Not Just for Dishes

March 29, 2009

"Never," he said, with great force. "Blue Horizon" by Wilbur Smith ♦♦♦♦◊

Another in the offering of gifts to my mom!

This time it's her apron from Christmas. It was okay on Christmas, but the ties at the neck were kinda long and she commented that it would work just as well to remove the tie-ability and just make one loop at the neck.

Hmmm. She said it much more eloquently and succinctly.

So, instead of taking her gift home with her, she left it for me to modify. I removed one of the ties at the neck and attached velcro at the ends of the remaining tie and the corner of the bib.



So, isn't this a nice apron? Can you tell what's 'special' about it?

It was made from two dishtowels and a placemat! One towel was cut up for ties and pockets, the other used for the skirt. The placemat was cut (just a bit) and sewed on as the bib. Except for the ties and pockets, all of the edges are already finished! Woot!

And, I'm not giving anything really secret away here, but another cool thing? I got the towels and placemat from the Dollar Store. Three bucks for an apron! Seriously, why doesn't every one of my friends and family have ten of these??

---

Now, I'm sure you're wondering:

How on earth do you keep track of all of your wonderful aprons?

(Okay, so I only have three - for now - but still...)


I put them on my custom-painted apron rack, that's how I keep track of them!
(If you click-to-big, you'll get an un-cropped picture)

First I decided how I wanted to label my aprons. Then I decided on the font and size of my print and printed out a sheet of paper.

I scribbled on another piece of paper with a pencil...

Then, using the end of a paintbrush, I put the printed letters over the scribble (scribble side to the wood) and rubbed (hard) over the letters.

It's pretty faint, the transfer (might be easier to see if you biggify), but it's there enough for me to see.

Paint over the transfer with acrylic paint (the inexpensive stuff you get from any craft store in the little bottles)...


...then outline it with a black fine-point Sharpie.

After that I added other decorative touches, hung it on the wall after waiting a week for Mr. W. to do it, and now I'm enjoying the fruits of my labor! (I'm also grinning every time I pretend to be Suzy or Martha or Betty or June. :snort:)

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Okay, one last thing in this chock fulla aprons post: Calamity Kim is celebrating the publication of one of her aprons in Apron o logy Magazine by having a giveaway! Click on over to Calamity Kim's Apron Celebration G*I*V*E*A*W*A*Y for your chance to win (not surprisingly) apron-related goodies! She's also including things that aren't obviously apron related, but pretty much everything is off the CUTE charts... (LOVE the miniature apron!).

Labels: aprons, craft

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Daisies and Dots

March 26, 2009

Abandoned book "Motor Mouth" by Janet Evanovich ♦◊◊◊◊


Mom had mentioned that she needed a small-ish tote bag to carrying a book in for when she needs to sit in a waiting room. (Wow, that sounded clunky) She was also bright enough to mention it in the month of her birthday (February).


I'm sure that years of observation have taught her that I have no memory for this sort of request, but if it's fresh in my mind I'll usually act on it. If she'd mentioned it in March, I never would have retained the thought until Christmas. Or I would have thought, "Oh! I can make that for a Christmas present and be ahead of the game!" Followed by, "Christmas is a long way away, I don't have to start right now, I can wait a little bit to start this project."

And I'm sure that the rest of that story is pretty obvious.



(There's an outer pocket here, kinda held closed by the ribbon and the cute little button...)

Details: Finished size approx 8x10x1½, big enough for most hardback books. Inner patch pocket reverse-appliqued and lined. Outer 'in-seam' pocket. Outer bag machine quilted, inner lining loose. Straps approx 1¾ wide, fabric over interfacing, 4 rows of parallel stitching.


Since I was making this freakin' adorable bag (seriously, isn't it just TOO much?) I decided that maybe she'd just want to carry a little paperback and maybe not the whole tote.

So I made a paperback book cover with handles and a snap - because she, too, lives in the rainy Pacific Northwest. I drew a yellow arrow pointing to the snap in the Action Shot below:



Action shot (See the cute little ribbon bookmark?)


And lined it with more of that happy daisy print.

If you're thinking of making a book cover with a snap and handles, be sure to extend the width of the main and lining fabric by at least 1½" on each (short) end. I made the inner flaps (the things that hold the covers of the book in) by folding rectangles in half - those I made 3" longer.

All of this 'longer' stuff allows the book to still be held in the cover, with extra room to sew on snaps and not choke the book.

I just did my own thing on both of these projects, but if you need a pattern there are a bunch of them out there (for free!). Just do a web search for "sew paperback book cover" or "free tote bag pattern".

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And just an aside (or two):

First off, the mayo treatment was not a resounding success. Much too much work for too little payoff. But it gave a good story!

Secondly, when I did a cursory Google search so that I could provide search terms for you? I ran across all kinds of group and forum posts where people are asking for these types of patterns. I've run into that in some of my Yahoo! groups, too: "Does anyone have a pattern for [fill in the blank]??"

Why don't the people who post these questions do their own web search? There's always some helpful group member who is quick to offer links to patterns for whatever is asked, and they frequently get them from a web search. Is this the equivalent of dropping your hanky? Does the poster just want to be part of the conversation? I mean, you're on the computer to post your question. That indicates you have the means to do your own Google (or whatever) search.

Surprisingly, I'm not going to get a twitch over the non-searchers. I just plain don't get it.

Labels: sewing

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Blogging in the Shower

March 23, 2009

So, I was brain-writing this post while in the shower a while ago. As with everything, there's a bit of a back-story:

I have long hair. It's also way curly. Like, so curly that it wraps around itself and ties itself into knots even if I'm just sitting still on a stool (go ahead, picture that). Except for the sound effects and the antisocial behaviour, we're talking Medusa here.

Believe me, I know my way around product.

Well, I've been busy lately and I haven't paid much attention to my hair except to keep it clean(ish) and tightly bound. So I thought it was time to give myself a serious treatment.

I started with a tube of Hot Oil treatment - you know, the kind that you put in a cup of water to heat, then massage it into your hair? Uh, yeah. Long hair. Little tube. Get real.

I knew it was time to break out the big guns, so I went shopping for heavy-duty-make-it-shine-and-bounce-like-on-the-commercials product. Once I finally narrowed down the choices (getting rid of $pendy stuff that was just charging for the NAME, avoiding so-called moisturizers that had alcohol as an ingredient, etc.), I decided on a cholesterol treatment. I opened up the jar (yes jar, not tube!) and took a sniff. Smelled like oil and lanolin. Looked like mayonnaise.

Click! Went the lightbulb (I would have preferred that it went "Ding!" but I only ask for a reasonable suspension of disbelief on this blog) - I've read many do-it-yourself-and-be-all-natural recipes for mayonnaise hair treatments. And, you know? A whole jar of mayo costs about 25% of what the cholesterol treatment was going for....

Forward to the Google search, where I finally decided on the DIY Hair Treatment here.

Step one: Ask Mr. W. to bring home some inexpensive but real mayo next time he's out. Explain that, no, the Best Foods in the refrigerator wasn't what I wanted. Finally give in (after he's good and confused and a bit irritated) and explain that I'm going to slather it on my hair. Oh. Okay. He took it much better than I expected.

When I finally got the time and inclination to start the treatment, I had the foresight to put on a shirt that buttons up the front (rather than a pullover; eeewww). I also decided at the last minute that I didn't need to be shoving my hand into the jar of mayo, so I scooped about a cup of it into a cereal bowl.

Find gloves. Get plastic wrap out of the drawer and push in the tabs at the ends of the box - this is NOT the time for the whole roll of wrap to hop out of the box and roll across the floor, you know?

Put a towel down on the floor because this has the potential to get gloopy. Put two more towels into the dryer and get them ta'heatin. Commence to slathering hair with mayo.

Um? Eeewww. (Thank god for the gloves, that's for sure!) This is room-temperature mayo I'm using. It's heating up in the little bathroom and when it gets massaged into my hair. The smell is... not wonderful. Oil, eggs, vinegar.... Makes me remember why you shouldn't put mayo on the sandwiches for the late-afternoon picnic...

Oh! And? Does anybody remember what happens to mayo (other than the smell) when it heats up? It melts. Liquefies. Drips. Long hair, flinging, massaging, dripping. (There might be a haiku in there somewhere)

Now it's time for the plastic wrap. I had the foresight (yes, I was congratulating myself on the amount of foresight I'd been having during this adventure) to remove the gloves. I tore off a piece and started to wrap it around my head and it didn't quite go all the way around. No problem, I'll tear off another piece. But by then my fingers had barely grazed the mayo'ed hair and they were pretty oily/greasy. Not as easy to get a big ol' piece of plastic wrap off the roll. I finally did, and after wrestling with it (you know how that goes, right?), got it wrapped around my head.

Where it promptly slid off onto my shoulder.

Plan B. Get a plastic grocery bag and tie it up around my hair. Great plan, except for the whole slippery-fingers-hard-to-make-a-knot-in-the-bag thing. Walk around the house with a bag on my head, looking for a binder clip or a paper clip or something. No dice. Go back into the bathroom, root around in the trash can for one of the discarded gloves to loop through and tie the handles of the grocery bag together over my forehead. Make sure that there's a big ol' bubble of air in the gloves that gets pushed into one finger so it's sticking out like unicorn horn.

Go grab a towel from the dryer, wrap it as best I can around my grocery bag crown and go make lunch. (Tuna... with mayo from the OTHER jar, btw)

After 10 minutes or so, switch out towels for a new warm one. Wonder if it's just the bag and the towel that's making my hearing 'feel' funny or if I actually have a glob of mayonnaise inside my ear. Gross out, shudder a bit and find a distraction... When I've finished the chapter in my book, it's time to wash this stuff out of my hair.

Turn on the shower so that it's pretty hot, grab a towel to dry my newly-conditioned hair (are you keeping track? I'm up to 4 towels by now). Take off the grocery bag crown... and drip melted mayo all over the bathroom floor. Sheesh.

Once in the shower, the rinsing part goes pretty well. Except that I'm draining OIL onto my shower floor. By the time I even get to putting shampoo on my hair, I'm moving like a penguin, trying to keep as much contact between feet and floor as possible. This is NOT the time to do that stand-up-and-shave-your-legs thing in the shower!

After finishing the shower - in penguin mode - stepping out onto the towel was a bit scary. Fortunately my shower curtain rod is actually screwed into the walls (instead of suction-cupped or whatever most are), so I at least had the illusion of safety as I grasped the rod on the way out of the shower.

Note to self: Get up right now and go spray the shower floor with 409 or whatever grease-buster I have. Getting into the shower will be no more safe than getting out was. And try to resist the urge to go make a BLT.

My advice to anyone thinking of doing this? Wash your hair in the sink. Have a sense of humor.

Labels: babble

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I Did Something!

March 06, 2009

Abandoned book "Split Second" by David Baldacci

Okay, so Mom's anxiously awaiting the picture of the finished headboard that goes into the guest room, but I don't have a long enough dowel yet (I'm going into town today), so it's not mounted. And, uh... I'll have to clean off the guest bed so that I can get a decent picture of the ensemble. And un-stack the nightstands. And get the non-book stuff off of the bookcase. [snort]

But I have actually done something this week that is fiber-related. First off, let me introduce you to the Crossed Cables scarf*:



The pattern is Celtic Cable Scarf by Vanessa Lewis, found on Ravelry here and at the Kraemer Yarns website here. Yarn is a pretty bright aqua wool that J gave to me; it's a heavy worsted. I'm using US 10½ needles.

I found an "oops" where one of the cables went over instead of under - I woulda fixed it, except I found it 20 rows later - and I'm only on row 34!! Then, when I was talking to Grace about it, I realized that what I thought was an "oops" was actually the way the designer wrote and knitted it in the sample. Hmmm. Will. Not. T-t-twitch. I suppose that I have to be strong on this. I could fix the recent (2 rows back) over/under now, but then there'd be that one that was 20 rows back and I don't wanna do that. And I certainly would pop a vein if one cable was over when the rest of them are under. Nope. I'll just have to be strong.

*So, it's officially a scarf. It's awfully wide, I think, for a scarf (because of my yarn/needles, I'm sure). That, and if I wore this color up next to my face, someone would start lining up pallbearers and bringing hotdish to Mr. W.

It might end up being something else, like a bag, unless I find someone who thinks their life would never be complete unless they owned this scarf.

I also finished (?) my Red Delicious BOM Block #2. The "real" colors are a little more vibrant, but this is a pretty close representation:



Did you know that there's now a Yahoo! group for this BOM? You can join here, if you're interested. It's amazing how different the blocks are from quilter to quilter. I've seen orange ones and purple ones and blue-China-looking ones. There's even a member who's using a black backgroud and bright fabrics. WAY cool! I haven't seen anyone else who inks their blocks, but there's some incredible (and impressive) handwork on display. This is the most 'international' BOM that I can remember being part of.

I'm on to Block #3 eventually - but that white board behind my sewing room door is still laden with FEBRUARY's schedule, so #3 will have to head to the back of the line.

Labels: quilting

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Thread and Fabric

March 03, 2009

"Sure," she said.  "Bad Business" by Robert B. Parker ♦♦♦♦◊

I don't even think I should officially dub anything in the post as a UFO... I'm so far behind in my self-imposed quilt-related obligations that right now everything's just thread and fabric. The last time that my sewing machine or iron was turned was 14th February. For me, that's a long, long time.

Ignoring the fact that it is early March, I'll jump up and down and proudly show you the finished January "block" for my Calendar Quilt Challenge.

The finished "block" has been trimmed to 9½ x 36".

All of the strips are from my scrap bag - literally a brown paper bag that sits on the floor within arm's reach of my sewing machine. The only design guidance I allowed myself was to stick to blues, purples and greens for this month.

...and I'm pretty sure that it's not nearly as rainbow-shaped as it appears, though the striped strip does smile a bit!


Special dates include my grandson's first date, my little dog's birthday and the inauguration of our new president.

The appliqué and stitchery is the January block from Ellie's Quiltplace Country Calendar BOM.

(Woot! Kinda like two BOM's in ONE!!)



So there you have it. There is a a lot of progress on the Red Delicious block #2, and I'm not gonna get twitchy that block #4 has already been posted. No, I'm not. Gonna. T-t-twitch.

And I suppose that you might wonder about the 2009 Advent Sew-Along button that's over on that there sidebar. Uh. I have a brilliant idea.

I think I might just have to go find my sewing room. Apparently I'm feeling well enough to feel a bit guilty, so it must be time to engage in some active meditation. Beats the heck outta folding laundry.

Labels: quilting

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