Gifts for Mom

My Mom came for a visit and she also turned 85 years old this September, so I made a few things for her. I made the zippered bag from a Red Hat fabric print. I gave her a bar of handmade unscented soap...yes I made the soap too. Then I crocheted 3 small washcloths. I figured these were useful gifts and hopefully she might really use them.

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Chile Placemat

My friend Pam taught how to make this placemat at the quilt guild I belong to. If you make several of these in different colors, you can link them together to form a Chili (Chile)Chain Table Runner. Pam is the designer of this pattern as well as several other chile/Southwest designs. I made one of these in red (see older posting) too. I didn't follow the directions completely because I used scraps instead of cutting 5 fabrics she suggests in the pattern. I always have to be different!

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Yarn Dyed With Prickly Pear Cactus

I dyed some yarn with prickly pear cactus. Here is is hanging to dry in my bathtub. In order to get this color you need to let the yarn ferment for 2 weeks.

Here are 2 balls of yarn I wound. This yarn was a bare sock yarn from KnitPicks. It is a superwash wool with 25% nylon. Those little flecks of color are in the wool that I purchased. The small bit of yarn in the foreground I also threw in the pot to see if it would take the dye differently. The smaller yarn is 100% Peruvian wool, also from KnitPicks. It appeared to dye a bit brighter and darker than the nylon blend wool. Like I did with the fabric and tee-shirt dyeing, I saved the prickly pear cactus fermented juice and tossed in 3 skeins of bulky weight wool yarn to ferment for a couple of weeks and I think I might end up with a light pink shade...stayed tuned and we'll see what happens.

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Knitted Apples

I knit these apples after I knit the pear. It's from the same place I found the pear tutorial (scroll down to the knitted pear posting below). I like the apples better than the pear.

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Metal Tape Measure Snap Bag

This is the first and only bag I have made using a couple of pieces from a metal tape measure. My husband's metal tape measure broke and he was going to throw it away, so I said I wanted it and cut the tape measure into several pairs of different sizes. I finally got around to making one. It turned out nicely. I added the Prairie Points to the front and back of the bag thinking that I could use them as pulls to open the bag, but it didn't work at all. So I sewed a double-stacked button all the way through the bag as a decorative element instead. I am going to use this a a lunch bag. I doubt I will make any more of these, as I really don't care for the metal snap closure that much. It doesn't stay open. I prefer making zipper bags instead.

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Fabric & Shirt Dyeing Day

I tie-dyed about 2 dozen shirts (tee-shirts and blouses), plus cotton fabric at the end of August. I let the items soak in the buckets for all day. The next day, I rinsed them out and washed them. I kept the excess dye in the buckets and dyed some more fabric as well as some rayon/wool blend felt, some cotton crocheted doilies, some cotton lace and rayon fabric. The darker dyes still dyed dark, but some of the other dyes dyed a lighter shade. So I ended up with quite a bit more dyed items by using the dye again the second day. I could have probably dyed more a third day with some of the dyes, but I was so tired I decided not to bother. I was pleased with most of dyed items. A few didn't come out as well as expected, but most did and some even better than I expected. I will try and take photos of a few shirts to post later.

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