” x 15” pieces. 

2. Carefully pleat, fold, or gather the 15” raw edge so that it measures 6” across.  Stitch pleats/folds/gathers in place. 

I pleated this by eye, fiddling with it until it was even and measured six inches across.

To make the handles: 

1. Print out the pattern pieces and cut them out.
2. Overlap the TABs and glue or tape the pieces together. 

I printed mine onto cardstock so it would be easier to trace around and stand up to mulitple uses.

 3. Use the pattern to cut out four pieces of fabric and two pieces of flannel.
4. Pin the pieces together in this order: one piece of fabric, right-side up; one piece of fabric, right-side down; one piece of flannel.  (Do this twice since you are making two handles.)
5. Starting at point A, stitch around the handle to point B, leaving the bottom open.  Clip the corners and turn right-side out. 

6. Press so that all the edges are crisp, then turn in a one-inch hem along the open bottom and press. 

The one-inch hem will make sure it stands up to daily use and repeated washings.

Fold the flannel to one side or the other, it doesn't matter which.

 Assemble and finish: 

1. Insert the raw pleated/folded/gathered edge of the dishtowel into the open base of the handle so that it lays a full inch inside.  Sew at least two rows of stitches to hold it in place.  (Remember that people will be tugging on this as it hangs in the kitchen so it must be well-stitched!) 

Normally, I would use coordinating thread to hide the stitches, but I used white here so they would show up better.

2. Center your button on the pointed flap (point C) and mark lines for the buttonhole.  Make the buttonhole on the flap. 

Again, this would look better with coordinating thread.

(Ah, buttonholes!  Along with zippers, they are one of the most daunting tasks for the new sewer!  This is a good project to learn on because, after all, it’s just a dishtowel.  Once it’s stained with coffee and barbeque sauce, your wonky buttonhole won’t matter a bit.  I suggest following the directions that [hopefully] came with your machine — that’s how I learned.  Here are a couple of links from Sew Mama Sew that might be helpful:  Buttonholes 1 and Buttonholes 2.  Here’s one for hand-sewing a buttonhole from CraftStylish.  Just keep practicing — like any skill, that is the only way you are going to improve.) 

3. Fold the flap over so the point lines up with the bottom edge of the wide base of the handle.  Use a pin or mark with pencil where the button should go on the wide base and sew on the button. 

4. Fini!  Hang your dishtowel and admire.  

5. Wash your hands – it’s flu season!

You could use a heavy-duty snap or velcro if you don’t like to make buttonholes.  It would be cute to use coordinating fabrics on the front and back of the handle, so when you fold it over, you see both fabrics.  A scrappy handle would be sweet as well. 

This pattern should be considered copyrighted (some wretch of a human being was copying free patterns from u-handblog and elsewhere and selling them on etsy, can you imagine?!), but I know a lot of crafters are looking for simple projects to sell at craft fairs, so feel free to sell any hanging dishtowels you make from it!  Just send me a picture so I can see your handiwork! 

And please check out my new etsy shop:

kleio's belly on etsy!

 

christmas prezzies 3

 

This was my most experimental undertaking this Christmas — a clock for my brother.  This gift was an amalgam of a bunch of other people’s projects.  At some point, I saw Krupp’s cross-stitched Star Wars pieces and I loved the idea of using Yoda’s line, “do or do not, there is no try” in a piece for my brother, who is a huge Star Wars geek (aren’t we all?).  I toyed with various ideas — embroidering a tie, freezer-paper-stenciling a t-shirt, or making a clock — and a male friend encouraged me to go with the clock. 

I got the original idea for an embroidered clock from Prudent Baby, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to mount the clock in a frame the way she had done.  A search on Flickr for ideas turned up this clock by Bertha Reza, which recycles a cd for the base.  The idea for using pin-stripe horizontally came from Blue Sky Thinker — I wish I’d used a lovely wool like she did but I couldn’t find a wool suit to recycle at the thrift store and my fabric store only had this poly blend.  I was able to find a never-used clock at the thrift store, which was lucky because my local craft stores were both out of plain clockwork kits and I didn’t want to pay double for shipping from Amazon.

It took two seconds to unscrew the battery-operated clockwork out of this clock.  I saved the calendar part as I must be able to use the wooden numbers for something.  (Too bad it only has April — all the other months are missing.)

Since the hole in the cd is a bit larger than the post, I made a couple of washers out of cardboard to hold it in place.  The thing I am proudest of is how I MacGyvered a hanger out of a baking tin.

I forgot to take a picture of the back once it was assembled, but I gently stretched the pinstripe around to the back and gathered the edges, then cut a slightly smaller circle of felt which I attached by hand to cover the edges.

I was pretty excited about this when I had finished it, but now I wish I had done something more complex with the stitching — and probably not used the pinstripe.  But despite the simplicity of the embroidery, this project used up the most brain power this Christmas as I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to make and how to make it.  My brother didn’t seem very excited about it but that’s ok.  It was an experiment and I imagined his reaction would go either way.  Since I myself am now pretty ambivalent about it, I can hardly blame him for feeling the same.  But it was fun to try something new, even if the results weren’t stellar.

 

christmas prezzies 2

This morning I read a couple of articles and blog posts about New Year’s resolutions and one writer noted that even if you don’t completely follow through on them, resolutions are a good way to reconnect with your dreams and goals.  I tend to set these kinds of goals at my birthday instead of in January as a cold winter month when my energy is at its lowest never seems like a good time to take up a new project.

This year I am making an exception because there are two things I really want to accomplish.  The first is to start running again.  I’ve been saying I want to do this for months but enough lollygagging!  I have developed what we call “dissertation ass” from sitting at my computer all day and all night, and if I want to stay fit as I move into my forties, I need to get off it!  Not to mention that yoga will be a lot easier if I lose the extra pounds I have gained over the past couple of years.

The other goal you may want to join in on.  This is to finish one UFO every month, starting in January.  I inherited a couple of quilt tops from my grandmother five or six years ago and I had intended to complete them for my mom, my aunts, and my uncle.  I finished the one for my mom and gave it to her for Christmas a couple of years ago, but the other three are just sitting in a drawer.  The time has come to finish these and send them to their new homes where they can be enjoyed.  There are several other items on The List that should take me through the middle of the year at least.   If you are also planning to tackle your UFOs this year, let me know and we can encourage each other.  The first thing I’m going to finish is the quilt for my aunt Ruth, so check in on January 31st to see how I’ve done.  Of course, I have all sorts of other plans like finishing my dissertation and going on the job market, but these are things that will happen, so I don’t need to make resolutions to see them through.

My niece wanted a new bedroom curtain for Christmas.  I lined this with flannel drapery liner to keep the chill out of her cold Gloucester home.  I worried that it was a bit too sweet for my 15-year-old niece, but she seems to like it.  I used a reverse-appliqué technique for the letters, similar to my office curtain.

 

dressed in holiday style

Try as you might to avoid it, life goes on and at some point in December, you will find yourself in a store with 50 million other shoppers.  Maybe you need to get some groceries or pick up one thing at Target  — this was me, yesterday.  I made it out with one thing, and quickly, but I wished I could have printed up little cards with some handy reminders and handed them out to some of the other shoppers. 

When shopping at a mall or big box store, make sure to bring a snack and some water.  It doesn’t matter if you ate just before you left home, something in the air will make your blood sugar drop in the next 27 minutes and you will definitely become dehydrated.  Low blood sugar and dehydration can both cause irritability and confusion.  Don’t wait ’til you get crazy to get some food into you — then you’ll buy that jumbo bag of M&Ms and just make things worse.

Be nice to the checkout person.  Unless you have actually been punched in the nose today, I can guarantee that you are having a better day than she is.  Working retail during the holidays is like working in one of the circles of hell.  BE NICE — Santa is so watching you right now.  I like to imagine that if I am nice to the checkout person, they will be nicer to the next customer, who will be nicer to the next person, and so on.  And really, it’s just as easy to be nice as to be bitchy, so why not be nice?

It helps to remember how very lucky you are to be waiting in line at Target and not in, say, a rice line at a Sudanese refugee camp.  Take a deep breath and remind yourself how ultimately insignificant the next four minutes are.  So the lady in front of you waits to get her wallet out after everything has been rung up, then slowly counts out seventeen one-dollar bills, then slowly counts out coins, then realizes she doesn’t have enough change and pulls out another bill.  It’s all good.  And poor customer service is not a human rights violation.  You still get to go home to your snug little house and admire your purchases.

I like to park at the end of a row furthest from the store because I am less likely to run over a crazed shopper and there are less cars vying for my space.  It’s good to have a little walk in the fresh air too.  Wherever you park, go slow, wait your turn — heck, let the other person go first.  Why rush?

I guess I would sum it up by saying, chill the f*** out, people.  It’s just a mall, not the beaches of Normandy.