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:: August 4, 2008 Wee Wonderfuls Turtle
Joining the Wee Wonderfuls Hand Sewing for Fun Birdie is the Wee Wonderfuls Hand Sewing for Fun Turtle. He was a gift for a turtle-loving baby friend who is no longer a baby. I like how it turned out, and I just love hand stitching with wool felt. posted by in Finished Projects , Sewing :: Comments (10) :: link :: August 1, 2008 Whatever
A little subversive cross stitching, which will be a gift for an ex-co-worker and still-friend as soon as I find the right frame for it. I went straight from the pattern; maybe next time I'll try a full-on workup of "whatever loser." posted by in Finished Projects :: Comments (1) :: link :: July 22, 2008 Sesame Street Overload
We've been getting Sesame Street: Old School So awesome. posted by in Inspiration :: Comments (6) :: link :: July 21, 2008 New Ironing Board Cover
I didn't follow a tutorial for this, but I know they are out there. The old one -- the one that came with the ironing board -- sucked bad. It wouldn't stay on. It was just a piece of batting with a cheap fabric cover, not sewn together, and there wasn't a proper casing, just a thin cord run through some overlock stitching. Here's how I made the new one: 1. Laid out old cover, used it as a pattern to cut fabric for new one (just cut it roughly about 5 inches bigger all around -- should have even gone a couple inches more) 2. Laid out old pad, used it as a pattern to cut some batting for an extra layer of padding. 3. Folded old muslin fabric cover over the two layers of batting, and stiched all around. Intended to sew this to the wrong side fabric cover, but then decided not to. 4. For casing, folded about 1/4" in on wrong side of fabric and pressed down, then folded another 1/2" in and pressed. 6. Unfolded this casing and stiched in a buttonhole in the 1/2" hem at the tip of the cover in which to insert the cord. 7. Sewed the edge of the casing down with a zigzag stitch. 8. Ran cord through the casing with a safety pin. Done!
The fabric is from an Urban Outfitters tapestry. And remember when I got my new iron? Thanks to some intervention by Weeks Ringle, Rowenta sent me a new iron after I wrote that entry. It is an excellent iron and I need to post a full review soon. I just like the looks of the Black & Decker classic more. posted by in Finished Projects , Sewing :: Comments (15) :: link :: June 12, 2008 A Year of Ott
Our Otto is one year old today. Ott (which he can say). Toto. Totebag. Looking through all these photos, trite but true, I can't believe how much he has changed in so little time. Especially: When did all that hair come in? There's always something extremely difficult about each stage of infanthood, but there's always something going on even more extremely wonderful. Right now he's walking (wonderful) and exploring (following him around every waking second - difficult). He's starting to puzzle things out, like how to hold the pop bead in the bath water just right, so that bubbles come up as it fills with water. If he takes a piece from something he tries to figure out how to put it back, and if he can't, he hands it to us, always saying "oin?" (Wonderful.) He's holding his little graham crackers and biting off little pieces -- no need to break everything up, paranoid first-time mom. But how did he learn that? (Wonderful.) He's gone from downing two jars of whatever baby food per sitting to refusing, with an unambiguous head-shake, pretty much anything but yogurt. (Difficult.) He's starting to show fear and sensitivity -- last night I yelped "NO!" when he stuck his entire fist into a smoothie, and he started crying and wanted away from me. That was awful. (Just the first in a long line, I know. Difficult.) He knows that the remote works the TV, that grandma's voice comes out of the phone, and that the mouse works the computer. He comes up when I'm working and pushes my hand out of the way -- HARD -- and takes over the mouse, looking at the screen as he moves it around. I'm realizing what "setting a good example" means and that we need to start -- now. (Difficult.) He is happy and wonderful and curious and the cutest sweetest baby ever. I have kissed his gigantic cheeks a million times every day. He has lived with us for a whole year now. Wonderful wonderful wonderful. He's officially a toddler now, and we're just now getting glimpses of the new set of difficult/wonderful things in store. (Parents - what do you wish you had known? That's my favorite kind of advice.) Happy birthday baby guy, we love you big time. posted by in Baby :: Comments (30) :: link :: May 31, 2008 Olive's Quilt
This is a quilt I made for Olive. I neglected to show you the awesome bunny her mama Gina knitted for Otto (uhh, last year ...); I will have to do that next! It's the Easy Lap Quilt pattern from Amy Karol's Bend the Rules Sewing Now, Olive is not a traditional pink-y kind of girl. I started making this before Olive was born and my Otto was new -- I think a small part of me was depressed about the relative non-cuteness of baby boy clothes so I totally girled out on this. I thought it was more orange and yellow, actually ... that's why it's a good idea to take pictures of your quilt top in the assembly stage; you learn truths that being up front and personal tends to hide! But I think (I hope!) that Olive and Gina don't mind this pink. More pictures: detail, quilting, and back. posted by in Finished Projects , Quilting :: Comments (9) :: link :: May 1, 2008 Camilla Engman Theme
Camilla Engman iGoogle home page theme! I got mine. posted by in Miscellany :: Comments (1) :: link :: April 30, 2008 Takashi Iwasaki
Collages by Takashi Iwasaki, via Martin Klasch. I get so much quilt inspiration from collage art. Iawsaki's embroidery, "Abbies", and paintings are incredible. posted by in Inspiration :: Comments (5) :: link :: April 15, 2008 Announcing True Up
I know I've been scarce. It's because I've been consumed with a new project, and today I'm finally ready for the reveal. I'm thrilled to announce True Up, a blog devoted solely to fabric. All fabric, all the time. Fabric love 24-7. I got the idea last year after I lamented that I couldn't go to the fall Quilt Market to get a sneak peek at all the newest fabric lines being released. Even if I could get the time off work and take the journey with baby in tow, they wouldn't let me in because I'm not a shop owner or manufacturer or press. But wait. Wasn't Dioramarama press? Kinda? I mean, I write about fabric a lot. I thought maybe they'd accept someone with a blog about nothing but fabric. Wait. A blog -- all about fabric?! Why doesn't such a thing exist? How great would that be? I already spent so much time looking around online for new and vintage fabrics, and dreaming about my own patterns, it seemed like a job perfectly suited for me. Even though the idea came from my desire to go to Quilt Market, the project quickly became far more than a means to that end. It feels like I'm finally answering my calling. So, after months of planning and mucking around in Wordpress (to which I have switched after being a Movable Type person since the beginning of blog-time), my all-fabric, all-the-time blog is ready for the light of day. Please take a look and let me know what you think. I don't know quite what the fate of Dioramarama will be in the midst of all this, but I plan to keep it going (at the slow pace you've come to expect!) for the time being. posted by in Dioramarama News :: Comments (9) :: link :: March 12, 2008 Dyeing Lessons
For my baby shower my friend Christie gave me some hand-dyed/stamped cloth diapers (to be used as burp cloths). I love them and ever since I have wanted to try my hand at dyeing. After what seemed like a long time gathering all the supplies and finding a some time this past weekend, I got my chance. Here's how it went.
I bought three colors of procion MX dye from my local art store: chocolate brown, avocado green, and pearl gray. You also need soda ash, but the art store was out so I went by the pool store for some. When I asked the guy there for some, he asked me immediately if I was doing some dyeing, so they are familiar with this request. I gathered a bunch of cotton onesies, new big ones and old small ones, and bought three yards of Robert Kaufman kona PFD. All together it weighed 2 1/2 pounds. Each 2/3 oz bottle dyes one pound of fabric so I figured I was good. You also need salt -- a lot of salt -- two cups per three gallons of water. We had a big box of coarse Kosher salt on hand and a container of regular table salt. Now that I (duh) read the instructions on the Jacquard site, I see you're supposed to use non-iodized salt. I knew the coarse salt would probably not dissolve well, and thus cause problems, but I forged ahead anyway. I'm not too into the mottled, variegated hand-dyed look; I was after more solid colors. Apparently the mottled look is best achieved by the low-water immersion technique, so I opted for tub dyeing and pretty much just followed the directions on the bottle of dye. However along the way I referenced pburch.net and Lisa Call's great series of posts on her process.
I got the fabric wet, then filled three buckets full of hot tap water and dumped in the salt. I didn't pre-mix my dyes or use urea, just (carefully) dumped each jar into the salt water mixture. You have to use a mask and gloves as you do this, as the dyes are very toxic in powder form. Then I put the fabric and some of the onesies in and stirred. The soda ash goes in next. I realized I was supposed to have already dissolved the soda ash in water. I decided to just dump it straight into the dye solution. It is coarse, about like laundry detergent, so it probably didn't dissolve all that well. However, the brown and green looked great immediately, rich and deep. The gray looked bad from the get-go, more purple than gray and with lots of spots all over.
I let it sit for a little while then added more onesies, so that they would come out a shade or two lighter than the first fabrics I put in. (They did.) I let it all sit, stirring occasionally, for a few hours more. The dye jars say 50 minutes but I let it go longer. Then I removed the clothes and fabric from one bucket and ran them under the faucet a little bit. I squeezed them out, put them aside, and dumped the bucket of dye solution down the drain. I was worried about staining but there was none. Then I transported the fabrics in the empty bucket to the washer, which was filling with cold water. I repeated the steps for the other two colors. You can wash them all together without worrying about color transfer. Last, I ran two more cycles on hot. Lisa Call recommends turning your water heater up to max before you do this so the wash water is as hot as possible. The heat is what removes the leftover dye at this stage, so you want it as hot as possible. I didn't bother with synthrapol, a special detergent that dyers use that bonds with the remaining dye molecules and wisks them away. The results:
The gray was all but disastrous. Clearly the dye powder didn't dissolve very well before I put the fabric in. I think there was a layer of powder still on top of the water that hadn't busted through the surface tension before I added the fabrics. Although, the second round of onesies turned out great! (Oops - no picture of those.) The brown and green turn out lighter than I thought they were and far less than solid. Turns out I didn't stir the mixture enough. Still, Otto wears it well.
posted by in Other Crafts :: Comments (49) :: link
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DVDs from Netflix and have come to the conclusion that it'd be worthwhile to buy them. Here are some classic segments on Youtube:
. So easy, in fact, that I went from my memory of the pattern photo and didn't even reference any measurements. I tried to do the quilting similar to 
