paper craft

Back on Track (For Now)

by CZeitler

On the mend and on the go once more. I was able to visit my cousin, though I managed to forget all of my medications at home. It was a good way for me to better notice how much of an effect the anti-depressant is having on me (a lot of good effect!). I only cut my trip short by a few hours, so things went very well. I took my pills Sunday night and by work on Monday I could already tell the difference. When I spoke to my Psychologist he mentioned that I was likely going through some form of withdrawal as well.

I was feeling better, though not at 100%, last week so I took it easy until I felt that I was mostly regulated. While I was giving myself the grace and rest I needed some organizing and cleaning up did occur. Since we are heading into winter I am going to keep up with the oregano and garlic oil supplements until they run out, though I might cut back to twice a week.

This week I have found myself diving headfirst into crafting again, though some of them seem a little more like procrastinating crafts, I have gotten quite a bit accomplished! I had a large piece of faux fur left over from when I tried to make a sensory quilt, it was just the right size to be a cushion for my weaving bench. It is about 5 foot long and very puffy so I hope it will work. My house is a little too messy for me to take a picture of the enormous pillow. I have decided that this winter I wanted to weave a ‘bog jacket’. This is a lovely piece of clothing made from whole cloth with minimal cutting and seams. It is my plan to weave about 9 yards of cloth on my rigid heddle loom that can make 31 inch pieces. I am going to use Knitpicks dishie cotton for the warp and likely the weft as well since I have a 7.5 dent reed. I already have 2 inches of warp wound off, when I have a little extra in pay I will buy the rest of the yarn I need. Fortunately Dishie is very standard and I don’t need to worry about dye lots. I am currently debating about whether I want to buy all white to dye myself or buy some colored yarn.

In the middle of November I am going to be a part of a murder mystery show and I need to make progress on the dress I wanted to sew for it. One of the items that I have started is the tulle petticoat, photo below. Honestly I’m not sure it’s going to work out but this is so much fun. I pinned the tulle in and did a rough basting stitch for the first batch. I plan on pinning and sewing in the elastic today, followed by sewing down the waist band and then putting in a hem for my pull on elastic petticoat. the library had a lot of tulle left over from other projects and I am supposed to be a flamboyant medium so I chose my favorite color purple.

There was an amazing sale on cotton muslin so I have 10 yards of natural cotton muslin that I need to cut apart to dye for a dress. I need to make the first try with the pieces I cut out of a tablecloth I purchased at good will. I did wash the muslin however it is going to need a good iron before I do anything else.

My library was getting rid of a ton of receipt tape while we were doing construction and no longer have the right machines to use this tape. I have been wanting to try spinning paper for some time and I did spin a large piece of this paper tape, it turned out amazing but it is such a pain to create with my wheel. When I am feeling creative and bored again I will try a spindle to see if that is any easier. If that is not possible I can use it for some sewing projects or coloring projects. Maybe even just writing lists out.

The last project is working with watercolors on fabric. My library purchased a circuit maker 4 and one of my co workers found a great price on a light board so I bought one for myself. I was then inspired by a picture of a shape painted onto a linen cross stitch fabric then stitched over with sequins and beads as accent. That picture was of a dragon, amazing, and I decided to do the same with a crow outline I had. I taped down the paper to the light board and then taped the fabric over top. I started with blue, then red, the black over all of it in an attempt to add some depth. I took the fabric off of the light board after I had the outline completed to avoid any bleedthrough onto the board, it is a good thing I did so. I hope to do some stitching over top of this then add embellishments like sequins and beads. I have not painted over the crow with fabric medium yet since I am afraid I will blur the image and I love how it turned out. I plan on getting my guts up and putting the fabric medium on today before I start stitching.

I am making strides to keep my productivity up this weekend, here’s hoping I can keep it up. Until next time remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!

Biting the Crafting Bullet

by CZeitler

This past weekend was about biting the crafting bullet and doing those projects I have been dreaming of, in one case for years. I will start with the craft I have been procrastinating about for less time, only a few weeks.

Earlier this year I saw the Tula Pink Deja Vu Nightshade collection that was going to be released in July. More important to this tale, I saw the quilts that Tula Pink had created to go with the collection. Immediately my attention was caught by “The Still Room” and I started looking for how I could pre-order the pattern. In my months of searching it seemed that I could order the kit for $186 or wait until the collection launched and then purchase the pattern. I waited, impatiently, for the collection to launch. Imagine my surprise when not only did the collection launch but the pattern was FREE on https://freespiritfabrics.com/projects/?page=3. The link is directly to the page that contains the Tula Pink patterns but I recommend looking at all of the free patterns. That being said, I still procrastinated for a couple of weeks. Finally over the last week I looked through my fabric and started pulling types and colors that I thought might work. This past weekend I bit the crafting bullet and started cutting out one type of block at a time to sew together. Instead of following the cutting diagram and cutting out all of the pieces for all of the blocks I decided to start with the blocks that had large motifs that needed to be fussy cut. Before going any further I am going to disclaim, at this time I have not purchased any of the Tula Pink fabrics, this project was entirely out of stash. I do hope to purchase some of this collection for some of my English Paper Piecing to take advantage of the fussy cutting. That disclaimer aside I have finished these first 4 blocks and no two are the same size, and they certainly are not the size called for in the quilt diagram, but I will be able to add sashing and such to fix them up.

Honestly, I think getting these 4 blocks finished this past weekend is amazing, however that is not all that I did!

I had made up some paper pulp from shredded mail, the recycling this week is paper so I thought I would finally start shredding some. I learned several lessons, the first is to take out all of the plastic windows before shredding paper that you want to turn into pulp because the plastic will tangle around your stick blender and then you have to unplug it to get the plastic untangled. The second is that even if you let your pulp sit in water for 3 days (I’m hoping 4 is okay because I want to pull another couple of sheets tonight) it just gets better. I know that it will likely start to mold in another day or two but there were also instructions for drying the pulp so it can be used later. The method is much simpler than I thought, there are tons of tutorials on the web so I don’t think I will go over it again here. I did purchase the kit from Crafter.com as well as the video instructions included there. I’m looking for ways to make more sheets of paper than I currently have ‘couching’ sheets for, so keep an eye out for that. I do love how the shredded mail had some weird inclusions that added different colors to my finished paper.

That is all for this week so until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!