Sewing for Summer

July 8, 2009 at 10:20 am (Dye Projects, Sewing)

Summers are usually pretty warm where I live, and the last few years, I’ve come to prefer wearing skirts and sundresses during hot weather.  This spring, I realized that my summer skirt collection had gotten pretty worn out and that I needed to make myself a few more things.  In between doing some theatre sewing and tie-dye, I’ve managed to sew up the following (some of which could have used some ironing before photographing, but, oh, well :) ) :

This dress is a linen-cotton blend.  The fabric was tangerine when I bought it.  I did a little shibori stitching on it and then over-dyed it with bright pink dye to get this sort of rose color.  The pattern is an old one that I think is out of print now.

Here is a little more of the skirt detail:

Here’s my first skirt, made from some green patterned cotton that was supposed to be part of a quilt many years ago that never actually happened.  It had “aged” enough in my sewing closet that I decided it could have a new use.  It’s made from Favorite Things “Cute Skirts” pattern, one I’ve used a few times before.

This skirt is also from a pattern by Favorite Things, this time the Belle Skirt pattern.  The fabric is some I bought last August at the beginning of the semester at a local college.  During that time, there is always a vendor that sells posters and also various fabric pieces that students use as bedspreads, wall hangings, or whatever.  I have some I use as tablecloths.  I bought this particular one with the idea of sewing it into some sort of clothing, but had trouble finding a pattern that would work with and show off the different areas of pattern.    I really love how this one turned out.

This last skirt is one of my very favorites.  It’s made from an old tired-and-true pattern from Kwik Sew (#3336), which I’ve previously made in numerous ways.  I made the shorter version and did make one change, dividing the top section from two pieces into 4 to accomodate the unique fabric.  The fabric is actually two long-sleeved tie-dyed t-shirts that I’ve had for a couple of years.  I’d loved the way the patterning came out on the shirts, but they were sort of boxy and I never, ever wore them.   They are getting much more wear now as a skirt.

And in case anyone is wondering, the backdrop is my kitchen pantry :) .

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Shibori Stitched-Resist T-shirt

May 4, 2009 at 10:16 am (Crafts, Dye Projects)

On Sunday, our family was invited to a birthday party for a young friend.  On Saturday, I decided that I would try to make a stitched-resist t-shirt as a gift. There’s nothing quite like the last minute for inspiring me to make something :) .  

I took pictures along the way this time.  I started by drawing a simple flower design on a children’s size small t-shirt.  I used Crayola washable markers, which seem to wash out well:

 

Then I grabbed some thread and began stitching.  I’ve tried a couple of different threads, but keep coming back to this kind, Dual Duty Plus button and carpet thread:

 

I use this thread doubled and tie a double knot on the end.  Also, before tying the knot I use my fingers to smooth the thread from the eye of the needle down to the end of the thread.  I do this a few times and it seems to help keep the thread from twisting and knotting as I stitch.  

Here are some pictures of my first few stitches:

I use a separate thread for each section of the image.  I often switch around colors of thread which allows me to see better which threads I’m gathering up when I’m finished stitching the design.  As I finish each section, I trim the threads, leaving a tail of a few inches.  

Here’s a picture of the flower with all of the stitching completed:

 

Next, I began pulling the threads tight, one section at a time.  Because I used a doubled thread, I tie the two loose ends to each other in a few knots when the section is pulled tight.  I’m not sure if this is the “right” way to do this, since I’ve pretty much been figuring it out on my own.  However, it works for me and I don’t particularly believe in right or wrong ways of anything involving creative pursuits anyway :) .  

Here’s a picture of the first section pulled up tight:

And here is the entire image pulled up tight:

 

At this point, I dyed the t-shirt using blue-violet dye from Dharma Trading Co.  After rinsing and washing out the dye, I carefully clipped the knots and removed all of the stitching.  I gave the shirt one more rinse to close up any visible holes left from the stitching.  

Here is the finished shirt:

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A Little Dye Printing

April 19, 2009 at 2:46 pm (Crafts, Dye Projects)

I’m mostly posting these pictures  so I’ll remember that I DID actually accomplish a bit of artwork this past week.  I’m trying really hard to do a bit of work every day, even if it’s only a teeny, tiny bit.

The following pictures are the result of my first experiment with deconstructed screen printing, as described in Rayna Gillman’s excellent book, Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth: Stamp, Screen and Stencil with Everyday Objects. Basically, various resists are placed under a screen and thickened dye paste is pulled across.  The screen is then left to dry and then plain print paste is screened across to transfer the design to fabric.  It’s not very complicated, but it takes some time for the screen to dry, for the printed fabric to cure, then to be washed out.  I did this over 4 days this last week.  I really think I’m going to need to make or buy some more screens, because just having one is limiting- I would have liked to play for quite a bit longer with the screening process and with just one screen, that’s not possible. All of these were screened on to fabric that had been previously dyed with a combination of pink and gold dyes.  I used a blue violet dye for the screen.

And here are a couple of small shibori stitching experiments  from this week.  This one is the same pink/gold fabric from above, stitched and over-dyed with black:

This one is a piece of bargain tangerine linen-rayon blend fabric that I bought, hoping it would be good for over-dyeing.  This was my sample piece, which I dyed with bright pink dye.  It’s a little brighter than this photo shows.  I loved how it turned out, so I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon sewing a summer dress out of the tangerine fabric.  This week (or maybe for longer!), I’ll be working on doing the stitched resist work so that I’ll hopefully end up with a very fun and funky one-of-a-kind summer dress.

Hopefully, I’ll have more to post next week- maybe sooner, depending on how much work and everyday life gets in the way of making art :) .

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A Little More Shibori Stitching

March 30, 2009 at 1:45 pm (Crafts, Dye Projects)

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve stitched up a few more mini-shibori experiments to use as studies for something larger that I have in mind.  I finally had a chance to dye them yesterday and am sharing the results here- perhaps mostly just to remind myself that I did them.  Once again, I didn’t take any pictures of these “in process.”  I still mean to do that, perhaps with the bigger piece that I have in mind for my next project.  I did find a nice little stitched shibori tutorial online that shows some of the possibilities here:

http://www.burdastyle.com/howtos/show/658

This one was stitched using  the stitch pattern from “step 1″ of  the tutorial above:

The rest of these were stitched using the stitch from  “step 4″ of the same tutorial:

Spiral

Heart

Curve

“Peace” on a scrap of an old t-shirt

Circles

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Fabric Ball for a 1st Birthday Gift

March 13, 2009 at 5:02 pm (Crafts, Sewing)

This fall, I started watching a neighbor’s baby full time.  When I started, I didn’t realize how much that would change the time and energy that I have for sewing, knitting, crafting and all of that sort of thing.  As the baby has  grown and gotten more mobile, I’ve had less and less time for projects.  There’s been even less time for recording anything that I do  make, so this blog has been sadly neglected. I see that I haven’t posted anything since December, and I’ve decided it’s time to try to post a little more often.  We’ll see how that works out!  

Today, the little man that I care for turned one, and I wanted to make him a gift for his birthday.  I’d saved a link to a blog with instructions for making a fabric ball, found here:

http://www.purlbee.com/fabric-beach-balls/

I dug through some fabric scraps and decided to make the medium size:

 

I made one addition to the very-easy-to-use pattern:  I added three bells.  I made little fabric bags to hold the bells so that the ball’s stuffing can’t get wrapped around them to keep them from jingling over time.  Also, if the ball should come apart, it would make the bells a little bit more swallow-proof. Here’s a picture:

 

This was a very fast and simple project that I’ll be sure to make again.  My little guy loved this and I’m going to have to make some more of these in different sizes  and textures to keep at my house!

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Snow Day Cooking: Pasta with Lentils

December 21, 2008 at 1:04 pm (Cooking)

Today it’s another snowy day, something that is unusual in my part of the world.   We get snow a bit in the winter, but I’ve never seen this much or had it last for this long.  I cook differently in cold weather than I do in the summer and today decided to make one of my favorite winter-weather recipes for lunch:  Pasta with lentils.  This is easy, fairly quick, and always warms me up. It’s also made out of ingredients that I pretty much always have on hand.

Here’s the recipe:

Pasta with Lentils 

1/3 cup lentils 

2 -1/3 cups water

3 Tbsp olive oil

1 onion (chopped)

2  carrots (diced- usually 1-1/2 to 2 cups worth)

1 tsp. Italian seasoning

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. black pepper

½ cup orzo pasta (measured dry, before cooking)

 

Bring water and lentils to a boil.  Cover and reduce heat to a simmer.  Cook for 15 minutes. 

While lentils are cooking, cut up onion and carrot.  Heat olive oil over medium heat and add onions.  Cook for a few minutes and add carrots, stirring occasionally (and actually, I usually start cooking the onions while I’m cutting up the carrots).  When lentils are done cooking, add them and all of the cooking water to the onions and carrots.  

Rinse out the lentil pan and fill with water to cook pasta. When water is boiling, add pasta, reduce heat a bit and cook for 10 minutes.

While waiting for the pasta water to boil, add Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper to lentil mixture.  Reduce heat to low while pasta is cooking. 

Drain pasta and add to lentil mixture.  Cook together for a couple of minutes.  This makes about 4 servings.  

I usually serve this with grated cheese, but it’s good without it, too.  It also reheats well.  This is one of my very favorite winter lunches.  

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Snow Day Paper Crafting

December 19, 2008 at 11:37 am (Crafts, Ornaments)

I love all sorts of star shapes, and a few days ago, I saw a pattern for some large paper stars on another blog.  They are similar to some stars that I’ve seen in a local shop, and I’ve always intended to try to make some to hang in my front window.  Someday, I’m still going to, but today I decided to make a smaller version of them.  

First, I found the original pattern here:

http://thisrecycledlife.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/decorating-for-the-season/

After downloading the pdf, I decided that I’d like to start with making a smaller version.  There are lots of ways to reduce patterns, but in this case, I used a setting on my printer.  By choosing “properties” and then “paper” I was able to choose an option that says “9 in 1″ that will prints nine pages in miniature form on one page.    This basically makes a 1/9 size pattern.  There are also other options, such as “1 in 2″ and “1 in 4″ that reduce page sizes as well.  I’m sure that other printers offer similar options.  I printed this on cardstock, which made a great pattern for tracing onto my paper.  

The paper I used for this project was some that I’d purchased  with a larger project in mind.  Unfortunately, my cat helped make it unusable for my original purpose by running across it with muddy feet, so now I am just working around the muddy spots and using it for smaller projects :) .  For gluing this, I used YES! paste, which I really like for a lot of paper carfting.  It stays where it’s put, is workable for a longer time than some other glues, but also holds well as soon as you stick it together.  A tub of this will last for a very, very long time- I’ve had mine for a few years, I think.  I applied it with a smallish paint brush.  Here’s a picture of  it if you haven’t seen it before- it’s a very useful glue to keep around:

yespaste1

 

And finally, here is my finished product:

Rather than tying it together as the pattern mentioned, I just glued all of it together.  I also cut out a spiral from the paper I used to glue on the center because I like spirals and I thought it needed a little something else in the middle.  For hanging, I poked a hole in one of the star’s rays with a needle and threaded ribbon through.  I love my new ornament!.

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Shibori Stitching Experiments

November 29, 2008 at 10:08 am (Uncategorized)

Yesterday was “Black Friday” when everyone is supposed to go shopping.  Since I’ve been one of those “buy nothing” people on that day for many years, for me it was a wonderful day off.  Instead of shopping, I decided to do some experimenting with Shibori stitched resist.  I keep a stash of white dish towels that are good for dyeing to use as last minute gifts and/or gift wrapping.  They aren’t of a super high quality, but since I’ve never really done much shibori stitched resist, I figured they would work as a beginning place and I wouldn’t ruin any “good” fabric if it didn’t work out.    

 

My husband told me I should have taken some pictures of the stitching before I dyed the dish towel, but I didn’t.  I think in my mind it wasn’t going to work out very well, so I figured it would just be more wasted pictures and I didn’t feel like the taking the time.  I just wanted to get on with the project.  Here are my results (and I do wish now I’d listened and taken a few pictures of the stitiching, but I’ll try to remember to do that next time :) ) :

 

In the picture above, the color is a little washed out. I used Dharma trading’s blue-violet dye, as I like the way it often seperates into different colors and was happy that it worked out that way this time, too.  These detail pictures are a little closer to the actual color:

 

 

  I’m thinking more stitching is on the agenda for today.

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Another Star Ornament

November 26, 2008 at 1:38 pm (Crafts, Ornaments, Recycled Arts and Crafts)

I love star shapes and recently was browsing the internet for instructions for making star books.  The last time I did that, it led to an ornament on my blog (found here:  http://hinzpired.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/how-to-make-paper-star-ornaments/.  This time, the results were the same, although the design is new.  I think these are actually easier than the the first star ornaments and also offer the potential for lots of embellishments.

I’m sure that this isn’t really something new- I’m sure I’ve seen this sort of ornament somewhere before.  However, I didn’t find any instructions for them during my internet search, so I’m offering my version (I did find some very similar ornaments that someone is offering for sale using the custom images of your choice, which reinforced my idea that the instructions must be out there somewhere).

For my version, I used a few different choices for paper:  some multi-use 24 lb copy paper, both plain and stamped with paint; a paper grocery bag stamped with paint; and magazine pages glued together with a glue stick (the bottom two ornaments are made with magazine/catalog pages glued together).

Now for the instructions:  Cut your chosen paper into strips.  I chose to make my strips 2-1/2 inches wide.

Then cut the strips into squares- you will need either 5 or 6 squares.  Most of the ornaments above were made with 5 segments, but the bottom ornament made with the Lee Valley catalog cover uses 6- it’s up to you.

Next, fold all squares in half:

Open it up and fold it in half the other way:

Next, open it up again, flip it over and fold it diagonally.  If you are using a paper with images on only one side, those images will be on the outside during the first folds and on the inside during this fold:

Now, open up the paper, and on the right side, fold the little triangles that have been made inside the squares.  This is hard to explain, but easy to do:

Repeat these steps until there are  5 (or 6) pieces folded:

Now, the pieces are glued or taped together.  For most of the ones I’ve made, I used glue stick, but I tried double sided tape and found out that it worked out, too- and it’s a bit less messy.  Either way, apply glue or tape to one section and then stack the next piece on top:

Continue until all pieces are stuck together:

Next, cut two pieces of ribbon, jute, string, etc.  I tend to cut ribbon a bit longer than I think will be needed and then trim it at the end if it turns out to be a bit long.  Fold ornament into a stack and glue or tape ribbon on to one side:

Next, cut two more pieces of paper to be the covers of the book.  You can make it exactly the same size as the folded star or make it a bit bigger.  I chose to make mine the same size, so cut out one piece from my original strip of paper that was 1-1/4 by 2-1/2 inches and then cut it in half one more time.

Use glue or double sided tape to attach  this paper, covering up the corner of the ribbon that has just been attached:

Repeat on second side:

The ornament will now look like this:

Now bring the two ribbons together so that the ornament forms a complete star.  Slip a bead onto the ribbons and tie a knot in the end of the ribbons:

The finished star is now ready to hang.  For storage or to display the ornament in book form, the bead can be pushed to the other end of the ribbon and the star can be folded to become a book.  Push the bead back down to the end to keep it in this position:

I think that these ornaments would be beautiful made with some of the art papers I’ve seen, using nicer beads.  All sorts of recycled papers could be used, too.  I’ve also been experimenting with using stiffened fabric instead of paper, but those results aren’t ready for the blog yet (and you don’t really want to know why, although I’ll tell you that it involved my cats…).

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Natural Pink Food Coloring for a Princess Cake

October 26, 2008 at 7:22 pm (Cooking)

I’ve mentioned here before that our family does not eat foods containing artificial flavors or colors.  3 out of 4 people in our house feel better this way, and since one of them is me and the other two are my kids, that’s how the food gets made here.  Over several years of eating this way, I’ve learned a few tricks to make our food more fun for those times that call for that.  While no one really needs for food coloring  to be added to things like frosting, it’s definitely more interesting to have it available.  There are some natural food colors available now, but they are expensive, don’t have a long shelf life,  and even more importantly, they have to be ordered through the mail in my small town.  This  means that spontaneous food coloring can’t really happen.  Because of this, we’ve done lots of experimenting with making our own natural colors from ingredients we can easily find locally.  The easiest of these is making pink food dye from beets.

When I first heard about making my own dyes, the instructions I found for pink said simply to reduce beet juice. Now that makes sense, but at the time I had no idea how to do that.  For those new to this, here are instructions for exactly how I do that.  

First, I purchase canned beets.  Open the beets, dumping the pink water into a pan.  For this batch, I used 3 cans of beet juice water.  You can eat the beets, freeze them for later, or as I did with this batch, feed them to the chickens who love everything :) .  Here’s a picture of my beet water, which was about 2 cups worth of liquid at this point:

Next bring this mixture to a boil.  I keep the temperature on medium-high until the juice has reduced quite a bit.  I then turn it down a bit and stir it to reduce the last little bit.  It will get all thick and syrup-y.  Here’s a picture at the end:

I put it into a jelly jar to keep- the original 2 cups of liquid reduced to about 3 Tablespoons of food coloring:

 

 

At this point, I keep it in the refrigerator if I’m using it soon or the freezer for longer storage.  

 

The batch I made yesterday was for a specific purpose.  My daughter was making a birthday cake for  a princess- themed  surprise party for a friend and wanted pink frosting.  My daughter tinted all of the frosting a pale pink for the main cake and then added a little more beet coloring to make the deeper pink accents.  Here is her finished cake, which I think turned out very well for a 14 year old- it’s certainly better than I can do :) . 

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