Category Archives: Stuff to make

Petite purls!

Posted in Kids, Knitting, Recycled materials, Sewing, Stuff to make by

I am so excited to have discovered the lovely online magazine petite purls (thanks to the oliver + s blog). It is a treasure trove of free knitting patterns for kids with a few sewing patterns. Meg, I thought these mittens would be a great use for your upcycled sweaters. I made some felt mittens for Betty using a similar pattern that I painstakingly resized for her little hands from a pattern for adult fleece mittens. This pattern looks much easier! I might add a soft cotton lining if I made these in wool–just tuck the lining inside the mittens and bind the tops together. I love the ’70s style racing stripes.

Albers quilt

Posted in Sewing, Stuff to make by

Remember when I wanted to make a Josef Albers inspired quilt? Well, I didn’t but Heather Jones at the Modern Quilt Guild did, and it’s just lovely. I ended up starting a quilt with eight-point stars–I’m still working on the top. Sigh. I really like how this quilter adapted the Albers square by leaving off the bottom. It feels a little lighter and works so nicely with the dimensions of the quilt.

Your Personal Colorscope

Posted in Paper by

For self-understanding, I like a cocktail of Chinese astrology (Year of Monkey for me) and Western astrology (Libra), sloshed together with a splash of colorscope from Paper Source. This is a newer version with slightly different hues than the one I hang on my office wall, but I still choose strawberry.

Brig–I’m going to say you’re a poppy (maybe because Poppy is your nickname?), but possibly a persimmon. There’s one flaw with the colorscope: no one should identify with things underfoot like gravel or cement. And, really, paper bag? Who’s going to go for that one? Someone who suffers low self-regard but is really into recycling?

Japanese Matchbox Art

Posted in Paper by

I’m in (small) love with these matchbox labels from 1920s-40s Japan. Little lovely landscapes of commercial art. I wonder what they’re selling? Five-star dining? Or a particularly elegant gas station with Quik Mart? If you read Japanese, please send us the translations. If not, just enjoy their perfect palettes: baby blue, pink and red; midnight blue, leafy green, and pink; and that rainbow circle? Stunning. Also weirdly reminiscent of my childhood Marimekko bedspread circa 1970s.

By the way, the photos are originally from a flickr set uploaded by Maraid Design. You can also see a survey of the matchbox labels at Buzzfeed.

Also, if you are enamored of small things, check out Look at this Little Thing! Fun for the whole family. My household spent about an hour looking and looking.

Upcycled Wool Mittens

Posted in Recycled materials, Sewing, Stuff to make by

This no-knit shortcut to making mittens is so preposterously easy (and somehow ridiculous) that it makes me giddy. To prep, toss an old sweater into the hot cycle of your washing machine and shrink it to kid-size. The finished cuffs of the sweater sleeves make excellent cuffs for mittens.

Constructing the mittens takes about 10 minutes. First, I turned the sweater sleeves inside out and lay them flat, using the existing sleeve seam. I traced my hand with pencil and sewed around the top and thumb. Turned right side out and that’s it: new stripey mitts!

This was my first foray with felted sweater wool–I’d like to collect enough sweaters to make a blanket, like this one from the Better Homes and Gardens blog.