Monthly Archive for November, 2008

Book Club Reminder: Sew Everything Workshop

Published
by
Simone
on November 28, 2008
in Books and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Our Craft Book Book Club will meet on Wednesday December 3 to discuss Sew Everything Workshop by Diana Rupp. If you’ve made something based on this book and would like to discuss and show off your project, leave a comment on December 3rd and/or submit a picture to our Book Club Flickr group. You can see some of our past projects on the right side panel. For more information about the Book Club go to the previous announcement.

If you haven’t worked with this book, but would like to participate in future discussions, suggest a book. In the past we’ve discussed The Big Ass Book of Crafts and Lotta Prints.  See you on Wednesday.

Embellishing a Hair Clip–A Tutorial

Published
by
Simone
on November 26, 2008
in Sewing and Tutorial
. 4 Comments

I’ve been wanting to embellish hair clips for a while now to use up the bits and pieces from my upcycled felted sweaters. For my first one I followed Amy’s tutorial on Angry Chicken, but I wanted my barrettes to be completely covered. So here is my version of the embellished hair clip:


On a piece of paper, draw around the hair clip and cut it out. This will be your pattern.


Pin the pattern on your fabric. In my case it’s a felted sweater bit, but you could use just about anything else that won’t fray; fused plastic comes to mind.


Embellish this top part, if you wish.


With embroidery floss, start sewing around the hair clip leaving the top part open. Pause here.


Turn the whole thing around and make a small cut across the barrette at the spot where you want the bottom part of the hair clip to come out.


Open up the clip and encase it in the cover by sticking the bottom part through the opening you just cut.


This is what it should look like at this point.


Finish sewing around the hair clip and secure the end of the floss.


You now have a hair clip sewn onto a piece of felt.


Cut out the barrette from the felt following along the lines of the top part you just sewed on.


That’s it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Winner of the Earrings Is:

Published
by
Simone
on November 26, 2008
in giveaway
. 0 Comments

Resa, Contestant Number 3

Thank you to everyone for participating. Now what can we do for the next giveaway . . .

Stumbled Upon

Published
by
Simone
on November 24, 2008
in Other Blogs
. 3 Comments

Lately I’ve been trying out StumbleUpon, a very temperamental little Web tool I might add that only likes some browsers sometimes. It has taken me to some interesting crafting sites such as:

Craft Chi where Amy shares her Rolling Pin Print tutorial. This is perfect for the upcoming gift wrapping season:

The Long Thread where Ellen explains how you can make these very cool thrifted holiday trees from recycled sweaters.

I love these bookmarks that Jaymi designed for D*I*Y Planner. I think I may make them for the members of my analog bookclub.

This is another cool little gift especially for those of us who like to change their art around a lot. Monica of Craftynest had the ingenious idea of turning these pants hangers into picture frames. Next time my daughter’s art teacher decides to clean up her space I’ll be ready!

Since I like clever upcycling ideas, this one by Autumn of Crafting a Green World caught my eye. She recycled brown paper bags into seed packets that she uses as business cards. I’m sure this idea can be further expounded into tea bag holders, envelopes, . . .

By the way, if you haven’t entered the giveaway yet, do so before Wednesday. So far there are 12 entries. Still pretty good odds to acquire the earrings.

Etsy Scavenger Hunt & Giveaway

Published
by
Simone
on November 20, 2008
in 99 earrings, Groundsel and etsy
. 2 Comments

The last couple of days have been filled with Etsy business. I’ve finally restocked the store and actually sold something, I joined The {NewNew} York Etsy street team, and I’m having a scavenger hunt in my store. Participation in the scavenger hunt will put your name in the hat for these earrings. They are made out of  jade, amethyst and sterling silver, and yes, they would be No. 22 in my quest to design 99 pairs of earrings.

And here are the rules:

Little Red Riding Hood is hiding somewhere in my store groundsel.etsy.com.

If you find her, click the item she is associated with and copy the URL for that page into the body of an email that you send to mycraftevolution (at) gmail (dot) com with the subject line Scavenger Hunt. I’ve thought of this whole rigmarole so the answer to the scavenger hunt doesn’t show up for everyone to see in the comment section.  I will draw the name of the winner on Wednesday, November 26th, the day before Turkey Day.

I hope this makes sense. Happy Hunting.

Notebooks

Published
by
Simone
on November 18, 2008
in Recycling
. 2 Comments

Why can’t I just throw my waste paper into the recycling bin like everyone else? So there I was, Saturday evening trying to dig out my desk and as I looked at the growing stack of paper I thought, “Didn’t I just see something, somewhere about making little notebooks?” So I folded the 8 1/2 sheets in half and then my gaze fell on some freebie postcards I had picked up from a rack at a restaurant. “Hm, these would make good covers.” So here they are: Two little notebooks made from last week’s proposal and tied up with some packing twine. Perfect for a few rounds of hangman while waiting for swim class to start. By the way, the PTA minute drafts are starting to look like a nice stack for the next notebook. . .

How To — Use Artopik to make Perler/Hama Bead Designs

Published
by
Simone
on November 13, 2008
in beads and tools
. 2 Comments

After all this bead surfing, I had to figure out how to make my own templates. While I found lots of examples of Mario, Pikachu, and Kirby sprite bead reincarnations all over the place, I couldn’t find a step-by-step tutorial of how to get these images onto a grid template that I could just put under my pegboard and follow. Then I remembered Artopik, some freeware for cross-stitch embroidery I had reviewed a few weeks ago and it all fell into place.

Step 1: Find your image

A sprite is a 2D rendition of one of those figures you find in video games, like Mario or Pikachu. I searched for “pikachu sprite” in Google and found the Pokemon Database site. Here I picked Pikachu from a list of pokemon and saved the image to my desktop.

Step 2: Resize your image–Photoshop

I opened Pikachu in Photoshop and discovered that this image was 80 by 80 pixels small.

Since my pegboard has roughly forty pegs, I resized the image to 40 by 40 pixels and saved it as a jpeg.

Step 3: Import the Image into Artopik

Next I opened Artopik and imported the smaller image into the program (Embroidery -> Import)

Step 4: Print the Image

And that was pretty much it. I selected print and set the grid to 5mm.

Changed the grid colors to make them more obvious and printed it.

Step 5: Start Laying out the Beads. . .

The Artoptik grid ended up not matching the pegboard exactly, but it was close enough to follow fairly easily. If your board isn’t clear or you want the beads to match your template exactly, you can always count out the colors just like a cross-stitch pattern.

And here is Pikachu in its bead incarnation.

For a list of fusible bead related resources check out my previous post Nerdy? Retro? Just Plain Fun.

Nerdy? Retro? Just Plain Fun! — Fusible Bead Resources

Published
by
Simone
on November 13, 2008
in beads
. 1 Comment

Perler/Hama beads have invaded my house. So far we’ve made a seasonal 3D turkey

and a flower

following the directions on the Perler site.

This little mouse is based on one of my Chinese grandmother’s cross-stitch embroidery patterns:

This new obsession sparked a late night search for bead related websites. The Nintendo gamer set seems to be particularly infatuated with this medium.

Here is a cool YouTube video by swoozie06 on how to make a Nintendo Necklace

Etsy also has quite a few Perler bead products such as earrings, magnets, and business card holders.

1. Halloween earrings by buttercrumb 2. Hootie the Owl by JustBeaded

3. Business Card Holder by Lost Mitten

The question of course, is what to do with them. I really like this street graffiti in Sweden:

Links

Here are the links I collected in preparing for this post:

Images

Patterns and Tutorials

Uses

Crafty Daisies’ Book Club Comes to Craftevolution

Published
by
Simone
on November 10, 2008
in Books
. 4 Comments

As you may know, I had started a virtual craft book book club while writing for the Crafty Daisies. The book club will now continue here on Craftevolution. Our next meeting is on December 3rd and we’ll be discussing Sew Everything Workshop by Diana Rupp, ISBN-10: 0761139737, ISBN-13: 978-0761139737.

Click the Flickr badge to the right to see some of the projects book club members have created for past meetings. For those of you new to the book club, here are the rules:

How it Works

Every 4-6 weeks we “discuss” a craft book as follows:

  • Make one project out of the book that is due for the next book club meet-up
  • Explain why you chose that project
  • Discuss the clarity of the instructions, the layout of the book, the illustrations, other projects in the book, and whether you liked the book or not
  • Suggest one book for the next book club

You can submit your discussion either as a comment the day of the book club meet-up or by email (mycraftevolution(at)gmail(dot)com). If you have pictures of your projects that you would like to share, email them to me or submit them to the Crafty Daisies Book Club Flickr group.

Finding the Book

As with any book club, this is not an endorsement of the featured book (of the ten or so books I read for my fiction book club I only liked three). If you already own the book under discussion, great, take a picture of your project and send me an email. If you think you want to join this endeavor, here are some ways to shop around for the book:

  • See if a friend already owns it and lets you borrow the book
  • Check with your local library (mine had three copies of this month’s book across the borough)
  • Compare prices (I bought this month’s book at list price, but have since seen it significantly cheaper online)

In other words, I don’t want you to get mad at me in case you buy the book and take an extreme dislike to it.

By the way, these are my materials for my book club projects. Yummy, yummy cashmere wool I got for a steal at my little fabric shop next door.

Your Basic Hat

Published
by
Simone
on November 6, 2008
in Knitting and Tutorial
. 1 Comment

Continuing with this week’s knitting theme, let’s talk hats. Over the weekend, I’ve rediscovered the knitting of caps. There are many reasons to specialize in noggin covers:

You can:

  • Knit one in the time it takes to watch [insert two-hour activity e.g., Iron Man, election coverage, hockey game]
  • Use up your leftover yarn
  • Use that one special skein you got in a swap
  • Try out a new pattern
  • Practice knitting in the round with double pointed needles
  • Test drive a design before committing $200 in yarn for the sweater version

So here is your basic hat pattern:

Cast on Stitches

Before you start, you need to know the circumference of the hat you wish to make. Either measure around the head to be covered with a tape measure, or use one of these standard measures: Women’s hats are about 21 to 22 inches in circumference, men’s hats are about 22 to 24 inches around. Lucia has a great chart on her blog on the bottom of this page.

Then you need to determine your gauge (aka how many stitches equal one inch and I leave it up to you and your confessional whether you actually knit up a swatch or blindly trust the banderole information on your skein), plug in your numbers in this formula.

(number of stitches per inch) X circumference in inches
=
number of stitches to cast on

You may need to adjust this number, depending on

  1. the requirements of the pattern you are using. For example, if you will have a 2 knit 2 purl ribbing around the edge, you need a number you can divide by four. And,
  2. the decreases you wish to take when you knit up the crown of the hat. For the hats in this picture, I gradually decreased the number of stitches at the crown at six different points. Consequently, the number of stitches I cast on had to be divisible by six.

Example: For the pink hat, the gauge was 2.6 stitches = 1 inch. For a hat with a 21 inch circumference, the calculation is 2.6 X 21 = 54.6. The pattern at the bottom of the hat had to be divisible by 5, so I rounded the 54 stitches up and cast on 55 stitches. The number of stitches at the crown however, had to be divisible by 6. When I got to that point, I knitted two stitches together (54) and then proceeded to decrease the stitches 6 times over the round.

Using either a short, 16 inch, circular needle or a set of double pointed needles, cast on your calculated number of stitches and close the round.

Knit the Hat

This is the fun part, knit whatever pattern you selected until your hat is approximately 6 1/2 inches tall. If you’re making a men’s hat, you may want to add an inch. For the pink hat, I used Nicky Epstein’s Eyelet Rib (sans bobbles). Right now I’m trying out a false flame stitch with this hat.

Shape the Crown

Make even decreases around the round to shape the crown. This is what six evenly spaced decreases look like.

Example: Using the infamous pink hat one more time: If you want to take those six decreases, follow this pattern: 54:6=9

  • Round 1: *knit 8 stitches, knit 2 together* repeat five times, equals 48 stitches
  • Round 2: *knit 7 stitches, knit 2 together* repeat five times, equals 42 stitches
  • Round 3: *knit 6 stitches, knit 2 together* repeat five times, equals 36 stitches
  • Round 4: *knit 5 stitches, knit 2 together* repeat five times, equals 30 stitches
  • Round 5: *knit 4 stitches, knit 2 together* repeat five times, equals 24 stitches
  • Round 6: *knit 3 stitches, knit 2 together* repeat five times, equals 18 stitches
  • Round 7: *knit 2 stitches, knit 2 together* repeat five times, equals 12 stitches
  • Round 8: *knit 1 stitch, knit 2 together* repeat five times, equals 6 stitches

Cut off yarn leaving a 10 inch tail. Thread tail through remaining six stitches. Pull tight and sew in the end.

Embellishments

Now is the time to decorate. Sew on some pretty buttons. Add a little crochet something. Try your hand at needle felting. Sew on a ribbon, or just leave it plain.

Charities

If you get addicted to this pasttime and even your mom smiles painfully when you offer her another hat, here are some charities that gratefully accept your work:

Knitting for Noggins collects hats for patients at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital.
Afghans for Afghans collects knit and crocheted goods to send to Afghanistan.
Cubs for Kids collects clothing for teddy bear cubs. The dressed up bears are distributed to children in homeless shelters.
Interweave Knits has an extensive list of knitting charities.

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