Category: Crafts

Craft projects of mine

  • Marimekko placemats

    Marimekko placemats

    I decided a few days ago that we needed new placemats to help protect our lovely new dining room table. I considered buying some, but I couldn’t find any that I liked that weren’t hideously expensive. (The cheapest Marimekko one is $36!) However, I do still have plenty of fabric left over from making the sofa cushions. Why not make my own?

    I started by prototyping different shapes. I wanted something organic and asymmetrical, so I used some cardboard to try out a few different options. (I put a plate on top for sizing.)

    The first was deemed by the Snook “too egg-like.” (I agreed.) So I tried a few rounded triangles and ended up with option #3.

    I decided I wanted the placemats to be reversible, so I found a suitable backing fabric from my stash. I used my template to cut out 6 red front pieces, 6 black back pieces (with the template reversed!), and 6 pieces of thin cotton quilt batting (left over from making Baby Taos’s quilt).

    Cutting the quilt batting

    Here are the pieces all set for sewing. The backing fabric is called “Psycat” by Rhynie Cawood, handprinted by Sydney’s Publisher Textiles. I picked up a remnant many years ago and I love how it looks like a Rorschach test.

    Cut pieces

    To assemble, I laid down a red piece face up, then a black piece face down, and then the batting. I pinned them all together.

    Assembled placemat

    I sewed them together with a 1/4″ seam allowance, leaving a couple inches at the bottom open so I could turn them out.

    Sewing placemats

    Then I trimmed down the quilt batting to avoid the edges being too thick. I also clipped the curves, which basically meant going around the whole thing since it was all curves.

    Clipping curves

    Then I used the opening to turn each placemat right-side out.

    Turning the placemats

    I spent some time making sure all the seams were fully pushed out, and I gave each placemat a good ironing. You can see there the opening at the bottom where I turned it out.

    Reverse placemat

    I folded in the seam allowances at the opening and hit that with the steam iron. Then I top-stitched all the way around each placemat at 1/8″, both for decoration and to close off the opening.

    Top stitching

    Pretty quickly I had a completed stack of six placemats!

    Stack of placemats

    Now it was time to decide on the quilting. I decided that the best options were either a spiral or a grid, so I mocked up a rough idea and sent it to a few friends for thoughts. Everyone voted for spiral.

    I set up the walking foot for my sewing machine, as well as the “quilting attachment” – an adjustable metal bar that sticks out that you can use to sew parallel lines. I used it to ensure the first few spirals were roughly 1″ apart.

    Sewing the spiral

    Once I got to the middle, I was basically free-handing it and just turning the placemat around and around. I LOVE how it turned out! It was really fun too. I blasted through the remaining placemats to finish the project off.

    Finished placemat

    I’ve got a can of Scotchguard around here somewhere so I’ll probably hit them with that to make them a bit more stain-resistant. Don’t they look great on the table?

    Dining room table
  • Covid-19 Scarf

    Covid-19 Scarf

    I’m finally finishing off the scarf I started during the first lockdown. It encodes a small part of the genetic sequence of one of the Covid-19 strains! 🦠

  • Alpaca Beanie

    Alpaca Beanie

    I finished the alpaca beanie for the Snook! This was purely to use up the extra bits I had left over from making his scarf. I casted on 132 stitches and then just made the pattern up as I went. His scalp is pretty sensitive and he doesn’t like hats that grip too tightly, so I only did a minimum amount of ribbing at the bottom. (The alpaca is nice and soft too.) I put in a band of the same slipstitch pattern I used on the scarf, and I did radial decreases at the crown. I just need to weave in the ends and give it a block!

    Alpaca beanie

  • Beanie progress

    Beanie progress

    I’m making good progress on the alpaca beanie I’m knitting for Rodd to match his scarf. No pattern; I’m just making it up as I go.

  • Textile exhibition

    Queer quilts, rebellious knitting and political pants: the radical world of textiles – What a cool looking exhibition! I love those trade union flags… and the pink shorts. 😉 If you’re going to Adelaide in the next four months, I’d definitely check it out.

  • Peer Gynt Quilts

    If you like classical music, patchwork quilting, or in-depth explanations of creative design process, you will absolutely love this blog series about 4 Peer Gynt-inspired quilts. The artist Deborah Pickett was inspired by this painting based on Ravel’s Boléro. Doesn’t that just make you want to make some art?

  • Needlepoint Cushions with Mrs. Morris

    Needlepoint Cushions with Mrs. Morris

    Eighteen years ago, Mr. Snook’s grandmother (“Kathy-Nanny”) moved into a retirement village, and I was gifted one of her many needlepoint tapestries: a tasteful nude reclining with a whippet. If you don’t know much about needlepoint, it generally involves a heavy canvas with a picture printed on it that you then embroider over with slanted stitches. Many of them are based on fine art, and Kathy-Nanny’s was titled “Venus d’aprés Titien.” (It’s clearly based on “Venus and Musician,” just with the leering musician removed.) It was in a heavy ornate frame, and while it was well-executed and beautiful work, it didn’t really… go with any of our other stuff. I put it in a closet for safekeeping and it basically sat in storage for the better part of two decades.

    A couple months ago, we moved back into the house after our extensive renovation, and I decided it was time to bring Venus back to life. Rather than hang her on the wall, I thought that turning her into a pair of cushions might be the best way to go.

    First, I had to get her out of the frame. Underneath I found the tapestry wrapped around a piece of plywood and stapled all the way around. There were hundreds of staples, each of which had to be pulled out by hand.

    Tapestry over plywood

    Thankfully Mr. Snook helped me. The staples were really dug into the edge, so I pried them loose enough for him to grab with a pair of pliers. It was back-breaking work.

    Pulling staples

    At last we had the tapestry free of the plywood. This is what it looked like from the reverse. Even on that side, you can see what a good job she did with the stitching.

    Reverse of tapestry

    Once I had it free, I rang up my friends at Morris & Sons. Mrs. Morris has sewn more needlepoint cushions than probably anyone in all of Australia, and she kindly offered to teach me how to do it. I met Mrs. M at her workshop, where we started by deciding on the backing fabric. We narrowed it down to these two velvets, and I decided to go with the more orangey-brown one.

    Choosing velvet colours

    Then her son Joseph helped me work out what size to make the cushions. We measured up and realised that if we simply sliced her in half, we’d get two very nearly square cushions out of it. They were both incredulous that I wanted to cut it in half, and Mrs. M couldn’t quite get over the fact that I’d have a cushion with just LEGS on it. But they were game for the experiment, so Joseph cut it up the middle.

    Measuring up

    Joseph also helped me cut appropriately sized pieces of the backing fabric, as well as slicing up many pieces to be used to create piping.

    Cutting the background fabric

    Then the real lessons began! I don’t want to give too many of her secrets away, but at a high level: Mrs. M first showed me how to piece the strips of velvet together into one very long strip, taking care to ensure the nap always went the right direction so it didn’t look or feel odd. Then I created meters and meters of piping, wrapping the strip around a long cord and sewing it down tightly. The Morrises let me use one of their industrial Singer machines, which took a bit of practice to get the hang of. It had a large foot pedal and a knee lever for controlling the presser foot.

    Sewing piping

    Next Mrs. M showed me how to sew the piping down around the border of each cushion top, with some special tricks for navigating the corners and for joining the ends up neatly at the bottom.

    Attaching the piping

    Next I put the backing fabric onto each cushion top, face-down, and pinned it around three sides tight against the piping (leaving the bottom open).

    Pinning on the backing

    Oh no, it’s time to insert the zipper! Mrs. M is a true legend and assured me that it was going to be much easier than I feared.

    Zipper time!

    I watched her closely as she showed me her method. I took lots of photos and notes to try to capture the trickier bits!

    Mrs. M sewing a zipper

    First we sewed one side, and then the other. Hey, I was getting the hang of this!

    Sewing the zipper

    I managed to insert both zippers without too much trouble, only having to unpick one or two bits where I got a bit too close to the zipper teeth.

    Completed zipper

    Then it was time to sew the other three sides of the cushion. The bits at each end of the zipper were the trickiest part, and I had to redo them a couple times. The rest was smooth sailing though.

    Sewing the other three sides

    After turning it rightside-out, I had a finished cushion cover! The legs made me smile immediately. I knew this was going to turn out even better than I’d hoped.

    Completed cushion cover

    The final step was to sew custom-sized cushion inserts. Mrs. M showed me how to gauge the correct size and how to put them together. Each one took a fair bit of stuffing! The hardest part was then sewing the openings closed when they were so full and fluffy.

    Stuffing the inserts

    And here are the completed cushions! As you can tell, I was pretty stoked with how they turned out. It’s still obvious that they are part of the same picture, and I only lost a tiny bit due to cutting her in half.

    Finished cushions

    While I’m sure there are other needlepoint nudie cushions in the world, these are pretty special. They look spectacular on the new couch too! They got a big thumbs up from both Rodd and his sister.

    Legs cushion  Lady cushion

    If you want to make needlepoint cushions of your own, Morris & Sons is definitely the place to start. They have everything you need including tapestry kits with canvas and threads. They also offer a professional service to make up the finished cushions for you once you’ve finished with the embroidery, which is handy if you don’t have an industrial-strength sewing machine at home.

    Thank you to Mrs. M and Joseph for all their help with these! I’m so pleased we’ve been able to keep one of Kathy-Nanny’s pieces alive in our new home. 🩷

  • Photo Post

    Mending day! A couple of our jumpers had worn holes and needed fixing. I’ve watched heaps of those videos of invisible darning, so I gave it a shot. I used sewing thread to provide a scaffolding and then Swiss darned over the top. Very pleased with the results! Hardly noticeable. 😍🧶

    Mending day! A couple of our jumpers had worn holes and needed fixing. I’ve watched heaps of those videos of invisible darning, so I gave it a shot. I used sewing thread to provide a scaffolding and then Swiss darned over the top. Very pleased with the results! Hardly noticeable. 😍🧶

    Mending day! A couple of our jumpers had worn holes and needed fixing. I’ve watched heaps of those videos of invisible darning, so I gave it a shot. I used sewing thread to provide a scaffolding and then Swiss darned over the top. Very pleased with the results! Hardly noticeable. 😍🧶

    Mending day! A couple of our jumpers had worn holes and needed fixing. I’ve watched heaps of those videos of invisible darning, so I gave it a shot. I used sewing thread to provide a scaffolding and then Swiss darned over the top. Very pleased with the results! Hardly noticeable. 😍🧶

    Mending day! A couple of our jumpers had worn holes and needed fixing. I’ve watched heaps of those videos of invisible darning, so I gave it a shot. I used sewing thread to provide a scaffolding and then Swiss darned over the top. Very pleased with the results! Hardly noticeable. 😍🧶

    Mending day! A couple of our jumpers had worn holes and needed fixing. I’ve watched heaps of those videos of invisible darning, so I gave it a shot. I used sewing thread to provide a scaffolding and then Swiss darned over the top. Very pleased with the results! Hardly noticeable. 😍🧶

    Mending day! A couple of our jumpers had worn holes and needed fixing. I’ve watched heaps of those videos of invisible darning, so I gave it a shot. I used sewing thread to provide a scaffolding and then Swiss darned over the top. Very pleased with the results! Hardly noticeable. 😍🧶

    Mending day! A couple of our jumpers had worn holes and needed fixing. I’ve watched heaps of those videos of invisible darning, so I gave it a shot. I used sewing thread to provide a scaffolding and then Swiss darned over the top. Very pleased with the results! Hardly noticeable. 😍🧶

  • Photo Post

    I finished it! This is the Easy Eyelet Yoke Lite in my reclaimed @hobbii_yarn Twister. Such a fun knit, and really suits this yarn. ❤️🧶

    I finished it! This is the Easy Eyelet Yoke Lite in my reclaimed @hobbii_yarn Twister. Such a fun knit, and really suits this yarn. ❤️🧶

  • Marimekko cushions for the new couch

    I’m a big fan of the Finnish design house Marimekko. They’ve been making gorgeous fabric prints and homewares for 70+ years. The only problem is that their stuff can be very, very expensive (especially here in Australia). A few months back though they had a clearance sale, and I picked up a couple meters of the iconic Unikko print cotton at 40% off. Today I decided to use it to make a couple cushions for our new couch.

    We already had a pair of old IKEA cushions with covers that were starting to fall apart. The feather inserts were still good though, so I removed the covers to see how they were constructed. They were rectangular — 59cm/23.25″ long by 37.5cm/14.75″ wide — with a lapped zipper along the bottom edge. I decided to make the new covers a little smaller so they’d feel a bit plumper. (They’d lost a couple feathers over the years!)

    Old IKEA cushion

    At this point Rodd was like, “So are you going to reuse the zippers?” I realised that was an excellent suggestion, so out came the seam ripper.

    Unpicking a zip

    Once I worked out what size I wanted the new covers to be, I added on a bit for seam allowance and then cut out 4 panels from my fabric. I then used my overlocker to finish all the raw edges.

    Fabric panels

    I’ve installed a few zippers in my time but I’m by no means an expert. I found this tutorial from The Sewing Directory to be really helpful. Once I had the zipper joining two panels together, it was very simple to sew around the other three sides.

    Sewing the cushions

    And here’s the finished cover showing the lapped zipper! Why yes, I did sew one side of the zip with red thread and one with white, thank you for noticing. 😂

    Cushion cover with zip

    Here’s a cushion in all its plump glory. To buy one would probably be like $90 AUD, so my version came out a fair bit cheaper. (That’s discounting my own labour though, which you should never do if you’re actually selling stuff you create!)

    Cushion

    Don’t they look lovely on the new couch? I might need to make some more…

    New couch with Marimekko cushions