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Repurposed denim

The Sew-Op got involved with a local art gallery, AVA, as part of their 40th anniversary year. They are located in a former denim overall factory, and wanted denim to be part of their activities for the year. They were very interested in straddling that blurry line between art and craft, using denim for purely decorative endeavors, useful items that are attractive but not decorative per se, and everything in between. We discussed the limitations of the medium (we have no industrial sewing machines, so there is a bound on how many layers of denim can be sewn in the Sew-Op) and some possibilities. As part of this meeting a few Sew-Operators, myself included, volunteered to make some sample denim items for the kick-off repurposing session. That was this past Saturday. Let me show you what I did!

This simple bag was actually whipped up for the organizational meeting. It’s two pieces of leg trimmed to equal size and sewn flat against each other, left open at the top and a little way down each side, after a strap had been sewn to one of them and the part of each that would be left open had been stitched across. I made a straight stitch about a half inch in from the edge so it could fray, and the strap has two slightly offset lines of zigzag stitch down the center. It’s all done in the thread color I refer to as “jeans gold.” After washing it I trimmed the sides, combed the bottom and gave it a little haircut as well.

This wall hanging was primarily to demonstrate the hanging method, dowel with string wrapped around it and hot-glued in place. I stitched around with a narrow zigzag about 5/8″ in from the edge, cut the fabric with a utility knife, washed it, and colored the slits with Crayola fabric markers. After stitching the button on I cut dowels to size and sanded their ends, and ran hot glue along the dowel against the fabric. If I had a higher temperature glue gun I may have been able to run the glue on the fabric and stick the dowel on afterward, but with low-temp the beginning of the line had solidified by the time I got to the end.

This guy was whipped up quickly with acrylic paint and those cheap plastic-bristled kids’ paint brushes. I used brown, copper, black, pearl, and glow in the dark. I couldn’t get a good picture, but the eyes, teeth, and claws glow.

The most admired item, however, was this bag made from the top of a pair of jeans. I cut off the legs, undid the inseam, and sewed a seam across. Since the back of jeans is wider than the front, I added a pleat just inside each back pocket to accommodate that. I had originally placed the side seams to minimize the width difference (the outseam is the topstitched one, so you have to fold on one or the other side), but the jeans had additional pockets below the right back pocket so I changed that to try to minimize the number of layers I was stitching through. To line it, I cut a rectangle of fabric a bit wider than the base of the bag, folded it in half and sewed the seams adjacent to the fold. Then I folded down the top so the pocket was as deep as the base of the bag to the bottom of the waistband (as measured by eye from the outside), pressed it, and hand-stitched it to the bottom edge of the wastband inside. I also stitched the inside of the waistband shut, but you can actually access the space between the bag and lining through the fly. All the pockets still work, as well.

The strap was the most time-consuming of the whole operation, because I braided it out of five lengths of ribbon (using these braiding instructions). I very much like it, though, and it seems to want to stay smooth and flat. After threading it through the belt loops I tied the like-color ribbon ends together in interleaved square knots (tie half of each, then the second half of each, so some of them are entangled), trimmed them, and glued them with Fray-Chek.

I also brought along my denim coaster from the craft countdown. I had one more idea for a bag but not enough time to complete it… perhaps in the future.

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.

Knook review

I received a Knook kit for Christmas this year. This is a way to knit with a crochet hook; the hook has a hole through it near the foot, you thread a cord through that hole, and the cord acts as your left needle. To start, you chain as usual for crochet, but then yarn wrapping and hook insertion change to methods standard for knitting rather than crochet.

I made an entire project with the Knook, the Circle of Love Mini-Cloth. The included Knook instructions only tell you how to cast on, knit, purl, and bind off, not how to slip stitches, increase, or decrease, so the patterns you can make are somewhat limited. Fortunately there is a large community of people designing simple squares for knitting, to use as washrags and so forth – two others I really liked showed a bat and a squirrel.

You can see blocking couldn’t cover up the tension change that happened as I proceeded.

Verdict? The Knook is good at what it does. The instructions are clear, the methods are pretty easy, the materials are good quality, and it really is knitting. However, I doubt I will ever use it again. I was faster at knitting when I was stumbling along with two needles and no real idea what I was doing. On the other hand, I believe that if I do try knitting again, I will be far better at it having used the Knook. I think it helped me understand how knitting works.

In sum, I would recommend the Knook as a gateway to actual knitting, a lesson allowing you to learn the motions of knitting and purling separate from the management of knitting needles. If you want to knit much of anything, however, I would say buck up and learn to do it the usual way.