Denim Patchwork Pillow

Posted on January 26, 2012

One of the craft blogs I read is hosting a “scrap attack” quilt-along. Theme projects like that have never really struck a chord with me, but for some reason, I was inspired to pull out my scraps and make something. I have a bag full of them, but mostly use them for testing out stitching, and plan to someday make paper with them (never mind that I won’t need an entire grocery bag full of them for that little experiment).

I wasn’t interested in an entire quilt, nor did I have enough scraps to do that, but our couch could use another pillow.

cutting my pieced strips

I couldn’t resist grouping the scraps by color, and I ended up with a good selection of reds, blues, and greens. I sewed a few strips, and arranged them on an existing pillow until I was happy with the composition.

I used inside-out denim as the base for the patchwork pillow, since we have a bunch of it leftover from my husband’s master’s thesis project (on automated sewing), but the blue of the denim is far bluer than I would use right-side out.

Fortunately I had a half-finished bag of polyfil just waiting to be made useful, so I could finish this project all in one day.

Ta-da!

 

Finished denim patchwork pillow

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Handmade Christmas: This and That

Posted on January 23, 2012

I have a valid excuse for still posting Christmas gifts, I promise. The last few years, my family has celebrated Christmas in January, to give us more time to see the rest of our families during the actual Christmas holiday. It’s been a week since we’ve been back from my parents’, though, so I figured it’s high time that I share the last batch of our handmade gifts.

First, another custom-designed pillowcase. Like my sibling-in-laws’ tandem bike pillowcase, I designed this fabric and then had it printed at Spoonflower. This pillowcase is a gigantic alarm clock, in happy colors for night time:

alarm clock pillowcase - bedtime

And sadder colors for the morning, since my sister (like me) doesn’t really like to wake up:

alarm clock pillowcase - good morning

If you want a way to recycle your Christmas tree, this next gift is ideal: a recycled tree suet feeder.

Shorn Christmas Tree

We sawed off the lower limbs of our Christmas tree, then sawed off the bottom 14″ or so. We drilled six 1″-diameter holes, and screwed a small eye hook into the top so it can hang.

hanging log suet feeder

The final, most random gift: davedavedavedavedave.com, a gift for my brother.

Experiencing davedavedavedavedave.com

It was a big hit – turn on your speakers to get the full experience.

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Handmade Christmas: sewn gifts

Posted on January 8, 2012

First up, a tie for Ryder. I used a free tie pattern from the Purl Bee, but modified it to make the base of the tie a more traditional width (the original pattern will make a skinny tie).

Handmade men's tie

Sewn gift number two is a set of pillow cases for my brother- and sister-in-law. I designed fabric for their pillowcases and had it printed at Spoonflower. This was my first time using Spoonflower, even though I’ve had an account there for a couple of years. I was really happy with how the fabric turned out.

custom-designed tandem bike fabric

My brother-in-law is quite into bicycling, and his wife is riding more and more, too. For their wedding, they used a cute tandem bike stamp for their invitations, name cards, and thank you notes. So Ryder and I decided the perfect Christmas gift would be a set of tandem bike pillowcases.

custom-designed tandem bike pillowcases

I scanned in the tandem bike from a thank you note they had sent us, and that’s the small bike you see repeating across the fabric in varying shades.

tandem bike pillowcase set

The large bike started out as a photo of a tandem bike, and I did a bunch of crazy stuff to it in Photoshop to turn it into the line art that we ended up using.  The most difficult part of all this was figuring out how to adjust the design so the seam allowances didn’t interrupt the design. In the end, I repeated the design for 1″ along all the seam allowances so that once sewn together, the design would line up more or less perfectly. Turns out it doesn’t really matter since once you put pillows in the cases, you can’t see exactly what’s happening at the seam allowances anyway. =)

Posted in clothing, finished, Sewing | 1 Comment

Simple stitched calendar

Posted on January 6, 2012

We ended up without a wall calendar this year (last year we had Krispy Kreme, the year before Chick-fil-A), so I decided to make one – or at least something for January. I cut a 8×10″ sheet of cardstock in half vertically, then wrote the days, list-style (because I wasn’t feeling up for the calculations necessary to make a grid, and our printer is out of ink!).

I was planning to doodle a fancy “January” with crayons, but while hunting for the crayons in our craft room, I noticed a stitched Christmas card I made (and never sent…) and liked that idea better.

Simple stitched calendar - January

The “J” is stitched with 3 strands of embroidery floss with a regular hand sewing needle. The main challenge of stitching on paper is that every hole you poke remains visible! We’ll see what happens for February…

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The most popular Christmas gift of the year

Posted on January 5, 2012

Spatulae

Spatulae! Thanks to my cousin, dad, and mother-in-law, we are now much better stocked in the spatula department (we were down to just one).

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Handmade Christmas: Wooden Projects

Posted on January 1, 2012

Happy New Year! We had lovely Christmas weeks visiting a lot of family in Michigan & Tennessee. We even saw a bit of snow in Michigan. I was getting worried that we’d go a whole year without seeing snow!

We were slightly less ambitious this year with our gifts and did not attempt to hand-make every single one of them (last year’s gifts here and here), but we still managed to keep ourselves quite busy with projects. First, the wooden selection:

Handmade wooden pencil holder

For Ryder’s mama, a wooden pencil holder. This was cut on a band saw, with 11 pencil holes drilled through the top arc. The bottom is covered in cork for less slippage. We stained it “special walnut” and finished it with polyurethane. I wish I could tell you what kind of wood this is, but we bought it months ago and neither of us can remember anymore, although I think it might be cherry…

Sudoku temple refrigerator magnet

Next, a sudoku palace/temple refrigerator magnet, for Ryder’s dad to show off his completed level 4 sudokus (of which we expect many). Ryder laser-cut the design that I had mocked up in Photoshop, which was great for getting the details in the ribbon and wings. The cherubim and banner is a separate piece, glued to the temple frame. Ryder wood-burned the details into it, and finished it with polyacrylic. A plastic sleeve on the back holds the sudokus, and strips of magnets around the sides and base keep it on the fridge.

Honestly, sometimes I don’t know how we come up with this stuff – but I am glad we did. Both of these projects were fun and we are really happy with how they turned out.

Posted in finished, wood | 2 Comments

Paper Snowflake Stars

Posted on December 13, 2011

These 3D snowflakes/stars look suprisingly nice for being made out of printer paper and leftover wrapping paper. And they’re really easy to make, too – just paper, tape, and staples.

Paper snowflake starPaper snowflake star

The one on the left is about 10″ wide and made from scraps of wrapping paper. Smaller is better for flimsy paper! The one on the right is made from sheets of printer paper, and is almost 2 feet wide. I think these would look really cool dangling from a tall ceiling for a party, or perhaps as an ornate bow on a gift. If you want to make some, you can find the tutorial over here.

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Handmade Ornaments: wire letters

Posted on December 9, 2011

Wire W OrnamentAnother easy handmade ornament – this one from wire. I used a heavier wire to make the outline of the W, then wrapped the letter in a thin-gauge copper wire. Another loop of wire makes an easy hook for the tree.

 

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Handmade Ornaments: pipe cleaners

Posted on December 5, 2011

Pipe cleaner ornament

A few nights ago, we pulled out a random assortment of craft supplies and I started thinking of ornaments to make. This guy started as a pipe cleaner twisted around a pen. I wasn’t quite sure what I was making until  I added another pipe cleaner through the first and twisted the ends (now the legs). Obviously: a pipe cleaner man. He’s a little jiggly, and is hanging by an un-bent paper clip looped through his head. A whole troupe of these guys would be fun, in various colors. Too bad I already put the pipe cleaners away!

 

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Tis the season!

Posted on December 2, 2011

Our apartment is cheerily decked out in all its Christmas glory – the tree is trimmed (complete with hedgehogs, chicklets, and a goat skull), the nativity sets are up, and the Christmas music is blaring.

Trimmed the tree

This is the time of year when my blog goes even quieter than usual, because I’m busy making gifts that can’t be shared til their recipient gets to peek at them!

Here’s a quick project I made last Christmas. It’s sort of a cross between a placemat, a trivet, and a coaster…

Christmas Tree Trivet

This is quasi-quilted – there’s a layer of batting between the top and the backing fabric. The backing fabric is wrapped up around the edges to also form the binding. Since it’s small (around 8″x10″) there aren’t any other quilting lines, which is why it’s only quasi-quilted. =) It really has no use yet except floating around our coffee table – any other ideas?

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