Bathmat

My boyfriend’s bathroom is quite small, so there is no avoiding getting the main floor area wet when you shower. He needed a bath mat, or maybe I did, since I was the one objecting to wet socks. His shower curtain is striped with bright orange, green, red, and yellow, so I thought I’d make him a terrycloth bath mat with those colors.

My stash contained mostly neutral terrycloth, except for a striped hand towel I had hoped to turn into a baby bib, but which had discoloration in the middle I hadn’t been able to remove. Perfect: I just cut strips off the edge and threw out the center. A trip to Jo-Ann didn’t turn up any terrycloth remnants, so I went to a thrift store and got a white cotton towel that I cut into fourths and dyed with my on-hand RIT.

dyed terrycloth

Unfortunately I didn’t have any yellow or red; I was hoping the lighter orange would be more yellow, but no. Oh well. I didn’t end up using the fuchsia/wine piece since it was so far from the colors in his shower curtain. I pieced the rest together into a thick double-sided bath mat. The colors faded a bit when I washed the mat (I washed the individual pieces before making the mat, and then washed the mat about three times to make sure it won’t run in his laundry), and you can see that I didn’t bother with the “stir constantly” instruction on the RIT bottle, but I like that the colors aren’t completely uniform. I wasn’t sure how well I would like this while I was putting it together, but partially because post-sew washing puffed things up a bit and partially because it just looks better after taking a step back and contemplating it, I quite like it.

one side and the other

Containers

I’m pretty much obsessed with making containers for all the electronic gadgets that come into my life. My cell phone doesn’t have one, but essentially everything else does.

My little USB modem got a case out of leftover fabric from some capris I made years ago, and a (purely decorative) button out of my grandmother’s button box. It’s a simple pouch with a snap-closed flap. I like how it makes me think of a mushroom.

closed open

My previous camera had a pouch with a flap that came up a narrow side and over the top, and a pocket between the flap and the main pouch that would hold two spare AA batteries. The fabric was purchased as a remnant. Unfortunately it was AWOL when I went to take the photos for this entry.

My current camera has a pouch with no flap – there is an elastic loop that keeps everything together. I used ribbon to hide the cut edge so I wouldn’t have to turn it under; this fabric was from the Sew-Op and I wanted to use the barely-large-enough piece I had.

front back

My laptop has the same laptop sleeve that my previous laptop had. The fabric was clearance upholstery fabric and the ribbon was from my stash. It’s starting to show a lot of wear, though – my embroidery around the edges of the ribbon is coming out in places. I have pulled out the appropriate floss and will hopefully make some repairs in the near future.

laptop sleeve detail of dying stitches

Crochet with ribbon

I finished my work early one night recently and, taken by surprise by that event, looked around for something to fill a little time before bed. I decided to try crocheting with ribbon, pulled from my stash. I used PlanetJune’s Love Hearts pattern.

ribbon heart ornaments

The white and gold heart was made with 1/8″ wire-edged ribbon and an E hook. The dark blue heart was made with a J hook and non-wired ribbon that had loops along the edge; without the loops it was a bit over 3/16″ wide, and with the loops it was 3/8″. They both turned out fairly sturdy and I think crocheted ribbon baskets and catch-alls would work quite well. The one difficulty with ribbon, that slows down the stitching, is that it wants to coil up into a nice corkscrew as you go along. I could probably have alleviated that by detaching it from the spool, but even once I did with the blue ribbon it still coiled until the free end was short enough to no longer drag on the floor. Instead I had to smooth it every stitch or three. It still didn’t take too long to make these hearts.