New Year - Old Goals

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm not one for New Years resolutions - I've come to the conclusion that if I'm going to change something about myself or my habits, it's best to start trying RIGHT NOW instead of waiting for a kickoff date. But I know that they really work for some people, and I won't lie - I use January 1st as an opportunity to evaluate my current goals and adjust tactics.

So, in the spirit of reflection, let's take a look at one of my lagging projects that I finally finished recently - pillowcases!

For Christmas of 2012, I decided I would embroider pillowcases for some close friends and family. I successfully completed a couple and shipped them off to the recipients before I had a chance to take pictures, but here is one that I completed in time for Christmas and didn't deliver until November 2013:

Here are a couple that I completed late and delivered later:

And here's one that I didn't complete until just recently and was able to just hand to the recipient immediately:

The moral of this story? My goal last year was to get this blog up and running. This year, I'm going to be consistent about it. Fingers crossed, I'll get 52 posts up over the course of the year. The vast majority of them will be finished crafts. Dare I say that I will complete 52 projects this year??

Stay tuned - we'll see :)

Record Bowls

I had a realization about Christmas this year.

To be more exact, I had a realization about Christmas BREAK. This is my first year without a real Christmas break, so when it was suddenly December 23rd, I found myself without gifts to distribute. Until this year, I'd always had the week or so following Christmas to finish up the gifts for my friends and I would deliver them when I returned to school after the new year. Not so much this year.

Ah well, you live and learn, right?

So this year, I made a bunch of the same gift to distribute to people. I had some 45s sitting around that I never listened to, so I made them into bowls!

I followed this tutorial.

Start with some records. I used 45s, but this works for full-sized LPs as well.

Place them on an oven-safe bowl on a cookie sheet. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Pop it in. The tutorial says to set your timer for 8-10 minutes, but since 45s are smaller, I left them in for 5-8.

When the timer goes, pull it out. I used a different one of the same bowl to help with shaping. Watch out, they'll be hot, but they also cool SUPER fast, so some scorched fingertips were par for the course for me.

Voila! I learned that if you leave them in for longer, the vinyl starts to shrink, so you can make taller or shorter by adjusting the time in the oven.

I'm planning on covering the bottom with a neutral-colored paper. I'll add pictures when I've done that, but until then, enjoy!

Pillow Sweaters

'Tis the season to be crafty!

I'm in a place in my life where I want my home to be a grown-up level of festive, but I don't really have the budget or the stockpile of decorations to do it. So I'm starting that stockpile. Little by little.

This year, one of the things I'm adding to the stockpile is some new pillowcases. In case you were wondering, I consider sewing the fourth side of a pillow to be one of the worst things that a person could be forced to do. Right up there with talking with a close talker.

So, I took a look at my sofa...

...and realized that it wasn't exactly the most festive thing out there. I love those pillows and all, but they don't exactly scream CHRISTMAS.

Living in Seattle, I know that our thrift stores can get picked over pretty quickly. I also know that, with ugly sweater party season upon us, the selection of festive sweaters - ugly or not - would be pretty slim.
I had the bright idea to buy some thrift store Christmas sweaters to cover them up.

Then, I had the brighter idea to use CARDIGANS!

I snagged these three at Value Village and whipped up some cozy little sweaters for my pillows. Bonus: buttons. Because all of them have button closures, I just had to sew the four corners and button them straight over the existing pillowcase!

Behold:

Cozy little pillows.

I'm already formulating a new project to use this technique, so stay tuned for an in-depth tutorial!

Headwarmer - Free Pattern!

I mentioned in this post that I went to London for a weekend to audition for Star Wars. What resulted was standing outside in line for six hours in order to hand my headshot to a woman. Luckily, this was exactly what I expected.

Regardless of the fact that I knew nobody would notice me, I wanted to look my best when I got to the front of the line. Being November, I knew it would be cold. I didn't want to wear a hat because, um, hi, hat hair. So, at the last minute, I grabbed a ball of yarn from my stash to whip up a headwarmer on the plane.

This only took me about an hour, including trial and error on size and length. It still ended up a little wide and a tiny bit long (it slips down somewhat), but it did its job and I didn't have absurd hat hair!

Here's the pattern.

Using bulky weight yarn and a size H hook (adjust for gauge).

ch 11
skip first chain, sc in each across (10)
sc in first two, ch 1 and skip next stitch, sc in next 4, ch 1 and skip next, sc in last 2
sc in each across
dc in each across to length
sc last three rows

Sew buttons on the final three rows to line up with buttonholes created by the chains in the second row. BAM, headwarmer! Happy crafting!

Bowtie!

November was a month of travel, and you know what long hours of sitting down leads to? Crocheting. Lots and lots of crocheting.

A few years ago, I went on a rampage, asking all of my friends what they would want from me if I were to make anything for them. I'm still chipping away at that list, and last month, I polished off a couple of them! Here's one of them:

I used this pattern and this yarn in Candy Apple Red. It's pretty straightforward (and a lot faster than this tie that I finished back in July).

I'll add pics if/when the recipient sends them to me!

Halloween Sneak Peek

My mother is a magnificent seamstress. As a result, I had some pretty spectacular Halloween costumes as a kid. As I got older, though, I could never decide what I wanted to be, and so the creativity of my costumes totally tanked.

Seriously. I was a shooting star one year. I just tied blue and silver ribbons to my elbows and knees. It was sad.

But this year, I had somebody suggest a costume for me. Admittedly, it was like May, but I latched onto it and have been completely convinced that it is the best idea.

I'm going to be a black-and-white movie star!!!

Originally, I was going to make my own dress from an authentic 30s pattern, but then I was thrift shopping and found this beauty:

Don't mind the mess in the hallway...

Sure, it's a little 80s, but just LOOK at the trim:

And the knot at the waist!

And it was like $22! That's cheaper than the pattern I was going to buy! The PATTERN.

So I'm thinking: ditch the shoulder pads, trim one of the layers of trim, and possibly take it in a bit on the sides.

Pair it with black shoes, black gloves, grey tights, and grey face/body paint, and I'll be good to go.

Stay tuned for more updates on how the costume turns out!!

Bombomb Plushies!

This project is one of the reasons I started this blog. This is a project that has been languishing for two years now and really isn't that difficult - I just couldn't get the motivation to get over the hump and FINISH. What's worse is that I also made a Christmas present for the recipient last year. The present was done well before Christmas, but these suckers weren't and I, for some reason, couldn't send one without the other.

But lo and behold, I have finally finished them - two Bomb-ombs!

I'm totally in love with them.

Look at their cute little wind-up keys!

I can't believe they took me two years to wrap up.

This is another project where I used a pattern by Wolfdreamer Off The Hook. She is an incredible artist with yarn and I don't know what I would do if she wasn't so generous with her patterns.

Anyway, I'll add pictures of these guys if the recipient sends me evidence of their new home!

Routine Issues

One of the biggest reasons I started this blog was that I had a whole bunch of lingering craft projects that I just needed to FINISH AND BE DONE WITH THEM, GOSH DARN IT!

Well, I've finished a couple of them, but I'm still procrastinating. The past couple of weeks are a good example of my justifications.

My sister and her husband didn't get a chance to take their honeymoon right after their wedding last September, so they decided to do a one-year honeymoon/anniversary trip. They were gone for two weeks and I volunteered to housesit for them. In my mind, this would be a good chance to get outside of my home and finally finish a couple of projects. And by a couple, I mean four that have been hanging over my head for anywhere between four months and a full year. 

It seemed like a good plan - the only thing on my plate was to go home after work and let the dog out. Because of the dog, I couldn't really go anywhere in the evening - she needs to be taken out every 4-6 hours. That time restraint made it easy to just be at home instead of going out and socializing.

But the best-laid plans...

See, my sister has a dog and a cat. The dog gets severe separation anxiety and will eat anything that you leave out when you leave. Simple solution: close everything in the bedrooms. But the cat knows how to open doors, so the cat will open a bedroom door and the dog will eat things.

That's how this happened:

I came home after work to find my yarn EVERYWHERE. I wasn't overly concerned because there didn't appear to be much damage done to the actual yarn - the cat just really liked pulling it around. But then I went upstairs. And I found this:

THAT is the remains of the stuffing of a project that I've been working on for over a year now. Something that's just been hanging onto the end of my list of things to do. The rest of it ended up in the dog's stomach. And now I feel like I'm back to square one with the project.

Motivation is really hard for me right now. I'm not sure if it's because I'm trying to do to many things or if I'm just not excited about the things I'm doing, but if anybody has any tips or tricks for finishing a languishing project (besides "just do it" - it might work for Nike, but it hasn't been working for me!), I would love to hear them!

Furniture Post - Dresser

One of the biggest pains of living in the dorms, then moving cross-country and starting real life is that I started with almost no furniture. Luckily, my parents are going through their post-children reimagining of their home, so they were happy to give me few pieces of furniture. But one thing I was left without is a dresser.

So after 7 1/2 months of keeping my clothes in wire baskets on the floor (thanks to my sister for lending me the baskets!), I finally buckled down and bought myself a dresser! Well, parts of a dresser. 

I bought this one from Ikea:

Hemnes, in blue

Here is the space I had for it:

I wish I had taken a picture of my haphazard organizational system that this dresser is replacing, but here's an idea of how much stuff was hanging around:

A work in progress...

Aaand voila!

Finally, I feel like I live in my bedroom! I took the opportunity to finally unpack a couple of lingering boxes, and it's amazing how therapeutic it can be to just move things around. It's like I had a little bit of spring cleaning in preparation for the fall. Have you done any fall cleaning? 

Baby Blankets!

A few years ago, one of my close high school friends had her first baby. I was kind of at a loss as to what to get her. I was 18 for pity's sake - I knew nothing of the intricate world of baby paraphernalia! Luckily, my mom stepped in and taught me how to make the simplest, most gift-able baby blankets EVER.

Since then, I've had three more opportunities to make these blankets - twice since I started working at my company! Now, I'm very hesitant to share the secret because I've been enjoying the raving gratefulness I've received from new parents about these blankets, but I suppose I should share. Generosity and stuff, right?

To make one blanket, you'll need a yard each of flannel in coordinating colors - I like a pattern for the front and a solid for the back (for these, I got a sports theme and an animal theme for the front and a stripe for the back). I tend to make these blankets in pairs, just so that the gift feels more substantial, so I get two patterns and two solids.

First, wash and dry the fabric. Because it's for a baby, you should use detergent with no dyes or scents. Then, trim any loose threads. Take a blurry picture, if possible.

I'm a terrible person and take shortcuts, so at this point, I place the two pieces right side together and sew all the way around, leaving a 4-5 inch opening in the middle of one side. If you want to be more precise, I would suggest trimming the pieces to be the same size before sewing.

Here's where I trim the sides to make them the same size. If you're more meticulous, you've already done this.

Then, turn right side out, poke out the corners (I use closed scissors), and stitch the opening closed.

Finally, topstitch about an inch away from the edge with a zigzag or other decorative stitch. This ensures the blankets keep their shape.

And there you have it! Throw them in a gift bag, grab a cute card, and you're all ready to make a newborn all kinds of cozy!

Golden Birthday - Golden Shirt!

Last week was my golden birthday. It was also a time when I learned how few people know what a golden birthday actually is - which surprises me, because I have been really excited about them since I was really little. But that might just be me.

Anyway, a golden birthday is when you're turning the age of the number of your birthday. So if you're born on the 14th of a month, your 14th birthday will be golden. Get it?

Now, the story of this project starts several months ago. Modcloth was having one of their grab-bag sales, where you pay a flat price and they send you an article of clothing in your size. One of my coworkers and I thought it would be fun to get something random from them. She got a lime green dress that she would never wear and I got... well, this:

At first, I was all excited because, you know, sequins. But then I realized just how many sequins there were. It's a little overwhelming. So I decided I would just be excited because I had some sequin fabric.

Then, when I realized that my golden birthday was coming up, I decided to use that golden sequin fabric to make myself a golden sequin birthday shirt. Drawing inspiration from this tutorial from Merrick's Art, I set off to make myself a contrast tee.

First, I bought a plain white tee.

Then, I cut out the back panel.

I then removed the skirt from the bodice of the dress and used the cut-out portion of the tee as a pattern to cut out a new panel. Knowing that sequins can be itchy, I also cut out a piece of the skirt lining. 

Then, it took little time to stitch the new back panel into the shirt.

I also wanted to embellish the front some, so I cut a small pocket out of the lining and added some sequin fabric to the edge. BAM pocket!

And THAT, my friends, is the short and sweet story of a golden shirt for a golden birthday!

Kirby Plushie

And for my latest trick...

KIRBY!

Those of you who have known me for a few years know that I love love love crocheting plushies for the people I care about. I have to admit, though, that part of my love of plushie-making goes to the fact that I feel like I up my nerd cred by crossing over nerd categories. Here are two that I've made in the past:

Luigi, for my brother's birthday

Mew, for my dear friend Sera's birthday

Now, I have to come forward and admit that I didn't DESIGN these beauties. That credit can go to Wolfdreamer Off the Hook, who writes the most amazing patterns for video game plushies. Seriously, they're amazing and you should all go and marvel.

I should also note that I'm not responsible for the eyes, either. Up to this point, all my felt eyes have been made by my mother. Hand her a picture of the video game character and she can reproduce it in eerie accuracy in felt. It's incredible.

SO I realized Wolfdreamer OTH hasn't designed every character under the sun, which means that sometimes, a girl's gotta go off the beaten path and make one for herself.

Here he is.

This Kirby is made from the body and arms of King Boo (though, if I remember correctly, I elongated the arm flap a little to make them hang at his side. I also might have made the body bigger than the pattern by throwing in a few extra rounds. Clearly, this is not a tutorial.). I then added Sonic feet and made eyes and a mouth!

The body/feet have been done for probably about a year now, but I've been frozen in fear of making my own eyes. Finally, I realized in a panic that I didn't have a post written for this Saturday, so I had no choice but to pull out the hot glue gun and get going!

Here's my inspiration image (courtesy of Google Images). I'll post a picture of the recipient when/if he sends me one!

Analytics Shirts!

During my first departmental meeting at my job, my boss brought up the fact that he had asked the design team to help bring his dream of an Analytics logo to life. The concept featured a capital letter A with super-ripped arms clutching fistfuls of cash, eagle wings keeping the A hovering over lightening-filled clouds, and a Latin motto overhead.

Shortly thereafter, we had a mock-up from a member of the design team, hopefully made outside of work hours. My company might just be the most delightfully ridiculous place ever. I love it.

At my company, every department gets a quarterly allowance to do team building activities. A while back, my boss approached us and said that for our next team building, he wanted to use our logo and make bleach-dyed shirts and that he wanted me to organize it.

Cue me getting very excited and throwing together a quick email with the different techniques for bleach-dying, complete with photo examples.

Here's how we made our Analytics logo shirts!

First, we gathered our supplies.

• Shirt
• Watered-down bleach in a spray bottle - 1 part bleach to 2 parts water
• Contact paper
• Cardboard
• Tape
• Box cutter/exacto knife
• Any other supplies you think you might need (tape measure, scissors, tailor's chalk, etc)

To make your stencil, sandwich a piece of contact paper between your pattern and a piece of cardboard. Tape the stencil to the contact paper and cut along the outside of your pattern. You have a choice of using the inside or the outside of the pattern. 

Then, you place your pattern on your shirt. Like I said, you have the option of using the inside (like this one) or the outside. With the inside, the design will stay the base color of the shirt and there will be a kind of sunburst around it of bleached shirt.

Here's an example of using the outside of the pattern. This way, the bleached part is the design.

You can see that the bleach has bled a little under the pattern. Spray sparingly with the bleach, because once it goes wild, it kind of ruins the outline.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of all of us wearing our awesome shirts... Maybe I should make taking more pictures one of my goals next month...

But I can say that you can see my boss wearing his shirt in this post of his blog! He and his wife are travelling the world right now. Lucky ducks. Oh, and I should probably mention that his shirt is the one that turned out the best. He really took his time cutting out the pattern and then waited to see how everybody else's shirts turned out before actually bleaching. I, on the other hand, rushed right into bleaching things and ended up saturating the shirt...

So what should I bleach next???

Crocheted Tie

Do you ever have projects that you had SO much energy to work on for the first 2/3 and then.... just fizzled? I have about five of those waiting to be finished up. I guess you could call them Bruin Projects.

But I'm proud to say that that number used to be six, but I've recently finished this crocheted tie!

Last June (see what I mean about fizzling?!), I had a friend request a crocheted tie. Now bear in mind that I have a personal aversion to ever telling anybody "No," especially when it means I get to go yarn/fabric/craft supply shopping! I promptly bought the yarn (in brown, 5), I found a pattern (my first adventure with reading crochet charts), and off I went.

The pattern calls for you to crochet it double-width and then sew it up the back. After crocheting the agonizingly small 200+ rows, I stitched up the back and found, to my horror, that crochet stitches are very stretchy and therefore it was nearly impossible to get a good knot in the tie.

Well, I suppose that's why we craft, right? To find creative ways to solve problems.

After some discussion with my mother (she fixes all my craft-related problems), I decided I just needed to iron in some interfacing. A few measurements, some frustrating sewing, and a few minutes with the iron, aaaaand....there was something stuck to the front of the tie.

Apparently there was something sticky on the ironing board cover, which transferred to my beautiful, darling stitches. Cue me freaking out, yelling a little bit, then stomping downstairs to dramatically present the damage to my mother. It was back to the drawing board in late September.

I'm not ashamed to say my mom fixed this one, too. Seriously, the woman could probably get 2000 year old stains out of Cleopatra's clothes. She's that magical with fabric.

By this point I was just sick of thinking about the stupid tie. I couldn't muster the enthusiasm for a third wave. So it sat in my to do queue until I finally stitched it up in April. But was it done? Oh-ho, no way - now it was too short.

See, the recipient has a self-professed absurdly long torso. So I had my brother try it on so I could maybe get an idea of where to put the loop in back and it was clear that it needed a couple more inches. So finally, in May, after 11 months of hanging over my head, the tie was complete.

If I did this project over again, I would definitely have measured the tie before I tied off the yarn. Also, when lining it, I would have layered the interfacing, fusing them together instead of trying to stitch pieces end to end. And I'd probably give it stripes or some sort of pattern.

Regardless, it is sent! And when the recipient receives it and takes pictures of himself in it (which I mandated via a card that simply read "PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN), I'll post them here.

What was the last lingering project that you've finished? (Or are there any you'd like to confess to?) Let me know in the comments!

Scrabble Tile Pillows

I'm super-excited to bring you my first tutorial: Scrabble Tile Pillows!

My best friend is madly in love with Scrabble and other word games. I personally don't understand it because I am terrible at anagram-style puzzles. It probably has to do with my left/right brain balance, but whatever the reason, I haven't the patience for the game.  But my best friend - boy oh boy, does she ever like it. In fact, she loves that game so much that her now-husband proposed to her via Scrabble board. It was adorable.

For her birthday (and by "for her birthday", I mean "several months after the fact, when I finally got around to making them"), I decided I would make her some pillows in the style of Scrabble tiles. Here's the finished product (and can I just say that I AM SO PROUD OF HOW THEY TURNED OUT):

So how do you make a couple of these beauties? It's actually pretty simple, First, gather your materials:

This is what I needed to make two pillows:

• Two pillowforms (18")
• Graph paper
• Iron
• Wonder-Under or other iron-on adhesive
• 1 yard Scrabble tile-colored fabric
• Scraps of black fabric (I had ~1/4 yd of black fabric that my mother threw in with my craft stuff when my parents helped move me in - thanks Mom!)
• Sewing machine/thread/ruler/pencil/any other normal craft supplies you need to feel productive (this includes my Disney Pandora station for me)

The letters are appliqued-on via wonder-under. If you've never used (or heard of) the wonder that goes under, it's an iron-on adhesive that makes projects like this a breeze. First, I figured out how large my letters should be, via graph paper. And by via graph paper, I mean I just laid it on, eyeballed how big I wanted them to be (referencing a quick google image search for "scrabble tile") and marked it with pencil.

I am clearly the most precise crafter you'll ever meet.

Then I sketched out my letters.

And vowed never ever to use anything but graph paper to draw. Ever. Again. It's magical. My letters were proportional!

 (...as somebody whose artistic ability goes about as far as stick figures, this was very exciting.)

Stick Wonder-Under to the back of your fabric by following the ironing instructions and cut the letter out of the fabric/Wonder Under combination.

Then, like an idiot because you did it backwards. So remember that you should pin your letter on the side of the fabric that DOES NOT have the Wonder Under paper.

See? It should be like this.

So cut them out the proper direction and place them on.

Iron them to secure.

Next, realize that they fray and will not stay. The particular type of Wonder Under that I was using is only meant to anchor fabric while you applique it on. Make sure you read the instructions thoroughly so that you get a sturdy enough connection. You wouldn't want your letters falling off! So I stitched to secure the letters.

I used a small zigzag, with the zig on the letter and the zag on the background. This eliminated these pesky little frays:

At this point, you will have two banners with letters in the middle. I used this tutorial for instructions on how to sew my envelope pillow cases. The idea is that you have two long, raw edges and two short, finished edges. You fold the top down and the bottom up so that they have 3-4" of overlap in the middle.

This is what it looks like folded. Note that the one on the bottom of the stack was the one I wanted on the outside (I cheated and used the selvage for the inside edge).

Stitch those suckers up, flip it right side out, cram a pillow form in there and...

Ta-da! Two wonderful Scrabble tile pillows, ready for a couch or bed.

I found it amusing to tell my best friend that she was worth more than her husband (she's the K, he's the B). What do you think? Would you make them your initials or is there something else that you're dying to spell with pillows?