Help! I am Out of Control with Fiber!

It is Anti-procrastination Month. I want to finish this cross-stitch map of Denmark that I began a long time ago. When you put a project aside, you don't expect it to be weeks, or months, or years until you pick it up again. You certainly do not expect it to be decades. In the meantime, eyesight isn't what it used to be and seeing the uneven threads on linen is more difficult than threading the needle. I can only work on it when the sun is shining into the sun porch. Even then, it gives me a headache.

The map is fairly large.

Can you see the date? That's right. It's been 18 years and that doesn't include the time I worked on it before that. It's quite an ambitious project and really all that is left is the border and marking a few towns. Why a map of Demark? The reason is that we were married there.

It seems I am totally out of control with fiber. I could fill my winter days with fiber arts, reading, and piping. This sewing tangent has a history.

It started with a simple yo-yo to finish off a child's hat.

Then the project bags that were in my last posting. One project bag has a top that is pieced together. Did that get it out of my system? No. It just added fuel to the fire.


Then I put together a little table runner from a tutorial called the Disappearing Nine-Patch by Rachel Griffith on P.S. I Quilt. Now I am going back to the School of You Tube to complete the quilting and binding. Not too shabby for a knitter, eh?

A Bit of Craftiness in the Mix

I've been wanting to put a more permanent tag on the prayer shawls we give away from our church knitting group. First I just handwrote them with permanent ink on fabric. They are just ok and I could foresee myself getting tired of that for the long haul. I later tried printing fabric labels on my ink jet printer. They turned out great and are smaller. Though the fabric is a bit expensive, I can get 30 labels on a sheet so as long as I don't ruin a sheet, it is just pennies per label.

We are just whip stitching them to a corner of the shawl. They are about half the size of the handwritten one in the photo. The ladies in the group really liked the idea.

Another pumpkin hat went to a little baby boy born in October. So cute.

Then I sewed project bags that can go into the basket I carry with me. These keep the project pieces nice and tidy. I've turned into a triple project person all of a sudden. What in the world is going on?

Old buttons with large holes dress up the ribbons on the bags.

A Crafty Morning

Yesterday two knitting friends came at my invitation for a surprise craft project. I had actually invited four friends but only two were brave enough. I told them the project was related to, but did not involve knitting. I am not really good at keeping secrets like this so when Nicole asked what we were going to do, I blurted it out. Sarah, on the other hand, was curious, maybe even wary, but trusting enough to show up with the specified materials: a t-shirt that could be sacrificed for the cause and a bag of polyester fiberfill. Hmmmm. That must have kept her up all night.

It turns out that 3 of us were the perfect number to make our individual body doubles. The instructions are found in Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits and this is one of the reasons I bought the book. Having a body double to try on garments is genius and when you can do it with duct tape, an old t-shirt, and some fiberfill, it is pretty cheap genius at that! We chose Nicole as our first guinea pig and she was certainly a good sport as Sarah and I read the directions step by step, pondering once in a while to figure out the next step. I think it took Sarah and me much longer to wrap Nicole than when Nicole was wrapping Sarah and me. We attributed that to the learning curve and that Nicole sews a lot.

After wrapping a body, you cut down the back and then tape it back together. Nicole and Sarah are figuring that out in this photo.

We have a few tips to share:

• The plastic wrap proved unnecessary. If the t-shirt has a reasonable neckline, we just taped around that.
  


• Get plenty of tape. It takes a lot.
  


• Get plenty of fiberfill. One large bag is not enough for one dummy and none of us are considered large.
  


• Do not attempt if you are overly modest.
  


• I thought being wrapped in duct tape would be claustrophobic but it wasn't. It didn't bother me at all and I'm the kind of person who doesn't like crowded elevators.
  


• Allow 45 min to an hour per person.

I don't look very happy in the photo, but it wasn't bad until I saw the finished product. Yikes! Am I that chubby??????????? (I asked my husband and he is smart enough to give the right answer.) Nicole looks a little wild-eyed. I'm glad I didn't know she had scissors in her hand.

The final stage was cutting a cardboad bottom, stuffing with fiberfill, and inserting a hanger.

Nicole looks happy with her finished Nicole #2.

I am just drawing a blank trying to think of labels for this post! It isn't knitting but it was fun.