Why a Craft Blog?

Certainly there are plenty of craft bogs out there. Here's another. I wanted to start this blog as an easy was to store some photos and make them accessible.

I knit,  I sew, I quilt, I teach. So here's my craft blog. I will not be posting every day, but it this is a good way to track Works in Progress.

So what's on/under the needles today?

Knitting:
I am making some clogs. They will be felted. I'm feeling a little intimidated, because I have not felted anything except by accident. Here is a clog in progress. 

 
Everything looks OK, right?

That is until you see how a clog looks compared to an actual well-fitting sock:

Hence, my trepidation. Will they felt down enough to fit my feet? Stay tuned. I have another clog and two additional soles to complete before I find out if this will work.

I am also working on one lace scarf, two stalled shawls and various socks. But those are posts for another day.

Sewing a Dust Cover and the Pillow from Hell

When you sew, or knit or do crafts of any kind, sometimes people like to come up with little tasks for you to use your skills. I used to have a quilt studio open to the public in Roanoke, VA. I dyed fabric and made art quilts and art garments. One day my landlord came in wanting me to do some alterations and repairs on a pair of pants. I told him, that certainly, I can do that for $20 and hour and I think it will take me about 2-3 hours. Happily for everyone, he left and never asked me to do repairs again.

But that doesn't work for spouses. In the 30+ years we have been married my husband has brought me various odd sewing jobs to do for him. These tasks have varied from putting a new zipper in a snow suit, turning collars, repairing a flannel shirt, to sail repair. Once he brought some dirt encrusted THING in from the garage wondering if I might fix it on my fancy-smancy Bernina. That request got a resounding "No way!" But generally, I try to accommodate his requests.

This was an unusual week. I received two sewing requests. One was a dust cover for the new Yamaha electronic keyboard. I tried to pass off some gnome fabric I had on hand for this but it was a no-go. 

Gnomish rejects

We decided on some very pretty underwater fishy fabric instead. This is the finished dust cover.

I was especially pleased with the form fitting ends, custom shaped to fit the machine.

So that project turned out fine, wasn't too much trouble and is a little like having an aquarium in the music studio.

But then there was the PILLOW. This isn't the first time this %&%$# pillow has raised its ugly head in my sewing room. The story is long and horrible, involving a succession of overstuffed feather pillows and one goose down pillow that wouldn't stop smelling of goose fat, a grisly, feather-spewing "let's use an Exacto knife to open/stab a package containing a pillow" incident and many nights of "down-in-the-mouth" from a pillow that just wouldn't stop coughing out feathers.

So the overstuffed, hard as a rock, down pillow comes out of storage to replace the flying chicken feather pillow....but....it is completely unusable as it is. This is one hard pillow. I tried it for awhile and it was like trying to sleep on a brick.

The solution: sewing skills. Open up the pillow, remove some feathers and sew it back up again. Easy, no?

Definitely, NOT! Sadly, I had been through this process once a few years ago and failed to remove enough feathers on the first go. Hence, the pillow taking up residence in a closet.

I suppose it is too late to make a long story short, but it took about 20 minutes of ripping out teeny tiny stitches, followed by the actual messy feather removal. Next, I perform the reconstructive surgery. Let me just say it is nearly impossible to shove the edge of a fat feather pillow under a sewing machine, especially with pins sticking out all over. After one bloody wound, much hissing and cussing, some hand sewing and more cussing, the pillow is back together again. 

If I ever see it in the sewing room again, I'm going to get stabby.