Art, Craft and Needlework, October 2013

[Harriet]

Put away the self-doubt and connect with the creativity you were born with. Forget about whether anyone actually likes the work you do, the projects you make or your vision of creativity. Who cares? You're doing what you do for yourself, to satisfy that viseral creative longing you were born with.

You're a creatively independent grown-up now. Color where you want and how you want, and everybody else can kiss your patootie. So, make a plan today to grab your tools, make your art the way you want to. Own your creativity.

- Mark Lipinski, fabric designer

It's October, and for many of us the cool weather ushers us toward our yarns, fabrics, canvases and writing pads. Our cameras will find a different season to photograph. Our decorating will fill a different cozy need. The chance to give a holiday gift we created or hang a holiday decoration we created looms large this month!

What's doin' at your house? Are you finding time for your creative outlets? Hurry, get those dailies done, to get to your own scheduled time to create art with friends here - we enjoy your work!

[Nancy]

I was able to knit up a few
Rows today glad for that progress!

[BookSaver]

Current projects involving a little bit of creativity:

1) I gave a quick tutorial at sewing group tonight on a project I learned in a recent class, taking 2 Tshirts and combining them to make a light jacket. I took samples of the project at every step of construction.

I'm glad that demonstration is over. I have 1 finished garment and 2 others in pieces. Now I can finish those 2 jackets before the weather turns cold!

These are very casual layering pieces, I will only wear them around the house and maybe to run errands.

2) Thursday night is a library group meeting to do some more planning for the cookbook sale / apron display in November.

3) Almost as soon as this Thursday night's meeting is over, I need to switch over to prep for a 4-day sewing retreat next Thursday-Saturday. Once again I need to make decisions about what will be a reasonable number of projects and supplies to haul. The location will be over an hour away, and I have a small car. It's a camping lodge so I also need to haul clothes, towels, sleeping bag, pillow, and a bunch of food in addition to sewing machine, tools, and projects. I refuse to make extra trips, it all has to fit in 1 load.

I have learned through experience that I need to take mostly easy projects. There are so many interruptions and distractions, too many chances for making errors on complicated projects. Plus we do our own cooking and chores, so there never ends up being as much marathon sewing as I'd like. (Well, there are a few that are able to accomplish a lot, because somehow they never end up doing kitchen chores. I guess their hands are just too delicate to wash dishes. )

Mostly I just want to play with fabric!

4) I think I have an idea for Christmas gifts for the sewing group board members. I saw a pattern online for pretty little business/credit card holders with 2 pockets, fastened with a button and a loop made from a ponytail elastic. If I make them in bright cotton prints, put a few of our sewing group's business cards in 1 pocket and a little pad of Post-It notes in the other ... maybe? They can always regift them as a store gift card holder.

[Harriet]

Nancy, how much do you knit as opposed to crochet? I have one aunt (from England - married my uncle there) who would never crochet if she could knit, and another who would never knit if she had the chance to crochet! I was taught to crochet, but never to knit.

BookSaver, the teaching is creative in itself in a different way, especially if you make up partially-completed examples and plan how you'll show them. Does the card holder pattern call for interfacing? That regifting idea is actually kinda cool.

I had a small-gift or multiple-gift idea recently which I suppose someone else somewhere has surely done already. Fabric inserts as design covers for those little plastic-covered planner/calendars the size of checkbooks, that usually have calendar-like photographs showing. I like it because there is built-in protection for the fabric creativity, yet it is displayed and gives use. It seems to me this could be a Heat n Bond project of a beautiful background fabric with Heat n Bond second fabric(s) for front decoration. Or, possibly, a fabric-glue project. I don't know if patchwork would be flat enough. If it would, the possibilities really open up, lol. Simple ribbon that matched a color could be glued in the back for a page marker. Could be made so that it would slip into another for next year. Oh, but I don't have time for these fun ideas! No, no, no!

I've been frustrated lately that I can't go to any Etsy page without having the connection immediately fail. It's too bad, because creative ideas looked up on the net often come up with an Etsy page I'd like to see. Perhaps it's my server, but I have Chrome. I hesitate to try to fix this, because I'll spend so much time on Etsy!!!

[Nancy]

I just finished a crochet project, working on a knit one now.
Last yr. I did more crochet,
when I did the crochet puppets. Most of time time I do more knitting.
An example would be I knit a baby blanket or shawl and
Crochet the edging for it.

[BookSaver]

Here is the address for the business card holder project
http://www.craftycupboard.net/2011/03/h ... older.html

She used fusible fleece for the stabilizer. I don't have any of that so I'm not sure how thick it is.

At the bottom of her page is a link to her flikr group. I'm glad I took the time to look there, too, for lots of photos of a variety of projects.

The more of these I look at, the more I like them. I have lots of small pieces of fabrics too pretty to throw away, thinking that "some day" I would piece them into an apron or something. Those bright prints would be perfect for card holders.

Harriet, I like your idea for calendar covers. I'm always disappointed when I try to buy a new purse calendar and can only find ones with boring covers. Why did I not think of slipping in a pretty fabric piece? Brilliant idea!

[Twins' Mom]

Just spent about 45 minutes upstairs in crafty/desk area unpacking stuff, after over a year in this house. Will do another round soon, was feeling overwhelmed by all the Stampin up cardstock in colors that have been discontinued, LOL.

Hummmm, just ordered labels and a printed cardstock ring for all the current and discontinued colors, to help me sort out what I have. Some have been discontinued and there are new colors (I think?) since I last stamped much.

Hate to keep the discontinued colors around, but I also have DP (designer paper in prints) that go with some of the discontinued colors....

[Harriet]

Twins' Mom, maybe you really have something there, that others wish they would have saved. Good job organizing. I was amazed when I came upon a digital scrapbooking online site recently - didn't know there was so much of that being done.

BookSaver, I enjoyed that site. Liked her table-runner idea using the large rickrack as an easy design element.

Not much to report here except that I brought a hydrangea bloom home from our table at the wedding reception and tried pressing some of the best-looking petal/blooms. Hydrangeas are rather bulky at the centers, though, so may not be good candidates. I wonder if wiser folks would have somehow removed the centers.

Having little to report, here is the gift wrap I did for the shower for DcousinMary's grandchild.

ElephantBabyShower2013.JPG

Plastic bow-pins make custom bows so much easier, and you can use more than one ribbon in them. The fancy thick ribbon was harder for the pin to go through, so I just pressed the tip of the bow pin at each spot I wanted the pin to poke through, making an indent, and then clipped a tiny spot there with scissors. No problem. Can't take any credit for the sweet fabric card, except that I grabbed it when I saw it. The only reason it appears darker at some places is the shadow of the bow.

[BookSaver]

Harriet ~ That gift wrapping is so pretty. Love the adorable elephant.

I had not looked at the table runner closely enough to realize that she used giant rickrack. Very clever. I've also seen that large rickrack inserted into a seam to look like a row of points, without the time involved in cutting and folding prairie points.

[BookSaver]

I realized over the weekend that our oven mitts are in bad shape, stained and I can feel a thin spot in one. I saw a cute idea for patchwork hot pads at the sewing group meeting in July. I've picked out some fabrics for a floral pair and a holiday pair. They will be priority projects for the sewing retreat later this week. The fabrics are in the laundry now. I'll try to get them ironed and cut the pieces before I leave Thursday.

Other priority projects are to finish class projects -- a sports bra and a knit jacket -- and also to finish one of the Tshirt jackets I used as a teaching sample.

The other teaching sample I might not finish this week because it is more complicated. I couldn't find a Tshirt I liked for the base, so I bought a turtleneck sweater at the thrift store. I don't wear turtlenecks but I like the purple color, and I think I can use the same technique from the Tshirt cardigan. However, because of the sweater knit, I will need to do a lot of stay-stitching before I can cut off the collar and split the center front. That is going to take a lot of extra time. Since my goal for this week is to zoom through quick & easy projects to lighten the projects bin, I might not start this one.

I still need to sort out fabrics to sew some little tote bags for Head Start preschoolers. That's an ongoing request from the organization, they give away hundreds of them each year. Sewing a couple of the little bags is a fun warm-up for starting a day of sewing.