Craft Challenge: Desk supplies tree topper

We discussed the idea of running some craft challenges. Then I put up the little Christmas tree at work, and it needed something for the top. Therefore, challenge 1: "make a tree-topper with things you have at your desk."

Here's mine, suitably themed for the maths staffroom:

I emailed it off to Rhiannon, and she responded with this index-card present:
 

Then I emailed our mother, and our stepfather came back with this penknife angel:

Join us! Make a tree topper with the stuff at your desk! We'd love to see what you come up with.

Sock Snowmen

Rhiannon and I feel very differently about Pinterest. This is why I love it - cute easy project ideas. And finding cool blogs or websites you otherwise wouldn't find. This sock snowman comes from the blog "Then She Made" and includes lots of nice pictures with the instructions.

It can be no-sew, and it can be very ethical/eco. If you have socks you don't want any more, buttons, ribbon or string, rubber bands and rice, you're there. In my case, I got rid of some knee socks that I've been keeping despite the fact they cut off circulation to my legs.

I have a few reservations about the rice. As you can see, all the rice creeps to the butt and stays there. Like all foods.

Also when you move him, his head lolls around in a disturbing way that makes me feel like someone will call the soft toy docs on me.

This second one I did with stuffing after a bit of rice at the bottom. The rice helps him sit up properly, but the stuffing stays where you tell it to.

My noses are made from bits of this orange twine that our cat net came wrapped in.

Bennie said he likes the mismatched but colour-coordinated buttons. "They look like homeless snowmen."

Soft Toy Spheres, Baseball-style

I've mentioned before, as I explored designing a pattern for a polar bear, I have a class doing Soft Toy Design as a unit for year 7 technology. Teaching is such a great way to learn! They've come up with all these ideas and I'm trying my best to find achievable ways to make them happen. One girl wants to do the head and body of her leprechaun as spheres.

I remembered reading Abby Glassenburg talk about baseball heads, so I said I'd try that out and we'd see if it was easy. I wanted more of a complete baseball though, minus the neck. So with help from this wikihow article, I drafted my baseball pattern.

Gosh I really enjoy drafting stuff like this. It takes me back to the good old tech drawing days of year 9 and 10.

I brainstormed some ideas for what I could make my sample sphere into. Pea? Tomato? Blueberry? Snowman? Caterpillar? Eyeball?

Ultimately it would be up to my fabric stash to decide. Blueberry/Ribena-berry it is. (Ok I could also have done snowman but it was already 8:30 by then and I like to get to bed early.)

Why do people who write tutorials never say "This is going to be fiddly and annoying to get it to line up" or "You will probably end up with more left on one side than the other"? I'm going to say it - these things might happen to you too. Be warned.

I decided to give mine safety eyes for the best of all reasons: because I happened to have some safety eyes. Also a little stitched smile.

"If your ball looks rather "squarish" ... you drew your two original circles too far apart." I did think they looked too far apart, but I went with my carefully calculated two thirds, like they told me to. Next time, round down lots. *sigh*

Still, he can be a slightly squashed blueberry.

Also, this was my first project using eco-friendly corn fiber stuffing from innergreen (and the fabric scraps, of course). The weird thing is that it smells like a foodstuff. Innergreen only sell in large quantities, so I bought mine through Tomni Design, from whom I also bought a rattle for my shapes cube.

My students are my most generous critics, they love everything I do! The blueberry was very popular, and was named "Violet Puffle". They are also very impressionable. I've brought in various examples to show them, and they suddenly say "I'm changing what I'm making!" There's a polar bear and a zombie and then the polar-bear kid today wanted to make a blob like this instead.

Pencil Pals Wall Decal

First secret! You didn't have to wait long. Once Spoonflower announced wallpaper and decals, I was pretty excited! I thought that my pencils could be really cute on a classroom wall. So I ordered one. Picked it up yesterday with the others, cleaned a section of wall first thing this morning and here it is!

As you can see, it's hard to find wall space in my classroom. My lovely year 7s commented right away and recognised it as being from Donald in Mathmagic Land. They also said that the pencil was kind of in the shape of a 7! Cute. This lovely pencil decal is also for sale in my Spoonflower shop.

School Fabrics

Spoonflower is so awesome. I have a new addiction. It is so immensely weird and cool and satisfying to see something you imagined as a genuine real life fabric.

I picked up my samples from the post office today. I'd ordered the Pencil Pals before, my Donald-in-Mathmagic-Land-inspired entry into the "School Supplies" contest, but it failed to arrive. The envelope arrived, slit open at the end with no swatch inside. I told the lovely Spoonflower people and they gave me credit for it, which was super nice. I was happy to finally see it!

One thing I'm finding it hard to get the hang of is size. I don't know how big I want my design to print. This one I did in two sizes to find out. This one might be a more useful size.

Plus my plane shapes fabric swatch came too. There's actually another column of shapes that don't fit onto the swatch - the trapezium, parallelogram and ellipse. Sometimes you just can't stop the maths stuff from being in your brain.

Also two things which I won't show you yet. One will have to wait until I get it installed and one until after the present is given. Yay! Secrets!

These 3 designs are now FOR SALE at Spoonflower. I have a "Shop" now, apparently. You should check it out, it is to be found here. I'd better get it a banner because right now it has my name hovering in a big white box!

Christmas Craft Plans - and the question of who deserves craft

There's just something about the calendar switching over to November that brings on Christmas plans. Not that I haven't had plans all year, but November crystallizes and accelerates them. The truth is, big craft projects for Christmas need a lot more lead time than November.  But there are lots of little things - cards, tags, packaging, tree ornaments, etc - that can be made very quickly. Presents for family and close friends I've had planned for a while, so I've done a lot of preparation for them, and November is the month that I need to evaluate whether they will actually get finished! Tanith kicked things off with a Christmas craft party over last weekend, and I've been spending lots of spare minutes stitching.

I'm involved in several exchanges over at RPG Geek this year: a Christmas card exchange and two present exchanges. One of the present exchanges is just games off people's wishlists, but the other, a less formal, smaller exchange in the 'Tavern' (the off-topic forum area) is a mixed bag of stuff related to their gaming and non-gaming interests. And we don't get told who our targets are until mid-November. I'm crafting three of my five cards (the other two I'm buying, as I want to send 'Australian Christmas' cards to some overseas people and I'm not in the mood to stitch koalas).  And I'm also making a card and a tree ornament for my Tavern exchange target.  This means very quick crafting - trying to figure out what I can make that relates to their interests and won't be too time consuming.

I love making crafted items, so I don't mind putting the work into these items (and current state of unemployment does at least give me plenty of time to work on them). But I do sometimes wonder if I'm being silly to do these for people I don't know.

Even when I look at my own close circles of family and friends, there are people for whom I rarely make gifts. Sometimes it is because it is difficult to find things they'd like that I can make - my husband falls into this category, one of the reasons I'm so excited about the Rogue Trader cape I'm making for him. I know he'll actually use this. My brother is another - he has a very tight list of interests, and is streamlining his life. As I can't craft weightlifting equipment, I'm stumped on what I could make for him. But both of these guys have hung around crafters for long enough that I think they would at least appreciate the work that went into a present.  There are others, however, who shall remain unnamed, for whom I am reluctant to make presents because I don't think they realise how much work is involved and don't appreciate them. The targets of my various geek exchanges are people I've only met online, and talking about roleplaying. I have no idea what category they will fall into. Will they see them as special craft items or just another card?

Or is that a relevant question? If I've enjoyed the process - if I've enjoyed researching their interests through their profiles, and finding a suitable pattern or card design, enjoyed the crafting - then does anything that happens after they leave my hands matter? If I've had a good time and am proud of my work, does it matter whether the recipient appreciates the work involved? Does my effort 'require' suitable acknowledgement to make it worthwhile?
Questions I'm pondering. Meanwhile, back to stitching...

My First Gingerbread House

Last Saturday I went to a Gingerbread-House-Decorating evening with a colleague. We were supplied with everything pre-made and ready to go, which made the whole process very easy. I feel that my cooking skills would let me down more than my decorating skills.

I took a photo once the major construction was finished, just in case it later collapsed.

While that set, last year's MasterChef winner, Kate, talked to us about food and Jesus and stuff.

Then we got to decorate. I had to steal some of the supper items to complete my vision, and it was very hard  not to constantly eat the decorating supplies, but I succeeded on both counts. Mostly.

I feel inspired. Next time I think I'd like to take on something more ambitious (of course I would). But with less Jesus. We're going to have our own gingerbread house making. With Blackjack. And hookers.

Rogue Trader Cape

My husband is playing in a long-term roleplaying and LARP campaign set in the Warhammer 40K universe, as part of a Rogue Trader crew. Their crew is consistently the best costumed (here is a picture of them from last year - I wasn't able to find a link to a more recent photo), but his outfit at the moment is made up of pre-existing pieces put together, nothing custom made for this character.

I'm making him a short cape to go over his outfit, and to make it very special I'm embroidering a symbol on the back. I'm using the Truly Victorian 1890's Cape pattern TV590, not because I think it is the best 40K look I can find but because it is one I have access to! I'm going to use some interlining to make the shoulders stronger and more masculine, but this Rogue Trader crew is all about the gaudy, so a Victorian pattern seems to fit that. The fabric has a nap, and looks like suede. The colour of the fabric has not come out clearly in these photos, it is a darker, warmer red than that. The lining will be in a gold; I haven't found quite what I'm looking for but as it should take some time to finish the embroidery I have plenty of time to look.

They have a crew symbol, and his own symbol is very slightly modified from that - the skull at the centre has a monocle.

I've just started doing the embroidery on the back. I'm doing the outlines of the empty shapes in chain stitch with DMC metallic gold thread (two strands). I traced the lines I needed onto greaseproof paper, basted over it with white thread, and then ripped the paper off, so I could embroider over the guide lines.

For the solid sections, I'll pad with yellow felt and satin stitch over the top. I'm leaving the words til last I think, as they'll be the most fiddly.

Here it is, ready for me to start the second phase of the embroidery.

I'll post more updates as the cape continues. I hope it looks quite striking when it is done. I'm quite pleased to have something I can craft and give as a gift to my husband - he's a very hard man to craft for. He's been involved with the planning of this from the start, and it has been fun getting him to make decisions about collars and styles of cape front and what embroidery stitch he wanted me to use (although he did say 'I can't really see much difference between them' when given five different stitch options. Sigh)

Plane Shapes Soft Cube

Who doesn't want their kids to play with toys that teach them stuff about maths? Crazy people, maybe. So anyway I can't even remember how this idea started but I've been playing around with Spoonflower, as I mentioned before with my Pencil Pals design, and I've been working on these shapes for a while.

I designed them with the idea in mind of making a soft cube toy, and maybe later a dodecahedron (I have 12 shapes ready but only the first 6 in swatch form yet).

Excited about ordering organic cotton, I ordered them in the organic cotton knit, and then realised what a fool I was when they came! I don't know, but I'm pretty sure a real stretchy fabric won't make a nice crisp cube. So I used some iron-on interfacing that I had. Actually that has turned out pretty well because the panels have a nice soft knit feel but a solidness behind that.

On the downside though in the process of interfacing, some of the fabric stretched. The square is not so square anymore and the circle is not so circular. So next time, not knit.

Still I'm really proud of it. Time to order some more swatches and make another one. Or try the dodecahedron challenge.

Luckily since this guy is finished, I'm allowed to buy more swatches. I've set up a new self-control system - I must finish 2 craft items before I can buy resources for another. There was a period of ebay-related incidents.

Ok it isn't finished finished, but it's blog finished (fabulous expression, courtesy of Ric-Rac). The reason is that I'm thinking about getting a rattle to put inside. Although I'll have to finish two more things to buy the rattle. Darnit.

Soft Toy Design - Polar Bear versions 1 and 2

Inspired to experiment with soft toy design (a bit of a childhood dream), I started with getting a bit of practise and experience by sewing up some from patterns, including the Hedgehog and Puppy, and the Zombie Bear. My only recent attempt to make my own was the compost creature, who was a bit of an easy project in the sense that it was supposed to look like a pile of rubbish!

No offense intended, compost creature.

So for the next chapter, we start at school. I've been teaching Year 7 technology this year as well as maths. For the first 3 terms I taught the projects I was given, an electronic skills tester and wind chimes, but for term 4 I felt like getting out of the workshop, doing some textiles, and incorporating a teensy bit more design into the project. Since I wanted to explore soft toy design, I decided we'd explore together.

I've decided on a polar bear because we'll be providing the kids with plain calico, and I wanted to show them something in a white/cream colour to show that you can do a lot with calico.

After much sketching, here's my basic "2D" polar bear pattern shape:

I wanted to develop the pattern from simple to more complex to show the different options to the students.

Ok so I didn't clip my curves and corners, but it's a good start. I'm happy with the overall shape I drew, but I think maybe the legs and head could be fatter. But I want to add an underbody gusset anyway so I'll see how it looks once that is in. I'm following the lesson on Elements of Soft Toy Design on WhileSheNaps for this, if you want to get more detail on what I'm doing.

She says that it's a process, and designs usually need some adjusting. Glad to hear it! Mine sure does.

Apart from failing to sew on my lines properly (always a problem), I'd adjust a few things. I think my underbody gusset comes up too high for his little legs, especially at the back. I also think the foot shape needs to be rounded out a bit, as does the face.

His legs at the front have turned out well. Next step, a head gusset to round out that cute little face!

Post-Halloween Thoughts

My grand plans for an ethical and Australian Halloween didn't get as far off the ground as I'd hoped. But shifting my point of view did result in some changes and some fun crafts and foods, so I'm happy with how the holiday turned out.

When I was trying to pick a craft project for the party I focused my search on 'green', 'recycled' or 'ethical' Halloween crafts. This produced some great ideas, but I do have reservations.

Sometimes these craft projects are called "recycled" because they use one recycled item, but they require you to purchase new craft supplies to complete it.What I'm ideally looking for in a Halloween craft is something that uses as little new material as possible and can be appropriately gotten rid of afterwards - composted, recycled, eaten or returned to it's raw state. These pumpkins will be dinner by tomorrow night.

One that I liked the idea of was a Halloween flower centrepiece. Of course it's only 'green' because I already have fake flowers and some old fake bugs. But what I like is that the flowers can go back into my craft supplies, and the bugs can go back in the Halloween box in the shed. Nothing has actually been 'used up' for this decoration. And it was fun to do.

I didn't have that many bugs actually, and the flowers I had available we not so uniform or pale, so I couldn't aim for the same look. But I had lots of little skeleton hands for one thing.

And this worm that is really slimy to the touch. I like the idea that in their lifetime, this plastic crap will at least have seen a lot of Halloweens, and been used in a wide variety of ways.

Now it's time to start looking ahead to Christmas. Awesome.