craftlog

I was at the campus bookstore last week and for some reason the canvases were crazy on sale, so I got 2 little 6×6 inch linen ones to try embroidering on. They’re already stretched and everything, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. The patterns are bird stamps I got in a Martha Stewart kit for embossed velvet ornaments. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to wash out a transfer pencil, so I just stamped the pattern onto some tracing paper and embroidered over it. Every time I do that, I forget what a pain it is to pull out all the little bits of paper at the end. Ugh.

The embroidery was pretty annoying too. The wood stretchers were pretty wide and made it really difficult to embroider anywhere near the edges. On a larger canvas with a centered design, it would’ve been waaaay easier.

For the second one, I’m trying the punch embroidery tool thingy, which so far is working great in the center of the canvas.

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My favorite Martha Stewart issue of every year came this week. Yay, ornament crafts. There’s a pretty good spread on doily crafts, one of which is a bunch of doilies treated with fabric stiffener and strung in a garland. I wanted to recreate it, but I didn’t feel like getting doilies. Instead I used this funny pillowcase I bought at Ikea a few years ago. The pattern looks like papercut snowflakes. I cut out a bunch and saturated them with Stiffy (lol), blotted the excess, and let them dry on freezer paper. They wrinkled up a bit as they dried, so I ironed them afterward (between sheets of paper, because who knows what that junk would do to an iron). Strung them on sparkly crochet thread I had around, and what a cute garland for the front window. I think I will make a second one to go right next to it.

While I was laying them out, I could tell some of the little snowflakes were going to be too small for the garland and scrunched them out of the way. When they dried, they made these neat bell shapes that I thought would look cool as a necklace. I only had a few that turned out nice, so the last thread end is 2 dots also cut from the fabric pattern and glued back-to-back. While I was threading them onto the waxed twine, I realized the similarities to the blissen fabric flower necklaces. Now I feel bad about being a copy cat :/

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A while back I was looking at wood stains for a now-forgotten reason, and I picked up a bunch of sample cards. They’re like paint chips except with little pieces of stained wood veneer. Any other ideas for these, please comment with suggestions.

I did the first one with a hole puncher and glued it to some felt. It’s destined to be a necklace once I poke some monofilament between the layers. You can’t see it in the picture, but the backing layer of felt looks nice in profile.

Second one is a little matchbook-style notepad. The paper pad inside is old business cards (I have a zillion left from my old job) cut in half and glued together along the edge. I like the names for the colors, like “maple sugar.”

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I’ve had a fun time decorating my new office. So far I’ve got art by Lisa Solomon and Aurora Robson, Amy Ruppel, Wolfie and the Sneak, Matte Stephens, Xenia Taler, and my sister Ariel.  Oh, and an awesome Sami Hayek clock I got at Target.  There are 2 main spots left that still need something: the big blank space behind my door, and a sliver next to some of the other art. I think I’m going to find a wall decal for the behind-the-door spot. I’ve been wanting something fabric to break things up a bit, so this is going in the other spot. Linen + some patchwork strips, stapled around some stretcher bars. Somewhat inspired by the collected works of shimandsons.

It’s 6 inches x 24 inches. I should’ve probably made it slightly wider, which would’ve given me a little more leeway with the fabric strips, but whatever. It took longer to pick out the fabrics than it did to make. :P

I’m also looking for a cool lamp for my desk now that it’s starting to get all dark and rainy.  If you’ve got any recommendations, shoot me a comment. :)

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Becket posted some photos from her family’s trip to visit. :)

ps. There are fireworks going off in my neighborhood right now!

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Mark carved these while we girls were sewing this past weekend. :)

Templates from Yes We Carve

ETA: my civic contribution was putting up this cool vote poster by Nikki McClure. Buy Olympia’s giving them away free!

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I only finally got around to visiting the Kinokuniya bookstore in Seattle. Some nice reader had sent me a photo a long time ago of the craft section of the store, which had a sign advertising Crafting Japanese. It’s still up! In giant letters! And they were having a 10% off everything sale! So I got a few new books, including some really awesome felt books.

This felt cuff is from ISBN 9784579111152, and is also inspired by the final collection of Project Runway winner Leanne. I liked her all along, so I was happy to see her win. My first attempt at handsewing the aqua wavey-pom thingy was a miserable failure. I wasn’t even going to reattempt it, but Amy and Becket are visiting this week and helped me figure out v2: machine + handsew, with fewer layers, which worked way better. The thick cream felt is a scrap of the piece I got in Japan, last used for the felt sewing box.

The version in the book hooked with buttons and loops, but I used elastic instead. Action shot:

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Our mattress is still on the metal frame it came with pending finding a bed frame/head board we like. Since that hasn’t happened yet, I thought it might be fun to try some of the wall decals from blik as a temporary and renter-friendly solution. I got the Boy in the Weeds pattern from Threadless, which I also happen to own in T-shirt form. The stickers were a giant pain to put up: instead of coming already assembled into the design, I had to cut every one of them apart and stick them up individually, using a level to keep them all straight. It took me and Mark most of the afternoon. But, they look pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Maybe I’ll try these doily ones next.  I have a big blank space behind the door in my office.  Hmmmm.

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Finally finished one of these on time! The idea this month was to use white + one of 4 colorways of scraps. I got yellows and oranges, which was nice because I added a couple of my own fabrics to the ones Hyena in Petticoats sent. It’s a simple log cabin, made simpler because I sewed all the print fabric into a long patchwork strip at the beginning and just used that for each of the “logs.” Since both ends of the strip are generally different, it allows some flexibility in picking the best coordinating corners, though it’s still slightly more unbalanced than if I’d planned it from scratch. But, I’ve realized that that’s part of the fun of patchwork, the spontaneity, and I am trying to stop sweating the details.

Oh, and it really is square; I’m just unable to take a good picture. :P

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Becket, my friend and occasional craftlog poster, has started her own blog! It’s called California Crafter and it’s pretty much super.

Seeing her fresh new blog has also finally inspired me to fix my stupid layout. Somewhere all my kludgey css cut-and-pasting went wrong and the site apparently looked awful on Internet Explorer, which 43% of craftlog visitors use according to my sitemeter stats. (Really? That many people still use IE? Huh.) Anyway, Mark’s convinced me that Wordpress is the way to go instead of starting over in Movable Type, so here’s my new stripped-down style. Please comment if you notice things start breaking. The links and RSS feed and everything should still be the same.

Oh, and can anyone recommend some sort of library widget to keep track of my craft books? Right now I’m doing it by hand, which means it essentially never gets updated.

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