A little bit of Gossip

Dear Anne, who is the Sewing Editor for the blog, Craftgossip, very sweetly featured my Valentine's Lovebirds Onesie tutorial today.  Anne manages the content for all the lovely sewing projects and you will find no shortage of inspiration in her collection.  Thank you, Anne!

How to make your own stamped hand-printed market tote bag

Hand-printed muslin tote by Eden and Eliot

Sign up for our February Giveaway to win a lovely hand-stamped dish towel with this same leaf pattern here.

Bringing your own bag to the grocery store is all the rage now so its no wonder that every store seems to have its own store-branded recycled "I-used-to-be-a-plastic-bottle" carrier.

For one thing, they are usually not the most attractive bags - the graphics can be screamy and even worse,  the news media reported last December that lead was found in some of the bright inks that were used to logo these totes.

I love to bring my own bags, so I thought I would try to make some that would be fun to carry around.  Here's what you need:

Materials

• Blank cotton bag (I found muslin bags at my neighborhood dollar store)
• Rubber stamps of your choice (bold graphics without alot of fine lines will work best)
• Fabric inks eg. Speedball Screenprinting ink, or
• VersaMagic Chalk Ink stamp pads
• Rubber brayer and plate or cookie sheet (if using screenprinting ink)

Instructions
1. Prewash the bag in cold water, and dry without using fabric softeners. You need to wash the sizing out of the fabric or the ink will not print well.  Press and smooth flat.

2. Figure out how many stamped impressions you can make on the fabric, mark the center of your design and start there.  For the bag shown above, I made two rows of 7 impressions, so I marked the middle and stamped to the left and right.  If you are meticulous about spacing, you can mark each spot and stamp from one end to the other, but I find it easier to eyeball it from the middle.

3. Prepare your ink.  If you are using screenprinting ink, scoop out what you need with a clean spoon and spread it on your plate or cookie sheet.  You'll get better results if you mix at least two colors together and don't use it straight out of the jar.  Its an old habit of mine from my painting days, and I know from experience that the color comes out much richer this way.  Use a clean spoon for each color.

4. Mix the colors directly on your plate and use your brayer to smooth out a even coat. Apply the ink onto your stamp using the brayer.  You should transfer an even coat onto the stamp.  Always test on a scrap piece of  fabric!  Once you have gotten the hang of transferring the right amount of ink onto the stamp, press firmly onto the fabric with even pressure.  Do not wiggle.  Lift quickly.  Repeat.

5. Clean the stamp well before changing colors.  For the bag above, I did the top row with Peacock Blue mixed with White, and bottom with Brown and a little Black.

6. When the prints are dry to the touch, put a piece press cloth over it and set a hot, dry iron on it for about 20-30 seconds.*  This will heat set the ink and render it washable.  Make sure you cover every part of your design.

*Actual heat-setting time will depend on how hot your iron is. You can do it a little longer to be safe, as long as you use a press cloth to protect your fabric.

**If you are using the fabric stamp pads, you can skip all the mixing and brayer action but you will still need to heat set it.

Hand-printed muslin tote by Eden and Eliot

Finally, a close up of my totes.  I made a run of 6 bags and was going to put them in my Etsy store but ended up giving most of them to friends.  Make a personal label for it, and fill it up with goodies for a hostess gift.  Or stamp a bunch of them for birthday party favors.  They will also make a fun afternoon activity with older kids.

If you do end up making these, I'd love to hear from you.  Have fun!

A treasure trove of patterns

A happy thing happened today....my Valentine's Day Lovebirds Onesie tutorial made it on the home page of The Pattern Depot as the featured sewing and tutorial site of the week!   For a newbie blog, I'd say its a pretty great feeling. Thank you, Eunice. It's sweet of you to include me in your wonderful collection of patterns and tutorials.

Valentine Lovebirds Onesie Tutorial - How to make a fusible-web and raw-edged applique

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Valentine's Day is just round the corner so I thought I would make a lovebirds themed onesie for Eden, who is always running out of play clothes.  While I was at it, I put together a simple tutorial for anyone who would like to try making this.  A hand-crafted onesie makes a sweet, personal gift for a birthday girl or new baby.

Materials

• 1 blank onesie or t-shirt
• 3 fabric scraps in red, pink and/or  red-pink combo
• Iron-on fusible web (eg. Wonder Under 805)
• Tear-away stabilizer (eg. Sulky iron-on or self-adhesive)
• Sewing machine needle for knit fabrics
• Sewing machine with satin foot
• Sewing machine thread in red
• Hand-sewing needle
• Embroidery floss in red

The first thing I do is to gather my scraps and put them together on the table to see if the colors will work well together.  Since this is a Valentine's Day design, I decided to go with a red bird and a pink bird, with some other accent fabric for the hearts.

Trace the outline of the birds on a piece of iron-on fusible web. (You will draw on the paper side of the web, the other side is the bumpy side which contains the heat-activated adhesive.)  Remember that you will be fusing onto the back side of the fabric, and then turning it over, so your applique cut-out will be a mirror image of your drawing.

Cut out the shapes of the birds from the fusible web, leaving a quarter inch surround.  Place the cut-out shapes of fusible web onto the back side of the fabric.  I like to do this over a light-table or hold the pieces up against the light in order to make sure the outline encompasses parts of the print I want to capture.

Set a hot iron (no steam) on top of the two pieces, and fuse the drawing onto the back of the fabric.  Carefully cut out the shape of the bird, along the traced lines. Do the same for the second bird.

Arrange the two birds on your onesie, making sure you mark their position with a pin.  In this case, I wanted the two beaks to be close to touching.

Peel the paper backing off the birds, and using a hot iron with a press cloth, fuse one bird at a time.  This is to make sure you have one fused in place so that you can reposition the second bird if you need to.

At this point, I decided to add some hearts, so I found a pair of Eden's old shorts with a cute polka-dotted print and cut a few out in various sizes.  I played around until I was happy with the composition and pinned the hearts in place.  The top three hearts will be fused onto the shirt, as I did the birds.  The bottom largest heart, I reserved for doing the raw-edged applique.

Turn the shirt inside out and apply the stabilizer (either iron-on or self adhesive) onto the back of your designs.  Make sure that the stabilizer is a large enough piece so that it provides coverage under both the birds and the hearts. Flip the shirt back right side out and prepare to sew.

I have a very basic sewing machine, so I used a tight zig-zag stitch.  If your machine has a satin stitch or other embroidery functions, you may want to use a fancier stitch. I love the scribbly effect of a zig-zag because it has that hand-made look, so don't sweat it if you don't stay perfectly on the edge of your shapes.  A little bit of a wiggle here and there actually gives it a personal touch.  Go slow and always pivot with the needle down.

When you are done, flip over to the back side and carefully tear away the excess stabilizer until you end up with something like this.  

Fuse and zig-zag stitch the remaining heart onto a scrap of jersey knit fabric using the same method as described above.  In this case, I'm using a scrap of heather grey jersey that matches the blank onesie.

You'll want to make sure the scrap is large enough so that you can securely pin around it.  Thread a hand-sewing needle with three strands of embroidery floss, and stitch around the heart with a tight running stitch.  You may use an embroidery hoop to help you, but I just sew it with the pins in place.

Keep the stitches even and close together.  Hide the knots behind the heart.

When you're done, carefully trim leaving an even allowance around the stitches.  Because of the knitted material, the edges won't fray and with washing, they will eventually curl giving it a quirkly, hand-made character.

The finished product!  Happy Valentine's Day!

A New Year's Resolution - Celebrating hand-made, repurposing old stuff and finding new reasons to love what you already own.

My New Year's resolution for 2011 is to make what I would otherwise buy.  Granted of course, that I can make a comparable, functional and reasonable version of that particular thing.

I daresay I will be screaming for a shopping binge after a couple of months, but that's what's fun about making a new year's resolution.  Its something well-intentioned, not completely thought through, with somewhat dubious chances of success.

For example, take this pair of slippers I made for Eden from a repurposed wool sweater.  Its a pattern from Betz White's lovely book, Sewing Green (note: it needed a fair bit of doctoring to get it to a child's size). I found one of my "so-very-yesterday" sweaters, felted it in a hot wash cycle, sewed it up and voila!

But all the good intention in the world won't get those slippers onto my toddler's feet.  Eden took her first look at them, and screamed, "No!" and ran in the opposite direction.

Its completely baffling because those are her favorite colors, she loves all kinds of booties/boots, and its soft, cozy and so darn cute.  See what I mean about new year's resolutions?  You can make them, but then life intervenes.

I had to buy Eden new slippers.

All I wanted for Christmas

When my sister and I were little, we badly wanted a Christmas tree.  But we lived in a part of the world where it was impossible for snow and the only kind of tree you could get was the plastic variety that came in a box.  It never occurred to us to pester our parents because of the way we were brought up, so we set out to raise money to buy a tree ourselves.

We poured our energy into building a Christmas Tree Fund, making sure we had plenty of time to earn what seemed like a monumental sum of money.  We did extra chores, (though it was a foreign concept to our parents to have to pay us), and we sold tickets to a musical we produced with an entire cast of toys.

The musical never took off, since my sister and I were the only mobile, talking members of the cast and we were terribly short-handed.  I forget what happened, but I think my parents finally took pity on us and got us a tree.

It didn't matter that it was a bright green, spindly thing and that we didn't have the best ornaments.  To us, it represented choirs of angels, dancing snowflakes, gingerbread houses, stockings by the fireplace, mistletoe and lots of merriment.  We never got the first five things on that list but we did have some good times.

Over time, we grew up and went on to prefer hanging out with friends over Christmas.  I got old enough to look forward to being entertained with fabulous parties, delectable food and great wine.  None of that homespun stuff for me now -  it was all glitter, sparkles and wearing black.

More time passed, I got married and had children of my own.  All of a sudden, I felt that I needed to care about "doing Christmas" right for my kids.  Well, it goes without saying that if only I knew how it was supposed to be done, I could reproduce all the necessary accoutrement to accompany  the absolute best Christmas so that my children would have these unassailable memories of happy childhood holidays to sustain them through all of life's unhappier times.

The first years of my married life, we got a real tree, lit it up, made Christmas dinner, wrapped presents, and hung stockings.  After my first child was born, we got a tree but left it bare.  I bought and wrapped presents but didn't put up the stockings. Christmas morning was a flurry of trying to photograph my daughter opening presents but all she really wanted to do was to play with the giftwrap, and all I really wanted to do was to sit back and soak in the scene.  However, there was special outfits to be worn and pictures with this person or other to be taken to "commemorate" the event.  When I balked, I was told that it was "for the sake of the children".

This Christmas, we have two kids and no tree.  No ornaments, no stockings, no special outfits and only the minimum of gifts.  In many ways, I wish I could go back to capture all the promise of Christmas from when I was a child, cradle it in my arms and give it to my children.  But I realize now that the magic is not found in the tree, the lights, the stockings, the cookies, the feasting, the lot of presents etc.  Because in truth, I didn't get most of those things.  It was the promise that mattered, not the stuff.

I believe that the point of all the work going into "doing Christmas" right would have been to be able to say to your child someday, "See, this is what your first (second, third) Christmas was like when you were little and here is proof  that I love you."  But if its love we're after, then we truly don't need all this stuff, especially when they are too young to care about it.

I hope my children know that I love them and that one day, they'll be old enough to maybe want the gingerbread house, the stockings and the tree.  I know that if they were to ever stage a musical of toys, I will sit through every take and every scene.  I will make sure that they know that they are cherished beyond measure, and that while they may not be able to earn their way into what they want so dearly, they may still get it, while its within my power to give.

And when they get it, they will also learn what it's like to hold on to the promise of something yet to be fulfilled, while reality falls short.

More magnets - the solution to an increasing number of cute baby pictures on your fridge door.

I am convinced that you can never have enough magnets for your refrigerator door.  Especially if you belong to the demographic set of thirty-something year olds who are new parents of babies/toddlers that I do.  My friends send me the latest and cutest pics of their little ones, and I keep them up long after the original occasion is over.

Seeing these photos helps remind me that I am not the only one going through this rough and tumble phase of raising young kids, barely holding on to the edge of sanity.  And of course, the Poison Control phone number is a handy one to keep up there as well.

Hence,  my solution is to acquire more magnets - not just the office supplies store variety, mind you.  If you are going to have to look at it many times a day (think how many times you open and close your fridge door), it'd better be something worth looking at.  I'm tired of staring at that grimy bit of post-it note, stained with sauce, held up by a chipped plastic disc.

Here is my first attempt in making my own special magnets.  Looking at them makes me feel just a little bit happier throughout the day - especially since they spell out the reasons why I should still get myself out of bed in the morning and live each day the best I can.