Patchwork Underground

Here’s a fun little project I’ve been meaning to post for a while now.  I made these in several colors since the first ones I made in purple.  I had to edit out my face in this picture because I looked super silly.  Don’t laugh!

These earrings sell themselves.  They’re big, they’re light, you can make them to match any outfit and they use up those pesky scraps you’re saving for no reason.  What more can a girl ask for?

Materials you’ll need to make these guys:

• scraps of ribbon, lace, cord, sequins or what-have-you
• ear bobs
• a 1.5″ x 1.5″ scrap of felt
• matching thread

Get er done:

1. Cut out your 1.5″ x 1.5″ square of felt.  (Excuse the pic, it’s Oregon and it’s February.  Light?  What light?)

2.  Choose your trims.  Be sure to vary the lengths of the scraps so that they hang in tiers.  Finish the ends of ribbons by cutting across them on the diagonal; the bias edge doesn’t unravel.  Knot the free end of the strand of sequins or else they will fall off one by one at inopportune moments (been there, done that).  Don’t shy away from using something you think isn’t that fabulous - if it matches in terms of color, it will probably look awesome once it’s mixed in with your other “conversation” trims.  You’re aiming for an interesting mix of textures.

3.  Knot your thread and whip-stitch along each piece of trim so that it is secured along one edge of the felt.  Stitch them at slightly wonky angles if you want them to flay out like the ones in the first picture.

4.  Wrap the free edge of the felt around the whip-stitched edge so that your stitches are hidden.  (The action is a lot like rolling a cigarette or a sushi roll.)  Whip-stitch the free edge down.  Continue stitching to the top end of the earring and draw the felt inwards with a few stitches so that it purses shut and you can’t see the free ends of the trim inside the felt casing.

For an optional wrapped texture wrap the remaining thread around the felt itself.  Wrap towards the top and knot.  With a needle, pass the free ends through the mass of felt.  Remove the needle from the thread and trim the threads that peeks out on the other side flush with the felt.

5.  Stitch the ear bobs to the top of the earrings.  Make sure that there is NO GAP in the circular link on the ear bob - thread can pass through really small places and your earrings will wind up on the ground!  If there’s even a tiny gap, push the link closed with a pair of pliers.

All done!  Enjoy.

If you sew or press your clothes a lot then eventually you’ll need to clean your iron. Why? The tap water you use in your steam water reservoir starts to calcify and/or oxidize and you start getting whitish and/or reddish crud in your steam water - and it will leave a giant stain on whatever it is you’re ironing. If you’re like me, first you will cry. Then you will consider replacing your iron. Then you will turn to the internet to figure out what to do.

Turns out all you just need to clean your iron.

First, buy a big bottle of bottom shelf white vinegar, like this one:

Fill your reservoir with it and turn the iron on. Steam the heck out of a fluffy towel or rag until there is no vinegar left in your reservoir. Then do it again or until you feel confident that no more whitish/reddish crud is coming out of your iron. Then flush it with water a few times to get the vinegar smell out. Done!

Note: Open a window because it is going to be FOUL in there while you’re steaming all your vinegar out. I’m pretty sure it isn’t bad for you but it is very unpleasant smelling and feels really weird to inhale. Not recommended.

I’m so excited to share my new tutorial with you guys! It just might be my favorite so far. This vintage-inspired project is wonderful for using up those little scraps of fabric, batting and ric-rac you already have laying around the house. Throw an orphaned vintage button on top and you have a seriously cute pin cushion that looks good enough to eat!

Ever since I found this vintage yo-yo-faced pillow at the bins, I’ve been itching to try my hand at yo-yos. When one of my best friends, Lara, told me she was buying an AMAZING 1920’s farm house outside of Eugene, OR I decided to make her something to celebrate. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to make but she was moving in with her husband and her 6-year-old twins this month so the pressure was on. After some tinkering, I settled on a pin cushion…with yo-yos on it, of course! Here’s hoping it’ll warm her new home some.

~~~~*The Tutorial*~~~~~

Materials

• One 12” x 12” scrap of light blue fabric (or enough in any shape to make six 3.25”-diameter circles)
• Two 6” diameter circles of yellow fabric
• One 3.25” diameter circle of yellow fabric
• 12” of matching light blue ric-rac
• 2 buttons (one for the top, one for the bottom)
• Matching thread
• Pencil or fabric marker

Instructions
1 – Cut out six 3.25” diameter circles from your light blue fabric and one 3.25”-diameter circle from your yellow fabric.

I used the mouth of a Ball canning jar as my template for the yo-yos and just traced the shape with a regular pencil. You can use a fabric marker or chalk for this, too.

2 – Cut out the two 6” diameter circles from your yellow fabric. I just marked a center point for my circle, lined it up with the 3.25” mark on my ruler and spun the ruler around that center point, marking out the circumference of the circle as a I went.

3- Fold a ¼” seam allowance in towards the center of your yo-yos, pressing them flat as you go. Don’t stress about perfection here, any imperfections will be hidden in the gathers.

4- With a hand sewing needle and knotted thread, sew a running stitch all the way around the circumference of your yo-yo. Pull the string taut and make a few back stitches to secure the gathers.

5 - Flatten out the yo-yo, even out the gathers and press with steam. Repeat this process for all 7 yo-yos.

6 – Attach all of the yo-yos together using small whip stitches. I used one long piece of thread for this purpose and just hid the “jumps” on the reverse side of the yo-yos. (See picture) Remember to put the yellow one in the center!

7 – Attach the ric-rac to the right side of one of the large yellow circles before you join the top piece of the pincushion to the bottom piece. To do this, I lined the edge of the ric-rac up with the very edge of the yellow circle and stitched around the circle using a 1/4” seam allowance. In doing so, I only caught one side of the ric-rac in my seam, generating the “petal” effect you see in the finished pictures. When you’re sewing the ric-rac down, arrange the ends of the ric-rac so that the tails will be tucked inside the pincushion when it’s turned inside out. (See the second image below.)

8 – With right sides facing, sew the two large yellow circles together, using a 1/4” seam allowance again. For extra accuracy, I stitched directly into the line of stitching I created in step 6 when I attached the ric-rac. When you’re joining the top piece of the pin cushion to the bottom piece, make sure to leave an opening so that you can turn it right side out when you’re done.

9 - Turn the pin cushion right side out and stuff it with polyfil or cut up chunks of quilt batting. Whip stitch the opening closed with matching thread.

10 – Center the mandala of yo-yos you created in step 5 on the stuffed pin cushion. Pin it in place and tack it down using a hand sewing needle.

11 – Attach the buttons. To do this, I knotted a thread around a plain button and passed the thread through the bottom of the pincushion to the top so that the plain button was on the bottom of the pin cushion.

There, I passed the thread through my vintage button and back down through the center of the pincushion and through the bottom button again.

I went back through the bottom button one more time, pulled the thread taut so that I created a dimple in the pincushion and then wrapped the thread around the shank of that bottom button a few times, knotting it as I went.

(Note: You may be asking yourself, “Why two buttons?” Well, my inclusion of the bottom button is designed to take the pressure of the “pinch” off the fabric - otherwise, the knot would eventually pull through the fabric, undo the “pinch” and leave a nasty hole in the bottom of the pin cushion.)

12. Trim off any excess thread and you’re done!

Handmade bias tape (or bias binding, as I’ve also heard it called) can really dress up your sewing.  Yes, you can buy the pre-made stuff at the store but it’s expensive and very limited in terms of color.  When you make your own, you can match your tape to your project exactly.  Patterned bias tape pretty much always looks rad.

The good news is that it’s easy to make.  Let’s do it!

1. Start with a square or rectangle of your fabric.   I don’t like to use the entire width of the fabric for small projects because you end up with A LOT of bias tape that way.  A small starting square means less waste for smaller projects.

2.  Cut into your fabric along the diagonal using a ruler, a cutting mat and a rotary cutter.  If you don’t have a rotary cutter, use a piece of tailor’s chalk to mark out your lines and then cut along them with a pair of scissors.

3.  Turn all of your fabric into strips of the same width.  You can make tape of any size but be aware that the smaller your tape the harder it is to deal with.  Remember, your finished tape width will be one quarter the size of your starting width.

4.  Now, join all the strips together to form one continuous strip.  Some people like to square off the edges and join their strips together with a diagonal seam.  I like to leave the edges cut on the diagonal and join them as you see below:

5.  Iron your seam flat with lots of steam.

6.  Fold the edges of you tape inwards towards the middle of your tape.  Press.

7.  Fold your tape in half lengthwise so that the unfinished edges are on the inside.  Press.

8. You’re done!  Now it’s time to insert your bias tape.  There are several ways to do this.  I’ll show you my favorite.  First, I open up the tape.  I start on the *back* of the item in question.  With right sides facing, I sew along the first ironed fold.

9.  When I get to a corner, I stop at the place in the fabric where the two seam allowances should meet.  (In this case, I stopped 1/4″ short of the edge of the fabric.)  Then I fold the tape back on itself as seen below:

9.  I begin the intersecting seam at the same point that I left off the last one. (Again, this is the point in the fabric where the two seam allowances intersect.)

10.  Once you’ve gone all the way around the piece, Fold the free edge of the tape over the exposed edge and arrange the mitered corners so that they match up correctly.  Press with steam.  Pin if nessessary and top stitch your binding closed.

Hope this helps!  Let me know if you have any questions.

Ok, so I’m pretty much vegan these days.

BUT I have a serious weakness for leather.

RANT ALERT. Seriously, it’s no secret that I’m not into killing and/or mistreating our animal friends. I think the way the meat industry works in this day and age is straight up sick and wrong.

Now, if I were starving out in the woods would I rather die than kill and eat an animal? Certainly not.

Here’s what a lot of folks don’t understand: The whole starving-in-the-woods situation is totally different than choosing to pay someone to raise mistreated animals only to kill them for you so you can eat meat and not think about or deal with the animal you are consuming. As a consumer, it’s impossible to honor the animal when you are totally removed from its life and death. This store-bought disconnect is just so sad for the animal AND the meat eater.

Oh yeah - and that’s not even including the whole host of nasty environmental issues that arise from the unnecessary over-population and over-concentration of certain “livestock” on our planet.

Anyway, it’s for these reasons that I never buy new leather. I usually get it second hand. Politics aside, it is a superior material in a lot of ways and I figure it’s better not to waste it once its already been created. (Yes – people do see me wearing it and no - they don’t know that it’s recycled and, yes, this theoretically does encourage other people in their consumption of meat/leather products. No comment. Don’t really know what to do about it.)

My one request: Please, if you’re going to use this pattern, DON’T use brand new leather that you bought anonymously from the store. Find it, recycle it, hunt it and tan it yourself -whatever. Just be connected to and ok with where it came from. Or, heck, use the fake stuff. =)

Finally! The Tutorial!

Stuff you’ll need:

Medium-sized scraps of leather
Leather punch
Scissors

Step 1: Stand in front of a mirror with your leather. Hold the biggest piece up to your torso and decide which side is up. Often times the extreme edges of the hide will be the most interesting-looking and the least desirable to serious leatherworkers because of the (neato) inconsistencies. I used one of these edges for the bottom of my top.

Step 2: Cut a flattened triangular yoke from a smaller scrap. Make the top and the bottom about an inch longer than you’d like the finished product to be. You will be folding these edges over.

Step 3: Make a leather thong. No, not the underwear kind. A leather thong is a piece of leather “thread” that you use to sew pieces of leather together. The good news is you don’t need to buy this separately because you can make it yourself from a scrap of leather! Basically, you cut the scrap into a circle and start cutting it into a spiral shape – eventually ending up with a long strip of leather. I found a very nifty picture of this process on PaleoPlanet:

Stretch the cord out once you’re done cutting. Leather is very stretchy (especially in small pieces) and if you don’t stretch it out ahead of time, it’ll stretch out by itself. If it does this after you’ve sewn with it, all your seams will gap open. Bad.

Step 3: Now you’re ready to attach the yoke to the body of your top. I had to cut a straight line into the top of my halter where I wanted my yoke to be attached so that the seam would be a straight one. Once you have that worked out, fold the bottom edge of your yoke up (to the right side). Place the folded-over edge on top of the top edge of the body of your top. (I said top three times!) Use your hole punch to pre-punch the holes you are going to be sewing into to attach the yoke to the body.

I used a fancy embroidery stitch to give the top some pizzazz. It’s a modified lazy daisy stitch. I found good tutorials for this stitch here and here.

(Tip: If you’re having difficulty pushing the thong through your pre-punched holes, you can use your scissors to shape the end of your thong into a point. This can help smooth things along.)

Step 4: Make another leather thong for the halter part. Fold the top edge of yoke back (to the wrong side) over your halter thong, creating an encasement for it. I used a simple slip stitch to secure this part of my halter. You can see the pattern in this picture:

Step 5: Secure the back ties. I used a natural hole in the hide as one of my securement points. You can do this or punch a hole yourself in either side. Using another leather thong, fold the thong in half and push the fold through one of the holes about half way. Take the tail ends of your thong and poke them through the loop that should be sticking out of the hole. Pull the ends tight. Repeat for the other side.

ALL DONE!! Each one of these will look different depending on the hide you use, the shape you cut it, the length you choose for the bodice, etc. The possibilities are endless!

Let me know how it goes for you if you decide to give this a try. =)