Marbles, buttons, super balls, rotary phones–I seem compelled to collect the bits and pieces of life. Beachcomber, gutter forager, accumulator! I aspire to minimalism, but miss it by a long shot. Here is a glimpse into the galleries of my personal museum. What do you collect? And how do you display (or not) your treasures?
These 1″ little boxes won’t solve your storage problems (unless you just don’t where to put that penny, or marble, or piece of lint) but like many miniature things, they are delightful. Once during a bout of unemployment, I folded zillions of these (which may say something about my non-transferable work skills and resulting joblessness). Watch out, they’re fun. Make one, make many: they proliferate under your fingertips.
Materials
3″ square origami paper
bone folder, or a pen with a rounded cap to make creases
Step 1: Lay one sheet of origami paper, wrong side up, on your working surface. Fold the paper in half, long edge to long edge. (You can gently press with your fingers first, and then use your bone folder to make a sharper crease.) Open the paper and rotate 90 degrees. Fold in half again, long edge to long edge. Again, open the paper.
Step 2: Fold one corner to its opposite, to make a triangle. Open the paper, and fold the other corner to its opposite. Unfold. Your paper will look like this:
Step 3: Fold each corner to the center point. (Fold four times.)
Step 4: Fold the bottom edge of your square up to the center. Fold the top edge of your square down to meet the center. Unfold. Rotate 90 degrees, and repeat, folding the remaining two edges of the square to the center.
Step 5: Open two of the corners opposite each other. Lift the two sides of the box. Focussing on one corner at at time, press in the “tabs” you created with creases. As you do this, you will be lifting the third side of the box. Then press down the corner over the edge of side. The corner point should meet the other two points. Repeat to make the fourth side of the box. You’ve made the bottom half of the box.
Step 6: To make the lid, you will do the same thing, but with one alteration. In Step 4, instead of folding the edge of the square to the center, you will instead fold it almost but not quite to the center. Leave about a millimeter of distance from the center. Do this again to the top edge. Open, and repeat with the remaining two square edges. This will make the lip of the lid shorter and increase the diameter of the lid, so that the lid fits over the bottom of the box you created.
Enjoy!
Carpenter’s Wheel Quilt, attributed to Mrs. Miller, Mennonite, Easton, Pennsylvania, about 1890
The quilts displayed at the Quilts and Color: The Pilgrim/Roy Collection now at the Boston MFA are not for those who prefer a palette muted and restrained. While my kids were wolfing Fenway franks at the ballgame this past weekend (Go Sox!), my mom and I snuck off to to take a peek. These are not your grandmother’s quilts–or are they? In room after room, we encountered vibrating, dizzying color in bold patterns that are amazingly modern considering that their mostly Mennonite and Amish makers lived in the 19th and early 20th century.
Sunburst Quilt, Mrs. Ephraim Scott, American, 1856
Trained as artists, Gerald Roy and Paul Pilgrim collected quilts reminiscent of modern abstract art. They noted that the quilters displayed an intrinsic color sense, experimenting with saturated hues and color effects. In each room of the exhibit are paintings by Abstract Expressionists and Op Artists, highlighting the affinity between the quilts and the twentieth-century art.
An exquisite painting by color theorist Josef Albers at the Quilts and Color Exhibit
The exhibit runs through July 27, 2014.
I promised I’d share my VW Bug stencil and directions for painting on fabric using freezer paper. Here they are (click below):
VW Bug Stencil and Instructions
Freezer paper stencils are easy and satisfying–the lazy girl’s way to silkscreen. Freezer paper has a shiny side that irons nicely onto fabric and then peels away easily, leaving a crisp, clean image on your fabric. Freezer paper is available at many grocery stores. Leave a comment if you use this VW Bug stencil and please send a pic–I’d love to see your results.
Next, I’ll share the pattern for sewing the VW Bug pillow (complete with groovy pompom trim)!
It ain’t done yet! This is an anticipatory photo in which I revel in possibilities without actually completing the sewing. Those same possibilities stall me: orange pom poms or green? Orange wouldn’t provide much contrast with the orange-y fabric but it would offer consistency with the VW bus pillow–also orange is available at my local fabric store. Green pom poms require a car drive into the Dreaded Land of Strip Malls. Magenta pom poms are another possibility (available locally, too). Zeke and his friend Rowan agreed that magenta would be OK. But Rowan has green hair, so can we trust him?
See what I mean by stalling?
homemadecity.com 