Thimble rings

I posted some pictures for Chloe Patricia's 'Share Your Thimbles'. I'm taking a group photo before my kids put them through too much wear and tear. The blue and white one's my favourite. I like the colours and I like the thread. It's DMC rayon floss. It's slippery and tangly, but my local needle work store caries a huge range of colours at a pretty low price. That makes it a winner in my book.

Josephine knots

I write about posting regularly, then I go offline for two weeks. I was holed up in a traning room without internet access; excellent training, but not good for craft blogging. I check my blog and I find all these lovely comments from these wonderful people. Now I'm really encouraged to keep going.

I did manage to get some tatting done during breaks. The pink motif is a medallion from this lovely Japanese tatting book, done with DMC cebelia, size 30.



This is my first attempt at Josephine knots. There are 10 in the motif, so it was good practice. The one on the right is the first, on the left is the last. Keeping the tension loose was quite a challenge.



I want to get comfortable tatting with beads, so I made these with the chunky silk I had from making thimble rings.

I'm also trying to teach myself InkScape, so I diagrammed them for practice. Here's the blue one.



Here's the purple one.


I followed Jane Eborall's excellent tutorial for beads in split rings. It worked, but I think when the split rings come one after the other, perhaps it would make more sense to have them on a third thread, then use alligator joins between the split rings. If I get around to trying it, I'll post a picture.

Next, perhaps I'll take a stab at cluny leaves. I forsee some tangled, mangled threads. Five threads, all at once? I think I'll wait until the kids are asleep before I try it.

Motif 1: New Year

January 1st is a good time for resolutions. One of mine this year is to blog more regularly. I have certificates, source code and papers; all kinds of things to document my professional and academic life. I'd love to have something to document my crafting life.

I think part of it is to lose the feeling that blogging is difficult. I just need to take a picture, write some notes and post an entry. I don't have to worry about the dirty laundry showing in the picture or the typos in the text. In my work, when my inner perfectionist threatens my deadlines, I tell myself 'Done is better than perfect'. I have to develop the same feeling for blogging.

In order to help me to post more (and also since I'm going through a tatting phase) I thought I'd try the 25 motif challenge. If I can manage to figure out how to sign up, this is motif #1.



This is Jon Yusoff's elegant 'Magic Moment Snowflake', done in cheap Venus crochet cotton from my local craft shop. It's fresh off the shuttles, unblocked, ends showing. However, the tatting is done. So is this blog entry.

Done is better than perfect.

Baby bangle

When I saw this blog I knew I had to make a bracelet for my little lady. She loves accessories. Since she's only three, I worry about sharp metal bits and pointy pieces. I bangle made of paper and thread? Perfect!

My first two attempts went wrong. The base wrap tangled with the thread and the thread itself wouldn't line up. I think the problem is in the material. Your base can't be made out of floppy, glossy junk mail paper, and cotton balls don't work as padding.

I switched to heavy card stock and wooly serger thread and tried again. The bracelet on the left and the ring on top are the result. These went to my daughter. She's bashed them about a lot, so they look rather worse for wear.

My big guy doesn't like to be left out, so he requested a bangle for himself. He even chose the colours. I switched to plastic for the base and made the ones on the right and the bottom. They're holding up better than the paper based ones, and have even survived a few dunkings. I'm looking forward to making more of these in the future, perhaps one for myself next time.

Birthday dress

I did make a little something for my little lady's birthday a few months back. I turned an old shirt with a ripped seam into a little dress.

Here's a close up of the smocking. It's a simple diamond stitch in a pastel rainbow of colours. It was quick and easy to do because diamond stitch works up fast. Actually, it took longer to gather the pleats than to do the actual smocking. If I were to do it again, I'd choose slightly darker shades.

I've made her quite a few dresses out of old clothes, but this will probably be the last. She's gotten big enough that getting enough fabric is too much of a struggle. Here are some previous dresses from re-purposed material. The pink one is from an old batik sarung and the blue one was a baby blanket.
It's not like I don't have any new fabric to work with. I think it's more that if a piece of fabric manages to stay out of the rag pile, it must be very comfy, very pretty, and well loved. I like the thought of passing some of that love on to my little girl.

I'm quite pleased with the results, since this is only my second attempt at smocking. Here's my first, a top I made for myself when I was a teenager. Clearly I hadn't yet learned that sometimes, less is more. There is way too much fabric in the smocked section, resulting in a HUGE ruffle. I had to stitch some elastic along the top just to hold it up. I can only wear it when I'm feeling super skinny or else I feel eight months pregnant.

Birthdays

I just got through two birthdays and some tight deadlines at work. My kids have birthdays two weeks apart. So far I've resisted the temptation to combine their birthday celebrations. I figure they are beautiful little people (5 and 3 now) and deserve their own special days. Each kid gets two events, one at their play school, one with the family. For my big guy's birthday, he had cupcakes and origami to take to school. I made almost 100 cupcakes and 100 models. I'm kicking myself for not taking pictures. The cupcakes were quite a sight en masse. Oh well, imagine the cupcakes in the picture (made for another occasion), multiplied by 4, in pink and blue and green and chocolate. My big guy loves to help decorate cupcakes. Every time we go through the baking supply section, he talks me into buying a tube of sprinkles. He's also beginning to learn how to fold origami.

For the little lady, I made goody bags. She's a sweet girl, and her face lights up when she sees something 'piddy' (pretty). Each bag had a washi egg, a bright bundle of cookies and other bits and pieces.

I feel light when I look at those pictures. They represent a very successful stash-busting exercise. Aside from the baking supplies, everything there (origami paper, florist paper and ribbon for bags, cellophane for cookies) came from my stash of craft supplies.

Each kid also got a home baked cake. The big guy got a big chocolate cake with chocolate cake. I did try to take a picture, but it was just a big slab of brown. Not good to look at. Here's the little lady's cake. It's a butter cake, with butter cream icing and marzipan flowers. She enjoyed the cake, but when she tried to eat the flowers, she was absolutely disgusted. Yuck! Oh well, perhaps I'll try using fondant next time.

Frayed denim

I live in jeans, and as a result, I have quite a lot of old denim. So I thought I'd make a frayed denim blanket. Making it was harder than I thought it would be. I've never tried to handle that much weight through a sewing machine, and putting in that last row took some wrangling. Thank goodness for my mother's beautiful old Bernina. I'm glad I decided to offset the rows instead of doing a grid. If you tried to match the seams, you'd have to sew through 8 layers at each seam. With an offset setting, there are only 6 layers.

Fraying the seams caused me quite a bit of anxiety. It took me over a week to cut all the seams. I tried everything, scissors, clippers even electric scissors. The scissors could barely cut through the cloth. The clippers worked, but only through two layers. So, it took two passes to finish a seam. It took forever, it hurt my hands, and I got bored. The electric scissors were the most comfortable, but they kept slicing through the stitching.

In the end, the easiest was to use a simple blade cutter. I put the seam on a chopping board, then hacked at it with the blade. It still hurt the hands, but it was quick and strangely satisfying.


After cutting the seams, the blanket went through a wash and dry cycle at the laundromat. There aren't many self service laundromats in my area, so even that was a bit of a challenge. I got a funny look from the girl in charge of the dryers when I pulled all the fluff out of the machine.

Here's the blanket before and after washing. The seams did fluff up nicely, but I don't think the effect is worth it. Too much effort. Next time, I'll find something else to do with my old jeans.