Showing posts with label alongs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alongs. Show all posts

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Make-along Day 1

So you know how I said I was going to make a shirt for J?

Didn't happen.

After a not so pleasant morning, and as I was planning my measurements J bluntly informed me that since I wouldn't be working with a stretchy fabric I would have to either make the shirt with buttons or a zipper. (I had a project fail a year ago and blamed it on the stretchy fabric, and have refused to work with a similarly stretchy fabric to this day. I'm still not sure if it was the fabric or my nearly non-existent sewing skills, but it made me feel better to blame it on the fabric.)

I've never sewn button holes in fabric, and I certainly did not have fun the last time I sewed a zipper on something. So, after a not so great morning, all I needed was the feeling of being overwhelmed and the sense of impending failure to make me throw in the towel.

So instead I felted my first nuno scarf.

Iused some of the linen fabric that was to be made into the shirt (there's still enough for the shirt, I think, when (not if) I do actually make it).

The first thing I did was watch an excellent video on nuno felting on feltinglessons.com.

Then I layed down a long piece of bubble wrap (it couldn't all fit on my short counter space), and then saran wrap. I put down some red and blue wool, then two thin layers of green wool, and then bits of yarn. I couldn't fit the whole scarf on my counter space, so I just layed down wool for the length of my counter space.
roving

I put some of the fabric on top, and two layers of green wool, yarn, and bits of red and blue wool. Since I didn't hem the sides I made sure that there was wool wrapped around the sides.

nuno scarf start

I put the nylon netting on top of the wool and fabric that I just completed, wet it with cold water and smoothed it down, then rolled it around a rolling pin until I hit the next chunk of blank fabric. I applied wool, etc. to that next length of fabric, and repeated until all the fabric was covered.

Then I tied it and rolled it back and forth until my arms were tired. I took a long break.

nuno scarf rolled

When I went back to the package it didn't seem like it had felted very much, with a lot of the fibers sticking to the nylon and not to the linen. So I spent a long time manually rubbing it with a bit of bubble wrap. When I could see signs of felting I wrapped it in the bubble wrap again, and started rolling it until I was sick of the monotony.

Even though it seemed like the wool hadn't felted completely to the linen I decided to walk on the wild side and started felting it with warm water. Eventually, when I was once again sick of the monotony I wrapped it lengthwise in the nylon mesh, put it in some pantyhose, and threw it in the washing machine (on a quick cycle).

The result:
finished nuno scarf

Friday, April 09, 2010

Can I make it?

I'm going to try and sew J a shirt tomorrow as part of the make-along. I've never sewn a shirt, I can't even sew in a straight line, and I'm fully expecting to ruin the semi-expensive cloth J bought for it yesterday. And although I know I'll look at my crumpled, lopsided attempt at this time tomorrow and feel disappointed that it's not perfect, I also know I'll be another step closer to being a decent sewer.

Are you going to joining the make-along? Making something crazy ambitious is not a requirement by the way.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Umm, ya

So, you know how I gave myself the deadline of Friday for finishing the gloves?

Well, turns out I had forgotten something important. I had forgotten that J was going to be at a conference for half this week and really, if I'm going to make a glove for her, I'd really like it to fit her perfectly, which means interrupting her every five minutes with whatever important thing she's doing so she can try it on and make sure it still fits. So, sadly, all I've really done is finish the palm and pinkie.
WIP knitted glovesBut, I do have good news.

Yesterday I finally made my light box!lightbox along
There's a lightbox along happening on twitter for the month of March. Which is a good thing too because I've been meaning to make mine for ages. Ironically J has the camera right now so the picture is taken with a crappy webcam. I have a few more projects to share with you, but it will have to wait until Saturday because these webcam pics are not very flattering, and I like flattering.