{How To} Sew a Quick + Easy Headband

Sewing headbands is addictive...

Since I sewed my first headband, I've made a few (ahem; quite a few) more for myself and my daughter. It took me a few tries to get the length and width just right, but once I did, I was off and running. I've sewn these on the machine and by hand; either way they are quick and easy gratification, and they keep my long, unruly (especially in the humidity of summer) hair off my face.

It's been a while since I shared a tutorial, and I thought it would be fun to show how I make these. I scanned in my adult template and child template as a Google doc. The child one is sized to fit my three-year-old daughter's head. The elastic makes it adjustable, but you may want to fiddle with the length or width a bit for an older child. (I aim to get the finished length to run from just behind one ear to just behind the other.) Just remember not to make the end openings any narrower than they are now, or it's just too hard to turn them right-side out. The templates are for half of one side of the headband--print them full size on 8.5x11 paper, but trace the outline against the fold of a larger sheet of paper. (Or you could cut two pieces and tape them in the center.) If this doesn't make sense, it should once you see the pics below. Okay, enough of the small details. Let’s get started!

For an adult headband, you’ll need enough fabric to cut out two pieces. A fat quarter is definitely enough. You could use two different prints and make it reversible. You could embroider your headband like I did with my denim one. Play around! You’ll also need about 5.5 inches of elastic (a little less for a child). I usually use woven, but the scrap I grabbed for this is knit. Take your full-size template and trace it onto your fabric. If you’re not fussy cutting (to get a particular part of the fabric onto your headband, like I did with the dogs here), just fold your fabric right sides together and trace, then cut out both pieces at once.

Sandwich your elastic on the inside. You can leave a little poking out the end.

Then pin your pieces together on three sides. Begin sewing (1/4” seam allowance) at the end without the elastic, but leave yourself a little room--a half inch or so--at the end. Otherwise, it’s really hard to turn it rightside out.

When you get to the end of the first long side, pivot and then sew back and forth over the elastic a couple of times.

Pivot and head down the second long side, being careful not to catch the elastic as you do.

Once you’ve sewn all three sides, turn it rightside out (grab hold of the end of the elastic to help you do this), then iron the seams flat. (You could press a bit before you turn, if you wanted to.) Fold the raw edges of the open side under and press.

Rather stained ironing board cover...

Tuck in the other end of the elastic and fit it to your head so it’s comfortable—not too tight, but not too loose, either. Then sew the opening shut, sandwiching the elastic inside. Again, go back and forth over the elastic a couple of times.

Pinned and ready to be sewn

You could topstitch all around if you want, but I never do. Here's this one all finished.

If you finish and realize the elastic isn’t quite right, no big deal. You can always adjust it. I made one too loose, so I just overlapped it and sewed it securely. I made one for my daughter much too tight, so I cut the elastic and inserted another piece to extend it, again, sewing it securely.

Finished headband--the modeled shot! So quick and easy, pretty and useful. So much to love in one little project.

Goofy self-portrait, so you can see it on.

Shared with my creative space...

Scratching the Itch: Zippered Pouches

Do you ever get it into your head to make something in particular, and then there's just no getting it out of your head until you do? Some time last week I decided I wanted to make little zippered pouches, to have on hand for gift-giving or just plain spontaneous generosity, not to mention I'd like a new one too. I'm not sure exactly where this idea came from. It might have been while I was trying to jam everything back into the small zippered pouch I use as a wallet. It's only a tad bit bigger than the size of a credit card, and I have so many cards that size stuck in there. It's fine to slip one or two out, but if I have to take them all out to look for something, it's really hard to get them all back in again.

Geez, I thought, I should just make my own. I might have had that idea while flipping through my copy of Sew What! Bags for fun one night (you do that too, right? just look through project books for fun?). There's a recipe in there for a wristlet, with the idea of modifying it to make a small zippered pouch. But where to get short zippers? I don't remember seeing them in Joann's. Etsy to the rescue! I ordered ten 5-inch zippers from zipit. With shipping I think they cost about sixty cents each. While I waited for them to arrive I cut 6.5" by 4.5" pieces from scraps, enough to make four pockets to start with. I chose plain outer fabrics (linen and scraps from an old, soft button-down shirt) so I could stamp them.

Clockwise from top left: Birch leaf; Irish moss; winter tree; summer tree.

A bit wonky in places, but cute! So cute!! They are just under 4x6 inches, and they are lined, of course. (They all have the same lining.)

So, I am still not great at zippers. My side seams don't line up exactly, and I don't seem to understand how the zipper foot helps anything, really, and I feel like I am actually sewing too close to the zipper, so the lining fabric tends to get stuck--especially in the one with the seaweed print (top right), where it really does get too close to the teeth in one spot. But yet, it also feels like too small of a seam allowance with the fabric. Maybe I shouldn't line the top of the zipper up exactly with the top of the fabric before sewing. If I position it down just a little bit so the stitching isn't so close to the top edge of the fabric, would that be a bad thing? Anyone have zipper-sewing tips to share?

Luckily, I have six more little zippers with which to experiment, and I know where to get more--in so many sizes and so many colors! Is it weird to feel like a kid in a toy store when faced with all those zippers?

Any creative urges just been nagging at you lately?

Linking up with my creative space...

Getting Ready

(Giveaway is still open--postcards inspired by the lake!)

I will be spending Saturday and Sunday taking a weekend intensive in mixed media through RISD continuing ed, so I've been gathering my materials and preparing for this very exciting (and somewhat intimidating) experience. I signed up because mixed media feels so challenging to me. I'm hoping to exit the weekend feeling far more confident with it. To add to the excitement, Karen is taking the class too. I am very much looking forward to meeting her in person.

Linking up with my creative space--lucky me, I get twelve hours of creative space this weekend!

Changing Rhythms {And Some Knitting}

It's summer. Rhythms are changing. All my kids are home--hurrah!--and we sat down to brainstorm what we might like to do this summer. We engage in cooperative list-making twice a year, for the summer and for the Christmas holidays. It was a suggestion I saw in a book on simplifying Christmas, the idea being that if you don't sit down as a family and talk about what you want to do, the family planner (me, in this family) might end up doing a lot of unnecessary work planning things that nobody would miss. Better to put the effort into activities everybody really wants to do. So together, the kids and I talk about where we want to visit, what we want to make, and what we want to do over the summer. This year, I decided to make the list a little prettier.

As you can see, there is room to add more as we think of it (we already have!). It's okay if we don't do all of this. Sturbridge Village is a carryover from last summer; we still haven't made it there. And we already have circus tickets. Not everything is big, either, or costs money. Some things are hopeful thinkings out loud. Everybody's ideas are on here.

We've already had our first of many beach visits--that's where we decided to spend a goodly part of the solstice, since it was predicted to be quite hot. We visited the barrier beach that has a salt pond side, too. The pond is shallow, with no waves, and I felt comfortable, this year, knitting a little bit while the kids played in the pond. My youngest is old enough for that now. (Still no knitting on the beach side, though.)

This is my take-along knitting, a second long, skinny Saroyan (since I liked the first one I made so much). I bought the yarn in December as a pick-me-up, the week my husband was away and the cat killed the TV and I finally went to the doctor and ended up diagnosed with Lyme. The colors reminded me of the ocean. It doesn't get serious attention, this knitting. I rarely work on it at home. It's the knitting I bring with me, mostly stockinette so I can hold a conversation, with just that bit of lace edging, and I can usually figure out where I left off in the repeat even if I forget to mark it down. I think it's entirely perfect that I was able to knit a few rows on a saltwater shore.

I'm linking up with my creative space, even though my creative space feels a bit sparse this week. It's all about (happily! so happily!) adjusting to new rhythms.

Sewn: {Last-Minute} Teacher Tote

I'm so glad you all seem to be enjoying reading the Squam stories as much as I'm enjoying writing and sharing them. I have a couple more coming up, but tonight I wanted to share this last-minute teacher gift. I've been thinking of it as the "crazy bag" in my head, which isn't fair, because the bag itself isn't crazy. It's more me, kind of. Anyway, first the bag:

And excuse the poor lighting; I made it tonight and am gifting it tomorrow, so daylight photos aren't an option. Tomorrow, see, is the last day of school. It sort of snuck up on me, which is weird, because I've been counting down to it for months now. (I have a little song about school lunches, and how many more I had to make, to the tune of "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." And when I got home on Sunday, my husband said, "Packing the lunches sucks!" No kidding, I said. Haven't I been saying?) But anyway, this is the earliest we've ended since we started going to that school--no snow days this year. We did have four hurricane days right at the start, but we made up three over the course of the year. One year we had flood days--four of 'em. They are not kidding when they say anything goes, weather-wise, in New England.

So, right. If I'd have been here last week, I'd have been thinking of teacher gifts, but my husband was being me, and he is not the version of me that thinks of these things. Typically at the end of the year I try to do something for all the teachers and staff, rather than individually, like I try to do before the holiday break. So I'm bringing in two iced boxes of joe tomorrow morning to leave in the office. But my oldest has had the same teacher for three years in a row, and he's moving on, and we wanted to give her something besides the shared coffee. But what? Nothing seemed right. So at ten this morning I decided I needed to make her something, and I went and found this tote tutorial from Zaaberry that I'd pinned over a year ago.

Did I mention my sewing machine wasn't actually in my possession at that point? I'd left it to be serviced while I went away, and it was pouring yesterday so I didn't want to pick it up. I got it back this afternoon, came home, fed the younger kids lunch, decided upon fabric, and cut my pieces. Because my husband is away, I didn't get to start sewing this until 7:30, but it's a quick sew, at least. My one concession to time was to use the thread already in the machine, thinking I'd match fabric to it. But I decided the bag should be this linen combo, which doesn't really match blue, except I had no brown thread and nothing that would go any better than the blue, so I kept it.

Oh! Take a closer look at the leaf print.

That's a birch leaf stamp that I carved the other night. I just had to. I'm so delighted with it. It's going to show up on other projects...one I'm quite excited about but can't show you yet. I'm so pleased with this stamp, I decided it had to be incorporated in this bag--it's on both sides. I used liquid acrylic craft paint, both because I don't have brown textile paint and because it's quicker and works just as well for this sort of thing, and it doesn't need to be heat-set (and it still won't wash out).

The really cute thing about this bag (and the reason it has that great button, which came in one of my WhimseyBoxes) is that it folds up.

So his teacher can just have it in her bag and use it at the library or the farmers' market or wherever she may be this summer and in need of a re-usable bag. I'm kind of smitten with this bag altogether. We're going to say the blue thread was a design choice, and be very forgiving of the wiggliness of linen (I'd forgotten how it moves when you try to cut it, if I ever knew). My son, to his credit, also seemed pleased and appreciative and thought it was a good gift. I think he is also admiring of the way it folds up like that, like it's almost tactical or something.

I'm linking up with these creative folks (missed them last week!) and then I'm going to lie down...

Honoring My Crafting Needs

I am a selfish crafter. Not because I don't make things for other people--quite the contrary, I make things for other people all the time. But because, for the most part, I only make what I want to make. I don't need to worry about what color might be trending next year or whether I have enough items to stock a shop or for craft fair season or whether foxes are the new owls (or is the other way 'round? I can't keep that straight). I just make what I please and what I need to make--not "need" in terms of the finished product but "need" in terms of soothing my soul.

I've noticed this month that all I really want to do is sew and knit. Possibly this is because it's Truly Spring, and it's a good time of year to sew skirts for me and my daughter, and that knitting pattern I chose to try and finish for Squam is very spring-like, too. But I think it's more than that. I think, in this very chaotic and anxiety-inducing month that May has become for us, I am instinctively turning to the very basic acts of making something serviceable out of nothing more than cloth and thread, yarn and loop.

Yarn through loop, over and over, until a sweater emerges.

I wasn't consciously thinking these thoughts when I began sewing my daughter's skirts, of course. I just thought, It's time to sew a skirt. And then another. And now I'm working on another.

It's just a pile of orange at the moment, but it's supposed to end up as an a-line ruffle skirt. Kim posted in the Ravelry sewing group that she was looking for test sewists for a pattern she is planning to sell, and I volunteered. I think the sole reason I volunteered is because I have always avoided ruffles; they look complicated and difficult. And I know if I've promised someone that I'll make this, I'll deal with my ruffle intimidation. (My sister, who can sew anything, told me ruffles deserve their pain-in-the-butt reputation and the way to deal with ruffle fear is to not make any. But I'd already committed by that point.) I'm supposed to have this done by Saturday, but all I've done is cut. I decided the sewing will have to wait until my husband is home, because I am so tired by the time evening comes when he's away. (Yup, he's gone again, but he's coming home late tonight.)

So I cut the pieces earlier in the week, after my younger two kids were in bed but my oldest was still up. Instead of reading his book or playing his DS, he decided to hang out with me while I traced and cut. He didn't want me to be all by myself--even though, if his dad had been home, he'd have been upstairs with him and I'd have been by myself anyway. It was very sweet, and he asked about the rotary cutter and why my clear ruler had lines on it and what a selvedge was and he marveled over the disappearing fabric marker--no doubt pondering its possible applications in the spy trade. I thoroughly enjoyed having his company while I worked.

While I was rummaging around in the fabric stash for something my daughter would like for the ruffle skirt, I came upon this.

There's three yards of it, and it's part of what I gathered from my mother's sewing room after she died. I didn't sew at the time, although I felt it coming (I bought a sewing machine just over a year later, eight months pregnant with my youngest). So I've had this fabric nearly five years, and I have no idea how long my mother had it before that. It was still folded up from the store, with the cutting tag stapled on. It's a big, all-over-the-place pattern, isn't it? I want to make a long, a-line, drawstring skirt out of it, hopefully before I leave for New Hampshire.

I know I'll be coming back to embroidery soon...I had my camera out at the playground today, wondering if I could capture, with fabric and floss, the sensation of being enclosed by the big tree that the kids call a fort. And I have lots of mixed media/painting in the future in the form of a class and a workshop. But for now, I follow my desire to cut and sew and press, to run yarn through my fingers and around my needles, to make exactly what I feel I must, something out of nothing, comfort out of cloth and string.

And because I couldn't walk by the delicate veins of the iris petal, the softly clinging raindrops, without taking a photo, I will share it with you. I hope you are crafting some soul happiness, too.

Shared with my creative space...

Dinoskirt

Remember the girl's dinosaur pants? I promised her a skirt, too, when it got warmer. This is the second skirt of the week, made the same way as the first.

She likes it even better than the pink flowery one. The girl loves color--the more, the better, all in the same outfit, please! I love how easy and quick it is to make a skirt for a three-year-old. It's so absolutely satisfying to take a flat piece of fabric, cut a rectangle, and with a bit of sewing and some elastic, have a garment just a short time later. And since this skirt used less than a half-yard of fabric, it cost about a dollar. (Love that bargain loft!)

I'm linking up with the creative folk here.

Loop'd

Over and over again, I have to learn that I can't control everything, no matter how tightly I clench my jaw and will it to be so. I can't control the badly timed fevers, the lingering coughs, the inevitable decision to delay that which has already caused quite a bit of anticipation anxiety. I've never been very good at going with the flow; the unknown and wiggly and tentative don't fill me with excitement but instead inspire an urge to make orderly lists in tightly controlled, neat printing with a smoothly flowing pen on a crisp page in a brand new notebook. It's not that I can't handle open, unplanned time, or that I always need to be busy--that's not it at all. I just don't like the uncertainty of out of my hands.

I'm trying. I really am. And when I forget, life reminds me. Amy, you gotta relax. Some things, you can't control, so you just gotta let it happen however it's going to happen.

Meanwhile, I've been embroidering those loops, a free-wheeling design drawn with a washable fabric marker on a piece of denim destined to be another headband.

You can click to make this bigger.

It's not done yet. Simple, loopy stitching.

Oh, and the phoebe nest under our deck has one creamy, beautiful egg in it so far. I can peek at it from above, through the deck slats. Later I saw mama phoebe resting in the nest. This makes me so happy I don't even have the words.

Linking up with my creative space, which has a brand-new shiny home.

Poem In Your Pocket Day + Give-away

**Thank you for playing along! Naomi, commenter #9, came up on random. org. Congrats, Naomi! Check your inbox for an email.**









Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day! But first, a little offering from me to you, to mark one year of blogging in this space: a 5x7" embroidery piece.

My first thought was to sneaky-like enter everyone who's commented this month and then just announce who won, but then I thought, Probably not everybody would want this, especially considering the blue shape looks more like a dagger or an icicle because I did it first, before I got better at keeping my diagonals going in the right direction (harder than you'd think, against that fabric). So instead, if you would like a piece of original embroidery, by me, just leave a comment on this post and let me know. It's wrapped around a piece of bookbinding board; here's a back view.

I think you could probably slip it into a frame without glass, or just prop it up on a shelf--if the blue icicle doesn't bother you, that is. (I should just be quiet and say I meant to do it that way, maybe?) Since it's Poem in Your Pocket day, if you'd like to mention a favorite poem in  your comment, or link to a post with a poem, or tell me what you're doing to celebrate, I'd love to hear it. But you don't have to. You can just leave a regular old "hope you pick me" comment. I'll use random.org to pick someone, you need to make sure there's a way to contact you (ie, leave your email address in your comment if it's not going to show up in the profile), and I will mail to anywhere in the whole wide world. Leave your comment by 8 pm EST on Thursday, May 3, which is a week from today. I think I covered everything?

Today, I'll be passing out copies of my favorite e.e. cummings poem as I go about my day. (I love the beach, you know.)

maggie and milly and molly and may
by e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Copyright © 1956, 1984, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust from The Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, Edited by George J. Firmage.

...linking up with the folks at our creative spaces...

Finished Knit: {A Better} Baby Yours

Two weeks ago I had just a back of a sweater; now I have the whole thing.

I don't usually photograph finished knits hanging up. But anyway. This is my second Baby Yours sweater (the first is here), and I'm much more pleased with this version, which has been modified all sorts of ways.

* I knit the six-month size in width, but to the length of the twelve-month size, and it looks way more proportional to me.

* I attached the fronts to the back at the shoulders using a 3-needle bindoff, wrong sides facing, instead of seaming. You can't even tell, because that portion is in garter stitch and it blends right in, but now the poky seam isn't on the inside where it can irritate sweet little baby shoulders.

* I picked up the stitches for the sleeves and knit them in the round, top down, eliminating the sleeve seam, which looked like it would irritate sweet little baby arms. I also ignored the pattern's instructions for increases (which would now be decreases) every four rows, and did them every ten, which worked out to every inch. The sleeves look better to me now.

They increase evenly, instead of weirdly. The pattern doesn't include a row gauge. The pattern doesn't include a row gauge. I paid $6.50 for this pattern, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that complete gauge information should be included with patterns, especially boughten ones. My stitch gauge was spot on, but I had to go down a needle size. Perhaps if my row gauge matched the designer's, the sleeves in the first version I knit wouldn't look so weirdly sloped to me. But I don't know if that's the problem. If I knew the row gauge, I could do a little bit of math ahead of time and make sure everything matched up but the pattern doesn't include a row gauge.

Anyway, this left just the sides from the bottom to the underarm to sew up, and that's not an area where a seam is going to annoy a baby. I prefer my modded-out version of this pattern to the original, but I am also happy to be done with knitting baby sweaters for a while.

A view of the back, just because. It's really a lovely cable.

It seems like ages since I've knit anything for myself. I've been knitting for Other People's Babies since December. So I began something for myself, using stash yarn that turned out to be annoying...but that's a story for another day.

Linking up with our creative spaces...

Slow But Steady {Creative Space}

My husband arrived home Saturday night from his week in Belgium, and Sunday morning I woke up with a sore throat. A week of not-enough-sleep and feeling stressed, topped off by two hours outside on a raw, cloudy Saturday afternoon, could only result in a rollicking spring cold. The symptoms went downhill from there, which means not a lot of progress has gone on this week with anything creative, although I have consumed impressive amounts of lemon/honey hot water.

But I finished the back of the second Baby Yours sweater, thank goodness.

Besides being awesome open-ended play props, play silks make excellent backgrounds for photographs! The blue color is very true to life in this photo, and I'm wondering if that's because I chose an orange background (orange is blue's complement). I'll have to keep this in mind for future photographs of tricky-colored yarn. Back to the sweater: I'm knitting the 6-month size in width and the 12-month size in length, and I think that will make for a much more proportionate sweater. The shoulder stitches are on holders, awaiting their 3-needle bindoff when I finish the fronts. I really meant to be farther along on this by now, simply because I want to be done with it.

And that's it for this week's creative space for me, but you can find more creative souls right here.

Small Things in Various Stages of Completion

Thanks for all your kind words on the circles embroidery for the 4x6 exchange. I sent it off yesterday with an extra stamp and a note explaining why (I heard back from the Art House Co-op folks and that's what they said to do). I wonder what I'll receive in return?

I have been falling short left, right, and center in my solo parenting role this week. I sort of hoped, after ten years at this job, I'd be better at it. In between meltdowns (mine and my children's), I've done a little creative work here and there. First, I decided I wanted some interesting, handmade note cards on hand for when I send off a package and want to include a note. Nothing crazy difficult to make...I just wanted to play around.

My kids have been spraying canvases with liquid watercolors, so I started by spraying red, yellow, and blue watercolors on a sheet of watercolor paper. I did them one after the other, so the colors blended quite a bit. When the paper was dry, I dropped on some black ink with a dropper and then tilted the paper so it ran in spots. When that dried, I brushed on some gesso here and there with a wide brush. I haven't played with gesso at all, really, and want to figure out what I can do with it.  Then I sliced up the paper into six 4"x6" pieces and printed them sparingly with circles and purple acrylic paint. Some are bubble wrap prints, some a small cork (the kind you can buy in a craft store--so smaller than a wine bottle cork), and some the end of a plastic tube. Fun.

Above is a second Baby Yours sweater in progress, and the embroidery that distracted me from working much on the sweater. After much consideration of other patterns, I eventually decided to go ahead and make another Baby Yours, but modify it to eliminate what I don't like about the pattern. This should be easy enough, given I've already knit it once. The embroidery is on a piece of fabric I printed, and it's Irish Moss (ETA: a type of seaweed) in progress. (I've shown it before as a stamp.) Since I didn't have the energy to post this the same day I took that photo, I get to show you the finished embroidery, too. (The sweater looks about the same, though.)

I'm going to finish this one similarly to the circles and I think it will be my contribution to the local gallery's 4"x6" fundraiser.

A note on trying to transfer the drawing onto the printed fabric...I tried to use stabilizer, because it's certainly easier to see a transferred pattern on a white background. But I really don't like stitching through paper into fabric. So I started over and used an iron-transfer pen instead. If you click on the in-progress photo to make it a little bigger, you might be able to see how faint the lines are in some places. They just don't show up well on blue/green textile ink. I kept the original nearby to consult when necessary and fudged just a little bit. But since it's my drawing to begin with, and I know Irish Moss quite well, it all worked out in the end.

I'm linking up with the folks at creative spaces and am kind of surprised I managed to join in this week!

Small(er) Things, Embroidered and To-Be-Embroidered

Remember that Japanese fabric that told me it wanted to be embroidered? I've begun.

(That was taken after dinner on my back deck because the weather has been beyootiful!!!)

Here's almost what it looks like now, not including what I added while I sat on the deck while my daughter played in the sandbox because the weather has been...oh, you know. I already said that part.

This right here is several things. Firstly, it's just under 4"x6", by design. Secondly, it's the first time I've embroidered on a multi-colored background, except for the August Stitch-a-Long, but that was different. I've admired many of the pieces I've seen that embroider on top of patterned fabric and finally got the nerve to try it (because the fabric told me to). This is just a simple design, so so basic--overlapping circles of primary colors, definitely not anything complex there! But I'm discovering that as the colors in the fabric gradually shift, my perception of the seed stitch against the background subtly shifts too; in other words, it's more interesting than I anticipated. It makes me want to try more (adventurous) things with color shifts of floss against color shifts of background.

Also, I think I am drawn to this piece of fabric because I had a similar-looking flannel shirt in college... (Pearl Jam, yes! Nirvana, blech).

I was intending this piece for a local gallery's Postcard Fundraiser (which does not appear to be limited to local artists--please click the link if you're interested). But then there are these...

(Photographed on the big rock in my yard, in the sunshine, because the weather has been...right, you know that already.) These are stamps I've carved, printed on cotton using textile ink, each 4x6. One of the thoughts I had while reading Hoopla was to try mixing embroidery with other images on the fabric. So these were heat-set the other night and are waiting to be embroidered upon, when I'm done with those circles.

I have some knitting to show you, too, but that will have to wait until the next post. But before I go, I wanted to share some of nature's own elegant weaving that my middle child spotted this morning:

Linking up with our creative spaces (click to see more creativity!).

Creative Space: 4x6 Exchange

So I signed up for the Arthouse Co-op's 4x6 art exchange, but it's making me sort of stressy, I think because when I signed up instead of "name" in the name box, it said "artist." I nearly closed the browser tab right then. But I didn't. So I need to come up with "art," versus those fun loose postcards that might be called mail art by some but Hanna gave it the way less stressy name of "DIY Postcard Swap" (and by the way, that link goes to the post with the links to everyone's postcards and they are amazing).

I think I should put my head away, really, and just have fun with this, but in the meantime, I tried to make a small watercolor painting instead. Remember the skunk cabbage from yesterday?  I sketched it a bit while we were walking, and then tried to paint it, using the sketches and the photo as guides.

After I took that photo, I added in some highlights that are probably completely unnoticeable, using white conte crayon.

I don't know, technically, this has problems, although it does look like skunk cabbage, if you know what skunk cabbage looks like. (My daughter, when shown this, id'd it right away. That's my girl!!) I haven't decided if this is worthy of an "art" swap. Maybe I should take another approach--printmaking, maybe, or collage, or even sewing. (A local gallery is holding a postcard fundraiser, with submissions due later in April...I've got something sewn in mind for that.)

The more I look at it, the more I'm thinking no. What do you think?

Linking up with our creative spaces...

Winter Trees II

This is my second go-round with the winter trees theme. I'm calling this embroidery, although I suppose it's also applique.

Here's a photo of the back.

So you can see the white linen is the ground fabric, and I added the negative space with the black to create the birch trees. I both machine-sewed and hand-stitched the pieces. My intention all along was to blanket-stitch the edges, which were left raw, by hand, but I was concerned about shifting, so I zig-zagged them on the machine first.

Here's a detail:

I do think it's hard to get the feel for this just through a photo. Every here and there I added some longer blanket stitches extending in, and in a few middle areas I satin stitched and then snipped some threads, to give the feel of peeling birch bark, and the naturally fraying edges contribute to that too. It worked out more or less like I'd hoped it would, when I was figuring it out in my head. It is, I think, deceptively simple looking--and actually, rather simple in execution, once I had the shapes the way I wanted. (Although since my main time for handwork is after dark, I nearly blinded myself stitching on black linen with black floss...luckily a couple of weeks ago Joann's had Ottlites on sale and I bought a small floor lamp to go behind my chair. So I'm not completely blind yet.)

I haven't forgotten my embroidered trees. My challenge to myself this month is to enter something in a local arts center's open show. (Drop-off is actually in early April, but I need to have something ready.) Last year I asked my older kids if they wanted to enter something--it's truly open to all, if you're willing to pay the entry fee, which is only $5 for kids. They both did, but I chickened out. So. This year I'm entering something. It needs to be 12"x12" and ready to hang, so I considered various ideas, in consultation with my sister, on how to get the embroidered trees to comply. This is the solution I like best:

I'm basically matting it with fabric (black linen again). I cut into the black piece and folded the sides back to have a neat edge bordering the embroidery. I'll sew that by hand, and this way I'm not cutting the embroidery fabric. I'm going to wrap a 12"x12" canvas with the black fabric, centering the embroidery. I prefer that to framing it. What do you think? Opinions are welcome, as I haven't done anything beyond pinning yet.

If I can get the birch trees into 12"x12" format, I may enter that one as well. We'll see. I just need to follow my children's example and proceed fearlessly and confidently...

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Postcards

I've completed the postcards for the postcard swap! So before I show them, I'll tell you that I always have a nagging feeling that whatever I make won't be good enough or up to the standards and that's a main thing that has been holding me back on this sort of thing. I signed up anyway. (I'm trying to be more open, remember?!) There are lots of small things that I wish were a bit better with these postcards, the biggest being that I tried three different types of glue/paste, the final one being the rice paste I use for bookbinding, and set them to dry under or in a big huge book (my art history book, which is great for this sort of thing), and some of them still have a curling problem. I hope it doesn't cause an issue in the mail sorting machines, and I wish I knew what to do about it.

So anyway, these are my finished postcards, in sets, and here are the papers I began with for the collages, if you want to look back. Some of them look very different once cut up!

These are more or less random collages in that I had no plan when I began and simply wanted to play with the papers and see where it led me. I think the two on the right, and the one on the bottom, are the most successful. The bottom one was created by cutting the striped paper into one-inch strips and then piecing them together, almost log-cabin style but not quite. I find the stripes much more interesting this way. Each bit becomes its own little composition. I really enjoy slicing painted papers into smaller pieces for just that reason.

I've been thinking of this next set as the "seashore set."

After these collages were dry, I stamped them, using blockprinting ink. You can see where it took me a couple of tries to realize that where the paper joins, I needed to apply a bit more pressure. I'm actually okay with this skip where it occurred though. It's proof an actual person made these, yes?

If you count, you'll see that's just nine. Going against my own wise instinct, I tried to paste too-big a piece of vellum onto one of the postcard blanks, and it curled horribly. Since I needed to make more, I decided to make extras. These four were watercolored, then block printed.

Totally abstract, and I like them quite a bit. I cut the watercolor paper to size, then used rice paste to glue the watercolor paper to the postcard blank (I'd printed these out on cardstock, so I could personalize them with the swap date, my state, and my name and blog address). Most of them didn't curl too badly. I accidentally smudged some ink on the bottom right one though, so I don't think I'll mail that one out for the swap. The stamp, by the way, was carved at a parent/child program, with a textile design as the inspiration.

So those are my postcards. I hope they hold up through the mail. I hope the recipient enjoys them. Despite my huge insecurities with this sort of thing, I went ahead and signed up for the Art House Co-op's 4x6 exchange today, so I'll be thinking on what to do for that next.

Shared with our creative spaces...such an inspiring community of bloggers!

Some other fun things around the web lately:

* I have a post on Kidoinfo on the wonders of freezer paper for the uninitiated.

* After a couple months of waiting, I received my Whimseybox invitation this month and signed up. I just think it sounds like a cool challenge and a way to explore different materials. I was pretty excited to see the invite in my inbox, and the first one should arrive, I think, while my husband is away, so perfect timing there! Fun things in the mail are always nice when I'm holding down the fort alone.

* You've probably heard about Taproot by now. I was really excited to get an email telling me that I would be receiving a free trial issue because I'm a Nova Naturals customer. I don't remember how or when I first came to Nova Naturals, but I know I only had two kids at the time. When I first saw the announcement about Taproot, the fact that Nova Naturals was involved made me more interested. I have always admired not only their products, but their philosophies and customer service (plus they're located in the only state without a coastline I'd ever want to live in, Vermont). Their catalog is so beautiful that when my daughter was a toddler, she would carry it with her everywhere. I love the toys we've purchased from them; they have a soul. Even after reading of their involvement, I was completely surprised that they'd send a trial issue. Really, these small considerations make me so happy! And I'm eagerly awaiting to see the magazine in person. (Yes, I subscribed, too..they had me at "valued customer!")

I hope your days have contained some sweet surprises as well!