Secret Valentine Exchange part XI - fresh hoops

Back at the start of the year I found a craft I wanted to try and knew exactly who I wanted to make it for. I even imagined the event to which she would wear it...

I'd stumbled upon this great tutorial for wrapping hoop earrings with fresh green leaves and string: Kate A. Creates

Timing was against us and it didn't happen in quite that way. Jump forward 8 months and I didn't have any tiny fresh leaves, nor did my giftee have a garden party to attend, but why not gift a pair of infinitely re-wrappable earrings. So long as one isn't immediately repelled by the smell of lavender!

Any time, any date, if there are fresh leaves to be found these can be re-wrapped and worn.

I think the trick is to find tiny, tiny leaves. I auditioned a few other garden plants but a bigger leaf gets lost as it simply gets squashed down by the string wrapping. I also found that a twisted yarn becomes somewhat untwisted and fluffy as you go. The variegated Hemptique hemp string worked perfectly, but a smaller leaf and finer gauge would make it just so.

But it's a very fun exercise in crafting and they do look pretty boho and cool. After I'd auditioned a few plants that didn't work, I also wondered about wool rovings, or even fabric strips. It would be easy to pair them with an outfit by using some of the fabric from the garment and then wrapping with a co-ordinated 1mm waxed cotton macramé thread.

I caught up with the delightful Nicole of maciniccreates and we chatted fast and loose over a few good coffees. I knew she could rock a weird, plant material statement earring, and I'll be honoured to rewrap them when they need freshening up.

Meanwhile I suspect she'll be either super chilled and relaxed from all that lavender smell on each side of her head, or quite nauseated and fed up with smelling like cheap toiletries! :)

Secret Valentine Exchange Part X - Cycling Cap

This was the November instalment in my year of making a gift for a (semi)stranger (Secret Valentine Exchange in hiatus). I misjudged just how long it takes to get something from one side of our country to the other, foolishly thinking it would be less time than it took to send something to Canada. Wrong.

Anyway, I've heard it arrived yesterday so I can share here...
Let's start with the first prototype - the one my gift recipient didn't receive.
I'm working on the blog-proven premise that everything looks better on my son, hence the cool model.

Back in my original callout for suggestions Tracey asked for a cycling cap. Something to wear under her helmet to keep the harsh W.A sun out of her eyes and off her head.

I have no experience with wearing or sewing cycling caps. They've never been part of the cycling tenue at our house. But it seemed like a fun and worthy project, and one day, when the older bloke decides he is thinning on top sufficiently to need a cycling cap, I'll be ready!

I started with a search for an online pattern. I found this one via Flickr but there's no way those dimensions were correct. I couldn't print it such that the written measurements would match the actual pattern pieces. But in the comments was a link to a printable PDF version that was slightly modified, so that became my launching point.

The pattern has four panels, each with a dart, then the brim attached.
I knew it was going to be a summer time hat, not a warm winter thing with ear covers, so I thought why not use some pretty Liberty of London fabrics.

I meticulously french seamed both my darts and my 1/4" panel seams so it would be gorgeously neat on the inside.

I added a KATM label with Bespoke on it, but forget to heat seal the cut ends of the label, so after stitching it into my tiny french seam it did pull out a bit and look like it might come out. I simply stitched around the other three edges to secure it and it was good.

The brim on this one is just a single layer of the plastic from a 2L milk carton.

You can wear it turned up for full visibility...

Or flipped down to keep the sun out of your eyes...

I didn't follow any instructions to construct the cap as it all seemed pretty self-explanatory. After basting the brim to the cap I then made a strip of pink cotton/lycra knit binding to finish the inside of the cap all around. I made the binding smaller than the cap so it would be stretched a bit to fit, but also added a short section of elastic at the back inside the binding for further gathering.

Here's where I made a Secret Valentine Exchange rookie error - I'd failed to do my research on my giftee. The hat was OK, it was perhaps a little bigger than I'd wanted it to be. The plastic of the brim threatened to be a little sharp at the edges. But it was beautifully made and looked super cool with six different Liberty fabrics.

In looking up Tracey again on Instagram to ask for her address I found an old conversation we had through direct messaging about women's cycling clothes. It ended with the line "... and I hate pink"

Time to make another hat and fix the little niggly bits and ditch the pink!

This one is also a Liberty of London fabric and one of the only Liberty fabrics that I'd ever get excited about myself (not a fan of pink or florals either!)

I took about 3/4" off the bottom of each panel so that the crown was less deep. I added about that much to each side of the brim to give it a more gentle and wider attachment and I covered the milk bottle plastic in a layer each side of that interfacing that looks like paper felt. It softens the plastic a little and protects the fine fabric from the sharp, plastic edges.

I still French seamed all the darts and seams, and this time I reached beyond what was immediately next to me and sought out some black knit for the binding.

I didn't have another Bespoke label, but a One of a Kind label seemed equally appropriate.

I'm pretty happy with this one and I hope it suits Tracey's bike style and keeps the sun and magpies off her face for many rides to come.

Secret Valentine Exchange Part IX - Falling Leaves Necklace

Gosh, I've got so much to share and I'm moving like a cartoon animal whose limbs are a blur...

But here I am, pausing for a second, to update the blog, as I'm delighted to announce that my October instalment in the year of giving (in lieu of the regular February Secret Valentine Exchange) has been received.

When I first put out the call for what to do with my rest time on our annual January holiday, I was delighted with one of the responses: Make me a macramé necklace thingy, said Deb (or words to that effect)

I've been following Deb on social media for many years now. She's a sewist and knitter of extraordinary talent, but I was also captivated by her photography. She would sew the loveliest clothes for her grandkids and pose them on a mannequin, in the snow, in her garden, and a deer would stroll past and be in the frame.

She's moved to a bigger city now so the photos of tapping maple trees are gone, but the recent snap with the Northern Hemisphere* leader we all want, Trudeau, was equally breathtaking.

* qualifier required, as down here in the south we all wish Jacinda Arden was our head honcho

Deb also throws the best looking dinner parties and goes to exatrordinary lengths to get the table, and the attendees, all turned out nicely!

I knew that even if my necklace turned out more costume-y than elegant, and it is string and rock after all, she could make it work for a fall themed dinner party.

So in the heat of the Australian summer I started knotting...

The stone cabochard and 1mm nylon threads came from a bead shop: Wholesale Beads. It is open to the public and you check you handbag in a locker, take a bucket and then wander over two levels finding all the things you need. Good fun for a craft nut!

Following a pattern from the book Bohemian Macrame, I spent our summer holiday knotting away and over the following week I finished all the leaves. Then I let it rest through Autumn

Attaching and knotting each leaf together took a little longer than I'd anticipated, but was a nice 1hr per night in front of the telly, kind of activity.

The back looks a hot mess as all the ends of the threads are cut and melted (the reason it needs to be a nylon thread)

I was delighted to hear it arrived in Canada, and Deb, who rarely shows herself on Instagram posted a lovely photo of her wearing it.

I'm having a lot of fun making things for people and sneaking them off in the post. Only three months left before my 12 months is up. Have you made something unexpectedly for someone? It's quite fun.

Secret Valentine Exchange Part VIII - Raffia hat

It's time for the September instalment in my year of the Secret Valentine Exchange.

In case you're not familiar with the original concept - two wonderful women organised a gift exchange between makers all around the globe. A short bio of who you are and what you like was submitted and a giftee would be assigned to you and someone else would receive your name and become your gifter. We made our small handmade things, whatever they may be, and posted them around the world in order for our giftee to receive it on Valentine's Day. A kind of insurance against feeling left out on that most crass, commercial day of celebrations.

With the illness of one of the organisers, the Secret Valentine Exchange is in hiatus this year and so I put out a call for ideas of things to make during my January vacation - when I'm usually crafting my gift to post at the start of February. The list was so long and there were so many fun ideas I decided to run with it all year. So here we are in September with the 8th instalment in my year of the S.V.E.

I'm particularly fond of this month's creation for the way it came to be.... The recipient @rou2an1_made politely put in a request for a straw hat like the one I'd made P way back when he was a gondolier for Italian Day.

I'm not going to pretend I wasn't flattered, but I quickly doused her flames by saying that had been far too much work, and I wanted to stick with using materials I already had.... In short, I told her she'd overstepped the mark :) But the idea stuck.

And then I was enjoying learning to crochet... And then Flipper came home with a ball of paper raffia that someone had given him to pass on to me.... This could just happen...

Except that I didn't have much of that paper raffia, and so as you can see it became a table mat instead.

I was really wanting to make this hat now, and in August I was off to the Gold Coast for a conference with nothing to do in the evenings. Perfect hat crocheting time. I put in an order with String Harvest for some of the Mondofil paper raffia: a large cone of speckled paper raffia in the cream colour and a smaller cone on the speckled brown, and had them delivered to the apartment I was staying in.

The hat came together over the week with a few late crafting nights and a few conference sessions where it came with me and prevented me from nodding off to sleep during the duller moments :)

The pattern is the Walk In The Park raffia sunhat from ABC knitting patterns (link here). I reduced from the suggested 3.5 hook to a 3 hook in order to get the tension about right. When I'd finished it was quite loose on me, and I consider myself someone on whom hats are usually tight...

I took a trip out to Torb & Reiner (who had assisted me so well with that ambitious straw boater project back in 2014) and purchased some Petersham ribbon and Hat Stiffener.

I sewed the Petersham ribbon such that it would be tight on me, then panicked and thought it was too small, so I ripped it out and made it a bit looser. It's still a tight fit for me but not too tiny. I hoped it would be right for my giftee. I knew nothing about her head size due to her tendency to never show her face on the interwebs and instead hide behind bunches of celery and other produce (#posingwithproduce)

Thankfully it turns out I got it just right!

I used my Hat Stiffener mixed 50:50 with Hat Thinner (very Alice in Wonderland) and painted the crown once and the brim twice to get a good amount of stiffness to the raffia. - and the table mat got a single coat too.

I delivered the hat today and we met for a lunch and had a lovely chat. She has already written a much better tribute to my hat than I could, so check out her Instagram post here.

I might need to make myself one of these hats since I never can find hats that fit me well, and in searching for this hat pattern I found a different super cute one I'd like to size down and make for A.

I'm sadly on a bit of a craft break as we pack up and move house to do some renovations. I have a bit of a blog back log though so while I'm not making I can hopefully catch up here. Or maybe I can leave one hook and a bit of string out of a box... ;)

Secret Valentine Exchange Part VII - make it a macaron!

Quite how I didn't already know @mrskylliearcher is a mystery. But I've just spent a lovely morning having coffee with her and handed over the August instalment in my year of the Secret Valentine Exchange. (what a coincidence is the first image in that link!)

Amongst many talents, she makes the most incredible looking macarons, and she suggested I make a macaron shaped pincushion when I put out my original callout for project ideas. I tried :)

The kids thought my macaron pincushion looked more like a hamburger. I was aiming for a sort of strawberry shell with chocolate ganache. But I'm not sure what my decorative bits would be. Coffee? Probably not a good flavour mix. I have said before that I can't bake, right?

I used a Straight Stitch Society pattern which is for a sewing pouch and pin cushion in the shape of an apple or orange (Apples to Oranges Sewing Kit Sewing Pattern). In order to have the less circular shell I simply sewed the panels together with a shallower curve.

The macaron opens out to reveal the ganache is in fact a needle pad (surprise!) and the bottom half is a cute little pouch. Just to really mix my flavours it's lined in a deep raspberry red. It took a bit of rummaging through the scraps bucket to find bits of fabric suitable, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have not aimed for realism and to have used floral quilting cotton leftovers. It certainly would have been less hamburger-y.

I picked up some nice sewing notions at Fibresmith and stuffed as much as I could into the bottom pouch.

Since we live in the same city and are both bicycle fans, we picked a café halfway between us and cycled to our rendezvous. It turned out to be a glorious spring morning and a brief coffee catch up turned into and hour and a half of chatting.

An absolute delight!

Now, if you want to see some really impressive macarons, go check out Kyllie's Instagram feed!

Secret Valentine Exchange Part VI

It's time for the July instalment of my year of crafty gift giving that is the Secret Valentine exchange 2019*

I loved the brief for this one....

Back in January when I put out a call for suggestions I was flattered, to great effect, by Kathleen.

She said, and I quote: "I really admire your style Shelley, so here's my idea: I have a new house that I'm struggling to decorate as it's so much bigger than the old one (also because I have no talent for that kind of thing). If you wanted to make some sort of furnishing/accessory/ornament for my living room somewhere in a cream/wood/teal/gold colour scheme that would be lovely."

That kind of open brief and lovely compliment will get you everywhere!!

When I got thinking about a wall hanging that would be fun to make I decided it was time to make those macramé feathers that were all the rage (possibly last year, but shhh, some of us may only just be catching up now)

I have plenty of three ply cotton macramé rope but I'd seen an image of what happens when you use that. It's a bit like unplaiting your daughter's hair - it goes all crimpy! This project needed single twist cotton string and it just happened that String Harvest had a partial reel on sale. Done! (and now I've realised I can't recall what size it was. Maybe 7mm?)

Sitting in the car at lacrosse training one night I made a miniature version in the leftover chunky cotton. The technique is well described in this blog post: Honestly WTF macramé feathers 

I wanted to make a series of three for Kathleen and try to match her colour brief. I did think about using natural dyes and did a bit of research as to how I could get wood tones or a nice gold from onion skins. But it seemed that apart from needing to get through a few kilos of onions in one week to save all the skins, I would also need to buy a couple of different metallic mordants. I figured it would be just as easy to buy some fabric dye.  

I used some Procion dyes from my local art shop along with soda ash. The instructions on the bottle were brief, but then I found the online instructions and threw some salt in the mix as well and suddenly the colour was setting more deeply. I used the Teal and a combination of Rust Orange and Chocolate Brown.

Of course, because of the tight twist of the cotton cord, the dye was never going to penetrate completely. I stirred and steeped for ages, but it was clear it wasn't going to be a homogenous colour as if I'd purchased coloured macramé cord. But perhaps this funny variegated effect would actually be better?

Once the feather is knotted and roughly trimmed, it's brushed out and here's where the variation in dyeing became most apparent. Short of redyeing the feather after brushing it, there was nothing for it but to embrace the result I had!

The Honestly WTF tutorial suggesting using a fabric stiffening spray to "set" the feather. But I found Peanut Butter and Jelly Bean on Instagram with a tutorial for making feathers that was a bit different. Her knotting technique has the cord on only one side with each attached loop which gives a sparser feather. But her giant feathers have such exquisite shape - the key is a felt backing. Follow the tutorial button in her Instagram feed for more info.

So I cut some felt backing shapes and got out the hot glue gun!

The felt backing allows the use of a map pin to help hold the feather flat against the wall when hung. Once the pin is in place, a little grooming with the mini cat comb and the pin is neatly covered up.

I delivered the feathers on Wednesday only to discover my giftee had a nice high, secure front fence with a gate lock and a standard letter sized slot for mail. I'd found an enormous, novelty sized gift box at the local $2 shop and short of climbing the fence with it on my head I was stuck...

Luckily a neighbour came out as I was standing on the street and I convinced her to play cupid for me and take delivery of the package. That was an added bonus of the whole Secret Valentine Exchange in that I forced a bit of friendly new neighbour interactions! :)

Kathleen sent me a lovely thank you email with a photos that showed the feathers perfectly matching her teal lamp, wooden side board and painting. Hopefully they'll fill a little space on the wall until she decides they're weirdly naff and so 2018. Rofl.

* The real Secret Valentine Exchange is in hiatus. It normally takes place in February of each year. I'm creating something every month for someone else until February 2010 in the hope that that I can keep the torch alive.

Secret Valentine Exchange Part V

This is June's edition of my year of making gifts for the slumbering Secret Valentine Exchange. I've just received word that it has arrived at it's destination, so it's time to share here.

Quite what it is, is debatable. Why it came into being, doubly so. But there was no doubting the genuine delight and warmth from the recipient when she received it.

This one was not commissioned. I simply started making something with no intention and when the kind @ecoleemhof on Instagram said it was beautiful, that decided it. It would be posted to her. 

Off it went to Florida, where Valerie, aka ecoleemhof was having a rough day and feeling a bit overwhelmed and lonely until she opened the post. How fabulous that my giant, pointless doily could brighten someone's day on the other side of the world. That's what it's all about!

I crocheted the thing (trivet, doily, placemat?) using two strands of the chunky cotton and one strand of the wonderful Habu paper moire from String Harvest. Possibly a size 9 crochet hook but I confess I forget.

The pattern is one from the Crochet Workshop book and is intended to be made with a single strand of finer yarn, and a smaller hook and end up no bigger than a drink coaster. Upscaled it turns out kind of cool.

I almost cried when I read Valerie's lovely thank you note and what a gift it is to be able to make something and send it off to someone for no reason other than you're sure they're a good person and it would be nice to give them something.

As a treat for myself I bought some flowers purely so I could photograph my big, pointless doily thing looking pretty. And that cheered my day up too. What a treat.

Secret Valentine Exchange Part IV - Cedric

The Secret Valentine Exchange is usually an annual, big circular gifting pool for creative people to make something for an unknown recipient for Valentine's Day.

It's foundation was in the lovely friendship between Sanae Ishida and Ute. With Ute's absence from the virtual craft world, this year it hasn't gone ahead. But, to honour those two wonderful women I've decided to run with it and create a Valentine's style gift every month until next February.

Let me introduce you to Cedric....

I was in Fibresmith a few months ago and found these wonderful embroidery patterns by Amy Kalissa on sale. Each pattern had a principal character, an emblem and a phrase, set out as three separate iron-on stencils to stitch.

I'm not much of an embroider-er but these patterns sold me with the quirky characters. Meet Cedric:

"Cedric is your stereotypical hipster, although don't tell him that, as far as he's concerned, he's a complete individual who does not subscribe to mainstream views. He fashions cushions out of scarves found in op-shops, manages to attend the opening of every new pop-up store within a 10km radius of the CBD, drinks pumpkin chai lattes with a pinch of nutmeg and enjoys going to Bingo with his posse.

By day, Cedric runs his own café, where customers flock to experience his famous deconstructed hot chocolates, Foie Gras Poutine and Trout Ice-Cream."

Just your regular inner Melbourne hipster really. 

Each of the patterns is intended to be stitched with variegated embroidery threads designed by Amy Kalissa. 

Before heading out to the country for Easter I noticed the little quilting shop in my parent's home town was listed as a stockist for these Cottage Garden Threads. So I packed an embroidery hoop and a bit of this quilt backing cotton fabric from the stash. Turned out they didn't stock the particular Namesake range intended for these patterns so I made do with ones that looked similar.

At least, I did until I realised the designer intended for me to stitch blue eyes on a tabby cat. Well that's just wrong and I couldn't come at that. My cat got green eyes instead. And now, you know, it really bugs me taht the whiskers are black. Cats simply don't have black whiskers. No matter what the cat colour, the whiskers are always white. Of course white whiskers on a pale background was never going to work, so as much as the veterinarian part of me is irritated by it, the whiskers are black after all. :)

Because I'm quite capable of laughing at myself, check out my first attempt:

I'd completely failed to see the instruction to only use two strands of the embroidery thread. No wonder it was looking so chunky in comparison to the example in the instructions. I had no idea that those multi-stranded embroidery threads were ever split! Lesson learnt.

Here you can see the iron on transfer. PSA - if you're doing this at your mum's house using her ironing board, put something under the fabric lest you end up with a permanent hipster cat tattooed on your mum's ironing board cover. Just sayin'.

Buttonmania came through with teeny tiny 5mm doll buttons for Cedric's cardigan. A quick phone call and they were in the post and arrived the next day. Thanks Buttonmania!

So where has Cedric gone to live? I delivered him today to Marisa. 

I've been a blog following fan of Marisa's for many years. She makes gorgeous clothes for her daughter and uses so many great Japanese sewing book patterns. I can always, always be tempted into buying yet another pattern book after a visit to her blog.

She had requested a stitched portrait of one of her own cats, but you know, a craft gift is never quite you expect, right? :) 

Not that her cats aren't great. One of my favourite photoshoots is when her cats met a tiny Arriety - check it out

It was lovely to catch up with her in real life for a coffee and I thoroughly enjoyed stitching Cedric for her.