I had a day of sewing that started off with a little beanbag for Mike’s spacephone. We’ve been listening to his iphone as we drift off to sleep at night and thought it would be nice to have a little dock for it. Mike also uses it for his alarm clock. All I did was cut two six-inch squares, sew around 3 1/2 edges, filled it about 2/3 full with dried lentils and sewed it shut. Instead of laying it flat, I made a fold in the bottom so it kind of sits like a triangle.
Since I had the sewing machine out and after seeing Cynthia’s and the Ookie’s quilts, I thought I’d try a mini-quilt. But opted, instead, to make a quilted table runner. And instead of making a bunch of fancy blocks, I make 1 log cabin blog and two additional “blocks” that consisted of 3 strips sewn together. I didn’t think I was ready for lots of math and all that measuring. So I sewed my three blocks together, made a quilt sandwich and did a big whack of freestyle stitching. Turned out that’s my favourite part. I just doodled on the quilt with the sewing machine and I really like how it turned out. I think I should do more of that. Here’s the photo:
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I was as surprised as Dion Phaneuf* this morning to find that I had actually nearly finished my rug. Finally! The Year of the Ox wasn’t kidding. Just one long year of putting one foot in front of the other and feeling like the field would never be tilled. I didn’t think I’d ever get anything completed. But today, I finished the rug! I spent just about the whole day yesterday ripping and rolling fabric – the most time consuming part of the project. Crocheting it was easy.
I thought I would have to block the whole heavy carpet by soaking it in the tub and then drying it off in between towels and putting something heavy on it so it would flatten out. But instead, I just ironed it. I turned the iron on to the highest setting, hit the steam button a lot and it flattened out into a perfectly flat circle. Yay! You can’t do that for every crochet project, unfortunately. I only ironed this instead of blocking it because the fabric was made of cotton (I’m sure there was some polyester in there, too) and is safe to iron out. I would not do that with wool (NO!) or mohair (NO!), but piles of torn fabric you’ve had in your closet for at least 4 years? It’s totally cool.
Would you like to see it in our front entrance? You can see it below…
*Hockey Talk – Dion Phaneuf was traded this morning to the Toronto Maple Leafs from Calgary. I didn’t see that coming.
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I’m a big fan of the website, Kind over Matter. It’s a feel good and happy website that also promotes artists and their work. I decided last week to participate in their Artist’s Trading Card swap and created this ATC. The rules of an Artist’s Trading card are minimal – the size of the card is 2.5 inches wide by 3.5 inches tall. And for this particular swap, the work had to be flat – so nothing could be added that doesn’t lay flat in an envelope.
I started with some white cardstock, got out the iron, covered the bottom in tin foil (Sorry Mom. I should have warned you about that. Don’t worry, no irons were harmed in the making of this ATC) took out my yellow and pink crayons and sharpened them in a pencil sharpener. I spread the shavings on the white paper and quickly ran the iron over the paper. It melted down into mostly peach, but there’s pink and yellow splotches on there, too. I picked pink (it represents the heart in feng shui) and yellow (it represents wisdom – again with the feng shui colour interpretation). I then added a quote I heard recently by Emmet Fox, a spiritual author. I like this quote a lot and have been thinking of it over and over. I guess it’s growing in my brain. Good thing those thoughts are now more positive, because if this saying is true, then I’ve grown quite a few turd plants in my day, I can assure you.
I wanted to write the saying on the card by hand, but it proved difficult to write with a Sharpie pen on the melted crayon background. Good to know for next time. I ended up printing the saying out on a label maker, and cutting the words apart. Then I just added some glittery glue on for good measure – just like Dr. Emmet Fox would have wanted it.
After making the little gold and yellow mat for the cabinet in the dining room, I decided to make a round red rug for the front entrance. I decided to throw away the worn out mat I paid $1.99 at Army & Navy about 3 years ago. I know! $1.99 for a little rug you wipe your feet on. Amazing. It’s like shopping in the Wild West over at A&N. I think you can find penny candy there, too.
I’m freestyle crocheting this rug. I’ve been ripping up all the dark red fabric I have in my stash. I did it this afternoon during a perfect movie for making noisy ripping sounds – a surprisingly disappointing Public Enemies. Oof. Sadly the dialogue was so terrible and corny, the rrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiip of the fabric was a welcome relief. And the ending? P.U. – that was the cornball icing on the cheeseball movie. But, if you enjoy a lot of tommy gun fire, I definitely recommend it. And the ripping of the fabric really didn’t take away from the rounds of shots.
After all the ripping, I connected the fabric pieces together and just started single crocheting in a round. I used the same technique I learned a few years ago at a crochet course I took. The instructor kept telling us to “put the crochet hook where it wants to go.” Very Zen instructions. Eventually it will be a great big circle. Right now it’s not a very big circle, but it will be once I get back to it. I think I’ll add a black border to finish it off.