February 2009

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I’ve been feeling reluctant to make any permanent changes to the room where I have my work space. Because I no longer have my business I think I’ve been feeling guilty about having a room all to myself for my sewing and crafting. Okay, the guest bed is in there too. But today I’ve decided that this house is too small not to use the space well. At some point this will probably be a bedroom for one of the kids but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use it fully now for storing and using my tools and machines. I do plenty of utilitarian sewing and fixing in here as well as creative pieces and it’s good to have a place to keep those projects away from little hands and prying eyes. Not to say that I don’t let the kids in here because I do. And the cat. I like to hear him peacefully snoring away. The kids have taken over the living room and the cat owns the whole house anyway . . .

So, all that to say:

  • I will screw the thread rack to the wall.
  • I will mount the ironing board on the closet door.
  • I will figure out a way to store my rulers and t-squares on the wall.

That’s a good start, don’t you think?

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hand-dyed blue/purple silk hankie from SpinKnit

hand-dyed blue/purple silk hankie from SpinKnit


I have these gorgeous silk hankies coming from SpinKnit. Annie is a dear friend of mine who has recently discovered that she is an amazing fiber artist! She has many other talents as well. She’s currently selling lots of hand dyed and spun natural fibers to fund a trip to help build houses in Mexico. See her story about her previous trip. So in her description she says:

These “hankies” or “mawata” are great for spinning, felting, needlework, pulling thin and knitting straight from the fiber or many other projects.

While I do have an old hand spindle around somewhere I really do not know how to spin. I’ve done a little felting with wool, never tried it with silk. I’m not so great at knitting either! Any suggestions for me?? What would you do with these beauties?

hand-dyed silk hankie in yellow and orange from SpinKnit

hand-dyed silk hankie in yellow and orange from SpinKnit

hand-dyed silk hankie in blue-green from SpinKnit

hand-dyed silk hankie in blue-green from SpinKnit

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shrink plastic heart charms

While the boy was gone to school, the girl and I worked on shrinking some pink. I drew and cut out the shapes for her and she colored them. The toaster oven works well for any pieces of shrink plastic up to half sheet. All I had was an unknown brand of matte white but this also comes in clear and black and some can even go in your inkjet printer! This is great for making coloring sheets for little ones. We made these rings and heart charms from the remnants of the planets. I won’t include a tutorial here as there are lots of good ones already available.

shrink plastic rings

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baking shrink plastic in oven

baking shrink plastic in oven

the shrink plastic solar system

the shrink plastic solar system

Monday the boy and I made the solar system. That’ll tire you out! I happened to find the shrink plastic and the boy has been interested in outer space lately so I suggested making the planets. He got out his Wall-E Leapster game which has a game that shows the order of the planets, smart thinking! I got on the internet to find out what colors we should do each planet, which we sort of followed. It took us two sessions of cutting, coloring and baking to finish all the planets. Most of them were done in the toaster oven (one of my favorite crafting tools), this picture shows the kids watching the baking of the sun in the regular oven because it was too big for the toaster oven. They loved watching the plastic curl and wiggle as it shrank down to a third of its original size. After all the planets were finished, the boy decided that we should tape them to the window, and he advised me on the correct order.

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This is the boy trying out the head of a donkey I made for a skit a few years ago for our church’s Children’s Workshop program. The skit was about Balaam’s donkey, which you can read about in the Bible (Numbers 22). It’s an interesting story, both amusing and powerful. The donkey head was constructed of plastic canvas, nubby fleece, felt, humonguous plastic eyelashes and some jute for the harness. I used a ball cap to get the shape of the head for the wearer and then made extensions from there to shape the horsey nose and ears. I sewed and glued the fleece onto the plastic canvas base. I left eyeholes in the fleece which had black canvas behind them so the wearer could see out but you can’t really see the human eyes underneath. You’ll probably laugh when I tell you that my husband played the part of the donkey wearing a grey sweatshirt and yarn tail along with the donkey head. But go read the story, the donkey has the last laugh!

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This could be a very long list but I’m going to try to limit it to an arbitrary number, say 10. I do a lot of different kinds of crafts so that makes it hard but I’m trying to think of the things I use a lot and would not want to do without. Then maybe I’ll talk a bit about each one at some other point.

  1. My Mac of course. Being a graphic designer, almost everything I do gets touched by the computer at some point.
  2. My sewing machine. I do a lot of sewing and mending, I think this is a must-have for every household.
  3. My serger. Hmmmm. Yes, I could do without it but it’s fast becoming my right hand for sewing projects.
  4. My good Japanese fabric scissors.
  5. My lightbox. I think my parents got it for me when I had just started the advertising design program. This year I got another lightbox that is round! and it spins! It won’t replace my traditional rectangular box but it probably deserves its own post.
  6. An X-acto knife and a metal ruler. I’m going to lump these together because they almost always get used together. Can I squeeze the self-healing cutting mat in here too?
  7. My Japanese sewing awls (meuchi) This probably warrants its own post as well to explain why.
  8. roll of 18″ wide white paper. Someone gave this to me when I was in college and I have been using it ever since, mostly for drafting patterns but not just for sewing.
  9. Flathead pins. If you sew anything these are really the best. Get the finer size with the heat resistant heads.
  10. Beacon’s craft glue. I hesitate to single this out but I discovered it last year and now I use it for everything. It bonds in a similar way and almost as fast as hot glue but without the heat, yet you can also apply it thin and get a repositionable bond like spray adhesive, without the mess.

Well, I can already think of a few more things, like Frances, my dressmaker’s form, made by my husband. You can read about her here.

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smarshmallow (according to the girl)

  1. those little white things Nana puts in your hot chocolate
  2. white mushrooms

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