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My favorite essential crafting tools

This could be a very long list but I'm going to try to limit it to an arbitrary number, say 10. I do a lot of different kinds of crafts so that makes it hard but I'm trying to think of the things I use a lot and would not want to do without. Then maybe I'll talk a bit about each one at some other point.

1. My Mac of course. Being a graphic designer, almost everything I do gets touched by the computer at some point.
2. My sewing machine. I do a lot of sewing and mending, I think this is a must-have for every household.
3. My serger. Hmmmm. Yes, I could do without it but it's fast becoming my right hand for sewing projects.
4. My good Japanese fabric scissors.
5. My lightbox. I think my parents got it for me when I had just started the advertising design program. This year I got another lightbox that is round! and it spins! It won't replace my traditional rectangular box but it probably deserves its own post.
6. An X-acto knife and a metal ruler. I'm going to lump these together because they almost always get used together. Can I squeeze the self-healing cutting mat in here too?
7. My Japanese sewing awls (meuchi) This probably warrants its own post as well to explain why.
8. roll of 18" wide white paper. Someone gave this to me when I was in college and I have been using it ever since, mostly for drafting patterns but not just for sewing.
9. Flathead pins. If you sew anything these are really the best. Get the finer size with the heat resistant heads.
10. Beacon's craft glue. I hesitate to single this out but I discovered it last year and now I use it for everything. It bonds in a similar way and almost as fast as hot glue but without the heat, yet you can also apply it thin and get a repositionable bond like spray adhesive, without the mess.

Well, I can already think of a few more things, like Frances, my dressmaker's form, made by my husband. You can read about her here.

Word of the Day: Smarshmallow

smarshmallow (according to the girl)

1. those little white things Nana puts in your hot chocolate
2. white mushrooms

Snow fort a.k.a. Cinderella's tower

And now I am going to consider myself officially caught up to real blog time as these pictures were taken yesterday! Another storm this week brought 6 inches of powder topped with a good 3/4 inches of hardened ice. After the earlier success with the igloo, the girl and I decided to build bigger. We chose one of the 6 foot tall snow banks at the street end of the driveway as a good place to build a tower. The kids had trudged a path along the top of the ridge to the top of this bank already. The girl and I broke up the ice into "bricks" and carried them up to the building site. I did a little prep with the shovel and then we started laying the bricks in a semi-circle. The bottom portion I "mortared" with snow but you can see the "bricks" are simply laid on top of each other nearer the top. We practiced our princess waving to the neighbors and the boy enjoyed playing in the fort as well. They kids decided to play at being Pazu and Sheeta, characters from one of our favorite movies, must-see Castle in the Sky from Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki. (We have the Disney two disc set which includes the original Japanese version on the second DVD.)

Crow tee shirt (sometime in January 2009)

I'm not exactly sure when I made this because I didn't take the picture right away. The boy couldn't wait to get into it. He's been needing some long sleeve tee shirts so I've just been trying to make them from fabric or our old tee shirts that we haven't been wearing rather than buy, especially since he is so thin that the store bought ones tend to look too wide to get the sleeves long enough. My husband donated a grey tee shirt to the cause and I recut and serged it up one night, intending to leave it plain. The boy however wanted to know what animal I was going to put on it. Since we had been watching the crows outside the window earlier he hit upon that. I looked for some pictures of crows on the internet and he chose one in flight. I printed out several and then quickly composited them on my lightbox to get the features I wanted from each, the wings from one, the open beak of another, the grasping feet of a third. I then simply cut a paper stencil and dabbed on fabric dye and heat set it with the iron. I lobbied for a small critter on the run at the bottom of the shirt but the boy preferred to have the word "crow" so that's what I did. The boy was reluctant to help with the actual shirt but did do a second stencil of the crow onto a scrap piece of fabric that will hopefully appear on a later garment for the girl. All done in time to catch the bus to PM kindergarten. I'm afraid they are getting a little too used to this!

Giraffe dress! (1/17/09)

The girl has been mad about giraffes lately so I had to get this unusual Alexander Henry giraffe print when I saw it at the local fabric shop. There's nothing cute about it, until you put it on the girl! I used the same A-line shift pattern but changed the shoulder seam to accommodate ribbons instead and added pockets to the side seams. I also made it a little bigger, maybe a little too much but then again she should be able to wear it in the summer without a shirt under. I had intended to use wide grosgrain ribbon for the shoulder ties but what I couldn't find a good color match so I ended up making the ties from the lining fabric. For some reason I cut them on the bias. I really cannot tell you why. Now they are easy to tie and drape beatifully but they also do not hold a knot well no matter how hard I pull. So . . . I may have to sew the bows shut. The mock-neck shirt I made up on the serger from a rayon ponté knit bought for another project that never got used. I'm getting better at this serger thing! I also made matching wide bottom pants. The girl was not inclined to wear the pants the day I took the picture but she has since. It's scary how mod she looks in the brown top and pants and her brown suede boots. I think she wore this dress about four times the first week.

Mama made pajamas! (1/17/09)

I ordered this great Michael Miller snowboard flannel before Christmas but it didn't arrive until after Christmas. Still we have lots of flannel PJ weather to go up here in Maine so I sewed some pajama pants up for the boy. Do you think he likes them?? The girl is wearing a yummy soft cotton velour dress from Dharma Trading that I tie dyed about two years ago! Too short to wear without pants now except to bed. Dark yellow and tangerine I think, turned out to be a great color combo for her.

Scrub-a-dub-dub, Legos in the tub! (1/13/09)

We got the boy his first set of Legos for his birthday. Huge hit! The girl was quite interested as well, if only because it occupied both her brother and her mother. So we had a rather Lego Christmas as well. After Christmas, my husband dug out his old Legos to add to the fun. What to do with thirty year old Legos? Give them a bath of course! The kids enthusiastically scrubbed away!

This is a bit of a cheat but it's too cute not to post (1/13/09)

Here's the girl doing a great impression of Cinderella thanks to a kool-aid dyed play silk and an apron my mother made for me when I was a little girl! I should post a close-up of the apron fabric, it's a wonderful, delicate print of tiny birds amidst bamboo. The play silk I made quite a while ago. My instructions for dyeing play silks in the microwave are here.

If it sleets, make an igloo! (1/12/09)

We've had a lot of snow this year, starting earlier than usual. I love snow and the kids are old enough to really enjoy it. One of the storms dumped annoying sleet at the end of a good amount of snow. We don't like that sort of thing normally, but we decided to make lemonade out of lemons. The kids walked around crunching the hardened top layer into one inch thick pieces. On one side of the driveway the girl and I stacked the pieces quite easily into an igloo shape. She then requested a candle but since it was the middle of the day I figured we would wait until it was dark to light a candle. It snowed again before I had a chance to snap a picture!

The two-tone magnified bugs shirt (January 2009!)

Hey! I'm almost caught up, we're in January now. I got this cute bug fabric last year as a credit for something else. I really didn't have a plan for it but I finally figured out how to use a bit of it as an applique. I took two old tee shirts, one of mine and one of my husband's. Using the tee shirt pattern I created for the boy I cut the pieces to make a two-tone shirt, mostly because the light blue shirt was not big enough to make a complete shirt. But I needed the light blue background for the appliques to look right. I fused the bug fabric appliques to the shirt but ended up sealing the edges with clear nail polish and whipstitching by hand because I forgot to sew the appliques before finishing the shirt. I made a ton of mistakes putting this shirt together, mostly because I didn't bother to make separate pattern pieces for the color blocking. But it fits, it looks fine, and the boy likes it. And it's survived several trips through the wash so I think it will last the season. At the rate the boy is growing, he won't be wearing it past the next few months whatever the weather.

Stove top toy from miscellaneous craft items (December 2008)

The girl got a really nice set of metal pots and pans for Christmas from her grandparents. Problem was, she needed a stove, and she needed it now! Rather than using a cardboard box that wouldn't last long, I looked around for something that wouldn't take up extra room but would be appealing to the girl. I decided to use the top of a plastic storage drawer unit that held the kids' art supplies. I rearranged the contents to empty the top drawer to hold the new pots and pans and the girl's tin tea set. I layered several colors of craft foam to make the stove top. For a long time I despised craft foam but I've finally decided that it does have its uses on occasion. I made the stove knobs from some wooden craft pieces glued together and painted red. I used my snap press to put snaps through the foam pieces and glued the other side to the bottom of the knob. Once snapped together the knobs are secure but able to turn smoothly. I love it when I can take stuff I already have around the house and turn it into a completed project!

Pink pillowcase for the girl (December 2008)

Here's the girl wearing a pillowcase I made for her for Christmas. I finally figured out that she doesn't like the flannel pillow case even though she does like the flannel sheets. So I pulled this sweet pink cherries print out of my stash and matched it with a light green border left over from another project. The boy got a similar pillow case made to match his train quilt. This was an incredibly fast and easy project. And I can see how it will be nice to have extra pillow cases for overnight trips and such.

Skirt with serged ruffles from remnants (December 2008)

I sewed a few little skirts as Christmas presents for my niece and the girl was a bit sad to see them go so of course I had to make something for her too. Since I have so much fabric, I have been trying hard to use what I have and not buy anything new. So this skirt was made from nine inch wide remnants. I actually watched the DVD that came with my serger to figure out how to make the doubled ruffle. Pretty nifty. I used some hempcel for the ivory trim and lining. For the waist I used some buttonhole elastic to make the waist adjustable. It was pretty simple to sew it in a continuous loop with the excess coming out the back seam in the lining. If the skirt gets too short I can always add a longer ruffle to the lining to add length. I liked how this came out and plan to make a few more, with variations of course. No pattern, it's just two tubes of fabric about 1.5x the waist, sew the ruffle on the bottom of the outer fabric. Sew the two tubes together right sides together round the top. Turn and topstitch the edge and then again down about an inch or however wide your elastic is. Don't forget to leave the side or back seam open where you want to insert the elastic.

A bed for Petite Blythe (December 2008)

My mother went to Japan for a visit with her family and brought back a cute little doll for the girl. I had asked for something more little girlish than what is common here in the States. So Blythe needed a bed or so I was informed by the girl. So since petite Blythe had made the trip from Japan I decided to make her a futon as her bed and a pillow and blanket to match. All were made from scraps, and I do mean scraps. Both of these were left over from making a toddler dress out of a 1/2 yard of fabric so you know there wasn't much left!

Better Done than Perfect

This is my new motto. Okay, it's not that new, I think I've been trying it out for the last few months. And it's working very well. Some people would say I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I don't think so but my judgement is probably questionable. I am a procrastinator and I often find myself unable to finish a project not just because I don't have time but because I can't make a decision at some point or I'm afraid to mess something up. Making stuff with and for my kids has taught me that speed is sometimes much more important than accuracy!

1. Yes, you can make a duck with just three Lego pieces. 
2. If you wait more than two weeks to finish sewing those pants they'll be too short by the time you get them on the kid.
   
3. Minnie Mouse is just three circles and a bow. A bow is just two triangles. Try it with pancakes and jelly.

Bethlehem marketplace c. 3 AD for kids and adults (December 2008)

This is our church's second year creating an impression of what Bethlehem's marketplace might have been like about the time Jesus Christ lived. It's a little hard to describe but our visitors have enjoyed it enthusiastically. It's not a living nativity, it's more like a participatory historical drama, mainly geared towards kids 3-11 but enjoyed by adults as well. I'm not really sure how I came up with this idea but it evolved out of some conversations with my friend Jan and a great deal of searching the internet. Teens and adult members help decorate the auditorium and serve as different characters. When you enter the building you are greeted by wise men who hand out maps to the market. You then go visit whatever shops pique your interest. All the shopkeepers are dressed in the historically suggestive costumes we use for our Children's Workshop (aka VBS). The kids get to make bread, shape pottery, work with wood, hear stories, visit the spice merchant, and sample flatbread and unusual fruits and nuts. While it's a rather large undertaking for our small congregation we've found it to be a fun and educational experience and we hope to continue building and sharing it with our friends every year. Did you know that "Bethlehem" means "house of bread"?

This may be the storm . . .

. . . where the driveway just gets smaller. The snow started earlier than usual this year and it's stayed pretty cold so it's really starting to pile up. The bank in front of the house is threatening to engulf the lamppost. We have steps cut into a bank at the end of the driveway that allow the kids to easily climb up to sled down into the backyard. The bank on the side yard will have to take most of the snow tomorrow when we clear the driveway, if we can heave it up that high. This picture is actually from the last storm, but you get the idea. I don't really know how deep it is unpiled, three feet or more? Most of it has been powder, so we've done lots of sledding but not much snowman construction. So far it's been fun!

New life for a hand-me-down jacket and shoes (November 2008)

This faux suede/sherpa coat came to us in a bag of hand-me-downs from a friend. The shoes used to belong to the boy but were now the right size for the girl. Unfortunately Miss Picky only likes girly shoes. In an effort to get her to wear something that would be safe for running around in I decided to embellish the shoes and jacket to match with some autumn colored leaves. Since I really can't draw I looked online for some inspiration and came up with a few pictures of leaves on branches that I could use to make my own design. I used my Tsukineko fabric inks in empty markers from Dharma Trading. These are absolutely great for someone like me who is not so handy with a paint brush. Pencil didn't work so well on the suede so I took a deep breath and my chosen colors and worked freehand. I love the way this project turned out and the girl wears this coat every chance she gets. She even wears the shoes!

The front of the jacket and details of the pocket, the shoulder and the shoes:

Trains on a quilt (November 2008)

Although I've been doing some sort of sewing since I was a little girl, I was afraid of quilting for a long time. Probably the idea of so much fabric and so much time gave me commitment-a-phobia. A few years ago I successfully completed a somewhat unorthodox lap quilt. That gave me the confidence to try a bigger project. The boy has always had a fascination with trains, most boys do, don't they? Anyway, I decided that I would make a train quilt for his birthday and I started months before and managed to get myself to work on it a little at a time. (I have to pat myself on the back for this sort of major planning, totally out of my normal mode.) I found this wonderful vintage collage look train print from Robert Kaufman fabrics. Because of the large scale of the print I decided to showcase it in a large panel framed with borders rather than cut it up and piece it back together. For a long time I didn't know what to put with it so I ended up doing something totally out of character for me. I took the train fabric to the local fabric store and asked the ladies at the counter to help me pick out border and backing material. I came home with the dark red and blue. It took me one whole evening to do all the math necessary to figure out how to cut the fabric for the borders. Another evening was spent rotary cutting all the fabric to size. A third evening accomplished machine stitching the top together. Wow, I was shocked at how fast it was going together. At this point I hit a snag. Layering the quilt sandwich turned out to be pretty difficult. I finally found a great method the day before we moved. It required pinning the fabric to the carpeting and since we were moving into a house with no carpet, I had to convince my husband that it had to be done that night. He graciously helped me pin the quilt layers together amidst the boxes. After that was done, the quilt had to wait a bit for the whole moving operation. When I got back to it I began hand quilting around the motifs in the train print. This took a number of evenings but was surprisingly pleasant to do. After that I stitched all around the borders. I couldn't figure out what to do on the widest blue border so I left it unquilted. Hopefully that's okay, it has survived two trips through the washing machine. I made my own bias tape and finished applying that to the edge the night before the boy's birthday. After he went to bed I snuck in and laid the quilt over him. We woke up the next morning to surprised squealing!

The tie dyed chameleon, see him? (November 2008)

Here's a plain boy's tee shirt turned into a one of a kind piece of wearable fun with tie dye and a fabric marker. I can't remember how I got this idea but the boy has been very much into all kinds of animals lately and maybe we were talking about lizards? Anyway, something about the chameleon's curly tail and the tie dye spiral made me wonder if I could combine the two. I found a chameleon coloring page online that I then juxtaposed over a tie dye shirt in Photoshop to try out my idea. It looked great so I went ahead and tie dyed several tee shirts with the center of the spiral farther down than normal. If I do it again, I'll also need to move it a little more to the right but it worked out okay anyway. I also tried several different patterns of applying the dye colors and this is the one that I was most pleased with for this particular use. After the shirt was dyed and dried I then used my lightbox to trace the design with a fabric marker. My lightbox is one of my favorite tools for crafting and graphic design. I also found a groovy font to typeset the word "chameleon" and added that to the design. Surprisingly I found several pictures of real chameleons in that bright blue combo online! But they can't really change color to match their background, sadly that part is a myth.

Little socks and tie dye baby sack (November 2008)

Speaking of my friend Jan, she taught me how to tie dye. We get together every so often and do a batch for fun and for gifts and sometimes to revive stained kids clothes that still have life in them. We get most of our supplies including clothing blanks and dye stuff from Dharma Trading. I tried out a new colorway here: red/tangerine/blue. I like it quite a bit. The itty bitty socks were dyed to coordinate. Aren't they cute?

Before and after: Ladies tee into little girl dress (November 2008)

There's a bit of a story here. My good friend Jan handles the ordering and artwork for camper clothing at our summer camp, Gander Brook Christian Camp. (My husband designed and built the website BTW, pretty sweet don't you think?) Anyway, this is supposed to be about sewing. The last few years, Jan and I have worked together on the artwork for the tee shirts and while the colors have traditionally been gender neutral we decided to try some pink. It was a big hit year before last so we did another one this past season and I designed the typography myself and we picked out three or four colorways. Unfortunately they only come in camper/staff sizes which means 7/8 years old up to adults. Jan and I both have little girls who adored these pink camp shirts and desperately wanted one. When we were packing up the left over clothing at the end of the season I had the idea to turn a ladies size medium into a little girl dress. I lucked out in finding a long sleeve tee shirt to fit underneath that matched the color of the lettering perfectly. I turned the tee shirt inside out and went to work with the serger, love that thing. The dresses turned out quite well and our little girls were pleased as punch.

Meet Junkyard Bunny (November 2008)

Meet Junkyard Bunny. (Trying singing that to the tune of Jukebox Hero ;-) The boy brought me this little bunny and asked me to make a super hero cape for him. It had to be brown so I used a piece of grosgrain ribbon and some hair elastic. This is a good way to make superhero capes for small figures. The elastic makes it easy for little fingers to put on and for the cape to stay put. And it's very easy to make, you don't even have to sew. I suppose I should post a pic of the cape itself huh? Anyway, the boy then put said bunny into the junkyard truck and Junkyard Bunny was born! Expect to see more of this character, he's captured my imagination.

Helicopter long sleeve tee and serging (November 2008)

I made my own pattern for this boy's long sleeve tee shirt based on several tee shirts from my son's closet. I used heavy olive double knit cotton out of my stash. I layered a stripe of light blue helicopter print cotton knit across the chest. I also made a small pocket for the left sleeve which is embellished with an orange snap. The boy was quite pleased, as was I.
I've had my serger about a year I think and I'm really getting to know how to use it. I've never had any luck using a regular machine for stretch fabrics. I was initially concerned about how much I would use it but I've found it to be essential for working with knits and a great time saver for sewing non-stretch fabrics as well.

Mini pink backpack for the girl (September 2008)

The girl had been asking for a pink backpack for some time, just like her brother's. His was made a few years ago from an old pair of my jeans. I threw it together without a pattern but it lasted through two years of pre-school and it's still his go-to bag for going on a trip. I took the time to make a pattern for the girl's bag. This was particularly important because I was using some narrow remnants of a mod pink swirly canvas. I used a coordinating plain pink canvas for the sides and shoulder straps.  I pulled the zippers and hardware out of my stash. The first backpack used hardware and webbing salvaged from a damaged-beyond-repair bag. I used the shoulder padding from the old bag for both backpacks.

Word of the Day: Spreckle

Spreckle (as defined by the boy and his sister) 

1. those marks on your skin left by the tops of your socks or your underwear
2. can also refer to the wrinkles on your fingers and toes from being in the bathtub too long
3. occasionally refers to polka dots
   

Snap your comforter to its cover (September 2008)

You know how your comforter is always drifting around inside the cover? I hate that. I had thought of various methods for temporarily attaching the comforter to the cover while still allowing easy removal for washing but none of them seemed likely. I finally hit on the idea of using snaps along the top edge of the comforter and the seam allowance on the inside of the top of the cover. I put about eight across and it works like a charm! No more comforter sinking towards the bottom of the bed leaving flat, empty cover at the head of the bed. I cannot express how much aggravation those few little snaps have saved me. It doesn't show at all from the outside and it also makes it much easier to put the cover back on after washing.

Must have a moose shirt (September 2008)

Living in Maine, moose are a common theme. I hadn't realized it but apparently the boy has always had a moose shirt, or at least as long as he can remember. So when he outgrew the one he had been wearing he requested a new one. As I had recently made the whale shirt, he knew that I could make him a moose shirt. EEK! He highly prefers to wear tee-shirts so I pulled out a barely worn plain ringer tee and went off to the fabric store to find the right variegated brown to match. That was pretty tough. Even tougher was cutting out that fusible web backed moose and applying it to the shirt. I vaguely knew that I ought to be using some sort of stabilizer to applique on a knit fabric but I didn't have any so I just decided to tough it out. It looks pretty good as long as you don't get too close! The boy likes it, and that's what matters.

Dad's Jeans turned messenger bag for the boy (September 2008)

The boy started kindergarten this year. We were all excited and a little scared but he made a great transition and loves his new school. The only supply requested was a bag big enough to hold a standard pocket folder and library books. His old bag wasn't big enough so I decided to make him a messenger bag from a pair of his dad's old jeans. I didn't have a lot of time so I didn't really make a pattern but just started measuring and cutting! I did line it with a lighter weight chambray but forgot to insert the stiffener that I had planned to use. Oh well, it worked out fine. The shoulder strap is adjustable and the flap conceals one large zippered compartment. On the back I sewed one of the back pockets from the jeans. The boy found this pocket useful for bringing along little toys and action figures.

Retro boy's shirt from scraps (August 2008)

This shirt started out as 9" wide scraps of Kona Bay faux shibori pattern cotton fabric in a lovely shade of ocean blue. I thought it was perfect for a summer dress shirt for the boy but I was limited by the size of the scraps I had. I fiddled around a bit and managed to eke out the body pieces by piecing the back of the shirt and cutting the collar and pocket from contrasting black. Rather than buttons, I applied black resin snaps to complement. I appliqued a humpback whale to the pocket and drew in the details with my favorite permanent fabric pen, Identipen.