More Coasters, Napkins and Towels

This is the next post in the series of when I sewed for two days mostly just for the sake of sewing.

Because I can never seem to have enough, I made dinner napkins and a kitchen tea towel again. The links will take you to the tutorials I've done here for those.

I love everything from Fog Linen and they've got these simple linen coasters I've been wanting to make for a while. Here's how:

1. Cut two pieces of 4" x 4" fabric.
2. With right sides together, pin and stitch around most of the perimeter (1/4" from the raw edge), leaving a gap of about an inch and a half. Trim the corners off.
3. Turn the piece right side out, tuck in the seam from the gap and press with an iron.
4. Top stitch around the piece close to the edge.

Voila! 

Small Pouch, Pencil Case

I could have sworn that a while (as in years) ago I posted on making little zipper cube pouches. I thought this was about to be a sister post, for a rectangular pouch, but I see no trace of this other post. This, then, is long over due! I recently bought a yard of fantastic red and white linen and then went to town sewing up my favorite quick projects and using it all up in a day and a half. It was so great to spend that much time sewing. I love these pouches. They take very little material and make great gifts, too.

Instructions after the jump!

Naturally Dyed Tea Towels

For Christmas I made a small batch of tea towels to give to friends and family. And since I'd had in my mind for a while to experiment with dying, I decided to experiment on friends and family.

After the jump you'll find the basic steps for creating a tea towel and what I did to create a gradient on the towels from blueberries and blackberries.

Etching Glass

At left: our glass cocktail shaker with etched monogram. Right: Taylor's gift, and us as young woodland varmints.

This post is specifically about a gift for my brother, which he hasn't yet received. But, given that he'd never be caught dead reading this blog, I think it's safe to go ahead and post.

I am and always will be a Stevens, even though I'm also a Morris now. "Team Stevens" happened on day when I talked my brother into letting me go on a run with him, and then our dad asked if he could join us, and then we all forced our mother to come along. It just felt so silly and all-American, going out for a brisk jog with one's whole family. Obviously, Team Stevens was a thing that needed a logo, and once that logo was created, it needed to be on everything. I think I had patches made at some point.

When my brother turned 21, I wanted to put the logo on a beer mug for him, but I couldn't find a company that would custom-etch glass products in such short runs - as in, one. Then I discovered etching cream. It's cheap, it's easy, and it allows you to customize glassware at home. I bought it at Sam Flax, but you can also buy it at Amazon, where the product description reads: "NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CLEANING GLASSES!"http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

My brother broke his beer mug in his last move, and he asked that I make him a new one. The process is as simple as this:

Quick Drawstring Bags

I've posted on a few kinds of drawstring bags already (here and here), could there be more? Of course. These are about as quick and dirty as it gets. It's also a good way to use up extra fabric (that you buy and buy without a project in mind and then you end up moving it across the country and promising yourself to find ways to use it and store other things, like air, under your bed). Instructions after the jump!

There's still time to make something!

Hi, all! You must have plenty of free time left and are wondering what other things can you make before Christmas is here? We've got ideas in the new masthead and right column and here are a few more.

bird mobile / bow tie / strawberry pincushion / pressed botanicals / clutch

PS. I have arrived in San Francisco, I've even found a great apartment with great roommates in the lovely Duboce Triangle and my stuff has even arrived from Boston and I've even just unpacked it!

Edible Holiday Presents

I am living life right now in full-blown Christmas mode. I've spent most of my adult life developing a Christmas playlist that isn’t terrible (Allen would argue with that), and it's playing on a loop. My Christmas presents are wrapped – not because I’m so together, but because few things fill me with glee like a bunch of wrapped packages stacked up in our living room. The only ones left to deal with are those presents that have yet to be made.

Every year, Allen and I make a bunch of edible gifts – pralines, granola bars, four kinds of truffles, and sometimes peanut brittle or marshmallows. The truffles are the most well-loved among their recipients, and the most time-consuming. Every year, I naively look forward to the magical night, a week or so before Christmas, when Allen and I will get home from work, prepare our mise en place, wash our hands, and calmly execute dozens of perfectly spherical, glossy confections. And every year those candies deliver us to the brink of sanity and coat two rooms of our house in a fine layer of Dutch-process cocoa.

But year after year, we soldier on.

Candied Key Lime Slices

Sorry about the inconsistent posting as of late. Allen and I were out of town for quite a while, traveling in Italy and France. It was a great trip. There were little disasters (I lost our train tickets - replacements, in fact, for the train that we'd missed 15 minutes earlier), and minor mistakes (Allen said "Hola!" to nonplussed Italians more than once (note from Allen: Only once.)). But there were little victories, too: I learned a little Italian, and my triumphs include successfully ordering quantities of cheese in a crowded Venetian market while Allen stood behind me and whispered, "Get some salami, too. Salami!" Allen's greatest feat was more dramatic: he cool-headedly jockeyed through Florence traffic in a Fiat while I pushed an imaginary brake pedal and stifled shrieks.

Allen, my awesome husband, was an ideal travel companion. Aside from being generally fun and hilarious, he hauled my giant suitcase around Europe (of course, I offered to tote his reasonable carry-on), while I packed it ever-fuller with jars of honey and olivewood cutting boards. And if I ever got tired of bumbling through Italian greetings, or searching for a French verb that I haven't used in years, Allen was always ready to step in and shout "Hola!" to everyone in the vicinity.



Jessica is presently gallivanting across the eastern seaboard, and me? Well, now it's time to eat and drink and catch up with friends (Jessica among them!) - before the holiday eating and drinking inevitably starts, which is a whole other kind of eating and drinking, and will require commitment and preparation. But we're back in the meantime, however sporadically. Those Christmas dioramas aren't going to decorate themselves.

Now to the project at hand. Our noble little key lime tree, who lives in a pot and had to be moved indoors last night, has given us 10 or 20 little ping-pong-ball sized fruits. In my determined campaign to turn everything healthy and natural into candy or cake, I took those fruits and made gorgeous little stained-glass treats - candy to decorate a cake!



Here are the instructions:

Cloth Napkins II

It's like a summer sequel! I actually made cloth napkins last July, too. The first were the wide, mitered-corner, fancier kind for my friend Holly. I've needed to make some for myself for at least that long; I mostly use tea towels as my napkins. I've been fantasizing about a same-size, blue set of cloth napkins, because who hasn't? These are simpler (read: immediate gratification) (disclaimer: sewing projects are never immediate; in this instance I'm using the term loosely to mean a mere few hours) - they're really simple. In fact, I don't think I need diagrams or even a jump for this post. OK, a jump.

But before the jump, I want to let you know there is a new (well, 2010, but I've just learned about it) fabric store in Boston. This is a big deal. It's fantastic, I got two of the fabrics I used for this project there. The store is Grey's Fabric and Notions and it's on the SOWA side of the South End. Seriously, this is such great news!

Envelope Case for Sunglasses

This fabric envelope is a total rip-off of a lovely one that Jessica made me, which I use as a wallet. Since it's not meant to be used as a wallet, and it has no billfold, coin purse, or cardholders, I'm constantly fumbling through it, dropping credit cards, tearing dollar bills, and exclaiming to cashiers about all the Sacagawea dollars I just found in there (!). And I still love it, which means it was a great gift.

I sized this up and elongated it so that it fit my old plastic sunglasses, which I've now broken, and it's slightly too small for the new aviators I just got on sale. (Which will soon also break.) So scale accordingly.

Letter Banner

What celebration doesn't need a letter banner? That's about all of the introduction I have. Full tutorial after the jump!

Small Clutch

I made another linen, metal zipper clutch. It's a wonder I haven't made 6 more (I guess it's those other obligations I have like my day job). Just like the internet, I am obsessed with these and could have one in every size and color. This one is a small size, for just carrying the essentials out or for using as a wallet, which is how I'm using it now. The construction is exactly the same as the larger version I posted about here, but you'll start with different dimensions. After the jump, I've got plenty more pictures to detail the process.

Adjustable Bow Tie

Hurray, something you can make for a guy! I'm always on this difficult quest. Though bow ties aren't for every guy, luckily, I have many fun guy friends that they are perfect for. I think these are fairly easy, a beginner's project, and they are quite rewarding. This is a real bow tie you must tie yourself. After a few tries, you'll get the hang of it. It's fabulous. I want to work one into my wardrobe. A photo-loaded tutorial after the jump.

chocolate babka

Here's the thing about our household. I found this recipe in Martha Stewart's excellent Baking Handbook when all of Atlanta was trapped under snow, making do only with what it already had in its kitchen pantries. The recipe calls for a full two pounds of one type of chocolate, and I thought, "Well, I'm sure we've got that!"

Good thing I made it; this bread sustained us and neighbors through a full three days of offices-closed, grocery-stores-depleted, full-on Deep-South snow freakout.

pressed & framed botanicals

I've been seeing some beautiful botanical prints lately that I'd love to somehow reproduce (in spirit, if not in detail). I've only marginal drawing skills, but Mother Nature herself offers an ideal way to bring the silhouettes of ferns and other plants into our homes without having to render their likenesses in pencil - pressing plants. It couldn't be more straightforward, and there are infinite ways to mount and frame your finished product - but I've got a few tips to help people along.

Chunky, Speckled, Crocheted Cowl

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Fifty-five ways. Or fifty-five little chains to start. I love something easy, something you can just make as soon as you decide you want it. I'd had an image of this woolly, chunky cowl in my mind for a bit. Over Christmas break, on an exciting trip to Michaels, I grabbed a hook and a skien and made it happen. It took no time, it's just a tube of double crochet. This is a great project for a beginner. It's almost too simple to write a pattern for, but I will, for formality's sake.

ch 55, sl st in 1st ch st to make a ring.
rnds:  ch 3, dc into next ch. continue with dc in each chain until the end and sl st into 3rd ch.
to finish: sl st and weave in tails.

Repeat until you're out of yarn or it is the height you want it. This took exactly all of one skein, it worked out perfectly with about 3 inches of tail on either end. I bought another skein (which is, by the way, this Lion Brand Yarn, Wool-Ease in Barley) because I thought I wanted it to be really huge and floppy and that I might double it - now that I've worn it like this, I quite like it as it is and may make myself a matching hat. I used a N/9.00MM hook.

Christmas truffles

These truffles are a pain, okay? They’re not something you’re going to throw together in half an hour, and once you’ve spent $30 on chocolate and your kitchen’s covered in a fine dusting of cocoa powder, you’ll wonder if it would have been easier to let Russell Stover do the job for you. Last night, when Allen and I got to the part where you roll the truffles in chocolate, he turned to me and said, “Get ready for the most stressful part of Christmas.”

But these are beautiful – not flawless, surely, but beautiful by virtue of being handmade, and once you give them to friends and family, you’ll realize you have a hit on your hands. A hit, and several ounces of melted chocolate and butter.

diy: boxwood wreath

I fantasize all year long about warm fires on hearths, holiday parties lit by candles, making pralines and truffles to give as gifts, and every other Christmas cliché. Spiced cider with rum, anyone? (To be fair, how could you argue against that?)

A lot of of my infatuation comes from the romantic atmosphere that flickering candles, spicy and citrus-y fragrances, trumpets at Midnight Mass, and ethereal, soon-to-go-by-the-wayside decorations conspire to create. The string of cranberries will be eaten by the birds, the cloved oranges will be tossed into the compost, and the tree will be chipped into mulch. It's in part its ephemeral nature that makes a light-strung cottage so appealing.

This project, too, is ephemeral - you'll throw it out sometime in January, but no matter, because it's inexpensive, it's easy, and you get to keep a boxwood plant in the end.

Cloth Napkins

I made these in July (July!) for my friend Holly's birthday - I swear I've already posted them, but I can't find it anywhere - but I'm still not convinced. This post must be here somewhere. But, alas, I'm doing it now, perhaps again.

Dinner napkins! I love cloth napkins, period. I rarely use paper towels, ever. And I've already confessed I also do laundry embarrassingly little. So many cloth napkins are necessary. They are simple to make and this way you can have the pattern you want, size you want and make as many as you want. I also think it's a great little project for a gift. Full tutorial after the jump.

MacAusland's woolen blankets

Do you ever get so excited about something you've bought that you want to tell people about it? This is one of those times. I apologize in advance for gushing, but I've been made giddy by a blanket. It's a gift for someone I love (who luckily doesn't read this blog), and I can't wait to give it to them.

MacAusland's Woolen Mills, on Prince Edward Island, Canada, makes beautiful, fluffy, lofty wool blankets in dozens of beautiful colors and several patterns (though the checkerboard is clearly the best). For those who value provenance, here's something: When you call MacAusland's Woolen Mill, you get a MacAusland on the phone. Here's a neat description of the mill.

MacAusland's weaves its blankets from pure virgin wool, and offers custom sizes and color combinations. Those lucky few who have sheep of their own can send wool for MacAusland's to spin into yarn.



The blankets are really well priced, from about $45 for a very large throw to about $85 for a queen-sized blanket. (Of course, though, keep in mind that shipping from Prince Edward Island to the southern United States doesn't run cheap.)

The blanket might arrive smelling a little of loom oil, and mine still had a few pieces of grass and natural detritus clinging to it. A cold run through the gentle cycle (using Woolite) helped remedy that. Never dry a wool blanket, or you'll end up with felt - just roll it around a couple of beach towels to squeeze out the excess water, and drape it over a bed or a shower curtain to dry.

A warning to those trying to coordinate colors in a cool-hued, white-toned house: MacAusland's "natural white" is completely unbleached, and more like ecru than white.

Would it be unreasonable to reupholster my settee with one of these blankets? Maybe I'll post a new upholstery DIY.