Gandalf

I am a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkein. (Okay, so I'm a huge fan of Lord of the Rings. I tried reading a couple of his other books but struggled too much to keep all of the elven names straight. My husband however does qualify as a HUGE fan of Tolkein.) When I saw fandom in stitches was planning on doing a There and Back Again Block of the Month I was excited. I mentioned it to my husband and he immediately agreed that I needed to do it. I've been sewing for years, but am very new to quilting. I've never tried paper piecing before, but read a lot of tutorials and figured it shouldn't be too hard. For my first attempt at paper piecing I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

I tried something a bit unusual with the fabric. I really wanted him to have a dark grey coat, a medium grey hat, and a light grey beard. Rather than buying three pieces of fabric when I only needed a little bit I found a dark grey piece of fabric and used bleach to lighten it.  When I got my fabric home I decided it looked more black than grey so I put a large piece in for the cloak for five minutes, a small piece for the hat in for ten, and a small piece for the beard for fifteen minutes. The beard didn't turn out and I used a piece of white for it, but I like the effect the bleaching had on the cloak and hat. 

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post. Since it was my first time doing paper piecing and bleaching of fabric I was more concerned with doing it right than documenting what I was doing. November 2 month 2's block is released. I'll try to take more pictures of the process as I work on that one. 

Ring Box

Over the past couple of years I've developed a love of rings. I was throwing them in the same box as my earrings, but I was worried they'd get scratched so I decided to make a ring box for them. (Yes, I know you can buy these from the store, but where's the fun in that?)

To start I found an old box, this one happens to be the one that my ipod came in. (Sorry I don't have a picture of this empty.) I had some thick foam in my sewing area that I cut into one inch strips for my spacers. (You could easily use styrofoam or anything else laying around your house.) I placed all of my spacers in my box to make sure they fit.

I took some scrap fabric and covered the foam. This probably would have been easier if I'd glued it in place but since I didn't have any glue on hand I used pins to hold everything together.

Since my box was clear I covered the bottom with a piece of fabric. If I'd had mod podge on hand I would have used that, but since I didn't I just set it in there. (If you haven't figured it out my craft space is lacking some of the basics. I do a lot more sewing and other fiber crafts that don't require glue.)

To finish I placed the wrapped pieces in a box and added the rings. I didn't need a large box, but this would be easy to do in a larger box to display rings at a craft fair or farmer's market and would look a lot prettier than the plain styrofoam or black velvet trays I usually see.

I'm sure someone else has done something similar to this before, but I didn't look at any other projects when I made this so I can't link to my inspiration.

I'm linking up with these parties:

A New Blog is Created

I've quietly been stalking various crafting blogs for months now. While I enjoy reading about crafts, I like making them even more. As I read what other crafters are doing I realize that I can do that too. I've even started taking pictures as I've been creating things with the intention of writing future tutorials. The time has come for me to take the plunge and start sharing what I've been making.

You'll see a little bit of everything here. I'm one of the fortunate people who's mother is a genius with a sewing machine and passed some of her knowledge on to me when I was young. She still gets random calls when I get stuck. In college I would amaze (or maybe annoy) my friends when I'd sit near a small lamp and cross-stitch during movie nights. I even inspired others to bring their crafts out of the closets on movie nights and got to learn crochet. Most recently I've begun quilting, knitting, and have leads on learning to spin. I'm sure as I go I'll find my voice and will focus on a single craft more. Of course it's also possible that my voice is not a single voice, but a dozen chipmunks each going their own way doing their own crafty thing.