Homemade Valentine Soap

Homemade soap - paprika created the pink soap

I made homemade soap Saturday. It's supposed to sit in it's box for 24-48 hours, before cutting into shapes and cured for 2 weeks, at the least. I was thinking "Valentines" so cut heart shapes. The leftover scraps I roll in balls. Since the soap is uncured, it's still caustic, so I dump it out on a vinyl table cloth and use rubber gloves. I've let them cure on my baking cooling racks, or brown paper before - this time they're on some old wicker placemats. The soapmaking recipe is at my Karey's Kitchen blog.

Using a cookie cutter for the heart-shape - rolling scraps into soap balls

Some of these will get felted over in two weeks. I'll post pics then ... so keep tuned.

"Coraline" - Tiny Knitting

I LOVE what this lady knits (and I like the sweater she's wearing - I wish I could see all of it). For years (since 2003, since that's the pattern's copyright) I've been knitting special earrings for friends - I use US size 0000 double-pointed needles - they're like metal toothpicks. The pattern is called Los Lobe Hose by Carol's Sockery. The pattern came with the needles.

I have a basket of colored yarn - basically like string. I'd like to know what the lady is using in the YouTube clip. I don't think I'd knit what she's knitting, but who knows ... They are beautiful!

Transparency

My last class challenge was transparency. Of coarse we think of see-throughness - and that's what I did. Alot of the gals in my class are art quilters - they have a harder time with this challenge. Think about it ... most cloth is opaque. So they have to think in terms of "illusion of transparency", or implied see-throughness. When I googled that phrase there was a little more possibilities given in what we were presented with.

Heather Thomas, my instructor, said to first choose the "child" fabric, then pick out the two "parents". Transparency is achieved when two colors (parents) are seemingly overlapped on top of each other to make a 'child' - like a quilted scene of overlapping balloons was one she showed.

Organza and tulle bottles without a flash

Organza and tulle bottles with a flash

Bottles and Butterflies were forever in my mind the whole month. I did thread paint four butterflies on soluble stabilizer and added some beads, but will probably use them in this month's challenge. I did do my bottles using tulle and organza. I used a tacky soluble stabilizer for them - the materials were not wanting to stay in place, and then I could stitch them together, dissolved away the stabilizer in water, and pinned it to dry. I'd washed a background material with fabric paint, but decided they looked best on black. So wonder-undered a black tulle over black craft felt (helped the craft felt look richer). Then I pinned on my bottles and stitched through all the layers doing a bit more thread painting for the light glare on the bottles.

I was enjoying playing with the organza and tulle so wonder-undered a lot of the colors, so to trace 'mountains' and 'moons' and iron them onto black cotton fabric. Should have used Steam-a-seam, as it would adhere better to the meshed materials. Once I completed the massing of the piece, I looked at the black pile of material left on the floor from when my son and friends were here sewing, and realized that all the blacks were not the same. I found I didn't have much left of the black I started with, so did two boarders, one narrow. I straight stitch quilted thru the layers around each 'moon over the mountain' rectangle. Then couched a variegated shimmery yarn on the outside edge of the narrow boarder. I'm going to face it rather than bind the edges. Still wondering about quilting it more tho.

Moon Over Mountain without a flash

Moon Over Mountain with a flash

Kumihimo Braiding

Kumihimo "Marudai" braiding device

Kumihimo is Japanese braid-making. Kumi means 'coming together', and himo is 'string, cord, rope, or braid'. I first learned to do this braiding on a square cardboard years ago. I knew of the beautiful wooden stand and weighted thread spools, and was about to try making my own, when I found a used one with 8 spools. I love it. I love, and USE all my tools!

There are many braid varieties made from 4, 8, 12, and 16 bobbins. I always do the eight and the same cord progression pattern all the time - no thinking, just a peaceful motion. Since I'm using varied colors, just trying to coordinate with what I'm making it for, it creates it's own pattern. I've made Kumihimo braids for most of my hanging felted pictures - those, using my handspun and dyed yarns.

This braiding is with crochet cotton thread, and it makes a narrower braid than with the yarn. I'm weaving this for the grandson's cloth alphabet books I made. Looking at it, Monte wants me to make him shoelaces!!

The bobbins are weighted and then a central counterweight is needed, attached to the braided cord. They typically put weights in a little silk bag. My counterweight is what I started with - a baby food jar filled with sand. I should make a cute bag!

When I begin and whenever I've got to move the counterweight back up close to the top, I put a chopstick thru some of the strings under the top hole. I used to wrap a rubberband around the threaded bobbins, but now I'm getting used to the twisted thread loop making it's own stopping point (so it doesn't just drop, roll, and unwind - which it will do if you don't have the string to the back as in illustration #1 above).

The felted picture is one of my earliest pieces, before I was doing needle-felting. It's wet-felted with embroidered details. I've made several of these pictures, not with embroidery tho, but needlefelted details, and sold them. The Kumihimo braid is for hanging the piece from a dowel on the back incased in a sleeve. I also attached the braid around the picture - an added twist, separating it from the felted frame.

Wet felted and embroidered - with Kumihimo Braiding

Cloth Alphabet Book

Cloth Alphabet Book

For several months now, when I've gone to my Language of Color & Design class, I've seen this material panel of an old-fashion alphabet, and I finally bought two panels. Then I also got several fat quarters of kid material to go with the panel colors and theme. It would have been easier to just make blankets from the panel, but no, I have to go all out ...

I made two cloth books for the Grandson's birthdays. Emery's first in January and Will's second, coming up early February. Now that I've finished Will's, with more improvements, I want to undo Emery's a bit and improve it also.

When my kids were growing up, they'd often tell us their dreams, or have adventures, or create an imaginary something. So we sometimes made these into books - paper-bound books with covers - books added to the book shelves and would be taken out and read. I wish we would have done more of this. I'll make blank books now for journalling, which is easy. But when you're assembling pages of ordered text, it takes a lot of thinking.

I was doing fine till the other day, one of Will's pages did not have the alphabet going in the right order, and might have even been upside-down, when placed in the page's order. It's best to have a table to do a complete layout on, and keep checking for correct positioning before putting together the whole page, with batting sandwiching, turned right-side-out and edge stitched along the outside edges and down the middle, closing the open part for turning. That was a lot of stitch ripping!

For Emery's I sewed the pages down the middle (had to do sections, as it was too thick to totally sew through it all - that's how we did our paper books - just sewed with a basting stitch on the machine down the middle of all the pages (I'll have to do a post on our paper homemade books). For Will's I bought some colored eyelets, punched holes and added the eyelets. Rather than use ribbon or yarn, I thought a braid would be stronger, so I wove a Kumihimo braid (I'll do a separate post on this) of crochet cotton threads - crayon colors. That threaded through the eyelets and tied holds the book together.

I like the old-fashion pictures and some of the words are no longer used - I didn't know them! I like how they turned out. I'm going to be making some more cloth books soon. One idea is to do some family photo transfers so they can look at family pictures and remember! Then there's always the activity book ideas.

Gandhi using a Spinning Wheel in India - Gandhi video footage

I'm posting this because as a spinner, I knew Gandhi spun, and worked at getting a lot of people to spin. It's a way for people to earn an income. But it's also a very peaceful tactile activity to do.

We just went to the National Western Stock Show; here in Denver every January. I used to demonstrate spinning, and sometimes weaving, at it a lot. I've demonstrated spinning at many other places too. I should demonstrate again - a great way to get more yarn! I've knit two sweaters and a shawl from my handspun and dyed sheep wool.

Gandhi is spinning cotton. It's a very short fiber. At a weaving guild sale years ago I bought a large box of cotton. I've been scared to spin it, but now, having read about a new book coming out by Rita Buchanan - Spinning Cotton - I'm going to challenge myself to give spinning cotton a try this year. More than a try, but tackle it till I get it!

A shawl I knit from my handspun wool