Wordless Wednesday - Wardrobe Re Do Challenge

Picking out the right fabric for my jean skirt.

Valentine's Trash into Treasure

For Valentine's Day my husband gave me a card and a box of chocolates (and a few other things). When I woke up this morning, I was inspired to turn them into a jewelry box. The only thing that I did not use from this picture was the envelope. The item to the bottom right is what covered the chocolate when you opened the box.

First measure the bottom half of the box. Next you add a half an inch to your measurements for a quarter inch seam allowance.

Next sew all 4 side panels of fabric to the center one. Then sew the corners together. Here is the box inserted into the fabric.

I did not have any fabric glue on hand, but Elmer's works just as well. I applied glue to the inner bottom cracks and base of the box to keep the fabric in place.

Next I glued the cushion insert to the bottom of the box. You could use fabric or another card for this, but I liked the way that this insert looked.

Next I cut the card in half. I measured the top half of the box and cut each of the cards accordingly.

Then I cut the fabric for the 4 sides panels. The measurements were the same as for the bottom half.
You want to make your straight stitch longer when sewing through paper. You will sew the 4 fabric sides to the card, and then sew the corners.

Next glue the other half of the card to the inside. Be aware of it's placement in relation to the card on the outside of the box.

Voila! Now I have a place to keep my necklaces and earrings without them getting tangled. I did have to spend a lot of time this morning untangling a lot of these necklaces.

It is a really snug fit, but the 2 halves do fit together. I love my new jewelry box.

Cabled Cowl

Well today was mainly consumed by getting ready to meet with our tax guy tonight. During my math breaks I worked on my cabled cowl. The pattern for this came from Vogue Knitting Winter 2009, pattern #12. It is the first time that I have used a knitting chart. I'm still on the 1st repeat of the pattern. It repeats 3 times. The color combination is a nice surprise. I was wondering how it would look since it was dyed with all six colors of the color wheel. I'm also surprised how easy it is to remember the pattern of each row in my head (each row is repeated 4 times in each round).

A glance at last February

I wanted to take a look back to last year's February posts to see what I was up to. I didn't realize that this month marks my 1 year ravelry anniversary. Yeah!

I made my 1st sack boy.

This month I made my 3rd one.

I made several pigs for National Pig Day (March 1st). It was fun giving these to people, especially my son's librarian who loves pigs.

A heart hot pad (free pattern on lionbrand.com).

I still love using this.

Three heart dishcloths.

Two heart small pillow toys for my toddler. One has a a cat toy inside so that it jingles. I was mentioned on a recent Yarn Craft podcast about how I used the hot pad heart pattern to create 3 different types of items.

A Valentine's box for my son to take to school. It is made out of a shoebox. Can you believe that it is still in good shape?

Two mice out of acrylic yarn that someone gave me. I want to make another one and fill it with catnip for my cat.

I started working on a knitted octopus (free pattern on lionbrand.com). It made seemingly complicated patterns easier. This is still one of my favorite toys that I have made.

I made my 1st milk carton wallet, and I began experimenting with soda tabs to make a purse.

There are other things as well, including a nice post on what you can make out of different recycled materials. Thank you for taking a walk down crafting memory lane with me.

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is here and I would like to share what I have been making for this special day. This is a crochet heart made from 2 soda tabs. Using a size us 3 crochet hook (a very small hook) and some crochet thread, make some single crochet stitches around the top hole of one soda tab. Then over lap another soda tab so that the bottom holes are on top of each other but at an angle. Then crochet through the 2 layers of the bottom hole. Then crochet through the top hole of the 2nd soda tab. Slip stitch into the first soda tab. Then using a double crochet, go around the whole heart one more time, then bind off and weave in the ends.

You can put a chain through the two top holes and wear it as a necklace.

This cute little puppy with a heart rug is for my toddler. You can download the free pattern on ravelry. It's a easy pattern and can be made in one night.

This sack boy is for my 10 year old who loves to play the Play Station 3 game Little Big Planet. Sack boy is the main character in the game. This will be the 3rd one that I have made for him. I call him the Ninja of Love. When using the pattern, you have to tweak the body and head because the pattern wasn't written very well. I will be posting my modified version of the pattern soon. To get the red band around the eyes, change the color in rows 20 - 28. He is wearing a soda tab heart bracelet, as a type of Valentine's. This time around I did not stuff the head as firmly as I normally do, thus the head is smaller than the other two that I've made. I also cut 5 straws in half and joined the 10 straw pieces together with 2 rubber bands to make the spine. The pattern calls for less straws which isn't enough to with stand him being played with.

Its Easy Being Green Episode 13: Crafting with T-shirts

The episode of "Its Easy Being Green" that airs tonight is about crafting with t-shirts. There are several things that you can make out of an old t-shirt. You might recall one of the first episodes was about quilting. I had showed how to make a Grandmother's Flower Garden style quilt out of t-shirts. Here is the blog link about it, and here is part one of the 3 part video from the show. There are other t-shirt quilts out there as well. Because t-shirts are so stretchy, you might want to starch them or use a template before piecing them together.

Next I showed how to make tarn or t-shirt yarn. You can see this how to on a past blog post. Here is a set of blogs posts that I have made about making and using tarn. You can also check out Cindy's blog at myrecycledbags.com for other tarn projects. She gives patterns for different things including a baby bib and items for your kitchen. Here is also a google image search for t-shirt yarn. Here is a list of tarn projects on ravelry.

The next item shown on this episode was how to make a reusable shopping bag / an easy tote bag out of a t-shirt. You might have seen this on the Martha Stewart show. You cut off the sleeves and the collar of the shirt. Turn it inside out and sew the bottom closed. Turn it right sides out and now you have a bag. Where the sleeves were are now the handles.

After that I showed how to make 5 bags out of 1 t-shirt. You can see my blog post on this here. You can also see a video how to at Fake Plastic Fish's blog. These bags are perfect for your produce instead of those plastic produce bags. The sleeve bags are good for carrying money, jewelry, and snacks in. The drawstring bags made from the bottom half of the shirt are also good for toys, gifts, and craft projects.

I was only able to explain how to make a lined tote bag out of a t-shirt on the show. Here is the step by step on how to make it.

Here is the tote bag that I made from a Friendly's work shirt. You used the bottom of the shirt for the top of the bag, because it already has a finished edge. You cut it from arm pit to arm pit and use the bottom half for the bag. Turn it inside out and sew the cut edges together, then sew the corners so that the bag lays flat when filled. For the handles I braided the bottom seams of several shirts together, then just sewed them on.

There are several books out there on different things to make out of a t-shirt. I own "Save This Shirt: Cut It. Stitch It. Wear It Now!" by Hannah Rogge. You can also visit the ravelry group Trash to Treasure's t-shirt thread for other ideas. One item that I found really cute was making a ruffled skirt out of a few old t-shirts. You could also make a t-shirt shrug, add some lace to the shirt's neck line, and much much more. Many people also use really old shirts as rags for cleaning their home and car.

One of my favorite resources for how tos on re purposing your t-shirts is Thread Banger. They also have a you tube channel and a vid-cast / podcast. I subscribe to both.

Also if you are looking for some fun and unique t-shirts to wear, checkout Threadless. I am wearing one of their shirts in this episode.

This episode of my show will be on my you tube channel in 2 weeks. The link for my you tube channel, textiles4you, is in the upper right hand side of my blog.

Its Easy Being Green Episode 14: Kelly Beatty & Light Pollution

Tonight I taped 2 new episodes of my local access t.v. show "Its Easy Being Green." My guest for the first show was Kelly Beatty, who is an amateur astronomer and a science journalist. You can read more about him in this link. Kelly came on the show to talk about light pollution, which is something that he loves to educate people on. Light pollution is when there are to many lights, especially certain kinds of lights, that make it hard to see the night sky in all of its glory (stars that light up the sky).

He showed how you can see the lights of our planet from space. In the United States, most of the light pollution happens east of the Mississippi River. He also noticed a difference in the light pollution in where I live vs where he lives (different parts of the same town). I live closer to a larger city and thus I have more light pollution around my house. We talked about how using LED lights and solar lights around your home is better. It is also better to use motion sensitive security lights vs the ones that just stay on. The best kind of lights to have outside are the ones that point down / radiate the light downward vs ones that shoot light up into the sky. Residential lights are a very small percentage of the light pollution. The biggest ones are the street lights. Also business lights (both indoor and outdoor) contribute to the light pollution. Our town has a light ordinance so that it restricts how much light pollution comes from any new outdoor lights.

One way to do this is to change the street lamps from having a bowl like light fixture coming from the bottom of them. This bowl like cover makes light radiate downward as well as to the sides.

Instead they should have a flat cover over the light so that the light only radiates downward. This will help reduce the amount of light pollution. Also it is less harsh for your eyes.

Light pollution also effects animals. Kelly said that some bird migrate at night using the light on the horizon as their guide. Some of these birds have been know to follow the horizon light, which ended up being a large city due to light pollution, to a lit up building. Then they would circle the building until they died. Very sad.

To learn more about light pollution, please visit http://www.darksky.org.