HomeWork

My new favorite book: Warm Fuzzies by Betz White. I loved my library copy so much, I bought my own from her etsy shop.

This ranks at the top of my list for felting books, and maybe at the top for all craft books. Great ideas. Clear instructions. After reading it cover to cover, I immediately raced downstairs to start sewing.

Luckily, I have a decent stash of recycled felt, so I could get started right away. However, if you find yourself without any source of holey sweaters, or the local thrift store has been pillaged by faster crafters, try LassotheMoon’s etsy shop where she has listings for wool sweater scraps. Betz White also offers similar scrap bags, but her recent popularity means they are snapped up pretty quickly.

This fish was inspired by her bird ornament pattern. While I created my own shape, I followed her directions for creating the fins, which have a piece of fusible interfacing ironed between the two layers of felt to act as a stiffener.  Fashioning the eyes took a couple of tries, and some searching in google images for inspiration; in the end, I needlefelted on a piece of blue felt and then sewed the eye patch to the body.

It is safe to say that our world is drowning in plastic cast-off by consumers around the world; whether it is little black toy wheels in the stomach of a juvenile albatross, or trees in the Amazon girdled by grocery bags, plastic is an evil that will endure far beyond our lifespan.

Since a lot of my work uses recycled sweaters to create wool felt, it seems logical to package gifts in a multi-purpose fabric pouch. What is a jewelry wrapper one day can be a camera case, glasses case or credit card holder another day. Sew two quick side seams, a button hole and the pouch is done.

My current dilemma surrounds my responsibility as a seller to provide wrapping or packaging for items I sell at a show. This Sunday October 7th, I’ll have my first booth at the I Heart Rummage craft show. Do I have to buy bags to hand to my customers? What do customers expect? What will they accept?

I have lots of clean, dry grocery bags in my kitchen. Would customers object to receiving their purchase in my reused plastic? While I have some small-handled gift-size paper shopping bags (you know the kind you get from upscale retailers), I don’t think I have enough for my purposes. My other idea is reusing the colorful coated gift bags people buy for birthday presents; lots of them have either seasonal motifs or childish prints on them, but they would serve the function. I’d appreciate any feedback or suggestions, and if any of my local readers have small paper bags they’d like to contribute, I’ll be at the Fiber Gallery tonight.

What is more French than a baguette smothered in Brie? A wool beret, worn at just such a jaunty angle says ‘I’m confident’ in a most nonchalant way.

As soon as I saw this pattern in Simple Sewing with a French Twist by Céline Dupuy, I was gripped by the impulse to run downstairs. Since the family was away for the afternoon, I forced myself to flip through the rest of the book before jumping out of my chair, but it was a struggle. Perhaps it was because the pattern calls for recycled felt, or perhaps it is photograph of the author wearing her beret, I could not resist trying the pattern.

The instructions calls for topstitching the pieces with the seams on the outside, however, one of the illustrations shows the band seam on the inside. I decided it looked better with only one exposed seam. On my next iteration, I’ll turn the whole thing around so the seams are all on the inside, just for a little variety.

The wool fabric for the red and orange beret wasn’t felted when I pieced it together. Though it looked lovely when I finished it, I thought it should be felted, so threw it in the washer for a couple of cycles along with some other sweaters that were waiting for the same treatment. Unfortunately, the brim felted to itself in some places, and in other spots firmly felted like a pair of smiling lips.

While I had planned to put both berets in my etsy shop, the defect is too noticeable for me to sell with pride. For now, I’ll post the navy beret, and sew another version of the orange & red to post tomorrow.

I have Moo MiniCards! What perfect little treasures! I love having my only little trading cards. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of Moo; the phenomenon was only brought to my attention recently, but boy do a lot of other people know about them, beg and trade them.

They are about half the size of a standard business card, but printed on heavy gauge cardstock in vibrant color, with 6 custom text fields printed on the back. You can select up to 100 different images, so unlike business cards, you can share many pieces of work with anyone who asks. The hard part is deciding which images look best because the selection window is just a slice of your original, forcing some tight choices due to unusually tight cropping.

When I sent the rosebud pins to Sarah and Loren, I wanted something a little more personal than a tiny ziploc bag, so I whipped up two rectangles of recycled felt. Sewing across the knit ribbing was impossible (though I’ve since learned about three new stitches on my machine that should make future projects easier - thanks Cheryl!), so I hand stitched the bottom, creating a tiny little postcard and pin holder.

Last night we watched The Science of Sleep (4 stars - 5 for originality - love Michel Gondry) while I played with some bits of felt scraps I was using to stuff this pillow. By the time I finished the blanket stitch around the perimeter I was sitting in a pile of wool, thread and dryer lint. I made the first of these little pockets, and then spent the first hour I was in bed thinking of variations.

The other three were stitched together this afternoon. I’m leaning towards number 1. What do you think?

My favorite flower is Centaurea Montana, common name Mountain Bluet. When I first started gardening, we had a raised bed filled with it in our back yard.

Unfortunately, this sweet flower is prone to farmer ants tending flocks of aphids. Very ugly.

There is something about the delicate petals and the color combination that enchants me.

Creating a 2D representation was a little harder than I imagined. Getting the depth of color was really hard, and I couldn’t get the perspective right.

Several more layers of color brought me to this version, which still isn’t right.

A nursery catalogue arrived in the mail this week featuring my subject on the cover. I decided to try a different version of the flower.

This looks more like Eeyore’s thistle than my beloved centaurea montana, but it is time to move on to another project.

Standing around chatting with a parent at our preschool this Saturday, I happened to whip out my checkbook sporting a slightly botched, very stretched needle felted checkbook cover with this design. My friend had been giving me advice because I was wearing these two numbers, and she thought I should start selling my work. When I whipped out the checkbook to show her my latest idea, she immediately asked me to make one for her husband, something a little more manly.  

The tree motif was Lance’s idea of something manly. I was so excited when I got to her house to turn it over, that I forgot to set the macro focus on my camera, so these pictures are the best of a bad set.

Pacific Fabrics sells clear vinyl printed with butterflies, frogs and flip flops for $4.99/yd. I bought 12″ of two different patterns, plenty for many more checkbook covers. Thanks for setting me off in the right direction, Sue. I love running into you on the street.

I’m suffering from a bad case of crafter’s block, or perhaps it is aesthetic intimidation caused by reading too many blogs. Each of these projects was started with a burst of enthusiasm, but for various reasons, I had to stop before I was done and now I can’t decide how to “finish” them.

This apron is made from a dishtowel and some grosgrain ribbon thrifted on Mother’s Day weekend. My original intention was to add a pocket just like this, à la Lotta Jansdotter’s Café Apron, or perhaps a patch pocket with a freezer paper stencil applique, but I just can’t picture the right “thing”. Where has my muse gone?

The inspiration for this little scissor hanger hit on Mother’s Day as well, but the ribbons aren’t exactly right, there isn’t enough room to include my rotary cutter, and the whole thing needs some interfacing or Timtex to make more rigid. Perhaps a more densely fulled piece of felt would be a better choice because the pinking shears make the bottom skew away from the top. This project is screaming do-over, but now that the bug to make it has evaporated, I’m lacking in motivation.

This lambswool and angora sweater was acquired at the clothing swap in West Seattle, but I couldn’t bear to rip it apart because it is so warm and fuzzy. Small tears at the neck in the shoulder seams needed to be repaired this week, so I embroidered a vine across the neck and down each shoulder, but this isn’t done either. More or less?

A few weeks ago, friends alerted me to a clothing swap at a West Seattle co-housing community. My mind immediately started thinking about picking up sweaters for recycling. I brought home four, but decided one was too good to recycle.

These small pouches were made from the sleeves of two different sweaters, both partially fulled by their previous owners.

We’ve needed a new case for our teeny camera for several months. Ironically, the old one turned up at my son’s preschool the day after I finished sewing this together. The circles are cut from a sushi-felted tube I made around Valentines for class cards. I sliced of a bit and needle felted them to the wool before sewing it together.

As this scene came together, I imagined a garden full of bachelor buttons. This is more of Marti’s roving, with more left for additional projects.

I’ve made plans to spend this weekend in Vancouver with my mother sewing my cape with the felt blanket I scrounged from Goodwill a few weeks ago. Beautiful beige that it is, I thought it would be perfect for dyeing a bright color using food coloring. I’ve tried Kool-Aid and was only moderately pleased with the results. Food coloring sold as a paste, used by Melissa the Baker, gave me much better results, with the exception of the purple shades.  

Exhibit A: the freshly dyed hanks of Lamb’s Pride dripping dry outside

Exhibit B: a fulled bag that spent five weeks pool side last summer; by the end of Sophie’s swimming lessons, the vibrant magenta and purple tones had all but disappeared, though the turquoise stayed true and the green color was started out pretty subdued.

With that experience under my belt, I’m approaching the process of dyeing my wool blanket with trepidation. I want to make sure that the color is even and that it doesn’t fade. In the past, I dyed the wool on the stovetop in the biggest canning pot I could find. However, I need to leave the blanket in fairly large pieces because of the pattern I’m going to use, so I’m tempted to try dyeing it in the washing machine. Will the hot water that comes out of the faucet be hot enough? Will the dye bath cool off before the dye has set? How much vinegar do I add to a large load in a conventional washing machine? On Pat Sparks’ list, I read a recommendation to add 1/4 cup of vinegar for a quart of water, but how many quarts does my washing machine hold? I’m looking for some feedback and suggestions.