To-Be Embroidered

 

I think I've found my wool for the background of the Toned-Down Circle Sampler. I snapped this up at the local Goodwill shop.

 A very nice quality but small-ish ladies wool coat. Perfect size for my uses.  The front was a bit worn but the back which I'll be using is in perfect shape. It's a good weight, heavy enough but still flexible enough.

I think it looks pretty good with the circles and threads. Now to get cutting to size and get down to start some stitching. And now I'm think how cool this project could be on a coat that someone would wear. I'd love to see that in real life.

Free Thread Nets

 

I didn't take a before picture, but these sketchy knit sleeves were on each Spider Mum in a bouquet my DH bought me. As I slipped them off, I remembered seeing something like these for sale at a quilt shop recently.

Yep! They work and on all sorts of spools and cones. I love recycling and this was a really low-effort one.

I think they work really well on these medium sized cones of rayon thread. It's such a slippery thread that it never likes to stay wound up.

Here's how the Spider Mums look out of their nets.  So fresh and fancy and frilly.

DH said that he chose that bouquet specifically because of the nets and how "the flowers looked so weird, I knew you'd love them." True true.

A Place For Hexies

 I had this toppling over stack of hexies ready to go and I was worried they were going to get mixed in with the mess of scraps from working on the Scrap Tape. So they needed a place to hang out together and I had saved a magnetic closure box that was close to the right shape and size. Formerly housed a FitBit. Of course I needed a rainbow, so I used some Inktense blocks on some heavy sketchbook paper.

After brushing on some water and letting the rainbow dry, I trimmed it down to close to the exact size and glued it into the base of the box.

I had to cover up the FitBit logo and UPC codes with some nearly matching washi tape.

It's a really nice box, heavy and a solid closure that sticks with no fiddling around. 

It fits all the hexies I have so far with lots of room for more. I could even have a little sewing kit in here.

A rainbow of Hexies in a rainbow box. Now to sew some together....

Newspaper Yarn

 I recently clicked on a Facebook ad for Darn Good Yarn because they had these eye-catching, colorful cute skirts made out of recycled saris and ended up also buying a spool of this yarn made out of coiled recycled newspaper. Isn't it interesting?

It's not washable or really easily knitted or crocheted with, but I think for couching on wall-quilts, or ATCs it might be cool. For now it's just sitting on my table vibrating with intensity.
Thanks to Maureen for the colorful eyelet fabric behind it, those colors just went together too well not to use as a background.

The Primal Green Experience

Here's a look at  CQFA's Primal Green show (through 7/30) that is now showing at the San Francisco Public Library.  First up is the official sign announcing the show, isn't it beautiful all lit up?  The quilts are scattered around through the whole area, and there is a map showing where to find them.

 Here is the view from the table before all the guests for our talk arrived.  It was a little nerve-wracking waiting for the panel discussion to start, so I distracted myself by taking pictures.  I kind of wish I'd taken one when the audience was there! It was a fun experience being part of the panel and I was really glad I got asked to do it.

 Thanks mom for taking this picture of me in front of my piece "Lorabund 3-step"

 I really liked the displays of ATC's that were put together, mine is on the lower row second from left.

 One of the coolest things in this beautiful new library building is this long curving wall that is covered in the cards from the old card catalog. 

I guess they let people write on them and "art" them up.  It makes for a beautifully textured wall, just fascinating and a great way to re-use/re-purpose/recycle.

I hope you can go see the exhibit!

Stylin' Recyclin'

 No I didn't make this myself, I actually bought it recently in San Francisco at the St.Patrick's Day parade art/craft booths.  From a company that is set up to produce recycled purses and other things that they design here, using young adults in a rehab center in Mexico City, Eco Fashions.  

I was really taken with the effective use of the UPC codes as an overall design.

Plus it had one of my favorite greens on the inside.  Most of their products are made out of candy wrappers or magazines.
It is very well made and it looks like it will last for quite a while.

Random Recycling or Refashioning

What do you do with a perfectly good, but old and kinda yucky looking bulletin board? The silver framing was still in good shape so I decided I didn't want to cover it up, but the cork part was chewed up and written on and needed to be rehabbed somehow. I already have a bulletin board in my work space, but it is completely filled up and I really like the way it looks and don't want to take anything down off of it just yet. So instead of throwing this old bulletin board away I'm decided to recycle and repurpose it just for me.

In my stash I found a good olivey mottled olive green with an interesting black print, this reminds me of those pretty iron fences you see in European gardens. I chose this fabric because I thought the color of it would look good with my orange wall where the bulletin board will be going when it is all done. I carefully ironed a hem on all four sides, continually checking that it was going to fit to cover the cork as close to exactly as I could manage. I actually ironed on the bulletin board, which worked out with no singeing of cork. I also tried to keep the linear design of the fabric straight, on the off chance that it being slightly askew would actually end up bothering me.I was going to glue down the fabric to the bulletin board surface around the edge, but I decided to forgo the glue and go straight to thumbtacks. Impatient much? Um, yes! I wanted to attach some black satin ribbon in angles across the surface so I used the ladybug thumbtacks I'd been saving "for something". Instead of measuring or figuring out ahead of time a sensible pattern, I just kind of went for it until I ran out of black ribbon. I found that I had to keep pulling and smoothing the fabric as I went to keep it taut and flat enough, but it worked out pretty well in the end.And here it is all done. Pretty random, but I like it. Reminds me of those spiderwebs that the spiders given various hallucinogenic drugs make.

And no, I haven't put anything up on it yet, so I don't actually know that it works to hold anything at all besides black ribbon...

Don't Stand Still

Anything is fair game to get embellished in my studio if it holds still long enough. This is a bottle of hand lotion that had its very very sticky label removed by my son (during the "I Hate Labels" stage). It was bugging me every single time I touched it because of the stickiness. What do I have lying around to fix this? Oh yeah, fabric scraps. So now the lotion bottle isn't so awful to touch anymore, plus it looks kind of interesting too.

These are my Raw Materials these days. I have so much fabric now (probably too much), that I really am not buying much of it anymore, but I am using whatever interesting things come my way along with all that fabric stash.

You saw how the red ribbons got used in yesterday's post. When will the other items appear in something else that I create? Who knows, but I know that they will be likely candidates to grab and use, since they are sitting near the top of the pile on my worktable.

What pile you ask?

This pile!

What are you recycling or reusing these days?

Oh and Happy Earth Day!

Manipulating Fabric Again

I've been working on finishing the quilt I made with the manipulated-Frankenfabric last year, it is turning out really great, (I'd show it to you but I am entering it into a show) and so I have have been wanting to try the technique again. But I don't have much polyester, absolutely no clothing (bleah, I just hate wearing it) and not much in the way of yardage in my stash. Polyester is the only fabric that the shapes will stay in permanently, so that's what I have to find.

So I had to do a brief search for a few more polyester skirts to deconstruct and manipulate into new and more interesting shapes, so off I went to the local Goodwill. These three pieces of clothing will be taken apart, and put through the process I described in this post last year, the green is a polyester skirt with a polyester lining and the floral is a polyester skirt with a brown polyester lining, the black/white one is actually a very large polyester tunic. All together they cost $11.

The last (and only) time I tried this fabric manipulation technique, the polyester was just a solid ivory/beige, so it will be interesting to see how the patterned fabrics look once they've been shaped into a 2D form with 3D shapes. I'm guessing that the strongly patterned black/white one will be hard to see the shapes in, but who knows. That's the fun of this manipulating fabric technique isn't it? I am planning to use a variety of objects this time, instead of just marbles of various sizes.

The rubber-banding process will be a good exercise for my right-hand to undertake. I'm slowly working towards getting strength and dexterity back up to my usual levels. A lot of movement and gripping still really tires my hand out, so I'm doing this in small batches as I catch up on the last few episodes of LOST before the new season starts.

Buncha Links!

Haven't done a link-tastic post in a while, so here are a bunch of links on various and sundry subject, that I've been holding onto until the "right time":

A Denyse Schmidt fabric giveaway at Little Blue Cottage.

Free embroidery pattern from BadBird

Something to use up a whole lot of your long fabric scraps.

Amazing under the sea sculptures, website translated from the original French.

A black velvet Elvis painted with....Cheese Puffs, no, really!

Vote in a Stitched-by-Hand Flickr contest.

Ideas for gift sewing at Sew, Mama, Sew

How to make an all-recycled sketchbook by leethal.

A beautiful wreath made from fresh brussels sprouts!

A great new clothes sewing blog called This Large Life.

Postcards for Earth Day

Hey Happy Earth Day!

I just made three postcards for the Green Postcard Challenge.

Go check out what everyone else made, there are some really cool recycled materials being used.

Mine are pretty conventional and are made with:

fabric scraps that most normal people throw away

rescued/recycled upholstery fabric

painted batting leftovers

a green ribbon from an Amazon.com gift

a mesh plastic bag that used to have limes (it melted on the postcard above, you can see the remnants as a very cool grid-ish pattern on the left side)

all on fusible batting scraps.

Bagging It

I finally got around to making up some bags out of the freebie upholstery fabric I scored a while ago. Didn't use a pattern or measure, just started sewing them together. This fabric is very heavyweight and the edges are pretty well finished which makes it easy to put together a sturdy bag quickly. Here's how they look, first up the polka dot variety.
Still Life with Dog, I made short handles that go over from one side to the other and placed them far apart so that the groceries can be shoved in easily.
Still Life with Dog, Reversed. Zelda isn't too excited about my totebag making activities. As long as I don't take too many flash pictures she tolerates most of the modeling demands I make of her. This fabric is fun to work with as it is completely reversible.
But then there is of course another consumer of new bag goodness around here. Spike is the right size so he gets to fully immerse himself in that new bag smell. He actually purrs and is quite happy when we do this to him, so no charges of pet abuse please.
And here is another bag, this time outside sunning itself on the chaise lounge in the sun. It is gigantic and I'm not sure whether I'll be able to heft it if it is filled with groceries. Unless they are the fluffy light-weight varieties like marshmallows or kleenex or cool whip. C'mon do you really think I buy cool whip? Bleah! Marshmallows are only bought when we go camping. Otherwise it is hard to get me away from the microwave where I am experimenting with how many seconds is best to melt them (have you ever done this, they look like they're alive in there!).
This is the reverse shot of the same bag, showing the tuck that I finagled into the bottom. I also made sure to sew the bottom seam twice for added strength, and used a pretty large seam allowance.

How Does a Spiral Recycle?

Here is a visual description of how I make my Spiral Recycles pieces. This is how I made #4 in the series.

I start out with a selection of scraps. Usually I am using the tiny strips and edges cut off when rotary cutting, most about 1/2" wide. I start out with a fusible batting piece on a quilt backing.
Here you can see the backing fabric that I've pre-fused so it is nice and flat, acting as one piece for the manipulating coming up ahead in the process.
I spread out the compressed scraps and start figuring out what I've got to work with. Looking for colors and separating out the batting scraps. Since those are white I have to distribute those carefully. I like using a small collection at a time. This keeps it simple and I'm not trying to find the "perfect" piece, I'm limited to working with what I've got right there in front of me in the workspace.
If there are larger pieces of fabric I will put them along the edges of the piece as that tends to be harder to fill in using the method I'm working with here.
Once I've got it all arranged, I place a piece of tulle net on top, pin around the edges, flip over and iron down on the backing side with a hot and steamy iron. The fusible batting holds most of the fabric down enough to work with and the net doesn't melt if I iron from the backing side.

There may be some re-shuffling to do if blank spots have appeared after the ironing process. And I do pin a bit throughout the whole surface, just to make it a bit sturdier during the quilting.
Here it is under the needle. I go back and forth and around and around. Working from the center out to the edge. It gets flatter and flatter, remember this used to be about 1" high before I ironed it!
Then, interruptions!
Back to quilting. I don't want anything shifting around, that fusible isn't going to hold forever once this is vertical on the wall. The stitching lines begin to show through the chaos of the background and give the piece some coherence. As the edges are stitched I fold around the quilt edge the excess net as I'm sewing.
Here is how it looks after lots of stitching. I don't like how that green piece is so outstanding. It is a piece of bias binding and it looks very out of place.
Time to add something else, so I go to the current scraps bin which has pre-quilted edges I've trimmed off of recent quilts. These have the three quilt layers held together with stitching. Adding them on top will give more dimension to the piece.

Using the green bias tape as a guide I start stitching them down, creating a spiral on top of the recycled chaos below.
And here it is finished! Voila' , "Spiral Recycles 4"