Back at home

A lot of my focus lately has been away from home.

I finished a braided rug, and put it in the bedroom at the foot of the bed under a chest.  The laminate flooring has a tolerable color, and ordinarily I wouldn't think that a rug would add much to the room, especially since I was using up colors I don't like, but it does make the room feel more finished and grounded. 

The rug's colors are medium tones, as is the floor, so the rug adds pattern and softness without standing out.

I went on from there and leaned a long board against the opposite corner, and then draped a long section of quilt top over it.  It's a bit theatrical, and wouldn't have been practical when my children were smaller.  It also is pushing me to incorporate a little more green into the curtains.  That might be as simple as lacing some crochet cotton through the holes in the lace trim, except that I really should wash the curtains first.

Eldest child has been taking remnants of Christmas-themed fabrics and other fabrics, and making reusable gift bags.  Not only reusable, but also reversible, with one side Christmas-y and the other not.  They look very nice.

The yard has greened up, thanks to plantains covering most of the bare areas.  The corner of the yard where my husband's dried mustard? plant from his community garden plot ended up last fall is coming up all mustard.  The flower beds are becoming jungles.  Children have planted things in various places--potatoes, lemons, carrots, and probably also apples.  

Laundry bags and mattresses

Last year, I turned two skirts into laundry bags, by sewing the bottom edges closed.  One was a skirt I didn't like the feel of, and the other just needed to be retired from my wardrobe.  The fabric is strong enough.  One bag has a drawstring and the other has a zipper, which is nice because otherwise it is rather difficult to get the laundry out.

Another project from a couple months ago was to turn a double-sized mattress into a twin size.  It's an inner-spring mattress that's two or more decades old.  The innards turned out to be very similar to the twin box spring I took apart one time; just no wood and less steel, and more padding.  

I cut through the fabric and padding, and used a small screwdriver and pliers to pry off the metal clips holding the springs to the edge, and then wire cutters to cut the spiral wires connecting the springs.

The heavier steel edging was a little harder to deal with.  I didn't want to cut it and then be left with no way to reconnect it.  I came up with a scheme for bending each edge over to the other side--which didn't work because the width I removed from the mattress was greater than the thickness of the mattress, so they stuck out too far.  I let it sit for a few days, and eventually figured out how to take up the extra with additional bends.

Then I started clipping things back together, crimping the clips I had removed back on with pliers.  This went okay for the springs, and less okay with the rings that had to poke through the padding.  They probably have a special tool for that at the factory.

I finished by sewing up the fabric with sturdy buttonhole thread.  The mattress is a spare for now, and is currently on a free-by-the-side-of-the-road metal daybed frame, under another mattress.

I also, roughly a year ago, repaired a seam on my own mattress.  I was thinking about replacing the mattress entirely, until I realized that it would be silly to replace the most popular bed in the house.  I sleep well enough on it.

Upgrades

I was able to repair a sink strainer that wouldn't stay in the open position by taking a piece of plastic tube from a marker, the fatter kind of children's marker, and cutting a slit down the side so I could snap it onto the stem of the sink strainer to hold it up.  It would have been easier if I had cut it to the right length before making the slit.

I also experimented with making a simple dust jacket for a book out of quilting fabric.  It looks nice on the shelf with the normal books, although the fabric sticks out a bit at the top and bottom of the spine.  I expect that it will collect dust and need to be washed and ironed at some point.  I perhaps should have pre-shrunk the fabric.

Yesterday I used a handed-down upholstery remnant to replace the seat on a freebie metal patio chair.  The chair uses splines in channels at the sides to hold the fabric in place.  The original plastic mesh didn't have hems or channels sewn at the sides, but I put them in the replacement, for strength.  It took a considerable amount of work to put the new fabric on, with the splines in and with tension across the width.  I am sore today, but not nearly as sore as I should be, thanks to milk.   I had sore muscles before I started.  I'm somewhat doubtful about the strength of the fabric, but it supported an adult's weight, cautiously applied.

During my break I painted new letters on my keyboard.  It's not that old, but almost half of the alphabet had disappeared.  I used a contrasting color of nail polish to paint the missing letters on--in Morse code.  I didn't get all of them on very clearly, but it has helped me learn some more.

Put-together

I spent some time this morning butchering a worn-out sheet.  Some of the better parts I am saving for sewing projects, and the rest became kitchen wipes.

Last week I pulled out my old wardrobe planning booklets that I had made, which were very helpful in figuring out what I need to do next wardrobe-wise.

Among the books we've acquired over the last few months was a very interesting one:  The Doll's Dressmaker, by Venus Dodge, which has lots of ideas and patterns for dolls' clothing.  Most of them can be scaled up for human clothing.

The children are of course thinking ahead to Halloween and what their costumes will be.  One of the older ones has put together a very impressive cardboard Stars Wars stormtrooper helmet, and is now looking for a source of EVA foam floor tiles for some other part of the costume.

Fiddling around

I've been chugging through a bunch of projects.  I converted a glider rocker with a broken mechanism to a normal rocker, using runners (?) saved from a handed-down family rocker that my children did in, complete with chewed-up ends from the family dog of the time.  I took off the lower level of the glider rocker, and bolted on the runners, after some shaping with a drawknife to remove projecting corners--which was complicated by the discovery of brads that were securing the rocker's cross pieces.  I worked around the brads until I could pull them out, pulled them, and then put them back in when I was done.

The finished rocker sits low and mostly rocks forward.  The runners are worn almost flat in the middle, and the rocking action is clunky.  It occurs to me that some more draw knife work might help there a lot.

Out in the yard, I put down some free leftover ceramic tiles interspersed with a set of marble coasters from a yard sale along a path in the garden, and then made a endpoint by putting down a slice of tree trunk.  The kids brought home three bins of these from a woodworker.

I started turning another tree trunk slice into a stool that can be shoved under the kitchen table, and found that all my drill bits of the right size for drilling pilot holes are getting very dull.

At that point, the family illness-of-the-week caught up with me, and I had to switch to less-strenuous projects:  finishing the embroidery on a tea towel, making more towel loops for the bath towels, taking the lace and worn spots off a vintage linen towel to make it usable, and stitching around the edges of my favorite bath towels so they don't fray.

I've also been enjoying my recent garage sale purchases, which include a little tin xylophone with brass bars that resound for several seconds when struck, and a student-grade violin, which I bought for $20 without even really looking at it, because I knew I still had my violin set-up CD from my previous sabbatical, when I made a fiddle from a kit.  The violin turned out to be in decent condition, just some scratches and stickers.  My husband found a guitar tuner, and I got it tuned up.  Then of course, I had to compare it with the fiddle.  The fiddle sounds better, part of which may be that it is just larger.  I found out that I need my bifocals to see where I'm bowing and fingering at the same time.

Rather a surprise

 One of the washcloths that I made from an old skirt is now threadbare to the point of developing holes.  What I noticed is that the areas that happened to be embroidered from when it was a skirt are not nearly as threadbare; the fabric density there is about double that of the undecorated portions, not including the embroidery yarn and thread--which were stitched as a yarn embroidery "couched" or stitched down with buttonhole thread.

So the embroidery has done a lot to protect the fabric from abrasion, mostly during washing, and has also helped to contain the fibers so they don't work their way out of the fabric.

It's that time of year again...

 ...when the school district requests that I submit Form ED-01650, "STUDENT REPORT FOR AIDS TO NONPUBLIC STUDENTS", so they can make budget estimates.

This form is actually only required in the fall, required by the Minnesota Department of Education to be submitted to the school district, and I put in some effort last year to confirm that it is only actually required for the nonpublic schools who are requesting certain services:  partial reimbursements for textbooks and materials; health services; guidance/counseling.

The Department of Education and the school districts find Minnesota's homeschool laws somewhat confining, and as usual the bureaucracies demand as much information as they can get away with getting, the better to manage you with.  Birth certificate applications practically want what the mother ate for breakfast now.

In other, more productive activities, I've put up a clothesline, after getting unstuck about where to put it.  I got the idea of tying one end to one of the weed trees in the berry patch, but then I found a better spot.

The weather this month has gone from big snowstorm to 88 degrees back to cool spring weather, with occasional thunderstorms and two rounds of small hail.  I have several warm-weather projects lined up, and have been chugging through indoor spring cleaning and organizing while waiting for the right conditions.  

The children and I have been spring cleaning in the bedrooms.  For me, I got my closet tidied up and brought out the back-up sewing machine, now that cabin fever season is ending and I don't have to be so protective of open floor space.  I'm also in the middle of re-tidying my main fabric drawer.  The older children very competently dealt with their rooms, and the middle children assisted me in getting their room done--in the process, we came up with some good ideas for making it work better.

I saved myself some time by deciding not to do a couple of projects.  A reupholstered armchair was stored in the garage, and I thought I would have to de-upholster and de-critter it, but I looked it over and it is okay as is.

A green hardwood branch came down in the snowstorm, and I've been harvesting pieces of it for various purposes with my pocket knife, which has a saw:  some straight sticks, some pegs, and maybe later some knobs.

We've made a couple of expeditions to the thrift store, and I spent some time reading labels on clothing.  They had a lot more natural-fiber clothing than I expected, but you had to really seek for it.

Setting up

It was time to enlarge the top of the improvised living room table to make it usable for board games.  I spent some time thinking about building out the cable spool end further, got stuck on how to support the new part from underneath considering the structure of the base, and then remembered that we had some boards that were the right length, and I could just build a whole new table top.  Putting the boards together went quickly; I only had to saw the cross pieces.  The surface is partially varnished from before, and I will probably throw a tablecloth over it when company comes over.

A while back I finished hemming a set of cloth diapers I had cut from a flannel sheet.  The sheet is from a set I bought at a garage sale for $3, and I think I got something like 13 or 14 diapers out of it altogether, including using the pillowcase for a cloth diaper as-is.

I also sewed a pillowcase to actually be used as a pillowcase, from fabric in my stash, and used up most of the thread that kept tangling up in my sewing machine.  It got better-behaved toward the end of the spool.

We had several chairs that needed gluing.  Happily, we have bar clamps now.  When I was done, I had leftover glue, and a pile of sticky bits of fabric I had been wiping up glue with, a wooden skewer that I had been spreading the glue with, and a sheet of paper I had been using to catch drips.  I kneaded the fabric in the glue, arranged it slightly on the paper, stuck the skewer into the center, let it dry, and now I have a fake flower that I can stick out in the window box in the spring.  I'm not sure how the glue will do outdoors, but it should be okay for a while.   

There was a story from one of the local news stations recently about a group that was teaching people how to turn milk jugs into mini-greenhouses:  cut horizontally most of the way around the center, punch a few drainage holes in the bottom, put in soil, plant seeds in it, then close it back up.  My husband has done this before.

Chugging along

I've been doing a lot of organizing and cleaning, and also a little decorating.

The plastic blinds in the kitchen were very bad when we moved in, and I just took them down and bagged them up--I hate mini-blinds too much to spend money on buying new ones.

I finally got around to washing them in the bathtub.  Hot water, dish soap, and spray cleaner had little effect on the thick, tenacious goo that was on them except to soften it a little.  What did work was to scrub with a drippy mixture of baking soda and water.  They came out looking almost new.

To dry the blinds before storing them again, I figured out a way to suspend them from the shower curtain rod by hanging two clothes hangers on it first, and then slipping each end of the top of the blinds into a hanger.

I came out only a little ahead in the end, though, because some little child decided to break one slat, and then another, of the bathroom blinds. I will splint them back together.

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I did a quick decorating project of covering a half-painted canvas--that my husband picked up from some curbside a while back--with fabric, and hanging it on the wall.  I used tacks salvaged from one of my de-upholstery projects.  I put the nail into the wall a little too low, and then compensated by putting a small wooden spool onto the nail before hanging the panel back up.

I used to cover pieces of plywood with fabric, stapled on, and lean them against the wall to hide electrical outlets from the baby, or put them under crates that would otherwise scratch the floor.

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I looked through the mending bag, and found that I have an even dozen pairs of children's pants waiting to be mended.  I'm going to have to switch thread on the sewing machine.  The thread in it now is very prone to jumping free of the thread guides and creating slack that then tangles down inside the machine.  I was making a quick pillowcase for a seat cushion, and had to pause every few stitches to make sure the thread was behaving itself decently.

The seat cushion was for the deconstructed chair in the library.  I also added one piece of the wood to the back, with short drywall screws, and worked out a way to semi-attach the chunks of redwood beam that it is sitting on to each other, so they're not shifting and letting the chair fall over.

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In other tinkering, we replaced the light bulbs in a bedroom with ones of a warm color temperature, and found out why the glass shade was on upside-down--it is too small to accommodate full-size light bulbs.  I worked out a way of suspending it a little lower using a bolt, a nut, and a couple of washers, with the bolt running up through the center of the original hanger, and being secured from falling back out with the nut.  It was a three-handed job, and I might go back and add a short tube as a spacer to steady the shade.

Shrunk wool

I have been saving any and all woolen items that shrunk in the wash, for mittens and maybe for a rug.  I did need new mittens, my old ones were from a shrunken lambswool sweater and were wearing right out.

The sweater I used this time had been shrunk three times, two when I first got it to de-oversize it, and then the one unintentional time.  I did the usual--tracing my hand, adding width for seams and for the thickness of my hand and wrist, sewing a zigzag stitch on the line with extra reinforcement at the thumb joint, and then cutting them out.

I found out that they were a little too thick to sew together on the sewing machine, and had to be sewed by hand.  There was about a week where I was wearing mismatched mittens because I hadn't yet sewn the second one.

I also found that it would be better and much easier to leave the seam edges on the outside, and just wear the mittens inside out.  

So, as usual, they came out looking odd, but they are very warm.

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I also went through my smaller and less usable odds and ends of wool, and made a quick mat for boots and shoes.

My idea, based on an entry rug in the store that I almost bought some time ago, was to attach wool "rocks" to a backing.  For the backing, I used some synthetic felt that I had.  It was black, so I was looking for something to go over it.

Having my fabrics sorted by size turned out to be a good idea.  I quickly found several in my medium-size drawer that could be used for a sort of shoreline, and quilted them over the backing.

Since it was to be a mat, I allowed some of the cut "raw" edges of the fabrics to show, and only made the mat's edges neat.  I also allowed the fabrics to not always lie flat on the backing, to simulate shallow water.

Cutting out the "rocks" from the different wools was fun.  Many of them looked a lot like rocks that I've collected.

For attaching them, I used some old craft glue I had.  It is water-based, but also fairly water-resistant when dry.  If it is not enough, I can sew things together later.

It seemed best to brush a layer of glue over the back of each "rock", and then add a few more dabs of glue to engage with the backing.

It turned out well enough, aside from me not noticing until it was finished that I had forgotten to cut the backing to the width I wanted--!!  The glue stiffened the mat a lot, but it bends enough to fit on the shelf I made it for.

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I have a running question in my head about how long I can go before my household starts to be afflicted with wool-eating moths, as seems to have been usual before synthetic fibers.

Thread goes fast

I used up half a dozen spools of thread in making the coat, and almost three more since then in other sewing.

I cut fabric for two corduroy skirts, one of which is ready to assemble, once I finish doing some embroidery along the hem.  The handwork is delaying the skirt by only two days, and is visually striking.

I also turned a pile of old clothes into kitchen wipes and baby wipes and a pair of fitted leg warmers for me.  The leg warmers would have been easier if I had sewed the seams first, and then cut the fabric, because the edges of the knit fabric curled up a lot.  I use a zigzag stitch with knits.

I've been transitioning sock styles recently, from homemade knee-high tights with ankle sock feet, to wool blend hiking socks, because I'm not happy with the ankle socks.  The leg warmers are working well in conjunction with the hiking socks, and I will probably make more.  They are just tapered tubes with casings for elastic around the top.

I've also been transitioning my sleepwear toward clothes that resemble my daytime clothes, and I altered a few of my older skirts so they have just elastic at the waist, and not ties that are knotted, and they can be used for either purpose.

A few weeks ago we had a big snowfall of fluffy snow, just what I was waiting for for cleaning my old living room rug, since I never quite had the energy in the warm weather to haul it out and scrub it on a tarp.

Supposedly fluffy snow is best for rug cleaning.  I've read that if you spread a cold rug over the snow, and sweep snow across it, and perhaps dance on it, that the snow will melt slightly and release just enough water and ammonia into the rug to loosen soil.

In practice, I've found that the rug will not get clean, but it will get a little less dirty.  In this case, the rug started out fully dirty, because I didn't clean it at all before I put it in the garage.  Lots of sand came off, and the snow underneath it definitely got dirty.  I moved the rug to fresh snow to do the other side.

We made two large bowls of clean snow into snow ice cream, by adding sugar, cream, and vanilla, and they didn't last long.  I noticed just a slight ammonia taste, so it seems the source of my rug cleaning information was correct.

Continuing with the coat

There was a library book I read once by a popular maker of Western shirts, who said that she always made the shirts quite large, and then altered them in the direction of smaller to fit her client.  

It would have helped if I would have remembered that book earlier in this process.  I had to add width in several places, which was time-consuming as the material was too thick for my sewing machine, and each insertion required two long seams.

Now I am in the finishing stages of the coat...zipper, collar, cuffs, bottom edge, and pockets.  It is amazing how much labor and materials go into such a thing.  The outer shell and lining took almost an entire flat bedsheet.

I've been using my homemade leather thimble very heavily, and I thought I should describe it.  It's a strip of medium-weight leather almost one inch wide and long enough to wrap in a band--shiny side in--around my thumb with about an inch of overlap.  Three stitches of dental floss at the exposed end hold the shape.

The overlapped area is the part I use for pushing a needle.  Having the suede side on the outside helps the end of the needle not slip off.  Wearing it on my thumb lets me use my other fingers for steadying the needle even more.

The thimble is one of my essential tools.  I misplaced it at one point, and then had a miserable time trying to use a steel thimble that was among the sewing supplies I picked up on vacation.  Then I took a couple minutes to make a new leather thimble, until I found the original one again.  It needs new dental floss, but it is still usable as long as at least one stitch holds. 

I've also been using one of the mannequins as a handy coat form.  That helped a lot with the layout of the outer and inner layers.  I cut the pieces large, laid them on, and then I could see where I needed to cut and sew them.

Cutting up, and weaving

I went through my mending basket, and decided which items were worth repairing.  The remainder I cut up, and filled the kitchen wipes jar, and a bag with more wipes, plus I filled a drawer with larger rags that I can cut up as needed, or just use as back-up towels.

I also unearthed my homemade loom and got the project on it going again.  I'm going to have to build up some muscles in my arms and upper back before I can weave for very long at a time.  There is a lot of reaching involved.

I have a plan to make a couple of little Christmas ornaments from juice can ends.  I try to make some kind of ornament every year, in sufficient quantity so each child has one of their own.

We made room for our Christmas tree, somewhat complicated by the fact that my improvised living room table will not fit through any of the interior doorways.  It is going into the back corner, which is a popular napping place because of the heating vent there.

   

Recycling around the house

I got an idea from magazine photos for replacing our collapsed family coatrack with a bench with a row of hooks above.   I used our former entry bench plus some planks that were waterbed salvage, plus some wood from our former couch, plus some hooks we already had.  After some crappier-than-usual carpentry--I was out of practice--it all came together.  It would almost look nice if I painted it, but paint doesn't hold up at my house.

It ended up being almost a double win, because the following week the laundry drain clogged and water went across the basement floor where all the coats had been piled before.

I used more of the pallet wood from the couch to make new seats for a pair of outdoor cafe chairs.  The seats will need some more Danish oil or something for a finish next spring, especially on the sawn edges.

I also de-upholstered a rocking chair seat.  There turned out to be two layers of fabric tacked over the original upholstery, plus a layer of something in between them that maybe used to be vinyl, but that had turned into slightly crumbly tar.  The springs were in poor condition, and I used more pallet wood to convert the rocker to a hard-bottom seat, with plans to find or make a decent cushion for it. 

I finished a lingering display shelf project.  The frame is from a wooden door screen we picked up for free, the shelves are tongue-and-groove scraps used as bed slats for a bed we were given, and I cut the shelf supports from more of the couch wood.  It came out looking fairly good; the screen frame had been painted in a nice color. 

We've also been dehydrating cabbage, onions, and celery.

Activities

Dehydrated some cabbages.  Sewed a shower curtain.  Replaced the covers of various chair seats, re-using tacks from earlier armchair.  Put a second bar across a closet to support a laundry basket holding all of the family swimming gear.

Have also been watching the squirrels chew up all of the black walnuts and spit the shells onto the driveway.

The local homeschool association has been putting more effort into the diversity statement on their website than into providing accurate information about homeschooling laws or keeping the membership sign-up page updated.  Doubt that's going to end well.

Mother-in-law has been doing some interesting experiments with natural dyes...avocado pits to produce a rose pink.

Where's the beans??

I don't know when the cheaper brands of baked beans started being canned as a big lump of beans swimming in a sea of liquid, but now I have encountered it twice, once in a store brand, and once in a brand from one of the largest ag companies.

In the latter case, I pulled out a strainer and measured:  just about exactly half of the can's contents by volume were pourable liquid.

I hate washing strainers.

This reminds me of early in the pandemic, when dried pasta suddenly started taking much longer to cook for some reason.

In other activities, I was able to repair watchbands for two children.  I took a toy apart and pulled some dust out of it that was getting in the way of the mechanism.  I altered a swimsuit so that it would fit for another season.

I knit a dishcloth from acrylic yarn rejected by a child, who also went through a substantial fabric stash and burn-tested samples to separate out the ones with synthetic fibers.

I finished one section of crochet for my curtain project.

Several pairs of pants were retired for being too far gone in the seat, and there is at least one more that needs to be retired, now that I think of it.

My husband dehydrated some cabbage.  I learned that you can freeze tomatoes whole.  Children have been growing mint.

My husband also brought home a vintage metal-frame chair similar to three that we already own.  They are very child-resistant, except for the vinyl seats.  My longer-term plan is to redo them in sturdy leather.

A family from church is making big changes to their diet, and they gave us several boxes of food from their pantry that they could no longer eat.  It was good to get a change from our usual and somewhat tedious simple foods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sheets and a wreath

My mother-in-law came up with a good set of secondhand sheets from somewhere, which were very welcome here. 

She also brought a box of very nice natural-fiber fabrics and clothing for my eldest child to repurpose.  Child is currently disinterested in any clothing styles less than 200 years old.

Child also went through dozens and dozens of balls of yarn and took samples for burn testing to determine fiber content.  Acrylic and other synthetics melt and drip and curl up while burning, and some of them burn like a cartoon fuse.  

It certainly made me reconsider allowing my family to wear synthetic fibers around open flames.

Cotton, linen, and wool burn much more slowly.  Wool smells like burnt hair.  Cotton sometimes has a small ember still burning at the end when it is blown out.  Linen tends to leave a tiny gray string of ash still hanging

Other children have been busily and ingeniously constructing role-play items from cardboard.

We were given some sweet corn, and my corn huskers left the husks strewn all over outside.  After a couple of days, I separated the leaves and braided them up into a wreath, letting the ends stick out.  The braid was long enough to make two full turns around the wreath; I tied them together with string, and wove a twig through across the top for support.

I still have a little cornhusk wreath that I made last year.  That is now on the back door.

Mending a quilt and a sheet

The quilt I mended by appliqueing leaf shapes over the pulled-out seams.  I sewed around the leaf edges before cutting them out, and then sewed them onto the quilt by hand.

The sheet I mended by a combination of darning and patching.  Darns for the small frayed areas, and patches for the rips, after first closing them with an "antique seam"

The sheet lasted for two whole days before tearing again.  I am not quite ready to purchase a replacement sheet at current retail prices--and accessibility since we are still vehicularly-challenged--so I'm patching it again. 

In the meantime, an old cotton blanket and the large piece of cotton upholstery fabric that I formerly used as a rug are filling in.  It is like camping at home.

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.

Soap and sewing

A quantity of soap shavings came home with children after an activity.  I melted down the soap to make new bars.

How I should have started was to heat up a little water in the bottom of my laundry soap pan, and then to slowly add soap shavings and dissolve them.  Most of the time, what I had was a softened, gooey mass of soap.  Not as bad as the time I was melting old, dry, hard bits of soap, but not good.  The laundry soap pan does not have a handle, and it took some time to incorporate all of the shavings.

Near the end, I found that turning the heat up from Low to the lower side of Medium was helpful.  The soap was still not anywhere near liquid, but it was at least moldable.  

I packed it into a pan, let it cool, cut it into small bars, and have put them up to dry and harden for a few months.

I suspect they will end up a bit crumbly, but hopefully they will be usable in bar form.  If they aren't, they can go into a future batch of laundry soap.

In other projects, I have been sewing toddler pants, using fabric from old adult clothes and elastic from worn-out kids' pants.  So far I have made four pairs.  The process is a bit time-consuming when I have to pick out multiple rows of stitching to liberate the elastic, and when I have to piece fabric together to make it wide enough.

It was easier to draw up a quick pattern than to dig out an old one.  So these pants look a little goofy, too, but in a slightly different way than previous versions did.

I also worked through several items that needed mending; still have a bag full.

Yesterday I dyed some fabrics in the washer in preparation for making three skirts.  This morning I was able to sketch out a pattern and cut out two of them.  The sewing for these should be straightforward.  The third will be a circle skirt, from a circular tablecloth.