Craft Test Dummies

Friday at the Expo started bright and early, and then went pretty much non-stop all day. This was the agenda:

• 7:30 AM: Up at the hotel, barely moving. I had gotten up at 4:30 AM and had a wicked time getting back to sleep. Wishing I could blow off my morning class…
• 8:30 AM: Quick shower and quicker breakfast later, I’m taking “Crocheted Flowers” from Megan at Stitch Cleveland. Except it’s not Megan, it’s Erica from River Colors Yarns. No matter. We got a great class kit with 3 skeins of yarn, a needle, instructions for 3 flowers, and a little plastic purse to keep it all in. Now, I have to start by mentioning that long ago in my life as a Music Therapist in a medical facility, I’ve had a number of patients try to teach me to crochet. What I figured out is that there are often multiple terms for the same stitch, and nothing was too consistent. So my big challenge was matching up what I knew how to do and what it was called. Oh, and how to do it correctly and consistently. Two hours later, I had a flower and a half that looked pretty darn cute. Yea for me!
• 11:30 AM: Time for coffee and Barb Callahan’s fashion show. She also does jackets (I’m sensing a theme, here!) and sells her patterns. She picks me out of the audience and makes me model the bracelet that we made in class last night. (OK, I was in the front row and I’m no shrinking violet. Still, it’s funny….)
• 12:30 PM: Back on the vending floor to pick up supplies and ideas. I even sat through a demo for an felt embellishing machine (Husqvarna’s version) and oh, yeah, I want one of those! If only $350.00 would fall out of the sky!
• 1:30 PM: Quick lunch of baked potatoes. And there’s that sweatshirt-into-a-jacket lecture again….
• 2:00 PM: Nicole is off to her felted clog class, and I’m wandering. I run across Susan Schremph’s demo of silk ribbon embroidery by machine, only to discover she’s doing a class at 2:30. Quick! Where’s Nicole??? She has my free class ticket!!! I call her cell, I find her class… well, hijinks ensue and I get to the class in the nick of time. Susan spends the hour showing us how you can use tacking by machine to create ribbon flowers. My mind starts to whirl. ATC’s! Postcards! Fabric cuffs! Literally, I get so wound up I get a headache. Consequently….
• 3:30 PM: I’m spending my kid’s lunch money on “Simple Silk Ribbon Embroidery by Machine” and enough silk ribbons to weave my own blankie.
• 4:30 PM: Get to the rest of my wandering. I decide to skip the trims, beads, and quilters’ cottons. I do pick up some silk fat quarters and a new pattern. (Editor’s Note: I bought 3 patterns last year from the same vendor. I haven’t made a-one. Hmmm.)
• 5:30 PM: I try to get out to find Nicole, but I get swamped in the end-of-day-giveaway melee. No choice but to wait….
• 6:15 PM: The day’s done. I’m exhausted. We both agree that we’re done. Fini. We won’t come back for Saturday. Dear daughter is still running that fever, so we go pick up some Chinese and head back to the ranch for some family time. And to gloat over our classes and purchases.

To read about Day One at the Expo, read here.

Well, I’m back from the sewing expo and my head is swimming. I took four classes over 2 days this time, and a good time was had by all.

My good friend Nicole made the trip up from Charlottesville, Va, and showed up to celebrate my birthday with some serious girl time. Three days of shopping, sewing, and girl talk. Whoopee!

For those who’ve never been to the Expo, it’s a pretty gi-gundous show. It goes over 3 days and boasts oodles of hand-on classes, demos, trunk shows, fashion shows, lectures, and vending out the wazoo. Here was my agenda on Thursday, the opening day of the show:

• 8:30 AM: “Really, Really Broken Dishes” applique class with Kim Montagnese. She is a great person, designer, and teacher. She taught us to use Do-Sew to back our appliques and use a blind hem-stitch to mimic needle-turn applique. Great class. (Great person, too. I love Kim! She’s the one who took this silly picture of me.)
• 11:00 AM: Snack break and fashion show. We saw a lecture on how to open up a generic sweatshirt along the side seams and create a festive jacket. Looked cute and easy. And when they passes around a toddler version with yo-yo’s on it, I just about had a coronary it was so cute!
• 11:45: Wandering about vending floor. Made a point to get to Cotton Candy Quilts which had the Do-Sew for sale. Also picked up some really cute fat quarters with my mini-patchfolios in mind.
• 2:00: Lunched on a tuna croissant (standing up) while taking in another fashion show. Another sweatshirt-jacket take by Londa, but more upscale.
• 5:30 PM: Completely overstimulated, we head over to the hotel to check in, only to find that they don’t have our reservation. And I don’t have my confirmation number. Undaunted, we work it out and schlep up to the room. I grab a quick snack, then head back down to take the shuttle back to the IX center to get to my class. Whew. I’m getting tired!
• 6:30 PM: Take Barb Callahan’s Vintage Beaded Bracelet class. (Easy peasy. Just stitch buttons onto elastic! I know what I’ll be teaching next time we have a Young Jewelry Artist series during summer camp at Silverthorne!) Barb was a hoot, too. Hope I get to take a class from her again.
• 8:00 PM: We’re done early. My shuttle doesn’t come until 9:30. I make calls. Nicole tells me the shuttle will come early. I find out that my sweet baby girl is still running a fever. I wait until 9:15, and some complete strangers from Pittsburgh take pity on me and drop me off at the hotel. Thanks, ladies! You’ve done PA proud.
• 9:30 PM: Meet Nicole at the hotel bar. I’m hungry, damp and ready for a drink. Nicole and I share some Mediterranean quesadilla thingy, and I down 2 Great Lakes Brewery Porters.
• 11:30 PM: Exhausted and with a sore back, I hit the sack. Even the hotel bed feels good after standing on a concrete floor all day.

To read about Day Two, click here!

Well, St. Patrick’s Day is rapidly approaching, and it’s time to get crafting! Personally, I won’t be doing kid’s crafts, but I do like to make a little something to wear and/or decorate the house for St. Paddy’s day. And I’ll be drinking Guinness.

But back to crafts! I have just a couple of cute-but-not-too-cute ideas for you.

You know a while back I was on my yo-yo kick. I found a cute shamrock idea using three of them, and really, you could whip this up in an evening. Make 3 green heart-shaped shamrocks and stitch them together on the edges. Because I’m not handy with the cording, I’d probably use a green pipcleaner for the stem. Make these into pins, magnets, hot-glue them to hairclips or headbands, whatever. Cute and understated.

Another easy idea is to use air-dry clay to make clovers. Roll it out into a sheet the thickness of 2 quarters, and then use your small heart cookie cutter to make 3 or 4 leaf clovers as you wish. You can even touch them up with gold paint. These are fun as pins, on cards, or on clothespins. (Just put a magnet on the back for an easy note holder.)

And though I’m not a crocheter - yet - I found a cute shamrock magnet how-to on CraftBits. So sweet…. I’d make a whole bunch of ‘em and arrange them into a little wreath for the door.

Martha Stewart has a quick pin craft using bumpy chenille stems, which make cute favors or gifts.

I love vintage images… and so I found a number of clip art resources for you– FREE (my favorite four-letter word!) These look like old postcards, mostly. You can print them off and use them in ATCs, postcards, sandwich them between glass for pendants, transfer them onto clay, or print them onto fabric. You’ll find the free goodies at:

• Download Free Pictures has a great vintage St. Patrick. Just like on the saint’s cards from Ireland!

• Karin’s Whimsy has a rockin’ harp, a lassie, and a little Laddie, too. All of them are winners.
• Martha Stewart has some little medallion and note card downloads to go with her craft…but you could use them for anything. (Maybe use the circle ones under glass globs for magnets?)

So I hope this kick-starts your Eire crafting season… erin go braugh!

There is a guerilla knitting movement afoot! I read in the Plain Dealer today that there is a group of folks who are covering trees with knitting in Yellow Springs Ohio. Really.

Now, I know because we are Ohioans, we are a little late in the game. I had heard of a guerilla-knitting group who blog under Knitta, please and they have taken to the streets, knitting cozies onto telephone poles, rocks, sculptures, car antennae, and even in the backs of cabs. Really!

The Micro-fiber Militia is out of Chicago, and they are cozy-ing up bike racks, construction scaffolding, and light poles. (The picture of the crocheted flowered lightpole is from them.)

I  have to admit I suffer from “Needle Envy.” I can knit only the most simple of dishcloths, and can only do scarves in crochet. Can’t read a pattern for squat. So a part of me is really intrigued by this phenomenon…. folks doing a positive style of graffiti.

I know why this hasn’t caught on in Cleveland. Too friggin’ cold! (Oh, and that little blizzard that just ran through, dumping 2 feet of snow on us.) Anyhoo, it would be cool to see in our fair city. We could use some random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty in our struggling city. Couldn’t we all?

Ok, so I am often inspired by other crafters, and this site is definitely worth mentioning. Skull-A-Day is the idea that you take a theme - in this case, a skull - and create one everyday, using every technique and medium you can. Since I couldn’t find an “about” page, I got no info to share on who, or why, this is happening. BUT, I do like the concept. And in particular, this yarn painting has captured my interest.

This technique actually came from Huichol Indians of western Mexico. Since we vacation in Mexico ever couple of years, I’ve seen them at the markets. I’ve read that these really are manufactured for tourists now, but back in the day these yarn paintings, or nierikas, were used a visual story telling and offerings to their gods. Check out the link above for some beautiful examples.

Which leads me to my Craft Test Dummy moment. This is a cool technique, and it’s inexpensive, so how to update this from the “grade school social studies art inclusion” level.

What about a mash-up with a Zentangle?

Ok, I blogged about this before, and how a Zentangle really is just a mandala in a square. (Read the full rant here.) But what if you drew a Zentangle or a Mandala or whatever, and then used colored yarns to fill in your texture zones? Hmm…. I’ve been thinking about this all night.

Gotta go get doodling!

I’ve still got some felt left over from the Felted Chair Covers, so I was looking for a fun, easy way to use some up. I ran across the idea of felted needle cases from Sue Bleiweiss, and I thought I’d do a simple version of that.

I cut the white felt (the cover) with a scallop-edged rotary cutter, about 3 X 4 inches. I cut the inner piece of felt - in this case hot pink - about 3 X 3 inches. I layered the small piece on top of the larger one, folded it in half, and stuck a pin in it to keep it together. Then I sewed from the outside on the left, making the “binding.” (I used a decorative stitch for this. Why not?) I added some little hearts on the outside, hand-stitched a little accent with embroidery floss, and added a button trim.

I got 11 of these whipped up in a morning, and will be sending them out as RAKs… Random Acts of Kindess… to my ClothPaperStudio Yahoo Group sisters. Fun to give, easy to do, and uses up some of that stash!

Why not whip up a few yourself, add a few safety pins and loaded needles, and

• gift your kid’s teachers
• share with your mom, auntie, sister, neighbor
• tuck them away for holiday gifts
• stick one in your purse- you know you need one!

Get inspired by these- much cuter and more elaborate than mine.

Click on the image to visit the site- enjoy!