Felted wool fish

Time for another installment in my series of Before and After moments:

The all-reddish orange one is baby alpaca, and the green trimmy one is super soft merino. Both were dotted with a ton of moth holes, making a big project impractical. It was however the obvious choice for the smallest of my extended family members who likes sea creatures.

I should have done a proper tutorial for this project but I didn't have much time - it only took about 90 minutes start to finish, which is about what I had, and in less than stellar lighting for photography purposes. But I can tell you that I simply cut out two layers of a fishy shape and opted for topstitching, so as to maintain said shape. It would have been a lot cuter if I had bothered to get red thread into the machine but - did I mention the 90 minute time limit?

Most of that went to improvising and then lining up his features, and to a lesser extent the side fins. I sewed all those bits onto one side of the fish, then used it as a template and put the other side of the fish nose to nose with the first to make sure everything lined up well. After all that was securely in place, I pinned in the top fin and topstitched all but a 2" span of belly, through which to stuff the stuffing.

Here's a tip: if asking the opinion of other children about a project that you think may be lame for the person you intend to give it to, be prepared to have to make more of said project. Seriously. This fish is going to a 7-year old boy not because I think 7-year old boys like handmade stuffies but because he is severely disabled and has difficulty even holding onto something. I figured anything in bright colours and supersoft fabric was a good idea. On completion I panicked, but unnecessarily as I discovered when I took the finished project to be judged by boys of similar age. Far from scathing, they were all - "make another one for him and give that one to me!" and "I want mine to be green!"

There is still a lot of fish-sized fabric left in each of these sweaters, so maybe I can make those boys some fish of their own. But not until my Christmas tree has had its moment and gone back out for composting, because the sewing machine is all tucked away behind it for the rest of the season.

(that doesn't prevent me from handstitching, of course. Stay tuned for one more project next week!)

From three felted sweaters to one fabulous skirt

On Saturday I finally had time to fix a skirt I botched in the fall, and it's so cool I thought somebody else might want to know how to make one. Sorry this isn't a real step-by-step pictorial, but it's such a dead easy project you probably don't need one anyway.

This is one of those lucky find kinds of projects. You need at least three merino wool sweaters because they tend to be thin and felt softly - ask me how I know a sweater that felts to the thickness of board won't work - of which one has to have a torso that felts to exactly your hip size.

Materials

One merino sweater with a torso that felts to your hip measurement and a ribbed cuff around the waist

At least two merino sweaters with a folded or flat (as in, not ribbed or gathered) hem, buttons and pockets a bonus

Instructions

First, you will cut the flat-hemmed sweaters off at the armpits, thereby freeing yourself to use the flat hem as the hem of the skirt.

Next, you will cut both bodies at one side, at least, to make a long strip of fabric. One of my two was a button-up vest with pockets, and I wanted to save one of those front pieces for a different skirt later, so I cut it in three pieces leaving the back of the vest intact and separating the button band for use elsewhere.

Now you want to stitch these sweater bodies together into one long strip, which when complete you will sew into a tube (leaving the upper part, where the armpits were, free to stitch onto your waistband later.) Because I had had to cut my vest, I cut the other sweater into two pieces so that I could have a grey-black-grey-black repeat. That sort of decision is entirely up to you; just make sure you get the hems lined up as perfectly as possible.

At this point you will address moth holes. My grey vest had several, but thanks to clever use of the button band, they became design features. (That's part of the button band over there on the right; the buttonholes are more obvious in person.)

I stitched my fakery over panels where possible, which is why I waited until I had a tube, but you may prefer to do this job before you join the strip.


Now you are ready to make your waistband. Cut the cuffed sweater across, just below the armpits, and turn it such that the cuff is now the waistband, and the torso the hip. Start pinning the hemmed tube to the hip section with eventual wear in mind, pleating the fabric to fit.

For my skirt, I wanted the pocket at the front of my right leg, as shown above. I also wanted pleats primarily on my left hip, so in addition to the one at the back part of my right hip for balance, I put deep ones there with two falling at the front and two at the back. Each set faces the other to make a flat patch at their centre.


Run one row of stitching close to the edge with the right sides of your hip and hem sections facing, then open it up and topstitch the seam along its hip side.

And - you're done! And I dare you to take if off again once it's on.

Transformation

As promised, I have before-and-after pics of one sweater's journey past my sewing machine.

Behold:

This sweater was in perfect shape which does make me feel a bit guilty, but also makes me click my heels with joy because I don't lose any fabric to month holes. You usually can't tell about moth holes until after the felting, have you noticed this? and sometimes the end result is more patch than project.

In this case I got not only a full set of metal buttons but enough fabric for two pairs of mittens:

I cut the second pair's back from the sleeve cuffs, and the palm from the upper back of the sweater; that of course meant no cuff, but I was able to cut extra cuff from unused parts of the sweater's body and stitch them on. I don't think it looks too bad.


That sweater was definitely worth the three dollars it cost me, wouldn't you say?

It's a start

I gave in and went back to the thrift store on Friday for more feltable sweaters, having convinced myself that I simply don't have enough for this year's Christmas-gift crafting.

This of course turned out to be Not True, but it was fun anyway and I got some great stuff - 7 sweaters, in fact, for $20. And one of them, though small and nearly sleeveless, was made of baby alpaca. I'll share pictures of them when I've made them into something so you can see the Befores and Afters.

A few weeks ago I had a little time to cut off a lot of felted sleeves for fingerless gloves, and yesterday I sat down to blanket stitch a trim on one pair of them:

The best thing about this project is that the yarn I used for the edging was a little present from Melissa, some vintage darning wool with a marvelous label. I love being able to incorporate bits and pieces from people I care about into the gifts I make, don't you? It's such a good way to spread happy feelings.

So - one down, 426 to go, give or take. Wish me luck for a pair of actual mittens this week!

Procrastination that paid off

Well, this is a first.

I've been too swamped this fall to get all the leaves up from the maple tree that generously shades my house. But if there is one thing I can't stand, it's not getting all the leaves up before the snow - because then when all your better-organized neighbours are joyfully looking out the window with their April morning coffees at pristine snow melting over green grasses and colourful crocuses, you're looking blearily at brown-dappled snow melting over brown sludge.

Last night, most of the leaves having been dealt with by somebody much less lazy and rather more generous than me, I went out in subzero temperatures to bag the remaining leaves the wind had raked for me into a few big piles. And this is where it gets good!

As I have learned to my cost in previous years, if you bag leaves after a rain, they will melt the compostable bag before the city comes to pick them up.

But as I discovered yesterday, if you bag leaves after a rain in subzero temperatures - why then, you can bag them with a shovel. Because the raindrops are now ice particles holding the leaves in one neat pile.

It was still a lot of leaves - 5 bags' worth, I think - but it only took about 40 minutes to do. And today: it snowed. Ha!

Fabric with feeling

My cousin has sent me an article about an exhibit we wish we could visit together - Threads of Feeling at The Foundling Museum in London (by which I mean England, not Ontario!)

It's a collection of fabric scraps given as identifying marks for babies left in the 1700s by mothers who could no longer care for them, but hoped to be able to come back for some day. Apparently only 152 of the 16,282 children accepted by the foundling hospital over a 19 year period were ever reunited with their families, which says a lot about the life expectancy and economic hardship of the time.

The history is amazing and moving, but a side interest to the creative people who visit this blog is the fabric itself, real everyday fabric that would probably never otherwise have been preserved for people like us to look at. Even wedding fabrics might not have been saved for so long - cloth being one of the most recyclable materials, especially at the level of poverty we're talking about here. But a baby is different, and the giving up of one unimaginably significant.

If you've got time for a hot cup of something and a longer than usual read, the first link will take you to the news article about the story behind the collection, the second to the museum site and a few remarkable photographs of the actual scraps.

What a quilt all that would make!

Getting a start on gifts

It's really been bugging me not to have had time to start on Christmas sewing. I mean, I bought all those sweaters to felt all through August! and there they are in my sewing cupboard, folded up and waiting.

So yesterday when I had to do a tiny bit of sewing, I decided to take advantage of the machine being open and got out the scissors:

and a quilty tea cosy for a template and got this:

Which is photographed flat because it falls over like a much limper sweater than it actually felted to, when you put it over a teapot. I think it needs a liner, which it will get in the next 45 minutes of 'free' time that occurs post-solution-idea.

Meanwhile, taking advantage of the bonus hour we got from Daylight Savings Time or whatever it's called at this time of year, I decided that since the sewing cupboard was open I should cut a bunch of sleeves for fingerless gloves.

Not every sleeve felts suitably for such a project, but it turns out that sometimes you can get two pairs of handwarmers from a single pair of arms, so I ended up with I think 7 pairs. I spent a happy hour or so positioning the thumb openings and adjusting lengths and steaming the wool, and now I have 7 pairs of canvas for blanket stitching and other embellishments.

You know, next time I have 45 minutes of 'free' time.

A thought occurred to me as I did all this. Well, two thoughts.

1/ Is it a gift if all I do is cut off a sleeve with a pair of scissors and then cut a hole for the thumb?

2/ Yes. Because it took time, effort, and money to find the right sweaters to felt, and then more time to fit perfectly, and it will take time - no matter how much I enjoy it - to embellish them however sparingly I do so, and moreover, I have so little time, and people know that, that they will know how much love got poured into these little tokens.

Then I had a third thought:

Just because it's super easy for me to do these things doesn't mean it's easy for everybody else I know. It's okay not to undervalue my skills.

And it's okay for you, too!