Sunday, January 12, 2014

Ironing board cover

A proper start of this post would have been to include the "before" pic of my ironing board cover.  Both the cover and foam below were so worn that you could actually see the metal grid.  But I just kept ironing, despite the lovely grid impression that was transferred to the fabric. Yet when I found this tutorial on how to redo the cover using the old one, I knew the time had come......the time to make a new cover.  I got a bit lazy when it came to pinning, so the new cover doesn't lay quite as smooth as it should.....but I"m sure it'll be a definite improvement over the old!

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Owl hot bag

Not much to say about this guy.  I essentially followed this tutorial, but turned him into a rice bag instead of a bean bag.  The rice is contained inside another bag inside the owl, and is removable so that the outer owl can be washed.  This is important to me, as everything seems to get dirty in our house-- not to mentioned covered with dog hair.  I'd really like to make some small hand warmers, but the smaller size wouldn't be machine washable.....I mean, can you throw rice in the wash?  


Wonky rag rug


I'm working on a T-shirt quilt and after cutting the images/logos off, I have lots of fabric left.  Sure, I was saving it for rags and other potential projects, but honestly, I have waaaaaaaay too much fabric right now.  IE, I wasn't thrilled about having to save boring T-shirt fabric and how many rags do I really need?  And then I discovered rag rugs.  Easy Peasy, right?  Hardly.  I cut the fabric into strips too wide so my "yarn" was a bit wonky to start.  I like the idea of crocheting the rug versus braiding, because I just couldn't see sewing the braids together.  But first I needed a giant crochet hook, so off to the thrift stores I went.  Oddly enough, the three thrift stores I visited had multitudes of knitting needles by absolutely no crochet hooks.  Perhaps I should clarify.  Goodwill and the local humane society thrift store had plenty of knitting needles.  Value Village had neither needles or hooks. Very Odd.  So I broke down and went to Micheals, armed with a coupon of course.  Success.

Success with the purchase, not with the crocheting.  I'm not an avid crocheter (or knitter for that matter) and I certainly haven't crocheted in the round much.  I was having issues grasping the concept of the "magic circle" so I reverted to just the non-magic-circle way of starting.  That looked like crap but I continued on.  Once I got on a roll, the crochet looked better, but still looked dastardly and I decided I just couldn't live with it.  I took it apart.  Not an easy feat with wonky t-shirt yarn.  I reverted to the braiding method and braided a very long rope.  That was easy!  But then came time to sew it together into a rug form.  Ugh.  It didn't fit under my sewing machine so I attempted it by hand.  I quickly lost patience for that.  Into the trash it went.  Yes, I tossed it, consoling myself with the thought that as a rag, it would have ended up there anyway (I hate to throw anything away).

Pinterest suggested a hula hoop rug that looked much more doable and I thought I had a hula hoop......but no such luck.  Did I really want to buy a hula hoop for the project?  Of course not.  And I wasn't going to pound nails into a picture frame to make a loom.  Thankfully, the nails weren't necessary.  Following this tutorial, I just attached the warp/vertical yarn to the loom (she used string, but I used my t-shirt yarn, mistakenly using an ugly color, but anyway....)and went from there.  It went fairly well, and I'm glad to have found a use for that leftover fabric, I'm just not entirely certain that I'd do it again. 

Elephant stuffie

I found this adorable tutorial on Birch Ogranic Fabrics and just couldn't resist making it (not like I really need an elephant stuffed animal).   And it was so easy!  The only thing that didn't quite go well was the tail.....I meant for it to be pointed down, but instead, as you see, it instead looks like my Ellie is about to make a, er, deposit, lol.  Oh well, I still love her anyway!