sewing Archives - Page 28 of 42

Pressing matters

Last week we discussed one of my Christmas gifts, and this week’s post was precipitated by another: a new ironing board cover. My old one was scorched and stained, prone to iron dents, and had never fit particularly tightly to the board. But what to do with it when I removed it? It is difficult for me to take something so large and just throw it out.

So I didn’t. I cut off the strip of little chickens that had drawn me to it in the first place, down at the wide end of the board, and then the largest piece I could get between that and where the board narrows.

I covered the large piece with linen, and attached linen to the back of the small piece. Then I folded the large piece in half and stitched all the way around twice, with the same variegated thread and two different decorative zigzags. The small piece got wide single fold bias tape stitched to the front, folded around at each end to the back, then the long edge folded to the back and stitched down.

The larger board is the size of a generous placemat, perfect for pressing small crochet pieces, such as these coasters made out of the medium size of Planet June’s Love Hearts.

Simple gifts

I taught my husband crochet last fall, and he took right to it. He’s completed three projects, including a scarf he gave me at Christmas, and has two in progress. He got his own embroidery scissors and set of hooks for Christmas, and I gave him some large pins last week for his upcoming multi-piece projects. Today I’m giving him a place to put those pins.

Honey for my honey! I began by tracing the outline of a Winnie-the-Pooh type honey pot, making four identical, symmetric pieces (of course it came out with much more extreme contours than that). I left out the tuck-in below the top rim and extended above the rim symmetrically to below it. After stitching those pieces together into a contoured tube, I added a disk of fabric across the bottom and sewed in a plastic ring (1.5″ diameter, outer edge) to hold the shape.

For the top rim, I had marked how far up the tuck-in should be and ran a running stitch around that part by hand. I filled the pot most of the way with sawdust, gathered the fabric until the opening was not much more than an inch across, then laid a second plastic ring above the gathers and took a few stitches to hold it in place. I folded the fabric at the rim to the inside of the pot.

For the honey, I first had to locate proper color fabric! That turned out not to be possible in my stash, so crayon tinting came to the rescue. I cut a 2.5″ circle of honey fabric, ran a gather stitch around about 1/4″ from the edge, and laid two 1.25″ circles of batting on it to keep the surface of the “honey” smooth. I drew up the stitches to make a disk and stitched across roughly to keep the fabric contained. Finally I topped off the sawdust on the pot, laid the honey on top, and stitched it on. I used a sticky lint roller to remove the sawdust from the outside of the pot.

If you want to make your own honeypot, I have a pdf pattern of the pieces, with brief instructions. Enjoy!

Babies and babies

Many moons ago, I wrote a quick tutorial on making baby bibs from a commercial pattern and terrycloth. Recently I had reason to use that tutorial, to make gifts for friends who’d had a baby Christmas Day and another pair of friends who had a baby in early January. Here they are!

First, a stained-glass bib.

For the same couple, an Irish bib with illuminated initial of the baby’s name, made from a St. Patrick’s Day guest towel.

For the couple with a sailing husband, a sailboat bib.

The second bib for the same couple, with an Eire-loving wife, a Celtic shield knot.

When I went looking for a Celtic knot to applique on a bib, I did not expect to find one that was traditionally placed on children’s clothing to protect them, but that is exactly what I found!

The knot and letter are done in ribbon, hand-sewn in place with matching thread. I formed the knot on a life-size paper printout of a photo of such a knot (in that case engraved on a button), pinning it first to the paper and then pinning each intersection and fold to itself. I unpinned it from the paper, lifted it over to the bib, adjusted it and centered it as best I could, and pinned it down. Periodically I repinned it, trying to minimize the number of pins used so there would be less for the sewing thread to catch on. It took a very long time. The letter T was formed directly on the bib and stitched down with somewhat less care than the knot, and then embroidered over to give it a medieval illuminated look.

The stained-glass bib was made by piecing strips and squares of terrycloth over the paper pattern, zigzagging them together, and then cutting out the bib and zigzagging the edge. After it went through the wash I had to darn one part of it that has started pulling apart. The heart on the T bib and the sailboat were both made by appliqueing terrycloth shapes with a zigzag stitch; the sailboat has additional details (lines and mast) made just with stitching.