craftlog

Pretty Little books

I saw the Pretty Little Patchwork and Pretty Little Potholders books at the bookstore yesterday! They both look awesome. I can't wait to get my copies so I can start making stuff from them. I was really excited to see that my coin quilt is featured on a chapter start page, and the staging for the green patchwork potholder is super cute.

finished resin jewelry

Here's how I finished some of the resin pieces I've posted lately.

Glued to ring blanks

1 layer clear, 1 layer yellow pastel, dremel drilled (I need to practice, obviously) with 4x fishing line

screw eye plus contact case molded and pastel colored

new design

Time for a site update. I feel kind of sad to see the old design go, since Becket designed it with me. It's been a long time coming, though. In the process of messing around with all my archive pages, etc, I noticed that craftlog hit the 5 year mark last week, and 1 million hits some time last month. That is crazy.

1. The font for the header is Ahnberg. I made the header and graph paper background myself.

2. I made a nifty iPhone icon for craftlog using the directions here and a free graphic from 123cursors (thanks, Google image search!) Obviously, it's a little pair of scissors to match my favicon. I will be shocked if anyone else in the world has craftlog bookmarked on their iPhone, but it at least makes me happy. :)

3. Also added a few new things to my bloglines (including one devoted entirely to googly eyes).

4. My artists and shops page had a giant update, since I don't think I've even looked at it for over a year. If you haven't checked there in a while, I started a list of shops that I've bought from. Also, lots of new links for things like resin jewelry.

5. Finally, I don't think I ever pointed out that I use a Creative Commons license for this whole site. That means that you are all welcome to take and repost my photos, replicate my projects, remix my ideas, whatever you want as long as you give attribution (a link is fine) and it's noncommercial.

Next on the list is updating my craft library.

cork ring

Adhesive cork cabinet bumper + ring blank = the easiest ring ever that is still super cute.

shoulder bag

I made Amy a shoulder bag for her birthday a while back. The outside fabric is a tablecloth from Ikea that I absolutely adore. Luckily there's a bunch of it left so I can make more stuff from it. Because it's a plasticy coated fabric, I didn't want to have lots of bulk at the seams, and I was worried my machine would stick on it, so that gave me the idea of using seam binding for the whole thing. I cut cross shapes from the tablecloth and the lining fabric (if I make another one, I'll also add a layer of interfacing), folded the edges up to meet and form the sides, and enclosed the raw edges with the binding. I love how it turned out, and it was remarkably easy (well, except for the part where I realized I couldn't bind the top edge with the sides already bound, but that wasn't too hard to fix). The handles are the same ones that Becket used for her pleated purse; they're from Tall Poppy (if you get them, don't forget the rivets). The lining fabric is a nice dark green cotton.

more resin

I'm moving to Seattle in a month, so one of the many things on the todo list is to use up all my unshippable resin. What a good idea for a craft night. :) Besides these ones, we also embedded buttons and coins, and I played around with layering colors with only slightly better results than last time. I'm mainly having trouble getting a flat first layer. Anyway, these are my favorites from the night:

My friend Matt embedded some bits from a circuit board. I like the LEDs best.

Another great model railroad figure one made by my friend Dannie. I love the composition.

Creepy little Mizna Wada girls from some stationery.

I really like these, colored with pastels and molded with a 96-well plate (finally found one flexible enough!) I have plans for necklaces and rings with these, if I can ever find any ring blanks I like.

These are some silver findings from a bead store. They have little holes on each side, which are too small for the resin to leak from; I didn't think to put a headpin through the hole until I'd already poured in the resin. :P

googly eyes

There was a sketch on SNL last night where Christopher Walken put googly eyes on all his plants (sadly, the video's been wiped from YouTube), and it's just aggravating my irrational desire to put google eyes on everything. They even had giant googly eyes for a tree.

failed resin experiments

Mostly for my own future reference: Normal poly 96-well plates don't release resin. Not even 12-well plates are flexible enough. Also, mix the pastel dust into the resin before you pipette it into a small mold, because otherwise it's really hard to resuspend.

wooden handled bag

My sister got me a really cool piece of vintage fabric (might be a curtain) which I've been itching to do something with. It seemed like a good match to these awesome wooden handles from Tall Poppy (doesn't look like they have them atm, though). Pattern was made up as I went along, and I'm most proud of a little clever construction trick I came up with to attach the lining at the same time as I made the tabs that go through the slots of the handles. The tabs go through the handles and attach with snaps so you could wash the fabric piece or even replace it with a different one. The only problem with it is that it doesn't open very far.

mac softie

I had this idea yesterday in lab and was instantly seized by a crazed need to make it. A bout of insomnia last night really helped move production along too. It's for a baby shower next week; what to make for the child of a computer scientist and a bioinformaticist? A toy computer of course, lol. I chose the old school Mac design because 1. I'm an Apple fangirl 2. we had a whole lab of these (can't remember if they were originals, plusses, or SEs) when I was in junior high, so they hold some nostalgia value for me (because, as usual, my crafted gifts are at least 50% about me me me), and 3. I am lazy and didn't feel like making a separate monitor and CPU. I kind of wish I'd put a smily face on the screen instead of the applique apple logo, but not enough to go back and redo it.

The obligatory rainbow logo is hand embroidered.

I made the pattern up as I went along, so I'm super happy/pleasantly surprised that it looks like it did in my head.

Check it: plush PC with Windows Vista. There are a bunch of stuffed wii's too, and this insane nintendo system with velcro screens to switch games. Is it bad that I have a design for a macbook on the brain now?

Oh, and just because the chupa would not leave the thing alone he deserves to be lolcatted:

loop pieced baby quilt

Since Amy posted her baby present, here's the quilt I made for Becket, I mean the baby ;)

I know that yellow and gray is a kind of weird color scheme for a baby, but I think it works, particularly knowing the family. The cool yellow/white/gray geometric print is actually a huuuuuge curtain I found on sale at Anthropologie. That's the fabric for the back of the quilt too. I think I might make a dress out of the rest of it.

So I thought I'd share my instructions in case anyone else is interested, and to show off the clever trick I came up with to get this done in time for the shower (though, for all I know, I might well have just rederived some well known quilting method, but I *felt* clever anyway). As you're reading through it, you might think it sounds crazy because, get this, you sew seams and then rip them out later. Weird, I know, but it saves major time and makes all the seams come out much squarer. I call it loop piecing.

All seam allowances are ¼ inch.

You'll need 9 coordinating fabrics that can alternate. Cut 5 inch wide strips from each, the width of the bolt (use 45 inch wide fabric, not 36).
Decide what order you want the fabrics, and sew strips together along long sides, right sides together. Iron seams.
Sew last strip to first strip, right sides together, to create a tube.
Square it up so the seams all match and slice into 8 loops, each 5 in wide. You should have enough extra fabric that you can cut off the selvages for a clean edge on both ends.
Using a seam ripper, open a different seam of each loop. Iron again.
Arrange the strips so you get diagonals of each fabric.
Pin adjacent strips, right sides together, to help make the corners match up. Sew. Iron again.
Cut backing fabric and batting 1 in larger all around than quilt top. Layer.
I tied this one with little embroidery thread x's at the junctions, but you can quilt it or tie it, whatever you want.
Bind by your favorite method (mine is to just fold the binding over and zigzag to catch everything at once). I made my own binding for this since I couldn't find the exact color of gray to match. (FYI, I highly recommend the clover binding tools. I have a couple of generic ones in other sizes, but now that I know how much better the clover ones are, I am actually going to replace my nonclover ones. Really, it's like night and day.)

A Trio of Kitties

Hello there - Amy here. I made these Denyse Schmidt kitties for Becket's baby shower: Papa, Mama, and Baby, from the "Steve" pattern.

Baby kitten was 1/3 smaller than Papa and Mama and made of a lovely wool felt contributed by Maitreya. Turning those arms and legs from felt was a bit tough!! You might recognize Papa's ears and tummy from other Craftlog projects, a piece of material Becket used in her very first sewing project, which also made an appearance in the Baby Shower Pocket Quilt. Other trimmings came from Maitreya's terrific collection, and from one of my excursions to MJ Trimmings. The button eyes were from The Great Philadelphia Button Haul (and mean that these kitties are shelf toys rather than for baby).

knit DNA

Look what my friend Carole made me: knitted DNA potholders! They are awesome and now live on top of my lab microwave.

Xmas wrapup

When I was putting away all the Xmas decorations today, I realized that I never posted a few crafts from when my family visited.

First one, I made everybody a tiny stocking with their name on it. I found a stocking template on the Martha Stewart website somewhere, added the name with a graphics program, and printed it out directly onto some slubby cotton ironed to freezer paper. I didn't bother with the bubble jet set stuff since these (presumably) won't get wet. Zigzagged the tops to catch the hanger, then zigzagged around the edge, following the printed-on outline. Cut it out, repeat 7 more times. They turned out a little more country-cute than I'd envisioned, but I still like them ok.

Radha and I just had to get this set of iron-together-plastic-beads-thing when we were out shopping one day. This is one of those kids crafts we somehow avoided up to now. Ariel made a pretty good portrait of my cat.

By the way, my new year's resolution is to be more productive, one prong of which is to stop wasting so much time on the internet. I just cut my blog reads list by about half, so we'll see if that lasts and/or makes any difference. For anybody curious, I'm using Getting Things Done because 1. it turns out that I already do some of their tricks, and 2. GTD has a huge online following. I think if I turn fangirl, that might help me adopt it and maintain it. Anyway, we'll see. Hey, maybe I'll even get more crafting done. :)

porcupine crewel

I saw this porcupine crewel kit that blempgorf got for 30 cents thrifting and fell in love. I commented asking if she'd like to swap, and amazingly enough, she was willing to part with it! I sent her a vintage bag kit I'd gotten at a church sale, among other things. I've been sick the last few days and it's been the perfect sick-on-the-couch craft. The pattern has a little flower top right (you can see it in the picture blempgorf posted), but I have left it off for now. I might go back and add it.

Kit is 2017 "Prickly Porcupine" from Paragon Needlecraft, designed by Barbara Sparre.