Mending and melding

I finally took a stab at my mending pile, and was able to adequately repair several items of clothing, one of which required serious darning/re-weaving where a button's stitching had ripped right out.

One of the things I did a while ago, and then forgot about, was to overdye a skirt and shirt in the washer.  The skirt had colors that were too bright, and the shirt was much too pale.  The skirt came out very nicely, and the shirt came out in a dull but tolerable shade.

I did a quick experiment with cutting a milk jug into narrow strips and then crocheting them.  Crochet uses up length very quickly, and it was difficult to cut very much of it because the scissors I was using tended to slide on the plastic.

Then I messed around with ironing the result, in between sheets of kitchen parchment paper. The plastic fused in some places and not in others.

I also tried ironing flat pieces of milk jug together to fuse them, again using parchment paper to protect the iron and working surface.  This worked, but since the plastic shrinks a bit when heated, you can't butt two edges together and expect them to stay there.  It also doesn't come out entirely flat.

At the playground, I found some stringy dead weeds that could probably be made into a rustic basket, if one reliably had their hands free for working.

I counted diapers going into the washer, and indeed as described in The Tightwad Gazette, twenty diapers equals one load of diaper laundry.  Cloth wipes are included in that, and really it is twenty diaperings rather than diapers, because I am putting a newborn-size diaper inside a larger-baby diaper at each diaper change.

Old stuff

I've been bashing away at a long-term refinishing project that has been dragging on for about a year too long, and have been making progress on it, despite the very irksome setback of having one of the pieces fall to the floor and crack just enough to need repair, but not widely enough that I can easily get the glue in.

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I started saving birch twigs for a besom-style broom; these are best gathered when the leaves are off the tree.  I decided to use the ones I have so far in my next foraged fall floral arrangement.  I just added a few sumac branches with red leaves, and a coneflower stalk.

Birch twig brooms are said to work quite well on sidewalks; I gave our driveway a swipe with a handful of the twigs, and I think they're right.

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I've been reading a book that is a reprint of early 20th century make-it-yourself projects for children. In one section on tie-dyeing, it mentions boiling sumac bark, roots, and berries, plus a piece of "old iron" to make black dye. This may be chemically similar to a recipe I tried once which used steel wool and vinegar to make a gray wood stain.  

The projects in the book run all the way up to a small summerhouse and a "garden cave" made of concrete over a bent steel framework.

Groceries delivered, and on the mend

With my husband and I both having Symptoms, we had to depend on others to grocery shop for us. They were able to get everything on our list, except for non-microwave popcorn.

I am slowly recovering, still low energy but that is to be expected anyway, being in the third trimester. I'm in the in-between phase where I can see everything that needs to be done, but I can't yet do much more than the basics.

So I am taking on a quick sewing project, that I can mostly do sitting down:  using a tie-dyed sheet that was in the fabric my mother-in-law gave us to make a skirt.

I have two simple A-line skirt patterns that I have been using for the past few years:  one with only front and back pieces, and one with four pieces (sometimes called "gores"). To reduce the amount of cutting and sewing, I chose the two-piece pattern.

I referred to my prior wardrobe planning booklets for the length, took a measurement from one of my existing skirts to get the width at the hemline, and used my present waist measurement.  (All of these measurements need some extra added for seam allowances, and for ease of movement.)

I cut out the pieces in one go with the measuring and planning, and will start on the sewing later. I am going to overdye the skirt with some dye that I want to use up.

We haven't needed face masks at all yet, since we haven't gone out, but I am thinking of trying out this pattern. The video there is helpful in understanding how the elastic loops go inside the mask during sewing, so that they will be on the outside when you turn it right-side-out; sewing topology can be tricky.

I have enough elastic on hand to make two or three masks, I'm guessing. I think it would be possible to make up to one-half or maybe even two-thirds of each ear loop from non-stretchy material, to conserve elastic. Or there could be longer ties that tie at the back of the head.

I've been following this blog on the reaction to coronavirus in the Manila area (population 30 million).

I'm beginning to wonder what coronavirus is going to do to other chains of supply and manufacturing in the medium term, especially in regard to textiles, which is yet another domestic industry that moved overseas decades ago.

Progress on the chair seat

Previously, I had stripped it down to the frame and springs.

Going by the careful notes I had taken while stripping off the old upholstery, I tacked on the new old burlap.

For the crocheted "rug" padding that I had made, I decided that the best way to attach it would be to crochet a round of single crochet 1, chain 1 around all four edges, doing slip stitches to get around the corners. That gave me a less-dense edge to tack to the seat frame.

Next came the thin pillow that I planned to put over it, which was a bit smaller than the crocheted layer. I decided to sew it directly to the crocheted layer, using some very strong thread that I have.

With that done, the seat is ready for the outer fabric, which still needs some preparation. It is a heavy canvas-like fabric, with a waterproof backing, which a friend of my mother's gave her along with a big load of other fabrics.

I made a page of little concept sketches for possible stamping designs, to be done with potato stamps, and chose one. After carving my two old, sprouting potatoes, and picking the best one, I mixed my two colors of fabric paint, and did some test stamps on a sheet of paper.

I did not like how it looked, at all. The paint was thinner and drippier than I expected, and the potatoes had become uneven in texture. Also, the paint color was not good--so I added a lot more brown to it, which gave a better color, but with a lot more contrast with the fabric than I was planning on.

Since I had given up on stamping, I went with scribbling on the fabric with a bamboo skewer. When I got done, I still was not very happy with the result, so I rinsed the pieces in the utility sink with hot water, which shifted around and rinsed off much of the fabric paint, depending on how much it had dried, leaving a combination of scribbles and splotches.

I hung the pieces outside to dry. Looking at them now, my first impression is that they are "too yellow", but really the color is only slightly brighter than a tablecloth I already have in the room. Hanging the pieces up made the splotches tend to turn into streaks. From across the room, the pattern looks like an unnatural color of marble.

This chair has wooden arms, and no skirt, so only the seat and back will be upholstered. I think this fabric will be tolerable for that, but I would not want to use it over a larger area.

If I find that I really don't like it, I can always make a slipcover.

Fall wardrobe tweaks

I did a quick assessment of my wardrobe for fall, and was happy to find that I already had just about everything I need. Most of what needed to be done was to forcibly retire some items.

From past wardrobe inventories, for example the one in my Wardrobe in a Week effort, I know that 95% of my daytime wardrobe needs to be "working casual".

I did sew one thing, a skirt from a synthetic fabric out of my stash. I have nailed down the style and length of skirt that I like best, but I'm still experimenting a bit with the fullness. For this one, I tried a narrower skirt than I usually make, and I found that I like the result, but that I wouldn't want to go any narrower.

The time needed to cut out and sew the skirt was about two and a half hours, including doing a zigzag stitch around the edges of all of the pieces, to keep them from fraying--which was very necessary with this particular fabric.

The fabric's color didn't go well with the rest of my wardrobe, so I overdyed the skirt. I have been trying to get away from dyeing things, because the chemicals involved are quite toxic, but sometimes it is the most economical solution.

The fabric took up much more of the dye than I had expected, but in the end it looks a bit chintzy. I think it could benefit from a lining to give it more body, but I don't think I have the fabric for that right now.

Felted winter hat

I found two books on felting in the library to use as references for this project.
The books said that it was absolutely essential to do some test swatches with your yarn, in your washer.

Front-loading washers aren't nearly as good as top-loaders for felting, because you can't just stop them in the middle of a cycle, but that is what I have.

From felting my test swatches, I learned that it would take two full wash cycles to get the yarn to felt enough, that its Kool-Aid overdyeing would not be affected by this, and that I was going to have to knit two layers to get the thickness of hat that I wanted.

I measured my swatches before and after to see how much they shrunk; the result was very near what I was told to expect in the books:  forty percent loss in the length, and about twenty percent in the width.

I combined two different hat patterns from the books to come up with a simple hat shape to knit:  knit a straight tube starting at the bottom edge, and then at the top, do ten evenly spaced decreases around, but only do the decreases on every other row. When done, part of the bottom edge is turned up, and part is left down.

At this point, I had a bunch of math to do to see how many stitches I actually needed to knit, and how many inches long, allowing for both my normal knitting gauge as well as how it would shrink.

To get the second layer, I elected to pick up stitches along the brim, and knit essentially a second hat attached to the first, in sort of a long football shape, pushing one end inside the other when I was done.

I decided to loosely tie these two ends together for felting, because I thought that my washer was likely to find some ugly way to distort the hat's shape if I didn't. The hat still came out looking like a squashed pancake, and has some puckers on the top that maybe wouldn't have been there if I hadn't tied it.

After blocking and drying, the hat is serviceable, although not photogenic. It's a bit heavy on my head, as there are almost eight whole ounces of yarn in it.

Rug repairs continue, and some knitting

I'm a bit more than halfway through the twelve or so feet of rug edges that need reinforcement. It is tedious...but not as tedious as weaving new rugs would be.

I did a quick knitting project, a simple headband in garter stitch.

I also bought some yarn to make a new winter hat for myself, since I shrunk the old one in the wash. The yarn was a brown with yellow undertones, rather than the red ones that work better for me, so I overdyed it with cherry Kool-Aid--just one packet was enough for eight ounces of yarn. The yarn took up the artificial color almost completely, and held onto it.  Now it is drying.

Kool-Aid dyeing instructions are here; I used slightly different ones, which called for 2 ounces of vinegar per ounce of yarn.

I had already knitted up a little sample piece and sent it through the laundry with hot water...it felted very nicely. I was careful during dyeing and rinsing to avoid sudden changes of water temperature; I didn't need the yarn felting too soon.

Summer hat

I had a plan to crochet a summer hat out of cotton string, and then scrunch some paint into it to stiffen it.

But Walmart didn't have enough cotton string, when I went.

What they did have was about 400 feet of hemp string (in the crafts section) for $5, so I went with that.

I started at the brim, made a long chain, and worked upward, with a single crochet (**American terminology**) stitch to start with for the first two rows--for firmness--then switching to half double stitch, which is a bit faster to crochet for the area covered.

I did scattered decreases, as needed, trying the hat on as I went.

I finished up with a few yards of string left over, worked in the ends, and then gave it a bath in some strong tea, to dye it browner.  That was yesterday, and it is still drying.

WiaW: Day 6

My final day of "Wardrobe in a Week"!

What I did today:

artistically repaired several small holes in a T-shirt

sewed a T-shirt from new fabric

overdyed a skirt that I sewed this week with brown dye; some of the previously printed portions took up the dye less than the rest, leaving it with a subtle pattern that I like

experimented with dabbing acrylic paint onto my solid black swimsuit; happy with the colors I chose, but not happy with the final result--but likely I can improve it with one more dabbed-on layer of the first color, just mixed with white to make it stand out a bit more


Next steps:

REST!

Put away the piles of fabric that are taking up half of the school room,

Get the house vacuumed,

And get on with my life.

Ungraying kids' clothes

I took the gray kids' clothes, and experimented with changing their color using chlorine bleach.

Procedure:  Dilute bleach in a quantity of water, enough for the clothes to move freely. Add clothing, and stir with a stick; watch for color changes in the water and in the clothes. Try for even exposures of the fabrics to the bleach, and for minimization of bleaching time. Remove clothes carefully (not splashing yourself), drain water, and rinse clothes in fresh water at least once.

Chlorine is rough on fibers, and will weaken them (or eat right through them, if you use enough, for long enough), so it must be used with care.

Results:  The bleach had very little effect on the clothes that were cotton/polyester blends...probably because the white fibers were cotton (already bleached) while the gray fibers were polyester (not dyed; made of actual gray polyester).  There were changes in the colors of the 97% and 100% cotton items:  either toward an orange or toward a purple--depending on the dye used to make the gray, I suppose.  The orangey ones needed heavy bleaching to get to an orange color.

Cushion slipcovers, with dye transfer

The cushions on our very used glider rocker needed slipcovers. The fabric that I bought for it (a thrift store tablecloth) turned out to not be quite right for it, but in the box of thrifted fabric that I received for Christmas, mixed in with all the polyester were two new pieces of plaid wool.  One in browns and black, one in blue and green and black.

The brown and black piece was just big enough to use for making the slipcovers, but the brown colors were just slightly too frantic for the room, so I decided to try to get some of the blue and green dye from one piece of fabric to the other.

First thing needed is a large stock pot that you are never going to cook food in again; dyes are no good for your health. I had one already. I pre-washed the fabrics in the washer. I filled the stock pot most of the way, put in a small amount of laundry detergent, and the blue-green-black fabric. I bought this to a simmer, and simmered it for a while, stirring it with a dowel from the garage.

Enough dye bled out of it that the water turned almost opaque.  I took out the piece of fabric, set it aside in a bucket, and put the other piece in, again simmering it and stirring for a while. (This other piece also had some detergent on it, from a false start that I had made before.) Then I gave each piece (separately) several rinses in clean water, starting with warmer water, and ending with cold.

The brown and black fabric took up very little color in the dye bath, and what it did take up was mostly black, because of the excess detergent, I think, and because the browns mostly cancelled out the blues and greens, color-wise, before being overwhelmed by the blacks, and also the plaid fabrics didn't contain nearly as much dye as some wool fabrics that I have tried this with before. Anyway, the piece came out slightly mellowed, as well as slightly toned down in color. It related much better to the other colors in the room.

The first step in actually sewing the slipcovers was to get the zippers ready. I had two scavenged zippers that were the right length (or longer).  One of them needed some seam ripping to free it completely from its original setting.

The next step was to cut a top and a bottom piece of fabric for each cushion, which required some careful layout.

I didn't think I had quite enough fabric to accommodate the zippers, so I decided to set the zippers into strips of a fuzzy black polyester fabric that was also in the box. I consulted a sewing reference book to figure out how to sew in the zippers, but still managed to make a bit of a mess of them. Luckily, the zippers were going at the backs and bottoms of the cushions.

Because of the curved shapes of the cushions, and the plaid stripes that I wanted to carefully match, and the ties that I had to leave openings for, I elected to hand sew, with a whip-stitch, the fabrics around the cushions. I did three sides of each cover, then took it off the cushion, turned it inside out, and machine-stitched outside my handstitching, for reinforcement and to reduce raveling. Then I sewed in one side of each zipper strip.

Each time I did that, I did it upside down/inside out! But I recovered by cutting the strips off the covers (I left extra width in the strips, so that was possible), and resewing them correctly. Then I sewed the other edge and the side edges by hand.

Altogether, the slipcovers make the rocker look retro, but boring, like a saggy old plaid couch. (Plaids really highlight any saggy parts; I should keep that in mind in the future when I'm sewing my own clothes.)  It does help to tie some of the other colors in the room together better.

So much to sew

My mother-in-law borrowed my sewing machine, so I am using our Janome Hello Kitty 11706 machine (bought long ago on clearance for $50; they are still available new for $110 and up). It is a good beginner machine but not a robust one, so I am saving my heavy-duty sewing projects for later. The other things that I miss on it are a center lever for lifting the presser foot (it's on the right, and I'm left-handed), and more control over stitch width and length (which are limited to three choices). EDITED TO ADD:  Access to the mechanism is limited, so the machine is almost impossible to oil at all the necessary points; the instructions don't even mention oiling. This greatly reduces the potential longevity of the machine; sewing machines need regular oiling (usually just a single drop of oil at any point where moving parts meet).

I finished a long dress that I created a pattern from scratch for, with princess seams and a three-quarters (knee-length) lining. I used a free piece of bordered fabric, and had just enough to complete it. It turned out well, except perhaps for the neckline; I need to review how to make those properly. It is high enough that I could go back and redo it later.

Also I am working on making a lighter cape, out of rummage sale corduroy. This fabric was originally black, but I bleached it to a medium brown. The color came out slightly mottled, but this just makes the fabric look more plush. For a pattern I have been referring to my pattern making reference book. Capes are fairly simple; the hard part is fitting the shoulders. Yet again, I have had to be a bit creative to eke out an entire garment from the piece of fabric that I have to work with.

I got bored with making the clothesline basket, and decided to do something different for the sides:  sew two pieces of cloth together in lines to make channels for the rope to run through. For precision, I did the sewing first, instead of placing the rope and sewing beside it. I had a miserably hard time threading the rope through later, though, until I switched to starting with a piece of twine (with a closed safety pin attached to its end, to lead the way), and then used the twine to pull the rope through. Then it was only miserable when the twine came loose from the rope. Now I have my fabric with the rope running back and forth inside it, and I need to join the rope loops at the sides and attach the basket bottom.

Found my way back

I've been doing a lot of reading.

Also, I've completed a couple of projects. One was a corduroy jacket that I found at the thrift store ($4). When I got home, I noticed there was a stain on the back. I should have checked before I bought it, but I would have bought this one anyway. Stain removal is not one of my talents, but it came out with some soaking in Oxiclean, After that, I shortened the sleeves, and now I like the jacket a lot.

I then took the corduroy jacket that I've had forever, which is baggy and shapeless and not the greatest color for me, and tried bleaching it. I was hoping the color would fade a bit, but instead it brightened as the bleach took out some of the darker tones. I am thinking of reworking it into something that fits better.

Finally, I took one of my rummage sale sweaters from last spring and shortened the sleeves. I may alter it some in the body later; for now it is only a little too big.

The next big change

I am thinking hard about how to get a rug for the family room.  The challenge is, as always, in the constraints:

Time:  I want it in place within the next two months.

Money:  Within the next two months, I'll have at most $50 to put into a rug. (And no, I'm not going to go into debt for a rug!) Craigslist rugs start at about $100 around here.

Size:  It needs to be about 8 feet by 10 feet.

Texture:  It has to not present a tactile annoyance when I walk on it or sit on it. Wool is as scratchy as I am willing to go. Also, I am unwilling to deal with a rug that is shedding; my children shed enough craft scraps on the floor already.

Color:  It has to accept the beige and brick colors in the room, but also to transcend them.

Washability:  We have another round of potty training coming up in a few months.

Style:  I prefer patterns based on those found in nature.

There are many ways of crafting rugs traditionally:  braiding, hooking, weaving, crocheting, knitting.  Of these, I have braided, hooked, and crocheted rugs before.  Braided rugs wear well, but are time-intensive to make, and I don't enjoy the technique.  Hooked rugs (here I am talking about using a hook to pull loops of a strip of fabric up through a backing) are more creatively satisfying, but take even more time and materials. Crocheting a rug is relatively fast, but again it takes a lot of material, and the result is not easy to clean (or move, with a rug of that size).

Wool is my preferred material for any of these, because it is more durable, and because there is the possibility of mellowing or even of transferring the colors:  simmer the wool fabric (or yarn) in water with some detergent--use a large pot that you will never cook in again, because dyes are very toxic and bad for you--and a fair amount of the dye will come out into the water. Then put in a different wool fabric, and the water will dye it.

For less-traditional rugs, there are canvas dropcloths, which can be painted.  A dropcloth costs about $30-$40.  However, I don't like the texture of painted fabric, and in my experience, unpainted dropcloths will pill and look cheap under heavy wear.

So my top choice at the moment is to make a "floor quilt" out of upholstery scraps and samples, which I can get from ArtScraps for $5/grocery bag. This is what my patchwork couch cover is made of, so I took the cover off the couch and tried it out as a rug. The cover is made from less than one bag of scraps, and is about one-third the area of an 8x10 foot rug, so I would need two or three more bags full to turn the couch cover into a rug. Then I would need a new cover for the couch, which would have to be in a single solid color or (more likely) a subtle print, to keep the room from being too visually busy.

A dropcloth that is lightly painted and stenciled would be my second choice. Complicating the decision is the upcoming YMCA Garage Sale, which on its final day sells things by the bag and by the grocery cart...so I could perhaps buy a heaping cartful of clothing (for about $35) to recycle into a crocheted rug.

Projects in the pipeline

Projects started:

Wool throw knitted from scrap yarn.  This is a long-term project that is barely begun.  I am knitting leftover wool yarn into blocks of varying sizes and patterns, which will be joined in a crazy quilt fashion.

Mobius head scarf.  This is a project from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around.  I am using thrift store yarn that is part mohair, with what seems to be a polyester core.  I am trying out a new lace pattern, which isn't going well so far because my stitch count seems to be off.  The fuzziness of the mohair is not enough to cover this knitting sin; I may have to unravel and start over.


Projects about to begin:

Overdyeing clothing with tea.  White doesn't go well with my complexion, but some of the fabric patterns in my clothing have white in them.  I have a box of cheap black tea, which I am going to use to stain these items into less unflattering tones.

Moving.  We will be moving in a couple of months, under more-challenging-than-usual circumstances.


Projects contemplated:

Sewing kid-size quilts for my two youngest children.  The older children each have a quilt with a pieced corduroy top (with their initial appliqued to a block) and a flannel back.  The quilts are soft and warm, and are great for curling up under in odd places.

Replacing a quilt top.  On vacation, I bought a homemade quilt from the thrift store for $10.  The top is made of old men's suits.  Probably some of these are wool, but some are definitely polyester, and are annoyingly scratchy.  Also there is a rip in the top and the batting that needs to be repaired.

Wall art.  I have a small yard sale photo frame, and a larger free-by-the-curbside used canvas (unframed; I have already painted over it in black).  I have an idea for a small piece of art that I can create for the smaller frame, and am not sure what to do with the canvas.  It is important to me to make artwork that is personally meaningful, not just something that looks trendy hanging on the wall.