Oc-Toy-Put or Oct-Toy-Put? Opinions? I was originally going to call it something boring and factual – Octopus Animal Organizer – I guess I try to cram everything into a name that I think someone might want to know. But my friend John came up with this catchier name. (It’s catchier, right?) In case you can’t tell, you hang it up and it lovingly strangles, or, um, hugs, 8 of your other stuffed animals. If you’ve already lovingly made your children too many stuffies, here is your guilt free opportunity to make another one! Or at least it was for me…

Squeezed into one yard of fabric, (barely, I’m all about the barely), for the next One Yard Wonders book. Props to maryanne for guessing that the pic of the pattern sketch in the post-before-last was an octopus!

Penelope loves her new octopus, and was a very patient little model, even when it was eating her.

Is out! I am (not) famous! And I have three projects in it this time! Especially lucky since I was so busy before the submission deadline that I only submitted one rather easy (but cute! really!) project which they didn’t take, but I also included some other ideas I had, and they gave me an extended deadline to work on them. (More time, a blessing and a curse!) I’ve hinted at them over the last year and a half, and now you get to see them!

Do you remember these felt doll house chairs? (Complete with tutorial) And the pondering about whether they would scale up?

Wait, I’ve blogged about that before! But now you can see the final project. I must be going senile! I bet you forgot too. Whew, safe!

Since this is from a year and a half ago Rebecca is 4 there. I was watching a video linked on Spincushion, and Rebecca Yaker says she thinks it would be good up to 2 or so, (and she called it a ‘wow’ project, so heady!) but I think she’s underestimating children’s desire to fit into little things. So while I probably wouldn’t make it for a 4 year old, my 4 year old would disagree. And my 5yo too probably. I should have asked her what her favorite project in the book was. The hedgehog book ends? No, that’s probably me. I’m betting on the Domo-kun backpack.

Rebecca & Trish (the authors, not my daughter) expressed amazement that this chair could fit into one yard when I suggested it. Here is the logic puzzle that I played with over and over to figure out how deep and wide and tall I could make the chair, and still fit it into one yard of home dec fabric (so 36″ x 56″) and keep all the main elements with the fabric print facing a desirable direction… it was both fun and headachy! I think I’ll do another post too on how amazing it is that they took all my sketchy illustrations and turned it into such a pretty book! That was what amazed me most with the first One-Yard Wonders book, the gulf between my input and their output, as a novice contributor last time I was bewildered that they were going to make a book out of what 101 people like me sent them! But it came back so pretty!

On to my second, in no particular order, project, the book holder. This is definitely the most practical, and I’ve had to make one for a friend already.

This is the prototype, slightly saggy, as it is before I increased the pocket dowel diameter. Although any version will sag with enough weight. Not the most glamorous or novel project, but totally the most useful. I love having this on our wall, it is a great place to keep track of all of Rebecca’s library books, and when I am going through her book shelf I will pull books we haven’t read in a while and put them up there to tempt us. The design lets you see almost the entire cover of the book, which I really like. (And you get more book area for less fabric, hahaha, gotta fit it in one yard, and I wanted it BIG.) Also I love looking at this fabric! I got it when we were visiting Tokyo so it always makes me happy. Rebecca and Trish wanted me to send them this original, but some of the screen printing came off when I pre-washed it (for all I know I bought it from a bin ‘clearly’ marked (in Japanese) “Flawed Fabric, discount!”)

So I made them another one with this Ecco print. I like it too! (It is a little bunched at the top because I hung it on the same nails as my original which is a little bit narrower.)

Third and most, um, ‘unique’ project:

You’ve probably seen the folded cloth flowers on traditional Kanzashi (Japanese hair sticks), well, I was thinking about my fabric origami project (Origami Organizer) that they had liked last year, and I had a clock movement that I was going to use to fix an antique dysfunctional clock, and well, I don’t think it is quite the ‘wow’ project that the first was, more like, hrm? Ha! I envision it adorning the office of some of the more interesting admins I’ve known. I designed it for brocade – wait:

Also totally flamboyant, but more Rococo/opium den than the modern print in the book. I should have fussy cut the pieces for the book version of the clock, so that the spots would have all come out in the center of the petals, or something, but I thought that might be cheating, since it would *technically* use more than one yard of fabric. I know, I can’t believe myself, I am such a rule follower! I follow rules that I think might exist. Ha! And I worry that my oldest daughter is such a rule follower… I need to work on me before I worry about how to help her!

So, which would you make?

And, oh, the giveaway, Storey publishing is generously giving away a copy of Fabric-by-Fabric One-Yard Wonders as part of their promotional blog tour, comment to enter. (This draw­ing is for US res­i­dents only, sorry!) [edit: giveaway will be open until Friday the 6th, because that is when I will have time to close it. ] So do tell me, which one of my projects would you make? I’d love to know. Or if you’ve seen the book, what project most strikes you?
Giveaway is now Closed!

Hmm, what would I make? There are a lot of bags and clothes in this One-Yard Wonders, much moreso than last time it looks like. Having never sewed a purse, maybe I should give it a try. Probably not though. Maybe the Drawstring Tidy Caddy (practical), perhaps the Tuffet Inspired Ottoman if I could find the space for it in our tiny crammed house (I really like the funky but simple geometry of the design), mmm, The Monster Backpack (Domo-kun!) would be very popular around here (super cute opening mouth with glottis!), the art (Toddler) smock would be pretty useful around here too, although I am *not* making all that bias tape. The Pig & Piglets! So cute how you can stuff the baby pigs in the mom, and they have little velcro noses to nurse! (But so much sewing!) Also squee worthy is the Little Girl’s Capelet! I wonder if I could talk Penelope into that… So what about you?

And don’t forget to check out some of the other blogs in this tour, past and future, for more chances to win copies of the book, and just for some good inspiration! The ikatbag review is especially nice if you want a review, & I just LOVE her blog! So much crafty cardboard goodness.

12/12/2011 Becka’s Project Journal
12/13/2011 Craft Buds
12/14/2011 Patch Work Duck Designs
12/15/2011 A Spoonful of Sugar
12/15/2011 Nifty Kids Stuff
12/16/2011 Nom Nom Nom
12/16/2011 Quaint and Quirky
12/17/2011 ikatbag
12/17/2011 Two Brown Birds
12/18/2011 Sharon Sews
12/19/2011 LBG Studios
12/19/2011 Carolina Fair Designs
12/19/2011 Under Construction
12/20/2011 Little Blue Cottage
12/21/2011 Craftzine
12/21/2011 Neuroses Galore
12/21/2011 Emily Steffen
12/22/2011 Jenna Lou Loves You
12/23/2011 Spincushion
12/27/2011 One Inch World
12/28/2011 Sew Sew Etc.
12/29/2011 While Tangerine Dreams
12/30/2011 Studio Cherie
January ’12 Lu Lu Carter
January ’12 Fiberosity
January ’12 Zuhause
January ’12 Obsessively Stiching
January ’12 No Bad Days
January ’12 Craft & Cackle
January ’12 AfricanKelli

In other news, I survived my spinning class yesterday. It went pretty well, there were a couple of kinders and first graders who needed more hands on help than I could give them, but really everyone managed it, in the end I think there was just one kinder who refused outright to spin, and one first grader who in the end had to hold the end of his wool up while I gave his drop spindle a few mighty spins and we twisted up the whole (3′) length at once. Sometimes you just need to move on to the next project. Out of 23 though, that’s not too bad, I think that means I made my 90% success goal. (We used this method if you’re curious.) It also means that there were several kinders who with a few minutes of personal attention actually did manage to successfully use a drop spindle with pre-drafted combed top. I learned it’s not actually called roving, unless it has some twist. But I need to be further educated there. So many new words! Diz, hackle, noil, long draw, short draw, rolag, woolen vs worsted, drafting, combed top, roving, sliver (rhymes with diver!?) so many words! If you are curious there is a lot of great information about spinning at the Joy of Handspinning. But like the snap of fingers, now I am on to weaving, because that is what I am teaching *next* week. I am learning SO much teaching this class! And weaving, it is so cool! Go read/watch this introduction to backstrap weaving! Now I want to make a backstrap loom, but my living room is currently full of a bajillion different table looms from school that I have to figure out and warp, so I don’t think I’m going to be doing that! At least, not this week.

So this is one of my egg dolls. She is cut on the bias to try to make her more plump and eggy with only two pieces of fabric. She is stuffed very firmly, not sure how ‘easy’ that is though, and has rice in the bottom so that she will stand up if you set her down firmly enough. So possibly not fun, and too hard. I need to see how she looks if I give one to Rebecca to sew and stuff.

My prototyping was a bit of a comedy of errors, only not as funny. I bought waxed paper rather than freezer paper to iron on to my fabric to send it through the printer (because I am cheap.) Needless to say it didn’t work at all. But what DID work which you might like to know, was to spray-starch the heck out of the sheet of fabric, mutter incantations about how it’s only a $40 printer, and send it through the printer. Anyway, it worked the 4th time. It jammed the first three. I remember there was a trick to it, I’m sure I’ll be painfully rediscovering it next time because I seem to have completely forgotten! Oops. Because I’ve gotten distracted by the textile exploration class I’m supposed to be teaching at Rebecca’s class. About things like weaving and spinning and felting and dying. I’m good with dying, okay with weaving though I’m still working on some of the terminology, fine with felting, I was going to say I know nothing about spinning, but hey, I learned yesterday! And it was really fun! So today I spent a couple hours at the playground with my drop spindle. I have a lot more to learn before I can teach this stuff to K-5th though! So, basically, the egg project is doomed. Like the two patterns I thought would be finished by the end of the summer. Doooooooooooooomed! Maybe that should be the theme of my Halloween decorating? Half finished projects grave yard. Too depressing. Dooooooooom! What a great word.

All good skirts start with making a large pile of ruffles. I love my ruffling foot. And I love being able to serge the top and bottom edges of the ruffle fabric and not having to hem all eleventy billion yards. I will be sad when serged hems are out of style. But that probably won’t keep me from using them!

It is possible that all good skirts start by finding some awesome fabric. In which case this good skirt got two good starts, because I LOVE this Kokka Treffle double gauze print of Alice in Wonderland. Double gauze fabric is such an lovely floaty but substantial weight for a skirt! Love love love. I originally ordered three yards of it from PurlSoho, and I was crushed when I only got one. Sad mistake! But they made it up to me by letting me pick three yards of something else comparable, whether or not it was on sale (like the Alice print was.) So I found something compatible, the red stripes, and thought I could combine them in panels, and then I ended up totally switching my mind about the kind of skirt I liked and really only needing one yard for it anyway. Or perhaps it was really the opposite order, I only had one yard, and I was feeling lazy… In any case, skirt!

My fashion photographer (5) is still working on not taking totally blurry pictures. Possibly I need to set up the camera differently for her if I am not going to be holding still!

I am into comfy yoga waists right now, and this was my experiment with a yoga waist with a non-knit skirt. Worked fine. I like the tutorial at Sew Mama Sew, although frankly I think it is silly to suggest that you can subtract 3″ from your waist measurement to get the jersey waist measure no matter your waist size. If your (child’s) waist is 21″ and you subtract 3″ as they suggest, nice snaggy waist. If you’re a large woman and your waist is double that, and you only subtract 3″, your waist is going to be a little saggy I bet. Much more sensible to reduce by a percentage, I used their reference measurements to decide on subtracting 7%. Seems to work about right for me. I am concerned that yoga waists in general will loose their stretch over time like my favorite t-shirts, and then I will be sad. We will see how long my infatuation lasts. So easy, so comfy! Please last.

I scored an old Wowwee Robosapien v1 at Goodwill for $20. With no remote.. There were two of them and no remotes, as I was just about to the check out a nice employee said, “Oh, are you buying that?” um, yes? (No, I’m just clutching it to my chest on the way to the checkout…) “Did you get the remote?” No! He thought he had seen it somewhere but then couldn’t find it, and Rebecca, Penelope and I turned the store upside down looking for it with no luck. So in the end we brought white robot home with no remote, and thought maybe we could program a universal remote, or maybe we would have to buy a replacement since it was looking kind of tricky, what was I thinking buying a robot with no remote?? I was thinking hacking… But I have too many projects already… Anyway, I was feeling lucky the next time I went by Goodwill, and thought, maybe they found the remote and stuck it back to the other robot. It could happen. No, there was a *third* Robosapien, in special shiny red, with his remote still packing taped to him. Cue me grabbing the second robot of the week and clutching it to my chest. Score! (For robots they are strangely huggable, I think it’s their narrow waist and curvy war mongering figure. Um.) So now we have two robots and one remote. Perfectly workable! Why did they have three robots in one week? Conspiracy.

Getting back to the point, lost so long ago, White Robot was too scary! So we made it a frilly skirt and some shoulder bows. Scandalously short skirt, but I needed to make sure it wasn’t going to get caught in any of its joints. Now White Robot is less scary, and Penelope will sit in my lap (the safest place) and push the buttons to get Robot to walk around in circles and kick balls. I heart robots! And I need to make sure the younger generation is indoctrinated! Robots! Sushi! だいすきです！ (Did that hiragana finally work?! WordPress after three years I have finally defeated you! Hopefully?) Robots! Woo! Maybe with some paint and plastic surgery we could convert White Robot into a Maid Cafe girl? Should have bought all three of the things!

These pictures are six months old. That’s what happens when I stop taking pictures of what I’m doing now! Swimming mostly, but we just built an air rocket launcher. Clearly I have been taking pictures of the wrong things…

I love this skirt though. I need to work on the lines a little bit, it is/was a little too long for Penelope, but I like the flaired morning glory-ish skirt. I may have to do something like that for me, but with a yoga waist. I am SO IN LOVE with yoga waists right now, they are cleaner than an elastic waist band, and so much easier than a zipper + button/hook/whatever. I am all about easy when it comes to clothes, my button holes are, um, appalling. I don’t care if I have a machine that is ‘automatic’, they just look awful once you cut them open. So snaps or hooks. But the problem with zippers is you have to go and buy them, and I never do, and then you have to put them in, and frankly I’m pretty bad at that too!

But I adore the little mermaids on this skirt. (I think I got it from Jo’s etsy shop, she is so sweet.) Oh, and it is a double gauze! Double gauze is so nice! It has such a nice weight, and it’s breezy! (exclaim exclaim exclaim!!!) I have a bunch of it to make me a skirt (Alice in Wonderland and stripes that I got from Purl Soho, a story in itself), but I haven’t and I haven’t. Maybe the yoga waist will get me back on track. Have to think about that. Not sure I’m brave enough to do the knit yoga waist + woven skirt. Think think think.

These bags have been really useful, especially since my husband has started collecting rocks like a mad man! He can fill a bag up with dirty rocks and leave it in a creek to wash off, hanging off one of the many fallen logs around here, and then sort through his clean-ish rocks before carrying all (five pounds of them) home. Really that just lets him find the right five pounds of rocks to carry home. Good thing orange bags are sturdy. I love you sweetie!

These will be fabulous for carrying our sand toys to the park too. (The sand toys do *not* come in the front door, they live outside in a plastic basket.)

Materials:
• one mesh (orange or other) produce bag
• a foot or more of canvas strapping or salvaged car seat belt
• 8″ x (length around top of bag + 1″) piece of fabric for top binding –
  or duct tape, brief alternate discussion at bottom.

Start by stretching your bag vertically, this will compress it horizontally. Decide how long you want the mesh part of the bag to be, and trim it straight across. Look, I’m being good and using my paper scissors not my fabric scissors. I probably shouldn’t admit how may pairs of scissors I have. I gave one to my husband and he immediately wrote ‘no cutting fabric allowed’ or something like that all over every surface. I was impressed with how many places he managed to fit it in, both blades, each of the handles possibly more than once, three star job. If I wasn’t in Vermont I’d go take a picture. But anyway. Trim your bag, or not, either way give it a vertical stretch though.

Gently flatten the opening out without stretching it much if you can, and measure the width. If you stretch the bag out too much before you sew the binding on it will go all lettuce-y around the top edge when you try to carry something heavy in it. It doesn’t much matter structurally though, it’s just an esthetic thing.

We are going to make a 2″ wide binding next, I went with the grain of the fabric rather than cutting it on the bias because I am cheap and we aren’t going around any curves. Since the binding is going to be double fold we need the fabric to be 8″ wide by the circumference of your bag + 1″ for rough seam allowance.

Cut your fabric 8″ x (width of bag * 2 + 1″)

So if you measured the width of your bag at 6″ you would cut your strip 6*2+1 or 13″ long.

Press your fabric flat. I hate ironing too, but you can’t make clean double fold binding without some ironing.

Fold it in half (hot dog bun style!) so that it is 4″ tall and press the fold.

Unfold it and fold one edge up almost but not quite to the middle crease and press the fold (don’t press out your center fold.)

Fold down the other edge almost but not quite to the middle crease and press that fold. (Bet you didn’t see that coming.)

Re-fold it in half and give it one more press all together.

Unfold all your careful creases and pin the two short (8″) edges wrong sides together. Sew together with a 1/2″ seam.

Open up the sewn seam folding it open or to the side with your fingers, and then re-fold the outside edges of the binding to the center.

Slip the binding into the opening of the bag, lining up the top edge of the bag with the middle of the binding. (It’s hard to see the purple on purple, but there is netting over the lower half of the binding in that picture.) I found that pins didn’t work very well to hold the bag in place, so I used removable scotch tape. Whatever your device secure the bag evenly around the binding. Sew the binding to the bag 1/4″ to 1″ above the bottom edge of the binding – it will only be visible from the inside of the bag, so pick where you want the extra seam. Remove the tape as you go, if you sew through it it will get your needle gummy. I learned my lesson with the duct tape…

Fold the binding over the outside of the bag, along your handily pre-creased fold line.

Stitch around the binding 1/4″ or so above the bottom edge for structure, and 1/4″ from the top for pretty.

For each end of your strap fold the edge under and pin on the inside of the binding.

Stitch a square with a cross through it over the end of your strap for that ‘I know what I’m doing’ kind of look. Preferably do not use a needle covered with duct tape goo, because it will skip stitches. I’m hoping I don’t have to clean out the inside of my machine now…

and play!

For the duct tape version, the instructions are pretty much the same, except instead of making a binding, wrap (gently) one piece of duct tape around the outside of the top edge, one around the inside of the top edge, and then one folded over the top edge. I sewed the strap on the same way, but frankly that was a dumb idea because I trashed my needle, I cleaned it, but I still couldn’t get the tape gum out of the eye, and there may be some inside my machine. If I made it with duct tape again, (which was great and quick and really satisfying) I would probably give it a tape handle too.

The end! And I can’t wait until I get back to the land of internet, where I can actually open multiple pages simultaneously in links, rather that one every five minutes! Ironically, DSL is finally coming to these sad lands, due to be installed three days after we leave!!!

Aren’t these cute? Or at least useful for those shell collecting trips, and the playground. And mostly recycled! Those are orange bags and old car seat belts. (The car seat was in a minimal accident and thus discarded.) I have the photos for a tutorial. But my posting schedule has dropped again, this working for money thing is definitely cutting into my free time, what with not wanting to skimp on the parenting thing, and needing to keep my family in clean clothes and dishes. Have I mentioned that I don’t have a dishwasher? But I think after a year and a half we figured out how to fit a portable 18″ one into the kitchen. Woo! It might involve the occasional bruised hip, but if it works out it will be totally worth it. So save your orange bags and watch this space for a tutorial. I’d say it would be up Friday, but frankly I’ll probably be packing for Maine/Vermont, and I have a presentation for work to do before I can even get to that. So hopefully Monday. I’ll cross my fingers for you. (^_^) I know you don’t really need me on this though, you can figure it all out yourself, it isn’t complicated.

But ah Maine. I need to slow down and do some anticipating or I won’t realize I’m on a (possibly working) vacation until it’s over. Moss, pine trees, boggy forest trails, beaches and very cold water. I made these bags for our imminent trip to a place very like ‘One Morning in Maine.’ We aren’t quite ready for the loosing-teeth part, but after re-reading it this morning Rebecca has requested that we plan on digging clams for clam chowder. Happy to oblige! There will probably be a gallery of fairy houses coming up soon too.

These shoes used to constantly frustrate Rebecca, they had straps with velcro across the top, and whenever she walked normally the velcro would pop open, so she’d walk like a duck, really slowly, whenever she wore them. Great! No, not great.

So I undid all the stitching on the straps and velcro and cut them off the shoe. Then I cut some short lengths of cupcake ribbon and some wide elastic, wrapped the cupcake ribbon around the ends of the elastic and sewed around all four edges of the cupcake to secure the elastic. The cupcake ribbon gives it a nice finished look, and, most importantly, now Rebecca can happily run in them!

We went on a mom-field trip to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve on the coast just north of Half Moon Bay. It was cool! There are tons of tide pools, a creek, boulders, anemones, starfish large beds of mussels and a bazillion hermit crabs and marine plants. I’d like to go again. I don’t think I’d ever seen anemones in the ‘wild’ like this before.