LaughingLark's semi-random craftiness

Using what you have

2011-08-12T04:51:00.001-07:00

I was rummaging through some very old photos this morning, and ran across images of some earrings I had made almost two decades ago. We had been bitten hard by the early nineties recession in California, and were preparing to leave for Missouri. The cost of living in SoCal was just too much for us with a new baby.

I knew I would have to make and sell jewelry to help with income, but we had no money for supplies to keep me going. I mean NO money.

Big earrings were in style back then, and sparkly dangles, and niobium and titanium. I had a few findings to work with, but not enough to flesh out a craft show when I got to the Midwest. I also knew I’d have to change my products and my price points for a different market. How to do this with no money?

One day, I got to thinking about making art paper earrings with beading as accents. I found out that the art paper I had in mind came in huge sheets, and would cost as much as a pack of diapers for my baby, so that was right out.

I don’t know how it happened, but one day I got the idea to use an old brass stamping as a mold, and try making an impression of it by laying down a piece of thin paper, squirting on some glue gun glue, then laying down another sheet of paper. I pressed down the stamping with the end of a pencil to make an impression in the hot glue, and then I cut away the extra paper. The goal was to end up with a surface that looked like art paper, and could accept paints and varnish. After some trial and error with every type of paper readily available to me, I tried sheets of Charmin toilet paper. Bingo! Success! The paper was thick enough to make a good painting surface and to keep the glue contained, but thin enough to get a good stamping of the design in the brass. And they did not look like what they were made from once I finished.

I painted and sold a bunch of these earrings back then. I made them in all different colors, with whatever suitable old stampings I could find. This is the only pair I had left when I stopped making them and moved on to other designs. The pictures I took are very blurry and the earrings themselves are long gone. I painted and decorated them in all different ways. This was one of the plainer pair that was just a solid color slicked over with some shimmery violet interference paint.

Now we are being kicked in the teeth again and again by the economy, and I am learning how to spin and weave even though these both are very expensive hobbies. I probably will not resort to using Charmin in my work ever again, but I do find myself having to create as many of my supplies as I can. I’ll be blogging about that in the coming months.

This blog lay dormant for a long time because my schedule and my toddler kept me busy, It’s hard to find time to write sometimes. But now he is growing up and becoming a good helper, and he goes off to preschool this year. More posts coming soon.

Thanks for reading,

Lark

The scarf that made me get a spinning wheel

2011-08-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

It’s both too much “something”, and not enough “something”, and it’s scratchy as heck. This is my first clasped weft weaving project from last year. I had just ordered a 10-dent rigid heddle, and I thought I had plenty of fingering weight yarns that would work, but I was wrong. I forgot to take into account the need for lots of tensile strength in warp yarns, and that they should not be subject to stretching. Suddenly I was down to a strident green mystery yarn that was the only yarn I had that would work as warp. I found two other colors that I hoped would at least be on speaking terms with the green, and off I went to make my scarf.

I loved every minute of the process, and I see real possibility here, but not with these types of yarn. To get what I want, I have to spin it myself, or dye it myself, or both. A scarf like this in buttery soft homespun with random slubs and harmonious color changes throughout would be a different beast altogether.

With this in mind, I asked for a Babe wheel for Christmas. I had always wanted to spin, and now I had a legitimate reason to start. The economy being what it is, I didn’t want to ask for something I couldn’t use a lot, and eventually use for income.

I discovered that I love spinning. I mean, I LOVE spinning. I also learned that I am not crazy about spinning uniform and neat yarns unless they have a lot of color in them. A couple of weeks ago, I spun a bobbin full of solid teal colored yarn and it felt to me like the yarny equivalent to driving I-80 across Nebraska or I-70 through Kansas. Serviceable and predictably monotonous, and not something I want to do a lot of.

I’m being pushed towards art yarns, and incorporating them into my weaving. I don’t know where I am going with all this fiber stuff yet. All I know is that feels right to me, and that I enjoy the journey. I thank this itchy scarf for pointing the way.

Once my kids are in school this fall, I will start blogging about spinning, weaving, beading, etc. I will also get around to writing beadwork tutorials at last.

Whatever you might be working on right now, embrace it and listen to what it has to tell you.

Thanks for reading,

Lark

Do you recycle ramie sweaters?

2011-07-21T13:33:00.000-07:00

I have misgivings about ramie, but I found a sweater that was 40% silk, 30% nylon, 15% ramie, 11% wool, and 4% other fiber, and I decided to buy it. It was a quarter, so I would not be out much money if it didn't work out.

I found it reasonably easy to take apart and unravel, but I did not like the feel of the ramie. It was dusty and the texture reminds me of soft paper. Even with only 15% ramie, I could feel it was in there.

Since I am not attached to this yarn, I thought it would be fun to blotch it with McCormick Neon purple and blue. The yarn itself is a striped gray tweed. I'm hoping this will be fun to weave into scarves with the colors appearing at random throughout the work.
I will probably avoid ramie in any quantity from here on out. I just don't like it. The texture reminds me of the feel of an old wadded up unused tissue that has spent the winter in your coat pocket. Soft, yet dusty and vaguely unpleasant. It's not my thing for knitting or weaving.

Have you ever taken apart ramie sweaters for the yarn or re-purposed them in some other way? What did you make with the sweater? There are tons of these sweaters around, and if there is a project for them, I might reconsider my stance on ramie.

Chenille on the Wheel

2011-07-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

This blog has been dormant for a very, very long time, but I have been crafting. I will not really have time to post about all the things I have learned until this fall, but I will get in here from time to time this summer.

Since I last showed up here, I have taken up weaving and spinning with all the zeal of a new convert. I don't have a lot of money, and I like the concept of recycling whenever I can, so I will be posting about making "new" yarn from old yarns in the coming months.

Today's effort is a chenille yarn made from 2 plies of recycled thrift shop sweaters. It's acrylic, and I'm making it for weaving into scarves on my Schacht Cricket loom.

I wasn't sure what to expect, so I started out with the sweater I liked the least from my thrift shop haul, and got this yarn as an end result. I'll edit in the wpi later.

On the niddy noddy, before setting the twist
Balls before plying.
On the Babe Production wheel.
I have not used Blogger in so long that I accidentally uploaded my pictures in the wrong order. Whoops. :)

So far, I'm pretty happy with this yarn. I don't know if I would knit with it, but my goal was to make a weaving yarn. I believe I could use this yarn right from the sweaters without plying it, and use the 12-dent heddle I bought separately, but a lot of us only have the 8-dent heddle that comes with the loom. By plying this yarn, I now have a thick enough yarn to use with the 8-dent. I have been reading that chenille yarns need to be woven fairly tightly to prevent "worming" in the finished piece.

I'll keep experimenting and posting my results. For now, I will continue to be semi-random in my posting habits, but soon you will see more from me. Look for a lot more posting activity from September on.

Mom, can I have some more of those screaming alien heads?

2010-01-14T10:28:00.000-08:00

I love it when something mundane turns out to be unintentionally funny, it changes the course of my day for the better.

I have a nine year old boy who never eats. He's growing, but I don't know how. I was the same type of child. If I could find a way to hide things on my plate to make it look like I'd eaten them, I would. He is me all over again.

We shop at Big Lots whenever we can. A lot of stuff that ends up at Big Lots is discontinued products or various oddball things. I found some elbow macaroni that are pinched closed on one end, and open on the other, and since they were made in Italy and priced under a buck, they landed in my cart. Pasta that little guys can easily get on a fork is always welcome in our home.

Last night I was dog-tired and disinclined to spend much time in the kitchen, so I went for the pasta. When I opened up the bag and dumped it into the pot, I noted again that they were odd-looking, but I was when I spooned one out of the pot to test it for done-ness that I burst out laughing. The pasta had puffed up into a little screamy-face, like these guys:

The sauce I used with these was rather thin and unremarkable, and didn't look very appealing.
But when I showed the meal my nine year old, he said "Cool! Screaming alien heads!" He cleaned his plate and asked for seconds. That never happens, ever.

This blog post is silly, but alien head pasta wrought an unexpected miracle at the dinner table, and I wish I had bought more.

Some old sweater recons, in time for the cold weather

2010-01-03T09:36:00.000-08:00

I actually made these last winter, and I fully intend to make more this year. Due to my sketchy blogging track record, I might not blog about them until July! So here are a couple of basic sweaters I made for my youngest. He was not a cooperative model, but I got him to stay in one area, looking out at the snow, long enough to get in a few blurry shots.

I noticed that many of the old acrylic sweaters in my pile to go to the thrift store were serged together. I had just downloaded some Kwik Sew toddler shirt patterns at that time, so I thought that turning my old sweaters into something warm for the little guy would be a great way to use them. I live quite far from any real fabric stores, and runs down to Joplin for supplies are few and far between.

The lighter blue sweater is made from Kwik Sew 3149

http://www.kwiksew.com/Catalog/cat_detail.cfm?pid=3149&Cat=Children&Level=Toddlers&QL=Toddlers

I used the turtleneck collar from the pattern, and made it from the big piece of back section left over after cutting out the front, back and sleeves.
I placed the pattern pieces so that I could use the existing ribbing. No hemming needed to reconstruct this sweater. Awesome!
The seam on the collar was centered in the back. I did not center it perfectly, but maybe next time. This sort of knit creeps a little while sewing on an older serger. I just got a new one with a differential feed, and I think that will help. No matter, it's not that noticeable unless I point it out.

The darker blue sweater with the patterned areas needed to have some wrist cuffs added. I just cut them out of some scraps left from the original sweater, when I cut out the collar. I had to do this so that the design would line up the way I wanted it to. It's very easy to add cuffs with a serger.

The dark blue was made with 2918 view B
http://www.kwiksew.com/Catalog/cat_detail.cfm?pid=2918&Cat=Children&Level=Toddlers&QL=Toddlers
This was not difficult, and the sweaters you see here have been washed many, many times and are holding up quite well. When I first made these, I was afraid they would not last, but they are tough enough for an active three year old.

This is a great project if you have too many grownup sweaters. It's also environmentally friendly and very inexpensive. You can use thrifted sweaters, or mix together a few sweaters into a new creation as long as they all have similar washing instructions.

Rooting fresh basil from the grocery store

2010-01-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

About three weeks before Christmas, I was in the produce aisle at my local store, and I got to thinking that basil might root easily in water, like the pothos plants that I had just finished potting up. I found a package of nice-looking leaves with a good date on them, took them home, and put them in a vase near a window.

Three weeks later, they had enough roots that I felt I could transplant them into a pot. They seem to be happy enough, considering that they need more light than I can give them at the moment.

So far, so good. They smell heavenly and are a good antidote to the dead of winter. Next time you go shopping, pick up some sprigs of basil and give it a try.

Experiment with craft felt, acrylic paints, and rubbing alcohol

2010-01-02T17:20:00.000-08:00

I have a large supply of felt in drab colors or colors I simply don't like, and thought I would see what happens when the felt is painted. This is synthetic craft felt, the cheap stuff. I saturated it, then did a color wash with some very old acrylic paints that I wanted to de-stash. For fun, I took a dropper and added a bit if rubbing alcohol to the wet paint. They took forever to dry, but here are the results.

The fabric is stiff, as one would expect, but not so stiff that I can't sew it. I'm not sure what I am going to make with them yet, maybe brooches or something. When I make it, I'll post it on the blog. Thanks for looking!

Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn Hot Stripe #792, better than potato chips

2010-01-02T14:43:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to eat less and craft more this year, but in the evenings, which are my munching downfall, I'm too tired to take on anything challenging. So I'm whipping up some basic garter stitch scarves. If visitors come to my house and look cold, they may go home with a scarf to keep the chill off. I'm really liking striping yarns and will probably not rest till I've tried them all. I wanted to knit more of this one before taking a pic, but the daylight was fast disappearing. Anyhow, you get the idea what this yarn does from the above image.

This yarn is so much nicer than Red Heart! The price is slightly higher that Red Heart, but comparable. The skeins are also a little shorter, so buy more than you think you'll need.

I am not wild about this colorway as an accessory, but at least it isn't boring. There's nothing wrong with these colors. I'm just remembering that they (except the blue) could be found in 1970's kitchens, and I'm old enough to remember those vividly. But it's growing on me, as is this yarn.

I Love This Yarn is softer and springier, and less likely to split than Red Heart. Definitely an improvement. And a skein costs less than a bag of Doritos. Maybe I will lose some weight this winter! I'm going to try.

I'll show you what some other striping yarns look like this week. I bought a few of them to get me through the latest cold snap.

Funkelnde Perlensterne by Ingrid Moras

2010-01-01T14:32:00.000-08:00

This is my new favorite beading book. I got it in November, with the hope that I would make all new ornaments for our tree this year. I got this one (above) done. Just the one. But it was a blast to make, and the diagrams were very easy to follow. Everything is in German, but it does not matter if you have some beading experience.

I used 28 gauge galvanized wire to make mine. I got it from a hardware store, rather than a craft supply store. The 26 ga. wire you can buy at the craft shops is a little bit too thick for multiple passes through glass beads.

This is the book:

I was able to get my copy from Amazon Marketplace. Sometimes you can find German beading books there, and if you are lucky, you can get one that is being shipped from a U.S. address and pay a lot less for the shipping. Look up Ingrid Moras on Amazon, and you will turn up a few books like this one. Someday I'd like to have them all.

I can't show you the inside of her book for copyright reasons, but I am very happy with it. I'm hoping that now that the holidays are over, I will be able to find the time to make more of the patterns from her book. Her method of constructing stars is quite different from the way I learned it, and it's very fun to do. I highly recommend this book.

Why I don't knit with wool (yet).

2010-01-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

I have a helper. If anyone takes off any garment and sets it down for more than a moment, my three-year-old housework assistant takes it to the washing machine and drops it in. Sometimes I find it there before I run a load, but not always. One time not long ago a lovely and soft gray wool beanie found its way into the laundry thus. When folding that load, I found a tiny gray thing that might fit my cat, but no longer would fit any of the humans around here. Other wool objects have avioded that fate so far, but it's been a near thing.

I love wool. It knits like a dream and does not feel squeaky or rough on my hands, or split on the needles. But until my helper knows wool does not go in the machine, I'm sticking to the washable stuff. That said, I am very happy to have a helper.

I have not tried super wash wool yet. I imagine it would survive a trip though the machine, but I'm afraid to find out just yet.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting about various brands of acrylic yarns, as I try knitting with them.

Red Heart Peruvian Print 0946. I hate loving this yarn!

2010-01-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

Now, I am still a beginner at knitting, but I wanted to share this colorway with you.

We just went up to visit family in the Chicago suburbs, and on the drive up I bought some Red Heart yarn in the colorway Zebra (black/gray/white) to make a scarf for my oldest son. He picked the color to go with his new black pea coat. I worked on the scarf periodically while we were there, and on the way home I decided I'd need more of the same dye lot, so we stopped at the Walmart in Springfield IL to try to find a match. Luckily, they had it, so I went on to finish that scarf.

While there, I noticed what looked to be a striping yarn called Peruvian Print. I bought a couple skeins to work on while in the van. While I don't care for the squeaky feel of Red Heart, this colorway is so fun that I almost don't mind. I knitted about two feet of scarf before I ran into a repeat of the pattern. I think that when I get out and try my Bond knitting machine, I'll have to make a throw or an afghan in this yarn.

I think that self-striping yarns could be my new addiction. I have a few other kinds of acrylic yarns to try, and I'll post how they work up in scarves, in case you want to see the colors before you go yarn shopping. I'm sure you will do something much prettier with them, but it's nice to see what a yarn does before you order it online or grab some in the store.

This simple scarf is 28 stitches wide on number 9 needles.

This year, I'll post what I'm up to more often. With a three year old, the crafting becomes sporadic, but I think I've figured out ways to keep crafting incorporated into my daily life. I'm eagerly looking forward to this year's round of Thing a Day.

Happy New Year and happy crafting!

Thing-a-Day, Day 28-- Red Ornament

2009-02-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

Here is my final TAD project, an ornament I finished this evening.

I'm going to miss TAD!

Soon I will be less busy and I'll be writing some tutorials, as promised. So I hope you will drop in from time to time.

Thing-a-Day Wrap-up

2009-02-28T20:50:00.000-08:00

Due to the flu and taxes, I got a few days behind on Thing-a-Day, and just now am catching up. Here are my things from the TAD blog:

Day 25, a simple scarf:
Sorry to not have posted for a few days, but my kids have been sick, and I’ve been sick, and we did our taxes. I did manage to finish this scarf on the 25th.
It’s about 7 feet long, and it’s folded up a bit because I had just worn it out in a snowstorm today and the ends are both wet. This was a mindless TV project, great for someone with the flu.
Day 26--Which is more fun, kitties or taxes?

Kitties, of course!
We spent the day getting everything ready to take to our tax lady, and during the mayhem and unhappiness of that, a package arrived for Seymour the cat. It’s a hand-knitted mouse made with homespun from my friend Mullerslanefarm, on Craftster. She grows her own catnip, and Seymour loves her mice better than anything. Here is his initial reaction to his new toy.

Day 27– Knifty Knitter Long Loom project

I had a chance to start another easy project yesterday. This is a Knifty Knitter loom with one strand of novelty yarn, and a strand of Caron simply soft. I’m not so sure I like it, but I don’t want to frog it. I think it will go into a tote bag and be carried out to the van for those times when I have to wait for someone and need something to do.

I'll be back soon with my day 28 project.

Things 23 and 24 --- Ply, ply again

2009-02-24T18:24:00.000-08:00

Most of my family is down with the flu right now, myself included, so I'm going to just copy my TAD blog posts about this yarn experiment tonight.

Thing-a-Day 23:
A couple of days ago, I started experimenting with plying yarn from old acrylic sweaters. Here’s the pic of my first blue-green yarn attempt. I did it all wrong, and someone over on the TAD blog explained to me what I did wrong. Thanks, Pat! I read your comment before I made too much more wildly unbalanced yarn.
In the first yarn, I did not put twist into the two frogged sweater yarns before plying them. This yarn is not useable. I wound it onto a pencil for now, till I decide its fate.

Here, I have two more balls of the sweater yarn, and I twisted them each individually on the spindle. I have been doing a little research, and I found out that if you don’t have a tensioned lazy kate, you can keep your yarn balls under upside-down, heavy terracotta flowerpots and have the yarn come up through the hole. This is a great idea, but I had two problems with it. Number one, there are no such flowerpots in the house, and my kids are sick, so I can not leave the house. Number two, I get interrupted a lot, so I have to leave my work often. I could not just pick up two flowerpots with yarn balls underneath each one, While holding a spindle, and put them up out of the reach of kids or pets withouth making a tangled mess. Since we have our own business, and I am in charge of dealing with emergencies, I might need to leave my work at any time.
What I ended up doing is taking two semi-disposable containers from the cupboard and making my own weighted yarn-holders from them. To make a hole in the lids, I gently folded the lid in half so I could fit it into a hole punch’s jaws. There are two holes; I just used the smoother one to feed my yarn through. To wieght them, I grabbed some glass marbles and dumped them into the containers until I was satisfied that the containers were heavy enough not to move around, leaving enough room for a smallish ball of yarn. I imagine that you could use anything heavy that would not snag or dirty your yarn for this purpose. Now I’m plying again, and if I have to stop, I scoop up my containers, stack them, and put them out of harm’s way.
I am twisting the plyed yarn in the opposite direction of the two single plys this time…

…and the yarn is not twisting up on itself much, so I’ll take that as a good sign.

There is very little info out there about plying recycled yarn, and I am an absolute beginner at spinning, so your input and ideas are warmly welcomed.

Thing-a-Day 24:

Kinda boring today. I have the flu, but there’s no way I’m missing a day of TAD if I can help it.
I did manage to ply the practice skein (purple and blue) today. It is commercial variegated acrylic yarn spun up with the leftover blue from the first skein. Pretty soon I’ll be ready to do this with wool.

Thing-a-Day 22 --- hat on a knitting loom

2009-02-22T12:33:00.000-08:00

Hi all. I'm not feeling very well today, and I did start spinning some yarns to try plying together, but it's more a day for sit-down crafts. I might finish my new yarn tonight before I go to bed, but not in time to put it in the TAD blog. Or I might set it aside altogether until I have time to make this cardboard charka and spin faster than by hand:

http://www.rabbitgeek.com/charka.html

Meanwhile, I curled up in a chair and made the above hat. I don't remember the brand, but it is a soft fluffy polyamide yarn and I used two strands. It was very fast to make on the green Knifty Knitter loom.

Thing-a-Day 21-- Frugal Eco-yarn Experiment

2009-02-21T16:47:00.000-08:00

(Edited to add: Someone over at the TAD blog kindly let me know that I need to twist my individual strands of yarn first, then ply them together by spinning in the opposite direction. So my next experiment may yield a usable yarn. )

Two of my children are down with the flu, so I'm going to copy my post from the TAD blog verbatim tonight. I may add more details later, or in subsequent postings.

As you may know from an earlier post of mine this week, I just tried spinning yarn for the first time. I do believe I’ve created a monster, and I might need to convince my hubby that a spinning wheel will be a good investment.

Today, I decided to try an experiment with some yarn from old sweaters. The sweaters had been unloved nineties confections from the back of my closet, and they all frogged apart really well last year, when I was on a recycled yarn kick. What I did not like about these yarns is that they had no twist in them. So I just wound them up on my ball-winder and promptly forgot about them until now.

The multi-brown one is cotton, and I thought I might make it a workable yarn if I plyed it with some plain brown worsted. So I tried that. I think on the next try I’d better reverse the direction of the twist, but I like the concept.

Next, I took the yarn from two of my old acrylic sweaters and combined it. Neither sweater yarn had any twist at all, so it seems like it is plying well (but let it be known that I don’t know what the heck I’m doing yet). This is really a fun TV-watching project on the drop spindle. It would be a whole lot easier with a wheel, but I’m getting the hang of plying the slow way. I like the color of my “new” yarn, and I’m hoping that plying will remove the kinks left in the old yarn from being frogged. I will set the twist in this yarn by wetting it and hanging it to dry once I’m done.

If this works out as hoped, I think that no ugly old sweater will be safe from me. :)

When you think about how many acrylic sweaters must wind up in landills, never to degrade, this lowly synthetic fiber becomes worth another look.

Thing-a-day 20 -- Pendant in a hurry

2009-02-20T18:01:00.000-08:00

I ended up being quite busy earlier today, and my hubby has a rare evening off from work, so I deciced to make a pendant as quickly as possible, but different from the other pendants I've made during TAD. These beads are from my bead bowl.

I think I should have added one more white bead to each side of the yellow bead, but other than that, I'm pretty happy with it. This seems to be the week for candy colors. I'm glad my bead bowl has so many.

Thing-a-Day 19 --- My first Yarn

2009-02-20T17:51:00.000-08:00

I wasn't able to post this last night due to internet issues and my little one not feeling well, but I started learning how to spin today, and this is my first yarn. I feel a new addiction coming on...

This was yesterday's TAD.

Thing-a-Day 17 and 18

2009-02-19T00:42:00.000-08:00

My two year old has been sick for the last couple of days, so I'm a bit behind in posting here. I did manage to keep posting daily on the TAD blog. In order to catch up, here's a two-fer.

Yesterday I posted these ornaments as a work in progress (next photo down). Here they are as a completed set of six. Each ornament has 16 picots in it. They were really fun to make, even though repetitive after a while.
28-ga wire sticking up everywhere. I use the galvanized stuff from the hardware store, not the copper-based kind from the craft store. The ornaments hold their shape better, and the galvanized is more break-resistant. You have to pull those picots pretty tight. It is maddening to have craft wire break on the last picot.

And here is day 18, a few pendants, one still in progress, and and Ojo de Dios that I started.

I'm not sure whether I'll work on the Ojo more today, or do something else altogether. At any rate, I'll get day 19 in the blog before bedtime. I hope. :)

Thing-a-Day 16 -- a tiny pendant

2009-02-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

I made this teeny pendant today. It did not turn out to be a good day for crafting, but I'm happy I got something done.

It's really little. the next one I make will incorporate larger beads, I think.

Thing-a-Day 15-- A beaded Ojo de Dios

2009-02-15T19:23:00.000-08:00

I love to do French beaded flowers, but the petals can get quite tedious to make. So I often will work on them on road trips. I use a tool called a beadspinner to rapidly string beads onto wire, and then I wind the loosely strung wire around a bit of cardboard. These are what I take in the car, so I never need to mess with loose beads in a vehicle.

However, I ended up making more than I needed for our most recent road trip, and now I want to use them up. I have a bunch of these:
The beadspinner works very well, and it is FAST! Here's a link to the kind I have:
http://www.beadspinner.net/page/page/3437207.htm
I have the plastic one--well, three of them, actually--and they are FABULOUS! If you have any application that requires the stringing of massive amounts of beads, you will love this thing! I needed more than one because I sometimes switch colors on my French beading projects, and I like to have several bowls ready for dipping my beading wire into. They are quite reasonably priced.

Without further ado, here's today's project. The winding of an Ojo de Dios is a lot like making a beaded flower petal, only they are normally made of yarn. This one used up a lot of beads! It is as big as my hand, and I hung it up in my kitchen.

I might make a couple more to keep it company on the wall. This was fun, and surprisingly fast to make. I spent just under and hour on it. That includes my estimated stringing time, thanks to the beadspinner.

Thing-a-Day 14--I don't know what they are...

2009-02-15T07:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, my craft room belched forth another baggie of irresistable craft supplies. I bought the rainbow acrylic pieces in San Deigo, CA sometime in the late eighties or early nineties. The acrylic rivoli stones were from a long-ago "bosses bead bag" from Fire Mountain Gems, also purchased in the early nineties. They'd been languishing in my craft room for a very long time.

I added some really, really bright acrylic yarn, and a pom-pom tool:

And these guys were born!

But what are they? Owlets? Aliens from outer space? Owlets from outer space?

They seem fond of the odd parlor games to be found in our house, so they have a wack sense of humor.

They were really fun to make, but now I'm thinking about buying another crafting tool, the Clover Brand pom pom maker. The one I was using produces a sloppy, uneven pom pom. I may try this again sometime this year. It's be fun to have a few of these guys peeking out from the branches of next year's Christmas tree.

This is a link to the Clover pom pom maker, to show what they look like:

http://www.amazon.com/Clover-3126-Pom-Pom-Maker-Large/dp/B001BA38X4/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1234712791&sr=8-1

It looks like this item will make a fuller, more consistent pom pom. Maybe I'll talk myself into getting one for Easter crafting. Yeah, that's it! I have an excuse to buy one now! I'll do a comparison post later on... :)

Thing-a-Day 13-- A Skullyflower!

2009-02-13T09:30:00.001-08:00

I have had some really cool quilting scraps that I got in a swap a few weeks back sitting on my desk, waiting to be turned into tiny crafts. I thought I might be able to make a flower brooch out of four square fabric scraps, and this is my first attempt. I was following around a toddler while sewing this, so it's not as even as I'd like, but it was a quick and satisfying craft project, and after I make a few more, there will be a tutorial.

Watch for the tuts from my Thing-a-Day projects in March; I'll have a bit more time then.

Thing-a-Day, Feb 12th

2009-02-12T19:21:00.000-08:00

Today ended up being a busy day, with little time for crafting. I did get these pendants done early this morning. The top one is made with Fireline as the stringing material, and it came out better than yesterday's attempt. The bottom one is Fireline surrounded by an outer row worked in 28 ga. wire. The inner pendant was getting floppy, so it needed a wire armature to keep it's shape. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I will revisit the idea in a smaller pendant.

I just bought some thinner, 6lb test Fireline, and I'm going to try some denser beadwork now that I have thread that will (I hope) fit though the skinny needles I like for beading. More on that later this weekend or early next week.

Fireline vs. wire -- Thing-a-Day 11

2009-02-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

First try--Fireline:

Second try: 28 Ga. wire:

Comparison shot:

I have some 8lb test Fireline that has been sitting around here for a while, waiting for me to try it. I thought this French pendant tutorial would be a good thing to learn on, but I wanted to use only materials available in my bowl, so mine ended up being quite a bit different.

Here's the tutorial in PDF format. It's in French, but very easy to follow:

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/mk.perles/pendentif_heptagonal.pdf

After making this piece, I have mixed feelings about Fireline. It is very easy to work with, and mistakes can be ripped back quickly without hurting the thread that I can tell. I wish I had 6lb instead of 8 lb, because I can't thread it on the beading needles I have. It would've been faster and easier to string this with a needle, but it did work without one; it just took me longer. At first, I was delighted, until I got further out in the design, then it got floppy. I like the tactile feel of the beadwork on Fireline, but the loss of shape really bothered me on this pendant.

I was determined to make a pendant this morning, so I tried it again, but this time I used the 28 ga. wire I favor for my star projects. It was a lot more difficult to make, but it holds its shape nicely. I wish there were a way to combine the tactile niceness of the Fireline beadwork with the rigidity of the wire-based beadwork. I do like how the wire one looks and I will make more, just not when I'm tired. Kinking wire was a huge problem on this piece.

I think I will try Fireline again with bicones, which the pattern called for in the first place. :)

An early Valentine from my eight-year old son

2009-02-11T06:52:00.001-08:00

This is far too awesome not to share!

I'm not sure what my thing-a-day is going to be today. The day is an open book and I am running on no sleep, so who knows what will pop out of my brain. We had loud banging and crashing thunderstorms and wind last night, and I get super-vigilant in that kind of weather. We had a tree land on out house last summer and put holes in the roof, and now a certain type of roaring wind wakes me up in an instant. So...*yawn*...I'm tired.

Whatever it is, it'll be in the blog before I go to bed tonight. :o)

Sweater vests into a hoodie--Thing-a-Day 10

2009-02-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I was scouting the thrift stores looking for sweaters to reconstruct, when I saw these two cotton sweater vests that looked like they would work well together. They were on the quarter item table, so I grabbed them. I wasn't sure how I wanted to do the neckline of my project, so I waited on it for a while, then remembered I had some green turtleneck-type jersey fabric that would work well as a neckline and cuffs. I wanted to try making a hoodie, though, and did not have a pattern.

What I ended up doing is using my favorite toddler raglan sleeve top pattern, Kwik Sew 3149, and instead of using the neckline that comes with the pattern, I traced a hood from a hoodie that fits my little guy, and added on a seam allowance. I had a picture of this, but it failed to upload. Anyhow, here's the raglan sleeves being laid out. I use downloadable patterns from sewingpatterns.com. I don't mind taping together tiled patterns. I hate dealing with fragile and cat-enticing tissue patterns much more. This pattern has been used and used and used and still is holding up well. If you go the download route to get this pattern, set your printer for fast draft, to save a ton of ink. The pattern here was printed on fast draft, and as you can see, it worked out fine for my purposes.

A hoodie! I overlapped the two center front sections of the hoodie hood, because my example hoodie was assembled in that way. It made it easier to insert as well. I started serging at the center front, and inserted it just like a regular neckband, other than starting at the front. Now that I am no longer intimidated by the thought of making a hooded garment, my kids and I will have hoodies galore! The green sweater I used for the torso section is darker than it appears here---more of a granny smith apple green.

Action shot! The hood fits, but he took it off as soon as we walked into the store. We were buying juice to drink on our walk. As soon as we went back out, the hood went back on and stayed on.

I'm going to look for more cotton sweaters so I can make more of these. I screwed this one up, but made it work anyway. The sleeves were accidentally sewn on backwards. Front sleeve notch, to back shirt notch, et al. I didn't catch it till I was sewing the front shirt section on. Since I used to work in a garment factory with a cutting crew that was frequently hung over, I learned how to jam together pattern pieces that don't quite line up. LOL. Anyhow, it worked out okay in a child's pattern. Little kids are basically cylinder-shaped and the front and back sections are not hugely different in this pattern. In an adult pattern, my boo-boo would be really evident. I'd like to see how this hoodie idea looks when sewn together the right way. Maybe later this week there will be more recons. It was fun.

Thing-a-Day for Feb 9th

2009-02-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

I was playing around with the beads in my bowl yesterday, and designed these earrings. I was going for a lacy effect. I think I will try them in several different colors. There may be a tutorial for these later on.

After I finished my daily thing, I was still in a crafty mood, so I made the rest of this stuff:

Heart pendants, another pair of star earrings, and a snowflaky-pendant thingie.

I have my Feb. 10th thing done, and will be posting it after I have a chance to get my pics uploaded. :)

Thing-a-day for Feb. 8th

2009-02-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

Here are the star earrings I made this morning over coffee. They are a little gift for a friend. They were really fun to make and went together quickly. I was tempted to make a pair in every color, but that'd be crafty overkill. *laughs*

I'm not sure what tomorrow's craft will be yet. I had a good meal out with my family, and I'm tired and content. I'll roll with whatever idea comes along.

Thing-a-Day project 7--a turtle family!

2009-02-08T08:03:00.001-08:00

I made these little critters yesterday, for Thing-a-Day. They are constructed like the hearts, with an eyepin holding the center bead, and 28 ga wire for the outer beads and turtle toes. After I make a few more, I'll put up a tutorial for them. These turtles are pendants, but they could be made as earrings as well.

I'm doing some little star earrings today, and hopefully will get them done and posted to Thing-a-Day and here before bedtime tonight.

A little help with photos, and my day 6 project

2009-02-06T12:08:00.000-08:00

If, like me, you don't have a very good camera, or the money to spend on a light box, you can make your photos of small craft projects show up more clearly without breaking the bank. First, get a touch-light from the hardware store, or at Walmart. The touchlights are good to have on hand for stormy weather anyhow. This one uses 4 AA batteries. Hang it up on a wall where you can find it in the dark, when you are not using it for picture-taking.
Next, get a plastic shoebox, like this one. With any luck, you may already have one in your home and not have to spend any money on it at all. Place your shoebox bottom on top of your touchlight upside down, like this:

Now, add a piece of white or off-white fabric or a piece of paper to act as a light-diffuser. After laying your light diffuser on top of the box, arrange your craft(s) and take your pictures. The light from below should eliminate the need for flash, keeping your photo from being ruined. Give it a try---it helps.

Now, here is my craft for today, these beaded hearts. I'm still working out the design, but they are fun to do. Once I can explain how I do this coherently, there will be a tutorial, if you like.

A close-up of the red one:

I might get more beading done this evening. These are the first projects out of the new bowl of beads.

Thing-a-Day for Feb 5th

2009-02-05T17:11:00.001-08:00

I didn't have time to craft anything yet today, so my thing was these photos. I had so much fun making beady things with the last bowl of beads that I went through my craftroom to find more unsorted mixed beads. I found an embarrassment of riches...

I used to live in a very, very small town, and all my craft supplies came by mail. While I lived there I got hooked on ordering Bosses Bead Bags from Fire Mountain Gems. I couldn't always use everything, so I accumulated bag after bag of "leftovers".
http://www.firemountaingems.com/details.asp?PN=H201928PB

This is a good time for me to start using them up. I can't really lay out big projects at the table because I have a very busy and curious two year old. So I work at the counter, while I'm cooking dinner or watching something in the oven. A bowl of beads at the back of the counter that I can work from when I have a spare moment is just the thing for me to get my creative jones each day.

While I was digging around in my beads and unfinished projects, I ran across this partially completed earring from the "Bad Day" series I made last year. It sums up the state of my beady largesse nicely:

I might get something made tonight. I really am eager to do something with these beads. I won't be able to finish up in four days this time, though. I think that there are at least two kilos of beads here... :)

I used up the beads...well, mostly

2009-02-04T18:00:00.000-08:00

I stopped when I realized that most of what was left was cracked or jagged or wonky in some way. Here is what's left:
And what I started with on Sunday:

I made quite a few crosses today, to use up the #1 bugle beads I had so many of:

And dragonflies:

A few more starbursty things:

And here's the group of everything:

This was a really fun midwinter project, and I'm going to do it again soon. I love to make little doodads, and I have more bags of mixed-up beads I've been putting off sorting. The next few days are supposed to be warm, so I will be out with the kids a lot, but on the next rainy day or when the cold weather returns, I'll grab another baggie of beads and see what happens...

I'm not out of beads yet!

2009-02-03T15:08:00.000-08:00

Here are the lastest projects from the bowl of beads. I think I might finish up the rest of them tonight or tomorrow. I might be ambitious about that, because there are quite a few little beads left.

Fire pendant for Thing-a-Day

2009-02-03T08:32:00.000-08:00

It's getting more challenging to find bead combinations in the bowl to make pendants and charms. I have several pendants half-done right now, but this one has fire colors in it, so with one of this week's themes being fire, I finished up this one first for today's thing. The red bicones on the outer edge are all wonky and slightly different sizes, but I made them work as best I could for this piece.

More pendants will be posted later on today, if I can get them finished. I am really liking this project, because I have to tell my inner perfectionist to just be quiet and work with what I have in the bowl. I'm picking more unusual color combos than I otherwise might have done. It has turned into a rewarding creative exercise and I'll probably do it again, with another of the assortments of beads I have lying around here. It certainly has made February less boring for me.

Today's projects from the bowl of beads

2009-02-02T20:28:00.000-08:00

Here are the pendants I got done this afternoon. More coming tomorrow!

A star charm-thingie. This used up all the remaining blue bugle beads in the bowl.

A medallion pendant thingie.

The black beads are a little wonky in this, but I found enough beads to complete it!

This one is my favorite.

Using an Innovations knitting machine with minimal swearing...

2009-02-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

While I have my machine out this morning, I thought I'd share a couple of my thoughts on how to make it behave better. I was tired of longer knitted projects getting twisted up, then dropping stitches, so I took apart an old lazy susan spice rack from the thrift store, keeping the spinny bottom part, and I keep that under my machine now. It is a huge help. Any turntable that will fit under your machine will work.

Another huge problem with the Innovations that makes people give up and want to hurl it off a cliff is its tendency to skitter and move around while you are cranking it. And yes, this makes it drop stitches too. A piece of shelf liner--the grippy rubber kind--will keep your machine from running away.

Thing-a-Day, Thing 2--a quick knitting machine project

2009-02-02T08:06:00.000-08:00

I'll be working on the bowl of beads today, but I also got out my Innovations knitting machine and made this hat this morning. Since it's my first craft of the day, and I have the somewhat unpredictable life that comes with a two-year old child, I made it my "Thing-a-Day" project.

This hat is fully reversible, with the other side being solid pink. The pink yarn is very soft, so I used it for the inside layer.The hat will fit a child or a small adult.

I'll be back later on with some new beady things.

More projects from the bowl of beads

2009-02-01T20:19:00.000-08:00

I knew I wouldn't be able to wait till tomorrow to make more stuff!

First thing!

2009-02-01T16:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, working only with the beads in the bowl and some 28 ga. wire (see earlier post), here’s the thing I made today, a beaded suncatcher. This suncatcher holds its shape pretty well, because it is strung on wire. I didn’t cut quite enough wire and ended up working in a new section of wire twice; hopefully that isn’t very noticeable.
Sorry that these photos aren't very clear. Here's an outdoor shot. It was sooo cold and windy that I didn't take enough pictures to get a nice clear one. You get the idea, though. :o)

I’m already eager to see what I can make with the rest beads in the bowl tomorrow. There are a whole lot of them left. I might not wait till tomorrow...

I don’t have a tutorial for this type of beadwork right now, but if you want to get the general idea, this German link is fabulous:
http://www.basteln-mit-elisabeth.de/perlenst.htm
Scroll down to where you see this:
“Wenn Sie hier anklicken, finden Sie noch mehr Sterne:”
Check out all those links for tons of help and ideas. You do not need to know German; her photo tutorials are excellent.

Gearing up for Thing-a-Day!

2009-02-01T11:07:00.000-08:00

I signed up for Thing-a-Day this year, to help me get out of my creative doldrums. I’m not following any set guidelines right now, but I seem to be starting to fall in with a theme of “using what you have”.

Last week, I received two mason jars chock-full of beady goodness from a friend. One of the jars had a baggie full of assorted seed beads and a few larger beads thrown in. I thought it would be fun and challenging to see what I can do with only this bag of beads and some 28-gauge galvanized wire.

Here are the beads at the start of this adventure, dumped into an old bowl for easy access. What shall I make?
I'll be back in a little bit with today's thing, meanwhile check out all the amazing things being posted today over at Thing-a-Day:
http://www.thing-a-day.com/

We laugh at winter!

2008-12-31T10:09:00.001-08:00

So. Back to the recons. I thought it would be fun to make some winter T-shirts for my little guy that feature warm tourist destinations and bright colors. Here is his Bahamas shirt:

This started out as a thrifted souvenir T-shirt, and a striped turtleneck. I used Kwik Sew 3149, downloaded and printed from sewingpatterns.com. I did not want to mess with a hem, so I serged on a band at the bottom instead. I got an EZY Hem from my MIL for Christmas, so I'll be doing some actual hems soon.
http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog.jsp?CATID=cat3439&PRODID=prd10304
This will make the job so much easier!

I will be making more funky tourist shirts over the winter. Give it a try---it's fun and will cheer you up.

Disposable clothing...sigh.

2008-12-31T09:11:00.000-08:00

Hi there! It's been a while.

I ended up really, really busy all fall, and let this blog fall by the wayside. Now I have more time to post recons and crafts. I did this one wayyy back in August, for a friend.

It is made from two Walmart shirts that were too short and very much unloved. I forgot how blogger uploads pics, so my photos are in a reverse timeline from finish to start. Next time I'll get it right. Sorry about that. In the photo below, I'm cutting off a section of the metallic stripey shirt to made super-long sleeves. I serged these to the green sleeves.

Annnnd going back further, I cut the green shirt in half, and cut away part of the sleeve.

I cut away the flimsy-looking lace trim, and later added a v-neck collar made from part of the stripey shirt.

This is Seymour, my highly-dedicated feline assistant. No sewing project can be done without him laying on it. Ever.

Back to square one. These are the shirts. They both are from Walmart and they both have issues. The green one is one of their "George" line, and it is a super-lightwieght jersey. Not really suited to this project, but I'm a rebel. The green jersey has no body at all, and is very limp. It is basically a disposable shirt because after a couple of washings, the lace looks like crap, due to the fact that the jersey is too soft to hold it in shape. Ugh. These things must be in landfills all over the place.

The stripey shirt is a "Faded Glory". At first glance, it seems okay, till you try it on and notice there is something vaguely not right about it. Nothing majorly wrong per se, just somethng about this shirt is "meh".

When I proceeded to cut it up, I found out what was wrong. The back of the shirt has the knit facing upside down. It is not readily apparent unless you are really looking for it. Doubtless hundreds, maybe thousands, of this shirt model were made the same way. Why? To save money.

I used to work in the garment industry, and the cutting crew would lay out rows of fabric to cut out all at once with a computerized saw. Our factory could cut as many as 48 of the same pattern piece at once this way, with pattern pieces going down a steel table that was almost as long as the building itself. We did have a lot of waste from making sure the pattern peices all were cut on the grain and right-side up. That could not be helped in order to make a quality product. What Walmart did with this top is choose to make them cheaper by turning some pieces upside down to make them fit more onto the same amount of yardage. While it's good not to be wasteful, the result was a top that only gets worn a little bit, before people decide they don't like it and it goes to the thrift shop or off to the landfill.

I learned that it is not a good idea to try and set a V-neck collar into such a thin jersey, but it was a great learning experience.

I'll still try to recycle Walmart clothes from time to time, but I expect to be frustrated. I will think long and hard about buying anything new from them. Right now I'm in the Wardrobe Refashion, and I signed up for another six months, so I'm saved from new Walmart clothes for now. Yay! :o)

Here's the blog:

http://nikkishell.typepad.com/wardroberefashion/

Happy New Year to all, and keep recycling! :o)

Ongoing battle with the Maddy top

2008-07-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

I love Burdastyle's Maddy top, and I've never made anything like it before. So far, I've put together two practice Maddies, niether one of them wearable. I'm not ready to give up yet, and hope to have a third one cut out later today.

The pattern:

http://www.burdastyle.com/pattern/show/11

This is my first Maddy. I wanted to eliminate the zip, so I tried making the top out of knit. I used a vintage 1970's navy and white dotted fabric. This top actually fits pretty well, and the knit makes the zip unneeded. The problem is that the second I stepped out the door and into the searingly humid Missouri midsummer heat, I was reminded of why polyester was the bane of my seventies childhood. The fabric made me incredibly uncomfortable and sweaty. It felt like I had a garbage bag wrapped around my torso. Ick.

Enter the second top, made out of a vintage cotton piece of yardage from the thrift store and a bit of pink quilting fabric. The vintage fabric had faded spots that I tried to cut around. About that zipper---I thought I had a zipper foot for my machine. If I did, it is long gone. Since I have never put a zip in anything since I was 15 years old and in home economics class, I never noticed it was gone. Heh. Anyhow, I attemped to put in the zip with a regular presser foot. It worked---kinda. The seam is a little further out than I'd like, but the real issue here is that I put the zip in too high. The poor thing looks like it's trying to escape this garment! Haha! I may pick it out later and put in a blue zip with a real zipper foot. Even though this zipper placement sucks, I'm no longer scared of putting them in, and once I either get a new machine (needed soon), or find a zipper foot for a 1992 slant shank Singer, I'll be doing many more zippers. Lower down, of course. The point is that zippers are easier than I thought. :o)

The tops were both made in size 48 and both fit me.

Behold the neck pokey zipper!
The next Maddy will be a newer knit, in a cotton blend, with the insert being a paisley quilting scrap. I think I might be a glutton for punishment because this knit may be tough to gather. Oh well. Maddy works best as a knit top for me right now. I like the idea of a pretty print for the center, and I can't find many novelty knits here in the middle of nowhere. So we'll see how the combo of woven insert and knit top goes.

Maybe by next week I'll have a wearable Maddy.

Happy sewing!

Lark

Clothes for my toddler boy from old polo shirts

2008-07-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

Hi again. I'm going to make every effort to get caught up on posting my projects here and on Wardrobe Refashion this weekend. Last month, I mentioned that I was waiting for a LEKO software pattern from sewingpatterns.com. It got lost in the mail and they sent a second copy which arrived last week. I've just begun to play with it, but made this shirt for my youngest out of polo shirt fabric scraps. There are parts from three different shirts in this project, and it fit him really well. I got lazy with the hem and didn't press before sewing, so it's a little wavy, but not too bad. I think I might add a little length to to pattern for my guy, though. He is long-waisted, like me. Here's another ex-polo shirt, with bands made from an old turtleneck. I've learned that turtlenecks make great neck and sleeve ribbing for T shirts. They have a lot of stretch, are soft because of the cotton cottent, and most importantly, are easy to find in the closet or at the thrift store in any color you might want! Suggestion: Make a test neckband to pull over your head before setting your collar to make sure you've picked a knit with enough give to it. So far I've had no problems with that, but that might just be luck. :)

This shirt hides juice stains really well! It's a busy black and white knit that looked horrible in the original men's polo shirt, but works well as a ringer tee.

I haven't sewn these yet, but the turtleneck will yield up a soft pair of play shorts to wear with the above shirt.
Here's that red and white polo fabric again:
And again, in a shirt for my eight year old. He wanted a red white and blue shirt, and we raided our old clothes for the blue tie dyed shirt. This was a test of the LEKO pattern software for his measurments, and it came out as a perfect fit for him. I think the software will work best for a child from about age 6-10. I'm still not ready to write a review of it, and have had less than stellar results with some of their free downloads for grownups (but I'm an odd set of measurements!). You can check it out here, if you like. The price is not bad:

http://www.sewingpatterns.com/sewingframe.php?mdl=http://www.smartcart.com/1sew/cgi/display.cgi?item_num=047leko

This is the shirt my son is wearing in the action shot.

Thes pics ended up out of order, but this is how I cut out another shirt from a humongous polo shirt with a logo on the front. By folding both sides in to the center, I was able to make both the front and back sections out of the front of the shirt. You can't see it here, but the placket and the logo are above the section where I cut. It was a wide and boxy men's XL. This shirt ended up as a ringer T with black from the turtleneck I've been dicing up, and I will embellish it with a stencil or an applique later on. I was going to use the decorative knit from the original shirt on the bottom hem, but later chose not to.

See how far off the grain the polo was originally cut? Stuff like this makes me feel soooo much better about my nascent sewing skills...
I made shorts out of the same shirt... The grain was way off on the sleeves of the original shirt, but I lined it up and got his sleeves from this piece.
Here, I am using the sleeves of the turtleneck for sleevebands!

The ugly old victim shirt.

I have been noticing that a lot of boy clothes are made out of polo pique. It wears like iron! I will definitely be making more polo shirt creations. I have some new victim shirts lined up and ready to cut up. Sorry for the inevitable typos I may not have caught in this post. I'm posting pre-coffee this morning.

Happy sewing!

Lark

I love Threadbanger tutorials!

2008-07-27T01:26:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, I have a lot to catch up on. I've been sewing and crafting, but not getting things posted. I'll start out with the rockstar shirt I made for my 16 year old. Above, this is what the finished shirt looks like after a trip though the washer and dryer. I wish I had better photos, but my son ran off with his new shirt before I was able to get them. This is a crappy nightime shot with an older camera. Later on I'll post an action shot. He has already worn it several times since I gave it to him.

I used the fabulous tute over here:
http://www.threadbanger.com/episode/FE_20071001

I did not have two matching T-shirts at home, so I grabbed two shades of red off of the 25-cent table at the thrift store. Once I got the shirts set up and marked off the 2-inch intervals, the sewing went really fast! I placed my finger behind the pressor foot at intervals to build a little stretch onto the sewing. I wasn't worried about how even my stitches would look, since most of them would end up hidden anyhow. I wanted to do what I could to make this project durable enough for a young rocker who may not always be gentle with his clothing. This technique is called "crimping" or "crowding" the fabric, and it builds in a little ease. I'll take a picture of me doing this sometime in the future. It's a super-helpful technique.

Below is the shirt right after I finished cutting it, and before I washed out the marking pen. I was so thrilled to be able to make something that my kid would wear and enjoy. I will be making him a couple more of these in time for school. He says that in the fall he'll layer them on top of a long-sleeved shirt. He wants a black and gray one, and I'm also going to experiment with putting a stencil (maybe a guitar or a skull) on the inner shirt so it will be peeking though the cut away sections.

This project was fun, quick and satisfying. Give it a try!

Wedgies no more! A quick toddler suit recon.

2008-07-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

I've had this idea in my head for some time now, and I finally got around to giving it a try. I have noticed that all my boys got longer before they got wider as toddlers, and bodysuits that would otherwise fit them would give them wedgies when snapped together at the bottom. I used to take the suits up to the thrift shop to donate them, and hope I could find longer ones. My kids were all long-waisted as little ones, and it is really hard to find bodysuits for my youngest, who has a really long waist. I got the idea that I could just serge in a piece of knit to make the suits long enough to make my little guy comfy while playing. I'm still on the learning curve with sewing knits, but more or less ended up with the results I wanted.

My pictures ended up a bit out of order, and I'm not sure how to fix that yet, so here we are with the finished product:

I decided it needed to be topstitched down in some way, or the serged seams might bother baby. I used a zigzag stitch, and it's not as neat as I'd like. I need to buy a twin needle as soon as I can find one. In any case, baby likes it, and that's what matters the most.
No more wedgies!

Here is the wedgie suit. It fits him from side to side, but it is too short to snap shut without causing discomfort and making his diaper smoosh to one side. Poor little guy, he can't wear this thing anymore...

I picked a spot to cut it, and decided a four-inch wide strip of knit would correct the problem. I used new knit from my yardage stash, but a used shirt would have been better, because it would have been preshrunk and presumably softer as well. But it's the fourth of July, and I wanted to fix this little suit today. The suit has some small faded juice stains on it and isn't in perfect condition, so it made a good victim for experimentation.

I cut the knit to match the garment's width, and serged the new section of knit together at the sides.

Matching seam to seam, I serged it to the top section, right sides together.

It is hard to make sure that the seams line up exactly, but if you go slowly, you can get them pretty close. In any case, chances are no one will ever notice.
Adding the bottom of the suit. I had to remind myself to make sure I that kept the butt in the back. :o)
Here is the finished suit before topstitching. If my blue knit had been a little softer, I would have left it alone, but I felt like it would irritate baby if it was not stitched down flat to garment's inside.
I am so going to try this again. We really like toddler playsuits that have the bottom snaps. Now we can keep them for a while longer.

I took the pledge!

2008-07-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Hopefully the button will work...

I, LaughingLark, pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of "new" manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 6 months. I pledge that I shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovated, recycled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thy thriftyness brings! Signed, LaughingLark.

I am very excited about this! I'm already planning my next refashion...

Big doesn’t have to be boring!

2008-07-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

Oh my! I have discovered the joy of bleach-stenciling with freezer paper! This shirt is the union of a big teal turtleneck (nearly 100% cotton), and a stretchy metallic turtleneck from the thrift shop. Each cost me twenty-five cents.

I wanted to give T-shirt stenciling a try, but I don’t have a lot of time to cut out a detailed stencil. I had been looking at mandalas for my son to color the other day, and I got to thinking that it would be cool to stencil or paint one on the side of a shirt, and I may do that someday, but for the time being I wanted something more “immediate gratification” that I could get done in an evening. Enter the snowflake shirt…

I cut apart my huge cotton turtleneck, with no help from the cat, and then the fun began.

What I did here is the same as what we all used to do at Christmastime in primary school: cut snowflake decorations out of paper. Only, in my case, I used a piece of freezer paper and tried to keep the design more flowerlike and less “snowflaky”. I added some butterflies for the heck of it. Then I cut my giant snowflake in half.

Moving on, I took a big piece of freezer paper, and ironed it, shiny side to fabric, to the back of my cut-apart shirt front section, then I flipped it right side up. I then positioned my two pieces of flower/snowflake/whatever where I wanted them, and ironed them to the shirt, shiny side down. I wish I’d taken some pictures of this process, but I was too eager to see how it would turn out. I may make a tute later on, if you like. It’ll be easier to write tutes when my son starts summer day camp next week. :)

I then took a spray bottle with bleach in it and misted some over the design. Then I got impatient and misted on more. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE! Less is more. If I had waited a minute or two more, the bleach would have started to do its thing just fine. Since I sprayed on too much, it bled under my paper, blurring my design. Sigh…

I worked right next to my kitchen sink, and as soon as the color faded as much as I wanted, I started rinsing, rinsing, rinsing as fast as I could. Then I filled the sink about halfway, and dumped in a bottle of hydrogen peroxide 3% to neutralize the last of the
bleach. Some websites tell people to use vinegar to stop the bleach, but that produces chlorine gas. Don’t do it! Maybe those folks work outside, or have rinsed super-carefully, but vinegar just isn’t safe.

After a short soak in the hydrogen peroxide and water, into the washer it went. While washing and drying, I picked a pattern and cut out the rest of my shirt parts. I wanted to be done before going to bed.
I forgot to take off my pedometer for the picture, and right after this pic I went for my walk. The pedometer will be my friend for the next few months.
I got it done in an evening, and it was super-easy. I’ll make more snowflake/medallion shirts because they are fun, fast and cheap! I think I might just put the next design on one side of the shirt, though. Or maybe up around the collar area. In any case, there will be more of them.

Thanks for looking!

Lark

Little boy's play outfit recon

2008-06-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

Today was my eight year old son’s birthday, and I blew my diet so badly that I’ll have to sew and craft like a madwoman for the next few days to keep my mind off of food. The day went really well, and the birthday boy was delighted with his loot.

As an extra gift, I tried to surprise Owen with a sleeveless tank top that I sewed up this morning, but I messed up on the sleeves. I cut the binding a little to short, and it make the armholes pucker. I cut it out really late last night, and I must’ve been thinking about how cuffs and collars should be smaller than the opening---not so with armholes on a tank top! He has been asking for sleeveless shirts, so I’ll try again, and refashion his botched shirt into a smaller version for my littlest guy.

Here is my 21 month old boy's new outfit, refashioned from old clothes and a bit of green jersey. I’m still working out the details, but this is the first try. As I cut out the T-shirt front, I discovered that the printed section was not a perfect circle. I dealt with the wonkiness of it as best I could. Oh well, it's my first muslin and he'll have grape juice on it soon enough. :o)

I was trying to go for something like a bicycle-short length, but they ended up more like capris.

For the shirt, I used an old painting Tshirt of mine, and made a pattern for him from a Tshirt that fits him. My shirt is about 14 years old and has some paint and ink on it, but it made a good practice garment. No worries about wasting money screwing up some good fabric. The little shorts are made from an unloved black turtleneck. They turned out a bit longer than I had planned, but I guess they do protect his knees a bit as he plays. ;o) The next pair won't be quite as long. The jersey made for turtlenecks is wonderfully soft for comfy toddler clothes. I'll be looking for a few more wardrobe rejects to make into playclothes for my little guy. I think I’ll make a black shirt to go with the shorts. Maybe with an appliqué in the green.

The other project here is the top from a sleep set I made for my eight year old son a few days ago. It is made from an old touristy shirt. It was a test pattern. The next ones I make for him will be more boyish; I raided my own wardrobe for a shirt to practice on. The set has shorts made from the green jersey fabric that did not make it into the photo since they are in the washer right now. This outfit has been worn and washed once already.

I’m not entirely happy with how baggy this pattern worked up. I’ll try it again with a men’s t-shirt from the thrift shop, and maybe make it a size smaller.

Excuse the wrinkles: it just came out of the dryer.

I ordered one of the LEKO software patterns for children last week, and I'm eagerly awaiting it's arrival. If the software works out, I should be able to really start stashbusting my kid fabrics. I also ordered the test demo CD for me.

I'll post later on my adventures with LEKO later on this summer. They can't be too much more hit and miss than the big four pattern companies...I hope. :o)

FrankenClothes, round one!

2008-06-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

Hi there, I’m new around here! I’ll be blogging about my sewing projects from thrift shop materials, and also some occasional beadwork projects. I’m primarily a jewelry-maker, but I have been throwing myself into sewing with a vengeance lately. I’ll share my discoveries and pitfalls here.

A couple for weeks ago, I saw this great tip over on T-shirt Surgery and decided I had to try it. I'm currently over two hundred pounds and very bored with my clothes, and my clothing choices. I'm trying to lose weight, and don't want to spend much on clothes that I hope to shrink out of, so “frankenclothes” it is! It is proving to be addictive, and I'm really going to throw myself into reconning and post my results here.

I made these shirts from boring solid-color plus-sized shirts, with newly-added raglan sleeves from the tute below. I used whatever printed knits I could find at the thrift shop on the 25 cent rack for the sleeves. I couldn't wait to try it! The size of the shirts I used for the sleeves was not as crucial, and anything medium and up worked great. Now that I've met with some success, I'll look for more fun knits to use on the sleeves. Look for more interesting shirts here soon, as I find the thrifted goods to make them!

Baseball sleeve tutorial here:

http://community.livejournal.com/t_shirt_surgery/2276395.html

I cut all the way up into the collar, since I planned on adding serged-in collars of my own anyhow. (When you cut a collar, make sure it is smaller than the neckhole, so it will not look floppy. I learned that the hard way.)

Without further ado, the shirts! These are my first recon attempts, and you can see the learning process.

Here are my first two victims---an unfinished vintagy sewing project from the seventies, and a nineties shirt with a floppy-looking collar:

The after shot. I think I'm not done with this. I left the zipper on, but I hate it. I think this will reappear later with a v-neck, and I'll wear a tank under it, since it will be pretty low. Lower than bra-line. It fits really well, despite the neckline issues.

This one makes me happy! It has issues from the different weights of knit material used, but I still like it. The sleeves and collar are made from a sparkly lightwieght knit, and the body of the tunic is from an ugly polo shirt in a pretty color. I cut away the collar and button placket, gave it a V-neck and put in a collar with an overlapped front. I used the sleeves from the polo shirt as a pattern for new sleeves. I did not topstitch any of it, because I thought it would get puckery-looking as a result. I still have more of the sparkly knit, and will revisit this idea once I get another shirt to try for the body.

Closer look at the collar. It's not as wonky as it looks. My 21-month old son was helping me by moving the shirt around while I took pictures. :)

This one is a plain cream-colored shirt with a tropical strecth knit for the sleeves. The neckline ended up higher that I like, but it fits. I don't have enough of the knit left to make another palm-tree collar, but may remake the collar in blue, once I dig up a scrap of knit I like.

I really liked this one. Then I topstiched it and ruined it. I used a zig-zag, but it still puckered up a lot. The body of the shirt is a lycra blend, and maybe that is why. This collar is coming off soon. Alas, this shirt ended up too small across the tummy. I'm hoping to fit into it by fall. I'll replace the collar, maybe with a v-neck.

Thanks for looking at my humble efforts!

I hope to have some little boy clothes recons to post soon.

Cheers!

Lark