Autumn Zebra

Craft from Xmas 2015 I made this apron as a Christmas present for my sister in 2015. The blue flower fabric is linen, the pink is a linen-cotton blend. I quite like making aprons because they're fairly easy and you can use colours that people often wouldn't find acceptable for other types of clothing. I can't remember if I used a pattern - I might have got one from one of my "complete sewing guides" which often have instructions for basic household items at the back. I always find it hard to work out what measurements to use for aprons with top pieces - how wide and how tall?

A craft from 2015 These 3 Christmas decorations were made from coffee sacks. They are zig-zag stitched around the edge in brown thread, and stuffed with just a tiny bit of stuffing to make them a bit less flat. They are decorated with scraps of lace and cord, and the templates were positioned to make the most of the printing on the sack as well.

Craft from December 2015. I think I made these for secret santa gifts. I didn't make the bears - those are from when I sent to Japan ages ago, in 1999. I was given them by the mother of a homestay family; they were samples from this kind of mail-order company she worked for, I think. To make the decorations, I used scraps of coffee sacks, a bit of stuffing, and various small pieces of ribbon and lace to decorate them. I think the purple strip is either a piece of polar fleece or a piece of felt. The edges of the circles are zig-zag stitched. These are one of the few "photogenic" crafts I have made. You could almost imagine this picture in a craft book or on a fancy web site! Normally my things look so haphazard, with no design principles, all the wrong colours and fabrics, and nothing matching for the photo. These are really easy to make. Make a circle template by tracing around a cup or something. Cut out your base fabric - you don't want it to be somethin...

This craft is from March 2015 We went to a medieval joust in Upper Hutt, and there was a woman there who was teaching people naalbinding, so I learnt how to do this little stitch, and made this little pouch out of the little bit of acrylic yarn she provided. I got some kawakawa leaves from my tree and dried them and put them in a plastic bag in the pouch and gave it to my friend who gave me the tree. Of course, I've forgotten how to do it now, but it wouldn't be hard to learn again. That's the problem with all these crafts though: you have to keep going and re-learning them every time you want to make something; unless you somehow manage to keep all of them up and in practice.

Spinning done as of June 2016 Once at an A&P fair I bought a home-made top-weighted drop spindle off a lady, with a bit of wool. I then got a bottom-weighted one from Oamaru (I think), but I didn't like it as much. Here's some of the spinning I had done by mid-2016, a few years ago. I don't really know if I'm doing it right because for some reason I couldn't find any videos showing people doing the same style that I was doing - I found bottom-weighted spindles, people spinning really really think wool, people spinning with the spindle supported on a table or something, but not just top-weighted drop spindle with thin wool. I just got out of the library a whole book on drop spindle spinning though, so hopefully that will be useful! My favourite wool is the dark stuff, which is like, still in its little shorn pieces, not brushed all fluffy like the other ones.

A more recent craft, although from February 2017. I have a singlet I really like that I bought probably over 10 years ago and it is getting a bit faded and stuff now, so I decided to make a pattern off it and make my own. I have had trouble finding any in the right type of fabric anyway. I just traced round the existing one and added seam allowances where necessary. Both of these are from the same pattern. The black one is merino, and worked really well. Its a kind of rib knit. It stretches around you, then fits snugly. The camo-bug one is not very stretchy and is too small. I think its a type of non-stretchy jersey or something. The black one is bound with a strip of it's own fabric, with raw edges and a zig zag stitch. The camo-bug one is folded over to the inside and sewn down, for some reason.

Another old craft from May 2016. Our house is cold and we don't want our cat to get too cold at night, so I made her this wheat bag. The interior bag is linen, and the exterior cover is old pajama material. I chose the linen because you heat the bag in the microwave and linen has a high ignition temperature - so, in case one of the little wheat guys gets super hot somehow, it's less likely to actually catch fire. I chose the outside because it is soft and furry and cats like that sort of thing. It is also easily washable. We heat it up in the evening and put it on the couch where the cat sleeps so she can snuggle it. Sometimes she actually does.

This is another post from a craft from ages back - from May 2016 in fact. I like to fix and refurbish things. I like to see how they change over time, and I like to see what they're like when they're fixed, and how long they last, and all sorts of things like that. It's something that can only happen over a period of years, and softly. There's literally no other way to experience something aging and wearing than to use it and to wait. I think that nowadays we seldom get to experience this because a lot of stuff - although it becomes old and worn out - was not nice enough and of good enough quality originally to be worth reworking. So we end up with rubbish instead. I orginally made this back for G, and he uses it to carry a book to read when we go out to cafes and such. It was getting holes in the back and in the straps. So I took it apart and gave it a new back and new reinforcement at the bottom (out of the same original fabric). I kept the front and the flap. I...

At the beginning of 2017 I made this book bag for my Mum. It is lined and has an elastic closure. I also gave her a book inside it. Shown below empty, and then front and back containing the book. The trickiest part was deciding how long to make the elastic so that it would hold it closed nicely but also accomodate different sized books without damaging them. It would also be nice if you could get different coloured elastic, but you can't at any of the stores here. It's made from nice Japanese printed cotton with a slight texture on the surface, and I think lined with pink linen.