Stuff I Make

Necklace Making Frenzy

May 20, 2011

Years and years ago, in one of our cross country moves, the con-artist movers we hired – the same ones who destroyed our china with glee and dodged our phone calls for weeks while we slept on the ground – made off with the box marked “Jewelry”. I’m sure they were disappointed when they opened it and it consisted solely of worthless beads.

Since then I’ve been slowly rebuilding my collection, which is difficult for me to do since I am a cheapskate, who refuses to buy even the cheapest jewelry because I’m capable of making it myself. But I didn’t do it very often. Certainly not often enough to keep up with trends.

I finally decided I must do something, and then I ended up at Michael’s on a day when they had all of their beads on sale at half off. Between what I already had waiting for me to get around to, and the haul I made at Michael’s, I had to start producing something if I wanted to get the drawers to close in my studio.

I have much to show you. I’ll probably have to draw it out for a while. But for today I thought I’d start with the simplest. The necklace in the top photo is just a bunch of beads strung on fishing line. I didn’t have any necklaces that were long, so I just kept threading and threading until it reaches down to my waist.

For this bracelet, I used the same principle. I had a whole mess of these beads passed on to me so I just kept threading until I ran out. I wanted to use this as a bracelet, so instead of just tying the ends together I tied them onto a magnetic clasp. The magnet isn’t strong enough to hold the weight of the beads if I wanted to wear it as a necklace, but it’s the best possible thing for trying to put on a bracelet one handed.

I made a similar wrap style bracelet out of these beads, but I deliberately strung all the beads together by color. It looks kind of weird all layed out….

But when you wrap it around your wrist all those beads line up and it looks like you’re wearing stacked bangles.

I’ve got lots more to come, and I’ve sorted them based on technique. So by the end of this series you’ll have enough jewelry making skills to make all kinds of stuff on your own.

Filed Under: Stuff I Make, Tutorials

Atti’s little lunchbag

May 18, 2011

Now that Atti goes to school everyday, I’ve joined the army of moms who make lunches. Although, I only barely qualify. He really only gets a snack at the end of the day, so instead of making sandwiches I’m collecting a piece of fruit and some crackers. But I have aspirations of sending better, fresher stuff, and that fresh stuff gets messy. So I needed something besides the front pocket of his backpack. Something that could be easily wiped clean.

The construction for this is similar to the Rustle Bag I made years ago. It’s just a simple square-bottomed bag you can make to any dimensions you want, but here’s how I did it.

Out of two complimentary patterns of vinyl, cut:
the body piece – 7″ x 29 1/2″
2 side pieces – 4 x 12 1/2″

Make sure you make each of these cuts out of each piece of vinyl so you have all the pieces for the inside and outside of the bag.

You’ll also need a piece for the front pocket. Mine measured 4″ x 4″, and a piece of velcro cut 2 1/2″ long.

Sew your pocket on the front body piece by zig zagging around three sides, roughly 8″ from the top.

Then sew one half of the velcro piece about 2 1/2″ from the top of the front piece…

and sew the other half of that velcro about 1/2″ from the bottom.

Next we have to make the handle. You can use any fabric you want, using whatever your favorite method is, but I had this great green ribbon that worked perfectly with my colors. I cut it to about 7 1/2″ long, folded it in half, folded in the raw edges on the end, and sewed close to the edge and then down the middle to stabilize the whole thing.

I positioned the handle about 3″ from the bottom of the front piece, so that when you bend that piece into place the handle will end up on the back. I used a little glue dot to hold the handle in position while I sewed a square shape on each end to make it super strong.

Now all of the external pieces are in place so it’s time to build the bag.

We’ll be making the exterior and the lining in one big seam, so lay the interior body piece and the exterior body piece, wrong sides together. Do the same thing for one of the side pieces, and then lay the side piece on top of the body piece, interior pieces together, lined up at the top and sew down with a 1/4″ seam.

See how when you open that seam you see the lining fabric together? It’s a bit complicated to explain sewing through the four layers at once, but if I’ve been unclear you’ll get it as soon as you have your pieces in front of you.

Now we’re going to turn the corner to create the bottom. Make a snip in the body piece just above where the stitching ended and bend it around to line it up with the bottom of the side piece. This takes a bit of wrestling, but it will work. Make a snip in the next corner, and go right back up the other side.

With all that bending and wrestling, things can get uneven at the top. So just give it a snip to make it even, then zig zag each side. I ended my zig zagging at each corner instead of just going all the way around because it keeps those seams still standing out comfortably instead of being smashed down and stitched over.

This is a simple project that loads of people had versions of, so I thought hard about what changes I wanted to make before I got to work. My measurements are a bit bigger than a regular brown bag, the handle gives an easy option for my little guy who will need a bit of help here and there, but my favorite idea was the pocket. It’s just big enough for some milk money, or, as I’ve already used it, a check when he just wants to eat whatever they’re having at the cafeteria.

{editors note: I had this scheduled to go up last week before the big blogger meltdown. Sure enough, in the time between then and now Martha posted her own version. Martha!! Blogger!! :shakes fist: Great minds and all that, but I still like mine better.}

Filed Under: mama musings, Stuff I Make, Tutorials

New dress for Spring

April 27, 2011

I searched everywhere for an Easter outfit this year and came up totally empty. I eventually bought a new top and some shoes and called it good. I wish I had known I was going to have such bad luck or I would have saved this dress for the special day.

As part of my ongoing efforts to fight the frump I’ve been itching to sew more clothes for myself. I end up needing to alter almost all of my clothes anyhow, I might as well just start from scratch. And my favorite thing to sew is dresses and skirts. I love dressing really feminine, and they’re super easy to make. Plus dresses might just be the one time it’s cheaper to sew your own clothes. In all my fruitless Easter shopping, even at Marshall’s and TJ Maxx, the dresses weren’t going for less than $50. I totally made this dress for less than that.

If I was a better model you’d see that this dress is totally a Joan from Mad Men silhouette. I’ve made this pattern twice so far and I’m sure it will crop back up in my future. It’s Simplicity 9481, one of those patterns that allows for a ton of adaptation to make it really fit your figure.

The fabric is just a plain pale yellow cotton, lined with a cream polyester to offer a little more coverage. I wanted to use the simplicity of the fabric as an opportunity for some surface embroidery, but I think it needs a little more. It looks pretty cool up close, but far away you can’t see much of anything. Then again, I might just leave it alone because it makes this dress perfect for accessorizing. I think I could totally wear this dress out and about with a little jacket and some wedges.

Filed Under: Stuff I Make, The Good Life

A Place for All Those Little Pieces

April 23, 2011

At Atti’s birthday party a couple of months ago, he got a bunch of really cool presents that have been sitting stacked in their boxes in the corner of the room ever since. We’d pull them out to play with them, and then I’d put everything back in the giant cardboard box so that the little pieces didn’t end up lost under couches, or mixed up with other toys, or, and this is the most likely, swiped by kitties looking for something to bat around.

But those cardboard boxes were just not cute, and started to discourage us from even playing with the toys at all. It was time to come up with a way to keep things together, that didn’t involve making my house look like the stockroom of a Toys R Us. These little linen sacks are cute to look at, and are the simplest things to make, ever.

Fold a piece of fabric in half and cut so that it’s big enough to fit all the little pieces you want to put inside it. Be generous here, better too big than too small.

I drew a little image to identify what was going to be in the bag, and cut it out of another fabric. Clip art is another great resource for this. Iron it onto fusible web, and then iron it in place on what will become the front of the bag.

The fusible web gets it good and stuck, so it’s tempting to stop there, but it will eventually peel up if you don’t secure the edges somehow. For this bag I used a glitter fabric glue since it was absolutely the easiest thing ever.

I also tried treating it as a regular applique and doing a zig zag stitch around it, but my machine hated the cheap fabric I was using so I gave up after one attempt. But long term readers know how obsessed I am with applique, so if I wasn’t making this on a bad allergy/low patience day, I totally would have gone this route.

The super cheap fabric I was using was a fraying nightmare, so I made sure to zig zag all four sides. Then sew the sides up to make your bag shape.

Since I was going for easy as possible, I made a really simple drawstring closure. Fold the top in towards the center about 3/4″ and sew down, leaving a gap open at each side.

Then thread a ribbon through the casing and tie a knot to secure it.

I remember my dad getting so mad at my sisters and me for how messy our room was, and going through our toybox unearthing lost treasures I’d been looking for for ages. This way, maybe those pieces have a fighting chance of staying together. Now Atti can just look at the front of the bag to see what toys go where, we pull the string and toss the bag in the toybox, and then it’s all ready to be played with the next time.

Filed Under: Atticus, Grand Schemes and Other Plans, mama musings, Stuff I Make, Tutorials

Another big project

April 21, 2011

I seem to have what we stitchers refer to as start-itis. Some of the most fun in stitching comes in the planning of projects – picking a pattern you love, sorting among gorgeous fabrics and fibers to pull together supplies, and dreaming of what you’re going to do with the finished project. Then you actually have to get down to a lot of time-consuming work. Most of my stitching friends have tons of projects started that they’re working on off and on as they savor the joy of that beginning stage.

Among hard core stitchers there are several pieces that are looked at with awe and envy, massive undertakings that become a needleworker’s white whale, but there might not be any design that better fits that description than the Marbek Nativity. I looked and looked for a great picture online, but I came up short. The thing is so massive that it really doesn’t photograph well.

I spent an absolutely joyous day at my local needlepoint store as we piled fabrics around and discussed the changes we’d need to make to get what I want. The piece is designed to be mounted as panels in a special frame, but I wanted to stitch it all up as one big piece. This presented a bit of a problem because it required me to reconfigure the whole pattern, which I did by making working copies of the pattern and cutting and pasting them together, and then I had to get a piece of fabric big enough to fit it all. Making some changes to make it as small as i could, this is still going to be about a yard wide.

After going a few different directions, we decided on this gorgeous linen that is dyed twice to create a beautiful mottled effect in blue and sand. I think it will be perfect for a desert nativity scene with angels flying overhead.

As if reconfiguring the whole pattern wasn’t enough, we also decided to change out a lot of the special fibers they used. This part gets really inside stitching, but to get the size fabric I needed I had to choose a very close weave. Which means that some fancy fibers are too hard to use. If you have these tiny little holes, then some of the metallic or fuzzy threads just won’t fit. Plus, this was originally designed in the 80’s, and some of the colors they chose weren’t, shall we say, subtle.

We swapped out the metallic colors the designer suggested with this beautiful palette of muted golds and pearls.

I think in ten years, when I finally get this thing finished, it’s going to be absolutely stunning.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Stuff I Make, The Good Life

Mantra Wall Hanging

April 13, 2011

Years ago I did some work for a scrapbook paper manufacturer who made translucent vellum sticker paper. Vellum is beautiful paper, but can be tricky to work with since any adhesive shows through. The sticker paper made that problem go away. I thought it was a great product, but I’m not sure they’re in business anymore.

I loved designing projects with the paper, particularly overlapping the vellums and using them together to get even more interesting color combinations. I thought that I’d make something to go in my kitchen, cutting out different words and overlapping them in different ways, each word encouraging you to eat up. But then we moved and this kitchen doesn’t really have a space for something like that. Meanwhile, the idea was percolating in my brain, I had a big frame and empty space in my bedroom, so I thought about how else I could use this technique.

I was flipping through one of my scratch notebooks and came across this list of advice to myself. Something I had just scrawled down some day without any thought of how I would use it. Probably just at the end of a meditation, or some time I spent thinking about the lifelong quest of how to get from the person I am, to the person I want to want to be. I thought it would be great to put this on my wall and make sure I saw those goals more often.

I didn’t want this to look like a list of classroom rules, so I wanted to create a background colorful enough that the text would blend in a little. In my head, I wanted you to have to squint a little to make out the text. I wanted it to look kind of like an abstract watercolor, and only on the second glance would you realize there was stuff to read. So, I went nuts with the watercolors. This took me several tries. I kept being too shy with the color, so I had to force myself to go back over and over again, layering different combinations to get something close to the image in my head.

Since vellum is translucent it will take on a quality of the color underneath it. I took out all the different colors of vellum I had to work with and stuck it on an edge of my watercolored paper to see what worked best together, and what worked best with these colors behind it.

I cut out all of these letters by hand, using a printout from my computer as a guide. It wasn’t too bad, just an evening in front of the TV, but man oh man do I ever need a Silhouette. If anybody knows somebody over there, send them my way. I’ve got a million and one things I could do with that baby.

Since I was using a sticker vellum, I just had to peel and stick my letters in place. But you can also use a xyron sticker maker, or a spray adhesive. You just want to evenly coat the back of the vellum with adhesive so that any changes won’t show through.

This now hangs in our bedroom, in a little corner above my jewelry box, which makes it one of the first things I see in a day. I love that this bit of guidance I gave myself will now be available for me whenever I need it.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Stuff I Make, Tutorials

Vinyl Splashmat

April 8, 2011

3 years into Atti’s little life, and I’m just now addressing the mess he makes at food time. A mess so great that we can never dream of eating together at our dining table, lest we want our carpet to be covered in a dense matting of crushed cheerios and cast off pieces of fruit. Which means that Atti usually eats in the middle of the kitchen, marooned on an island surrounded by linoleum.

I’d seen these vinyl splashmats in fancy kid catalogs, but rolled my eyes at them. I do that with a lot of stuff people try to sell moms – stuff that maybe could solve a problem that’s not really a problem, or will only be a problem for a few months until the kid grows into a new skill. But, my kid has reason to take his time at developing those skills, so it was time to put my eyes back in my head and recognize that this might actually have a point.

I bought 2 1/2 yards of the main colored vinyl, and 1/2 a yard of a contrasting vinyl for the binding. I knew I wanted it to be roughly square, so I folded the main vinyl in half and then cut it to the size that would work for my high chair.

The vinyl can be a little tricky to work with, so with the wrong sides of the font and back together, I zig zagged the edges. This keeps things in place as you’re trying to attach the binding.

I cut the contrasting vinyl into 3″ wide strips, and sewed it on just like quilt binding. Here’s a great tutorial for that. Once you have the binding sewed on to the front, bend it over to the back and pin in place. I used bobby pins to hold it down so that I didn’t make holes in the vinyl. If you pin it so that the binding covers the seam line on the back, then you can sew the binding shut on the machine by carefully sewing on the seam again. Sometimes, just to make sure I catch that back, I’ll sew a line on just the very edge of the binding on the front. This secures the binding on the back, but also adds a little look of topstitching on the front.

If your child will master eating within a short enough time frame to make all this work excessive, you could skip the binding and stop with a zig zagged edge. Actually, you could just lay down one piece of vinyl and not even worry about the back or the edge. But since this will most likely be a part of our lives for the next few years, I wanted to make it as nice as possible. Before it gets covered in so many crushed cheerios and cast off fruit that it becomes unrecognizable.

Filed Under: Atticus, Stuff I Make, The Good Life, Tutorials

Tharce-Gulu

March 25, 2011

I’m so proud of the work I’ve been doing as a board member of THARCE-Gulu, a charity to help the war affected people of Gulu, Uganda. It has completely taken up my life this year, but the work is so important and the opportunities so great.

Uganda has suffered more than most places on the planet as they’ve lived with the effects of colonialism, psychotic despots, attacks from evil rebel leaders, kidnapped children used as soldiers, sexual slavery, and extreme poverty. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, it especially pricks my heart to email with the leaders of the church there in Uganda. My brothers and sisters in this gospel have been through nightmares. Knowing that we share this background makes it personal to me. I feel like it is not just my Christian obligation to help, but a covenant I made to God when I was baptized.

It took so so many hours, but we’ve been able to take all our good intentions, all the suggestions from our friends in Uganda, and build an organization around it. As I type this our president is landing in Uganda to buy the land that the future center will be built on. A center for the people of the community to use as a place to recover from the trauma of war, get access to mental health services, benefit from visiting experts in music, dance, sports, art, and filmmaking therapy, and recover some of the opportunities that were lost to them during this decades long war.

Thanks to having a talented and passionate friend, we’re already getting a lot of attention for our efforts. I spent this whole year working on the website and I launched it just a few weeks ago.

Please check out the site, read up on what we’re doing, and donate.

www.tharcegulu.org

Filed Under: Do-gooding, Matters of Faith, Stuff I Make

Skeleton Crew Cross Stitch

March 21, 2011

Between spending February working on Christmas cards, and spending the rest of the year working on a Halloween cross stitch, I am totally out of season. But for some inexplicable reason, this project just called my name out of my non-crafty haze and insisted I get to stitching.

I bought this years ago when I was living here in Modesto last time, motivated by seeing it pop up on my favorite cross stitch message board. It’s wacky and cute which I normally would avoid, but for Halloween I am all over it. And yet since I bought it, it’s just sat ignored in my project box.

Cross stitching was the first craft I learned, so it’s only appropriate that it would be the one I would turn to when I’m not feeling the inspiration. Stitching is so meditative to me, working away on this has been really restorative.

Filed Under: Over the Top Halloween, Stuff I Make

2011 Christmas Cards

March 18, 2011

I finally, finally, in the longest time I’ve ever taken, got my traditional Christmas cards finished. And I’m afraid to say it just might be the last year I do this. My Christmas card list has gotten too big, and online printing options have gotten too good. I’m not sure I can justify the weeks of work to myself anymore.

But anyhoo, here in March I’ve finally finished my work from January.

I got this gorgeous flocked paper from SEI, the two stamps came from Inkadinkado and the ribbon was left over from another project.

Start by making all your different elements.

Cut a piece of 12 x 12 cardstock down the middle so you have a piece measuring 6″ x 12″. Use a scoring blade or bone folder to score one side 4″ from the end, and the other side 3 1/2″ from the end.

Out of a coordinating color of cardstock, cut a frame large enough for your image. I traced a chipboard frame I bought at a scrapbook store, but you can also find good stuff online.

Cut a white piece of cardstock large enough to fit behind the frame and stamp your image. I colored mine with markers so I could get the two different colors.

For the tab, get another piece of coordinating cardstock and cut it to 3″ x 2 1/2″. Score it down the middle, and stamp your greeting on one side.

Fold your tab piece down the middle, and staple it to the front flap of the card.

Cut a piece of ribbon 5″ long, and cut the end to make a pretty swallow tail. Glue it with liquid glue, lined up with one edge and down the center of the card.

While that’s drying, I added a little sparkle to my main image with some glitter glue. I also used an iridescent glitter glue to embellish the frame.

When all the pieces are embellished and dry, adhere them to the front of the card. After a little experimentation, I used a white liquid glue. I normally wouldn’t do that because you do risk the paper warping, but between the flock on the paper and the ribbon, tape was just not getting the job done. I just did my best to work really neat, and then stacked them up and put a heavy book on top as they dried.

I don’t know, I’m probably just grumpy because my lack of crafting mojo made this project a little less joyful than usual. I love sending out a little piece of handmade love so much, I’m not sure I can ever really give it up.

Filed Under: Over the Top Christmas, Stuff I Make, Tutorials