Well, well, well. Late again. I do know what day it is, I promise; summer makes the time slip away even for grown-ups.
Since I don't have a mission for these entries, I'm going to talk to you again about what's on my mind now. Today I took a field trip down to Newport to get my sewing machine back from Michael Jarvis, who was tuning it up. It runs beautifully now, and I can hardly wait to get to some machine-sewing projects. Between my travel and its tune-up, it's been almost two months since I last used my own machine!
School starts soon, and I have a pair of dress pants for teaching that are in need of alteration - typically if pants fit me in the hips they are slightly too big in the waist, and they are almost universally too long. This pair have been sitting in the closet for quite some time because they are lined and the waistband has no seams, and that presents quite a bit of additional work in the alteration. I have such a limited number of dress pants, though, that I will have to suck it up and get them done. I'll put a movie on to keep me company. Then I'll do the hemming at the Sew-Op once we open after Labor Day, surrounded by other people sewing and good conversation! I'm married to my own machine and other tools, hence not doing the whole job at the Sew-Op, but if you have alterations to make please feel more than welcome to bring them in. There are always people present who know about sewing and can help you out if you aren't completely sure how to proceed.
My other main sewing job is to reline a wool peacoat so I can wear it during the early and late winter. It's not really heavy enough for midwinter, but it lasts a while and it's an attractive coat. I have had it for many years and the lining is just through - I've already repaired worn spots where my back jeans pockets rubbed it and at the underarms, but it's generally thin and saggy and unattractive. Additionally, one of the buttons went missing, and years ago I bought new buttons to replace all of them (because I didn't like the original buttons enough to go on a hunt for a matching replacement). So far I've taken out the original lining, split it in half down the middle seam, left one half together and taken the other half apart. I also ironed some flexible tricot interfacing onto the inside back of the coat, to protect the wool from getting thin. I still need to replace the buttons, cut new lining pieces (with a seam allowance added on!), sew the new lining together and put it into the coat. However, if I do a careful job, I expect it will last me many years to come, and probably be a bit warmer because the new lining is thicker than the old.
And as a bonus, the new lining material is absolutely beautiful! The old was plain black polyester; the new is shiny satin, black background with vividly colored leaves. Sometimes a repair is more than a repair - you can make it an upgrade and add your personal style to the item. The Sew-Op has a large stash of fabric for such personal touches, from patching things to lining things to adding a decorative edging - not to mention all kinds of buttons and trims. It is all donated and free to be used by anyone who comes to Open Hours or a class. Hope to see you there!
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Sorry for the late post! I completely spaced it yesterday. However, it turned out for the best. According to Holiday Insights, today is Book Lover's Day. Upcoming days include Lazy Day (tomorrow), Left Hander's Day (the 13th), Bad Poetry Day (the 18th), and Frankenstein Day (the 30th) -- among many others. Craftzine has dubbed it Quirky Crafts Month, and under the Quirky Crafts tag there are some delightful projects.
Since it's Book Lover's Day, let's look at books. I am not a scrapbooker, per se, but I love to make books of clippings. Generally I find a nice hardcover blank book and paste things into it from magazines, catalogs, pamphlets, the newspaper - whatever I find that's relevant. I may also copy things out by hand. I am a terrible paper packrat. I have three books for recipes (plus a binder for full-size sheets), one for other household- and toiletry-related clippings, one for craft ideas, one for fashion design ideas, one for local tourist attractions (very handy when I have visitors!), one for gardening, and a number that hold memorabilia of past travel.
A few of the books are spiral-bound, which is convenient if you want them to lie flat, and the recipe books are commercially designed for recipes. The local tourism is a small-scale three-ring binder (by Day Runner or Day-Timer or some such), which allows me to keep it in order for finding things easily, and not have to guess how many blank pages to leave in the middle for future expansion.
I have in the past also made gift books, which also start as blank hardcovers (or sometimes nice softcovers, with a leatherette feel) and into which I either write longhand or paste in typed material. I put in poems, recipes, book excerpts and other quotations, jokes, and other nonsense. Those books are significantly smaller than my clipping books. They have to be, or I would never finish them!
For more professional-looking books you can turn to on-demand publishing, where you create a pdf and they print the book. After living there for four months, I made a book about New Zealand for my grandmother, with information about the culture and area, descriptions of my adventures there, and lots of photos. I used Lulu, but there are many options.
Of course one may also construct the book itself, not just its contents. I'm sure I will do this eventually, though I haven't yet. However, it doesn't stop me from finding the online resources! Making Books with Children has a number of free project instructions. About.com has instructions for a paper bag scrapbook which could also be done with children. The motherlode is at Craft Stew, a long list of links to bookbinding instructions grouped by technique. If you just want inspiration, LiveJournal has an active Handmade Book Community where people post their finished works.
Finally, if you would like some interesting and beautiful "unmade" books, do an image search on "altered books."
Since it's Book Lover's Day, let's look at books. I am not a scrapbooker, per se, but I love to make books of clippings. Generally I find a nice hardcover blank book and paste things into it from magazines, catalogs, pamphlets, the newspaper - whatever I find that's relevant. I may also copy things out by hand. I am a terrible paper packrat. I have three books for recipes (plus a binder for full-size sheets), one for other household- and toiletry-related clippings, one for craft ideas, one for fashion design ideas, one for local tourist attractions (very handy when I have visitors!), one for gardening, and a number that hold memorabilia of past travel.
A few of the books are spiral-bound, which is convenient if you want them to lie flat, and the recipe books are commercially designed for recipes. The local tourism is a small-scale three-ring binder (by Day Runner or Day-Timer or some such), which allows me to keep it in order for finding things easily, and not have to guess how many blank pages to leave in the middle for future expansion.
I have in the past also made gift books, which also start as blank hardcovers (or sometimes nice softcovers, with a leatherette feel) and into which I either write longhand or paste in typed material. I put in poems, recipes, book excerpts and other quotations, jokes, and other nonsense. Those books are significantly smaller than my clipping books. They have to be, or I would never finish them!
For more professional-looking books you can turn to on-demand publishing, where you create a pdf and they print the book. After living there for four months, I made a book about New Zealand for my grandmother, with information about the culture and area, descriptions of my adventures there, and lots of photos. I used Lulu, but there are many options.
Of course one may also construct the book itself, not just its contents. I'm sure I will do this eventually, though I haven't yet. However, it doesn't stop me from finding the online resources! Making Books with Children has a number of free project instructions. About.com has instructions for a paper bag scrapbook which could also be done with children. The motherlode is at Craft Stew, a long list of links to bookbinding instructions grouped by technique. If you just want inspiration, LiveJournal has an active Handmade Book Community where people post their finished works.
Finally, if you would like some interesting and beautiful "unmade" books, do an image search on "altered books."
Monday, July 25, 2011
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!
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!
Monday, July 11, 2011
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)