First, I wanted to do a design on the toe so I drew a pattern that I wanted to keep white (well… as white as the toes are to start with) with the gel glue and let that dry.

Then I mixed the acrylic paints together to make a nice teal blue and blue/gray color. I watered both of these down until they were about 6 parts water to one part paint. This guaranteed that the paint wouldn’t make the shoes too stiff or saturated with pigment.

You can see the glue acting as a resist to the blue paint on the toes. After the shoes dried for two days I soaked them in hot water and took a good, stiff scrub brush to them to get the glue off. I stuffed the shoes with newspaper to help them dry faster and in a nice, foot shape. Three days later, they are ready to wear!

I’m pretty happy with the whole process but there are definitely things I would do differently next time. First, I would stuff the shoes with newspaper before applying the glue. When I tried to wash the stains off the first time I let the shoes dry in a funny, wrinkled shape. This made getting a nice, even design on the toe super difficult. I also would have used white acrylic paint to hide some of the stains as well before gluing. Fortunately, it looks like the glue actually took the worst of the stains with it when I scrubbed it off! Now I’m ready for spring with a pair of fun new shoesies…

And… have I mentioned that she has a house bunny!? She does! And to prove it, here is a wonderful commercial for Microsoft Office!

I recently inherited a crock pot (thank you!) and I’ve taken it on a maiden voyage. Not with the usual beans, soups and hunks of meaty bits, mind you. I’ll be cooking beans and soups in it this winter but I have more pressing needs in the mean time involving bland white wool and wee packages of instant happy. Kool-Aid! There is a wonderful tutorial about dying with Kool-Aid here, so I won’t go into the whole process, just bits here and there.

Read on if you want the color key to the skeins above:

The mouth-puckeringly red red at the back of the photo was covered with Black Cherry and a little tiny bit of the Orange. Just a smidge.

The peachy color was from and exhaust bath (someone had already used the water to dye something mouth-puckeringly orange + a little red and had some colored water left over) with a little bit of Lemonade and Pink Lemonade sprinkled over it.

The red stripped skein was dyed with Black Cherry with 1/2 submerged in a very dye-intense water bath, then 1/4 in a mildly dye-infused bath and then the last bit submerged in a very watery dye bath. Nice, no?

The green and yellow were from straight-up Lemonade and Lemon Lime.

The purpley-blue is from the Grape “flavored” Kool-Aid. 1/2 the skein was submerged with Grape sprinkled heavily over it and the other 1/2 was dipped in the exhaust bath afterward. Turns out the pinks and blues in the purple coloring like to separate, leaving a neat speckled coloration.

Happy Winter Everyone!

Thanks for sharing Joe!

I printed W-E-L-C-O-M-E out on heavy cardstock and cut letters out to make stencils. Then I cut 7 pieces of white cotton fabric into roughly 8×11 inch rectangles. I held the make-shift stencils somewhere towards the middle-bottom of the fabric squares and, using a thick paintbrush, brushed over the stencils with Elmer’s Water Soluble Gel glue so that I had an even, thick layer. For the “O” and two “E”s I just held the centers of the letters in place with one hand and painted the glue on with the other.

I think painting the glue on worked much better than drawing onto the fabric straight from the nozzle of the glue bottle. It’s less wet and meant that the letter’s didn’t smudge or drip as much.

I set them on a wire rack to dry for a few hours then I got out my acrylic paints and a foam brush. I mixed some colors that I liked and watered them down to about 50-60% their original paintiness. I spread some newspaper on the sidewalk and, making sure the glue-side is up (I forgot on the second “E” and had to paint BOTH sides. It’s a little duller, but still legible) I just painted right onto the fabric. I hung each square on the clothesline and let them dry.

After three hours I filled a sink with hot, soapy water and hand washed each piece of fabric. It was so much fun watching the letters re-appear bright white from under the paint when the glue washed out! Instead of waiting for the to dry I took a hot iron to them and quickly dried them that way.

To make them an even size with actually measuring anything I cut a rough piece of cardstock in a 4×7 inch rectangle. Then I flipped the first letter over so that it was right-side down. I put the paper rectangle on top of the fabric so that the white letter was where I wanted it on the end rectangle and folded each side over the paper, as if I were wrapping a present. I pressed each side with iron and then slipped the paper out so that I could use it on the next letter. When all of the panels were pressed, I quickly sewed up along the edges with the sewing machine. Easy peasy!

I just tied them to a piece of string along their tops so that I could reposition them along the length if I needed to. And voila! It only took me an hour of actual crafting. It doesn’t get much easier!

The First Tutorial -Knit Apple Cozy-

Once in a while, I’ll pop an apple into my bag and tote it around with me for a few days before I remember that it’s in there. By then the apple has been bruised, punctured and generally mauled. I still eat them, or feed them to Linus however I think it would be just dandy to slip them into a little knit apple jacket (say the words “apple jacket” and try to keep the smile on your face… bet you can’t!). I did a little poking around the grand thing we call the internets and found an etsy shop, Handamade that sells them and a free tutorial on how to make them over at the Vegan Lunchbox. I haven’t had a chance to make one yet but the tutorial looks pretty accurate and I’d love to see how the wee jacket turns out if anyone decides to knit one up!

Photo from Handamade

Apple Cozy

from Vegan Lunchbox

Materials:
100% cotton 4-ply worsted weight yarn, such as Sugar’n Cream or Lion
Brand Kitchen Cotton: one ball main color and a small amount of
contrasting color for the leaf.
One set of 4 double-pointed needles in size 7 (4.5 mm) or size to
obtain gauge.
Size H crochet hook.
One ½-inch (15 mm) button.
Gauge:
20 sts = 4 inches (10 cm) in stockinette
Size:
Designed to fit around a small (medium, large) apple.
Abbreviations:
K1: knit.
P1: purl.
M1: insert the working needle from front to back under the
horizontal strand between the stitch just worked and the next stitch;
place this strand on the holding needle and knit the resulting loop
through the back to make a new stitch.
K1f&b: knit one stitch through the front and back, making 2
stitches.
P2tog: purl two stitches together, making 1 stitch.
K2tog: knit two stitches together, making 1 stitch.
Sl1: slip one stitch knitwise onto the working needle without knitting.
PSSO: pass the slipped stitch over the next stitch.
Directions:
Cast on 9 (12, 12) stitches in main color. Divide evenly onto three needles
(3 (4, 4) stitches on each needle). Join in the round.
Round 1: Knit all stitches.
Round 2: On each needle, K1, M1, knit to last stitch, M1, K1.
Round 3: Knit all stitches.
Repeat these two rounds, increasing every other round and maintaining
stockinette stitch (knit all stitches) until you have 42 (48, 54) stitches total
(14 (16, 18) stitches on each needle).
Knit 2 (3, 4) rounds even.
Now it’s time to stop knitting in the round. Instead, turn the work and begin
knitting back and forth and decreasing:
Row 1 (wrong side): On each needle, P2tog, purl to end.
Row 2 (right side): On each needle, K2tog, knit to end.
Repeat these two rows until you have 15 stitches left (5 on each needle).
Cast off.
Make the Leaf:
Cast on 3 stitches in contrasting color.
Row 1 (right side): K all stitches.
Row 2 (wrong side): P all stitches.
Row 3: K1f&b, K1, K1f&b (5 stitches).
Row 4 – 6: P all stitches on wrong side, K on right side.
Row 7: K2tog, K1, K2tog.
Row 8: P all stitches.
Row 9: Sl1, K2tog, PSSO. Break yarn and BO final stitch.
Finishing:
Thread the tail yarn and use it to cinch up the bottom 12 stitches. Attach
the button near the top of the apple at one side of the opening. Use the
crochet hook to crochet a 10 (12, 12) st. single-chain loop and attach it
opposite the button. Attach the leaf along the top border. Weave in all
ends.
Pear Variation:
To make a Pear Cozy, follow the instructions above to the point where you
have 15 stitches left (5 on each needle). Add 4 (5, 6) extra rows of
stockinette (knit on the right side, purl on the wrong side). Cast off. Finish
as for apple.

Until you replace hot wax with washable Elmer’s glue and dye with watered down acrylic paint. Then it’s a fast, easy and immensely teachable technique! I got the idea from Craftzine who got the idea from the blog This Artist Woman. I got enough materials for everyone in the dorm (21 people) to make two murals, one per floor. At less than $20 this wound up being a really easy and inexpensive way to get everyone together. Now, we haven’t done it yet but I did do my own test swatch so that I have something to show everybody when we do start to roll up our sleeves and get cracking. This is the example of batik on Craftzine that caught my eye in the first place:

This is a really pretty example. All of the white lines were created by drawing that pattern out with glue on the fabric, letting it dry, painting acrylic paint on, letting that dry, washing the glue off and then voila! It’s done! So I gave it a try…

This is a small swatch of fabric, about five inches wide and two feet long. I’ve applied the glue and the paint here and I’m waiting for it to dry before I wash the glue out.

And here is the finished piece! The white areas really glow when the fabric is held up to the light and I think this would be a great way to make some curtains later on down the road.

I would really recommend this project and the tutorial over at The Artist Woman. It’s concise, easy to follow and the process is easy enough for school children to do. Plus the finished product looks so good, it’s hard not to get excited about the whole idea.

I can’t wait to see what the dorm winds up painting on their fabric murals. I’ll be posting pictures as soon as they get going!