The Rise of Fleece

Fleece used to really freak me out. I hated the way it felt - weirdly like plastic against my skin. Since I'm a natural fiber snob this aversion to fleece should come as no surprise to anyone.

Then I adopted my dogs. My dog LOVE fleece. I cannot emphasize this enough. LOVE. If given the option of a cotton, wool, or fleece blanket, the fleece will win every time. And, frankly, this is a good thing because it doesn't matter how disgustingly doggy their blankets get, the damn synthetic washes up clean. The worst thing that happens is that it pills. And, guess what... my dogs don't care.

We call this the "bed nest"

So, suddenly, I had fleece blankets in my house - first, just on the dog beds, then, eventually, new ones were bought for the sofa. And then one made it onto the bed.

Wisconsin winters are really cold and my 104 year old house is a drafty old gal. I came to welcome the fleece blankets and, somehow, my strange aversion to the "feel" of it disappeared. I like to think that it's because fleece evolved and the newer stuff was less "fake" feeling but, truthfully, it's probably just that I got used to it.

The final blow came a couple of years ago when Company X offered a variety of Land's End clothing items as holiday gifts to the staff. The only thing I thought I might actually wear was a 1/4 zip fleece pull-over. If nothing else, I could wear it around the house when it was cold. So, that's what I ordered. It was so soft and warm that I ordered a second one the following year in a different color. As a matter of fact, I'm wearing one right now!

It's kind of pill-y but, really, who cares?

So, why this diatribe on fleece, you ask? Well, recently, I've been crafting with fleece and I've come to appreciate one more thing - the ease of the stuff.

If you need a quickie project or want to do something with children that doesn't involve sewing, fleece is your go-to fabric. There are multitudes of prints and weights (the wall o' fleece at Joann's is a thing to behold) and it's cheap.

For our charity crafting day, we did a number of no-sew fleece blankets which we then stuffed with batting and turned into dog (or cat) beds for the Humane Society. No-sew blankets are beyond easy. Here are the instructions in 5 steps:

1. Cut two pieces of fleece about three to four inches bigger than you want your finished blanket (dog bed) to be. This extra length accommodates the fringe and knots.
2. Lay the two pieces together, right sides out.
3. Go around the square cutting 3-4" fringe through both pieces of fabric.
4. Once this is done, go around the blanket tying the top and bottom fringe pieces together, nice and tight, into square knots.
5. If you want to insert batting (to make it a dog bed), simply insert the batting before you've tied up the last side and then finish the tying.

That's it. I tacked down the batting so it wouldn't bunch up during washing but, seriously, it's one of the easiest projects ever and perfect for a child who can handle either scissors or tying.

Also, while it required sewing, I used fleece to turn out a super-fast scarf and "ear muffs" for the Company X mascot. The beauty of this is that the scarf didn't have to be hemmed in any way and I could fringe the ends by simply cutting the fabric into strips. The "ear muffs" took a little more doing but fleece is so forgiving that I think I knocked them out in about 30 minutes total. I didn't even match the thread to the muff color because fleece sort of envelopes the stitches so you don't even see them. Here's a pic of the mascot wearing my creations:

If you have a Facebook account, you can watch the video below of the mascot doing the Gangnam Style dance and then you can get a view of the ear muffs too. Sorry about the tie to FB... we had no other way to link the video but the dance is so hilarious I wanted to, at least, let some of you see it. :)

So, what are your favorite, easy-peasy fleece projects? I'd love to hear because I'd like to add a few more to my arsenal for quick gifts and/or more charity projects.

- Alex

Friday Finds: Craft Gossip

Back in August, we mentioned that we'd had an influx of new readers from a website called Craft Gossip. Since then, we've spent a lot of time on that site and are real fans of its dedication to all crafts (not just the ones we're interested in!)

Craft Gossip is driven by user-generated content in every craft category known to man - well, nearly. Each category has an editor who's in charge of filtering through and publishing the content. This makes for a very dynamic site with constantly churning information on a huge variety of subjects.



Example of a free jewelry tutorial

 So...what do you get? Tutorials, free patterns, links to other great sites, give-aways, contests, and just about anything else you could ask for. Mighty Distractible has been blessed with having patterns featured at Craft Gossip twice - once for our embroidery patterns and once for the recently posted Pom Pon Hat pattern.

Check them out. Whether you're interested in jewelry making, scrapbooking, needlework, candle-making, quilting, edible crafts, and blah, blah, blah you'll find something to inspire you at Craft Gossip. Maybe you'll even discover a NEW craft to try. (like we need more, amirite?)

- Alex

Plushies (not Furries... get your mind out of the gutter)

For the uninitiated, in modern parlance stuffed animals are called "plushies". I suppose it's because they are so rarely animals anymore. From UglyDolls to microbes, anything can be a plushie these days.

Jiker - pretty cute UglyDoll

This is a plushie of the herpes virus. I swear to god.

On Friday, our Crafting for Charity group had its fourth quarter meeting. After the debacle with the baby kimonos last quarter, Cassandra and I decided to do something different with our remaining flannel. So, inspired by our friend Emily at Bluestar, Ink. (please go check out her amazing work!) we figured we'd try our hand and some plushies of our own.


Cassandra designed a couple of super-sweet and simple patterns for us to use. One of our members had some fur left over from a Halloween costume so Cassandra decided to make a wolf:

Wolf

And she made a bunny for me:

Bunny

I didn't end up making the bunny evil, even though Cassandra left me the option by giving him pointy teeth. Also, she eventually added a 1/2 inch seam allowance to the illustration which was really helpful.

One friend, Erin, did the sock monkey from the book Craft Hope by Jade Sims. That turned out to be a pretty easy pattern - even though she made it difficult by purchasing chenille socks that were a b*tch to work with. LOL

I started my afternoon by finishing up the last baby kimono. I had to fix the hand flaps (I'd sewed them incorrectly) and add the tie closures. While I was doing that, Cassandra and Erin started their plushies. Cassandra did a lot of handwork on hers - embroidering the face and making the furry ears separate from the rest of the doll - and, well, Erin had the aforementioned struggle with the chenille. I kept my doll simple. I cut a front and back from the same flannel fabric then added a coordinating colored "face", paw pads, and inside ears. I machine-sewed the whiskers and the triangle nose, then added a couple of buttons for eyes. We all finished up at about the same time. And here's our final product!

The Usual Suspects

Wolf detail (love the chest hair!)

All in all, these were pretty easy to make. Now that we have the basic pattern down, we'll probably try to knock out a few more at our next meeting. Then they'll be donated to the Children's Hospital here in town.

On a separate note, on Saturday we delivered about 10 fleece pet beds to the Humane Society. We made these by taking the no-sew fleece blanket kits from Joann Fabrics, cutting them in half (to make two smaller "blankets") and stuffing them with a thin layer of polyfill. They seemed really happy to receive them. Also, our knitters are knocking out newborn caps at an alarming rate. At some point soon, those will be delivered to the NICU at one of our local hospitals.

Finally, our group got featured in our company newsletter. Based on the response, the idea is pretty popular so, hopefully, we'll inspire some folks to start their own groups.

- Alex

Awestruck by Lotte Reiniger

Years ago, when I was an art student, it always bummed me out that we spent such a small amount of time on women artists in art history class. Now, please don't misunderstand me here, I don't feel the need to root for "the ladies" just because they are my people. It's simply that I connect with the artistic process of most women artists. Most likely this is because on some level we have a shared life or possibly emotional experience.

I have to say, I sort of understand Camille Claudel's crazy.

Lee Krasner ran with the big dogs.

To supplement my college education I would sit for hours in the library pouring over big books that included the work of well-known female artists like Cindy Sherman, Lee Krasner, Camille Claudel (my daughter's namesake), Frida Kahlo, etc. In the days before the interwebs this was really the only option. Nowadays online, in a few click-throughs I can stumble upon a mind blowing artist that I never knew existed. It was on the herzensart blog of a German handmade art toy designer the other day that I was introduced to Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger (1899 – 1981).

Lotte at work.

Wow...I kinda love her work, if I had to put a name on her style/meduim it would be: Paper Silhouette Animation Artist. The first of it's kind. Her work is both enchanting and dark, I think largely due to the fact that most of what I have seen is inspired by fairy tales. It has a hand-made feel to it that I find so appealing and yet (especially for it's time) it is amazingly technical. She had talent and brains. Love.


This is really inspiring. I am particularly taken with the idea of mixing my crafty pursuits with my highbrow art training. Hmmmm...I need to stew on this for a while.

Here is a brief video showing her inspiring creative process. Enjoy!

The Art of Lotte Reiniger (1953-1971) by baraqueafritz


–Cassandra

Crafts Gone Wrong

Y'all remember last week when I posted about doing our Crafting for Charity day? Well, let me tell you... our normally laid back event was an adventure in pure frustration.

As I mentioned, three of us decided to make baby kimonos this time around. We've been using the book Craft Hope by Jade Sims for months and have really liked everything we've made from it so far. For example, the Take-Along Quilt pattern was super-easy and allowed three non-quilters to get our hands wet with a new craft. So, the baby kimonos seemed like the perfect project - small supply list, weirdly simple pattern, and only a few steps in the actual instructions.

Lesson #1: Never assume that, because every other pattern you've worked from a book is good, that the one you're working on now is going to be good.

Seriously, the "pattern" itself should have been a big red flag.  I sew. Cassandra sews. Our third charity crafter sews. Why any of us thought that THIS pattern was remotely complete is beyond me:

Please note that the pattern instructions say to "Enlarge 500%". Yeah. This is all fine and good except that the average office copy machine will only enlarge 400% and there's no standard paper large enough to accommodate the full-sized pattern.

Now, I'm sure that our math-inclined readers (or our readers with better abstract analytical skills) will immediately have a solution to this little problem. In the aftermath of our sewing adventure, I've managed to think of a variety of ways we could have approached this dilemma. However, in the throes of having to have this pattern ready for a scheduled event, I took the "easy" route and enlisted the help of someone at Company X who has access to a plotter.

We arrived at our local fabric shop and set up in the big sewing room. Then, the three kimono makers started to cut our fabric. In the middle of cutting, we realized that something was amiss. The description of the kimono mentions "...special features, including fold-over sleeve cuffs that will protect a baby from accidental scratches." Unfortunately, there was no pattern piece for the fold-over cuff. No worries! We can improvise the pattern-piece. And we did.

Our next hurdle came when we started piecing the pattern together and begin sewing. The instructions were just short of gibberish - leading us to wonder aloud if anyone had bothered testing this pattern before it was published.  Let me provide a sample of what we experienced:

3. Lay the back piece right side up on your work surface. Note: if you're making the version with the envelope, lay the folded envelope on top of the back piece with the raw edges aligned. The fold will be facing toward the top of the garment. Lay the front pieces, right side down and one on top of the other, over the back piece (and envelope, if applicable).

Again, I'd like to direct your attention to the actual pattern pieces. Does anyone see instructions for a "fold" on the envelope piece?? So... how is the envelope supposed to fold and why? If we fold the envelope and align the raw edges, they'll be sewn into the garment and the envelope won't turn correctly.

Oh! and pattern has you finishing the the raw edges AFTER you sew the entire kimono together - which makes absolutely no sense.  Of course, we learned (the hard way) that, if you finish the edges BEFORE you sew this wonky pattern together, the pieces don't fit properly.

We are three, intelligent, educated women and yet it still took us about an hour and a half to figure out how to piece this craziness together to make something that resembled a giftable item. Once we divined the answer, Charity Crafter #3 managed to knock out two of them. I did 1.75 (I have to lay in the ribbon and fix the mislaid fold-over sleeve envelopes. Cassandra finished one.

Cassandra was so angry about the pattern that she, quite literally, couldn't blog about it. Once we've both calmed down, we're going to write to Ms Sims and suggest that she either remove the pattern or fix it before they publish another edition of this book. We also going to suggest that someone TEST every pattern before they go to print.

My issue is with the people who wasted over and hour of our time, including: a pattern designer who wrote a crappy pattern (inexcusable), an author who didn't bother to read/test the pattern before it went to print, an editor who either didn't know or didn't care that the pattern was crap, and myriad other people who touched this book before it went to print. They are directly responsible for putting out a bad product and creating frustration where there should have been harmony and good-will.

Is it wrong to expect people to deliver a basic level of quality? I don't think so. Maybe if we were talking about subjective quality - like, is the finished pattern pretty. But this is not "subjective" this is "does it work or does it not work." It's pretty simple to get that right and incredibly lazy to allow something so ineffective to be part of an otherwise brilliant book.

Quality is important to me and Cassandra. It's one of the things we bond over. This experience is the kind of thing that really upsets me (in case you hadn't noticed) because I know that someone, anyone, could have taken a 1/2 hour of time and prevented the ripple effect that caused us to have a bad experience.

So... my two cents... Always do your best to ensure the highest quality you can provide and remember that your output is going to affect someone, somewhere. Maybe even a little crafting group from Madison, WI.

- Alex

Giving It Away

Multi-tasking (note the iPhone for tweeting while I craft)

It's that time again, folks! Our little craft group at Company X is off to make stuff for charity this afternoon.


For the uninitiated, Company X generously gives its employees four hours each quarter to do volunteer work. They don't really care what we do - pick up litter on the side of the road, help out at the local retirement home, volunteer at your kids school for a day, etc - they just want us out in the community doing something for the greater good.


At the beginning of the year, Cassandra found the book Craft Hope by Jade Sims. Thus began our Crafting for Charity group. Every quarter a group of us get together and make something to give away to people in need. We've made quilts that were sent to Japan after the earthquake, little girls' dresses that were sent to Haiti, fleece blankets for a pet shelter, tiny knitted caps for preemie babies, and more. Today we're going to be working on baby kimonos.

We're making the envelope bottom so little toes can't escape

Doing this every three months has turned out to be one of the most fulfilling parts of our job. As a team-building activity, it's been great. I love doing something fun with people who I work with. All the politics and wrangling gets left behind and I get to know the real person. Plus, packing the boxes and envelopes to send off our finished crafts is a huge soul-warmer.

I hope that our group will continue and that our idea will expand. I'd love to see other groups form to do charity work like this.

Maybe next week we'll post some pics of our day and our finished products. Have a great weekend everyone!

- Alex

Quilts for Japan

No pithy title today - just a serious update on our last Crafting for Charity event.

These are on their way to Japan

As you may know from our previous posts, the company that Cassandra and I work for generously gives each employee a half day a quarter to do charity/volunteer work. It can be anything from Habitat for Humanity to volunteering at your kid's school. So, we formed a Crafting for Charity group that takes over the work room in our local sewing/knitting shop and spend a half day making stuff to give away.

We've made sundresses for an orphanage, no-sew fleece blankets for an animal shelter, scarves for the homeless, and knitted hats for preemie babies. At our event in February, three of us decided to take on a pattern called the Take-Along Quilt from the book Craft Hope by Jade Sims. None of us had quilted before so assume what you will... Needless to say, we weren't able to finish the entire quilt in one four-hour period so the remaining work was waiting for us last Friday when we took our next charity day.

A week before our charity day, someone sent me a link to a blog post by the editor of Quilters Newsletter. The exact post was as follows:

Quilters Newsletter has long enjoyed a friendship with Patchwork Tsushin, a leading Japanese quilt magazine. So when Editor in Chief Naomi Ichikawa emailed to say her magazine is collecting comfort quilts for those impacted by the recent earthquake in Japan, we wanted to join the effort. QN will gather quilts from U.S. quiltmakers then forward them to Naomi and her staff, who will deliver them to those in need.

This is when I start believing in fate or divine intervention or something. How perfect is it that, just as we're about to finish three quilts, we learn about a way to give to relief efforts in Japan? The idea that our small gift might bring comfort to someone who has been devastated by the events there is really moving.

I love how they look rolled up!

 So, we hurried to finish all three which I'm proud to say we accomplished. They were boxed up and mailed out two days ago with instructions to have them delivered to Quilters Newsletter today. Sadly, they got hung up in Colorado because of inclement weather but they're rescheduled to be delivered on Monday and then our first-time, rather amateurish attempts will be sent with the more serious quilts to warm someone during this crises. When something like this happens, it really solidified why we do this charity work.

I hope that whoever ends up with my little quilt doesn't look too closely at the stitching.

- Alex

Making Lemons into Lemonade

Yesterday afternoon I had every intention of writing a post about our fabulous crafting for charity day we held last Friday. And then I realized that this past weekend I left my camera at my Mom's house (2-1/2 hours away). Wa..wa..waaaaa. We had taken lots of pictures to share with you here. There were newborn caps being knitted, no-sew blankets tied up, portable quilts being sewn and the seaming was completed on a knitted blanket for the homeless. It was a productive (and fun) day. And as soon as my mom mails me my camera back I will share the details with you dear readers.

So, on to plan B.

As much as I enjoy writing on this blog, I also enjoy reading the crafty blogs of others. I would like to share with you some of my favorites:

Soulemama
I stumbled upon this blog about a year ago. Amanda Soule is the mother of 4 littles (soon to be 5) who lives in a farmhouse in Maine (how charming is that?). Her photography is amazing and she writes about some really clever projects as well as musings on her day-to-day family life. She is a wildly successful blogger (who has 2 project books published on the strength of her blog) and there is a reason for that. She posts daily and what she writes/creates is always good.

Ysolda
Ysolda Teague is a very popular Scottish knitwear designer. She's young, ambitious and highly creative. Most of her blog is devoted to talk about her design process and her travels. It seems as though she is always at this show or that...and even yarn shops here in the US and in Europe. I really enjoy seeing where she's been and her impressions of the place. She's even been here to Madison, Wis. and her post about it couldn't have been sweeter. I wish I would have been able to get to that book signing!

The Purl Bee
This is the blog associated with the fabulous Purl Soho shop. The posts are almost always tutorials on projects for supplies that they carry. Really clever stuff. Some of my favorite projects are The Back to School Lunchbag, The Very Easy Pincushions, and Toddler Overalls. And I really mean these are just some of my favorites. They update their blog at least once a week with a fresh project so there are so many to drool over.

That is just a list of 3 of my favorite crafty blogs. I will share more at some point in the future. If you have a blog you would like to share with everyone, please put your url in the comments section so folks can go take a look!

Have a great day everyone... talk to you again soon!

–Cassandra