Homebound

For various reasons, I've spent the month very much at home.

I've done a lot of the usual recycling of one thing into another:  new cloth diapers from a flannel sheet, and kitchen wipes from worn-out diapers.  I'm making toddler pants out of some 25-cent yard sale sweatshirts.

I laminated some more pretty papers and fabrics for shelf liners.

I decluttered some things that needed to go.

We made a bunch of birthday decorations from paper, including paper coffee filters.  Most of them are still up.

I got a small crochet hook, so now I can crochet my crochet cotton properly.

Porch chair

A project that I planned last year, but didn't do, was to create some kind of a seat for the front porch.

I started thinking about it again, and looked at a couple of broken chairs that I was thinking of combining and re-making.

It turned out that a wood folding chair just needed one small piece of wood replaced--and that piece was held on only by screws.

Replacing the piece--with wood from an armchair that I de-constructed some time ago--actually went as well as expected.

Then I painted the whole thing, after washing it.  That did not go as well as expected; I gave it three coats of paint and it really needs another.  

I also replaced the hinges of an old suitcase that we use for toy storage, with strips of leather, attached with screws and washers.

Thicker, vegetable-tanned leather would have been better, but I used what I had, and I expect that it will stretch and possibly tear at some point.  The leather wanted to twist and spin as I was driving in the screws. 

The other thing I've been working on is teaching myself needle tatting, using shuttle tatting instructions as a reference, but mostly just figuring it out as I go.

I'm not having the tension problems that I was with a shuttle.  The downside of using a needle is that it keeps running out of thread.

Speaking of thread, I find that when I am doing much sewing, the handed-down spools of thread that I am using run out of thread almost regularly.

What looks like an ample supply of thread, may not be.

New diaper covers

Recently I retired some of our cloth diaper covers, the last of the ones that we bought for our first baby.  I had been extending them for the last baby, who had outgrown them, by pinning them on with the diapers, but the baby started escaping from them regularly.

To replace the diaper covers, I made several new ones:  two layers of fabric with a layer of plastic enclosed in between. For a pattern, I traced around a secondhand pocket diaper that we use as a diaper cover.  It has no elastic around the leg openings, yet it manages to achieve a decent level of containment.  

For plastic, I used ironed-together chip bags for one, and stole my bulk rice bag sewing machine cover for the other.  The rice is both tougher and more flexible.

The sewing procedure is very similar to making prefold cloth diapers, which for some reason I can't find any decent directions for, so:  take the fabric for one side, sew the innards to it on the "wrong" side, then add the fabric for the other side with the "right sides" together and sew around the edges--but leave a gap so you can turn it right side out, and then once it is turned, sew the gap closed. For diapers, I also topstitch around the edges to keep them from inverting in the wash.

For closures, I experimented with using elastic ponytail holders and large (coat) buttons, sewing on the elastics where the tension would keep the loops secure on the buttons.

In practice, this works fairly well, although it would be better to have two elastics per side, so that the back edge doesn't pivot outward and make a gap around the leg.  The buttons I used are large enough that no additional buttons are needed for this.

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Then I made a new cover for my sewing machine, using a nice fabric remnant that was handed down to me, that was too small for a pillow cover.

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I took some water bottles that were getting in the way, filled them with water and two drops of chlorine bleach each, and put them aside for use in emergencies and outings.

Buying chlorine bleach at the grocery store was annoying.  New versions have been introduced since the last time I bought any, in the Pre-Covidian Era.  Now there are fabric-preservatives and new scents added to most of them.

I also use bleach to turn black cotton clothing into brown cotton clothing, socks in particular.  The key is to use very little bleach in sufficient water, and to rinse thoroughly right afterward.