Who's got the button?

Of course, as soon as I posted a link to Iron Craft, they moved. The site has been expanded into Just Crafty Enough. That's okay, though, because I forgot to say I was bringing them up last time in part as a source for summer fun ideas. There is at least one mom on there who does the challenges with her two sons each week, and posts all three projects on the Flickr feed.

I was in transit yesterday and today and almost forgot it was a posting day, but I happened to be looking at crafts to reuse buttons and other items anyway (buttons because the Sew-Op has tons of them - not because the latest Iron Craft was about them!). I'll start with about.com's list of frugal crafts for kids, since it has a wide range of projects.

Non-clothing button projects fall into two categories: using them as embellishments rather than fasteners, and using them as structural elements of crafts. I saw projects covering boxes, teacups, picture frames, and the edges of bulletin boards with buttons. My favorite in that vein was buttons in place of numbers on a clock.

You can glue buttons to magnets, string them on wire or elastic thread for jewelry, create mosaic pictures with them, or thread them on hairpin-shaped wires to stick into the soil of houseplants or a vase for a button bouquet. You can turn stacks of buttons into keychains and zipper pulls, glue them to headbands and hair clips, or use pipe cleaners to make posable button creatures.

If you have a lot of patience, you can weave embroidery floss through buttonholes to make coasters or other flat items, either rectangular or hexagonal.

The idea I'm going to try to find a use for is the embroidered button-fruit on these napkins. Have at the button box!

Summer fashion

Hi all!
I'm Rebecca, your other contributor this summer. I want to start by introducing you to Iron Craft, a weekly crafting challenge, if you aren't already familiar. Every Thursday they post a challenge theme, and you have until the following Wednesday to make something meeting the theme. On that Wednesday you may post pictures to a joint Flickr pool and everyone's entries will be featured in round-up posts on the main Iron Craft page. The current theme is perfect for the Sew-Op's philosophy: use something for a craft that you would ordinarily throw away.

However, what I've really been thinking about lately is t-shirts. I don't actually wear them, but I have eight or ten stashed in a closet. The reason I don't wear most of them is that I don't like the fit - too boxy, too high a neckline, etc. Well, not too long ago I remade one into a tank top, and I expect it to get a lot more wear that way. I was lazy and just laid an existing tank top on top of it, lined up at the shoulders, and cut around it with a wide margin for the seam allowance (especially important because the tank top was quite fitted and the t-shirt had a very large picture on the front that meant it stretched a lot less than the tank). Then I turned under the neckline and armholes, sewed up the side seams, checked the bottom hem for evenness and folded it up. If you want to be more careful, here is a lovely tutorial on making a masking tape pattern from an existing garment (the tutorial is for pants, but it will work with anything).

To mimic the original seams, I used a twin needle: two top threads, one bobbin thread zig-zagging between them. If you have a serger, you're in great shape for sewing t-shirts, but if not, this is the best approximation an ordinary home sewing machine can make, and you're at least guaranteed to have two parallel lines of stitching. Unfortunately it is easy to skip a lot of stitches. After I made my tank top I took my sewing machine to get a tune-up, and the owner (Michael Jarvis down in Newport, NH) gave me some pointers on sewing with a twin needle. Since the bobbin hook is not designed to catch two top threads, you can't avoid skipped stitches entirely, but you can minimize them by decreasing both your thread tension and your stitch length. Experiment to find good settings. Decreasing the tension to the point that the top threads are pulled under also helps the seam stretch, and likewise stretching the fabric slightly as you sew - steam ironing or washing will get it back to its original shape.

Actually, though, sometimes stretching out the fabric is what you want. As an alternative to a turned-under hem, you can cut off the fabric and make a tight zigzag all around the edge. The fabric will stretch and ruffle into a "lettuce leaf" hem.

Finally, I have some links for you, to lists of ways to alter t-shirts to make them dressier or more interesting, not just more fitted. The key search term for this sort of link is "t-shirt surgery", which I discovered after searching on several other terms. Here's what I found: Generation T, Not Your Ordinary T-Shirt, Fun T-Shirt Crafts, t-shirt surgery on LiveJournal, and T-Shirt Surgery on About.com. Have fun!

More Elsewhere

I swear, at some point I will actually do something here, but there is so much good stuff out there right now.

Here's two great and free raccoon softie patterns from Ruffles n Stuff

Home Ec 101 has a post about basic tools for the knitter/crocheter.
House on Hill Road offers her tote bag tutorial as a great teacher gift idea. School is now thankfully over, but I'm filing this away for next year.

Darling Petunia is showing her team spirit with this cute applique tee shirt. This would be a great way to hide a stain or a mended hole too. This isn't a tutorial but Sew Daily has one here.

Happy Fourth Everyone!

Summer Plans and Elsewhere

Thanks to all of you who stopped by to say Hi during the 35th Anniversary celebration. Today starts the Sew-op Summer Break. We've had a great year so far with Basic Sewing, Mending Monday, Basic Knitting and Rag Rugs. And there has been lots of activity in the Open Studio hours. We have great plans for when we reopen in the fall, but to keep you in the sewing/crafting frame of mind, Rachel and I are going to be posting here every Monday until September.

By way of introduction, I'm Jennifer. I've been with the sew-op since it began and in addition to keeping this blog running I teach the Mending Mondays and The Stretch classes. My mother taught me to sew when I was a girl and I've sewed off and on ever since. I've made dance formals and bridesmaid dresses, copied current fashion, sewed little girl dresses, extended my daughter's pants, and sewed on more buttons than I can count. I love refashioning: looking at something and seeing the possibilities. Someday I'd like to make a quilt and I have a bunch of my daughter's old clothes in a box waiting for that day. I also enjoy knitting and paper crafts. I am grateful to the scrapbooking craze for creating so many lovely papers, influencing fabric design and helping ordinary products be pretty as well as useful but I have no interest in actually scrapbooking.

For my starting post I'm just going to point you towards a few things elsewhere that have caught my eye:

A pillow case is an easy beginner project. All straight lines and no pattern needed but you create something beautiful and useful that will make you smile with pride every time you see it. There are plenty of tutorials on the web but I'll point you to this one with happy prints.

Betz White is one of my favorite sewists and pattern makers and I love these buckets. They're great for recycling old jeans and other fabrics.

And finally, take a peek into Sew Mama Sew's Summer Archives for some cute summer tutorials. The site is in the middle of a Summer Sewing theme with lots of great tutorials and prizes.

That's it for now. Rachel will be posting here next week and I hope you'll stop by.