containers Archives - Page 15 of 15

Hooks on parade

I crochet primarily in a recliner in my living room, with a small end table next to me and a lamp on each side. There’s not a lot of room, and the floor around the chair is covered with yarn, patterns, and notebooks. A rectangular tin that originally held fancy soap sits open on the end table, the body filled with reserved and leftover embroidery floss, the lid with current materials – including hooks. The steel ones disappear inside, and the aluminum ones stick out at one end. All of them catch on things and go missing periodically.

When I first learned how to knit, several years ago, I made needle and hook cases out of wool and calico. I still think they’re among the most attractive functional objects I’ve sewn:

However, they leave a little to be desired when it comes to accessibility. I quit knitting because it always felt like a chore, but the hook case has stuck around (and will continue to indefinitely, for travel purposes). If I ever pick up Afghan/Tunisian crochet the needle case will be useful for those hooks.

More recently I crocheted a lemon and stuffed it firmly with yarn ends to use as a pincushion.

Unfortunately, blunt needles have quite a time with it, and even the sharp pins can’t be inserted just any which way.

Then I found the Tower of Babel. This is the answer to my dreams: a long tapered strip, rolled into a tiered cylinder. Between the tiers you can insert hooks, needles, pins, even scissors, storing them visibly and at hand with a very small footprint. Certainly I still expect the current hook(s) to be lying around on the end table, but my most commonly-used hooks (E, F, and the 2.75mm steel) can live there. I made it in a day. As a bonus, I was able to use some wonderful cotton yarn whose colors haven’t worked for amigurumi.

Success!

Tomorrow is my birthday, so I am taking a moment to reflect on projects that went just right. I’m generally happy with my work, but every once in a while the planets align and the result is better than I hoped.

In my early twenties I had a pair of jeans I loved, except that they were just a little too short. I added some length in the form of orange wire-edged ribbon, a beloved article from my stash, and miraculously, it worked! Even a professor who didn’t typically comment on such things said he liked them.

They are with me no more, though for the lovely reason that they are now too big, so I do not have a picture and must turn to more recent successes.

I adore brocade. It’s so rich! And so difficult to use for anything. However, I wanted a purse to go with a brown dress, and had brown and gold brocade at hand. My grandmother’s button box was in the closet and the two came together to make a perfect envelope clutch:

It is fully lined with an inner pocket. This picture shows the true look of the fabric better, too.

Perfect projects need not be self-designed, though that is a bonus. I wanted a hobo bag to take to Germany, and McCall’s M4400, in brocade again, came out exactly as I desired:

I didn’t technically have enough fabric to make the bag, so I had to piece the straps. In fact, though it does not show here, I pieced the lining as well. The depths of the bag are lined with a straw-colored calico because I didn’t have enough green; this actually is a bonus because it is easier to find things against a lighter background. In the close-ups you can also see the decorative topstitching I did (by machine!). The top seam of the strap didn’t stitch together so neatly, so I added a loop around to cover it up.

What projects, fabric or otherwise, have you had come out just right?

Bonus Post: Iron Craft Challenge #16

My sister and brother-in-law went to Japan last year, and one of the many gifts they sent me afterward (solar-powered dancing sumo wrestler!) was a five-yen coin. It added to my collection of coins from New Zealand, Canada, Iceland, and various Euro-using countries.

Through Dollar Store Crafts I learned of the existence of Iron Craft, a weekly crafting challenge. I’m minimizing my craft expenditures, at least through April[1], and so I passed on the Peep-crafting challenge, but the following week was money-related crafts. Perfect! I have wanted to try making a ribbon purse for a while now, and had the perfect ribbon to go with the yen.

I’ve structured the rest as a tutorial. You’ll need a wider ribbon, a narrower ribbon, and some coordinating lining fabric. My wider ribbon was about twice as wide as the narrower ribbon (7/8″ vs 3/8″), so if yours isn’t your bag will have different proportions. I don’t recommend my sheer wide ribbon, as it did not want to stay squared, which made it hard to work with. The amount needed will vary, of course, but mine used less than 2.5 yards of the wider ribbon and 2 yards of the narrower ribbon.

Let W be the width of the wider ribbon and N be the width of the narrower ribbon. Cut 5 lengths of the wider ribbon: two of length 3W + 10N + 1.5 inches (“shorter”), and three of length 2W + 15N + 1 (“longer”). Cut 9 lengths of the narrower ribbon: five of length 10W + 1.5 inches, and four of length 3W + 1. [If you are working in metric, 1 can be 3cm and 1.5 can be 4cm. It is not important to be exact.]

For me, the height of the bag is 5N. Take one shorter and one longer wide ribbon and pin them at 90 degrees, the shorter ribbon centered on the longer one with one edge 5N + 1/2″ away from the end of the longer ribbon (or a bit further). Weave the remaining wide ribbons in a grid, pin, and stitch in place (I stitched along both edges of each of the two shorter ribbons).

Weave the narrower ribbons through the longer loose ends of the three wide ribbons. Put the longer narrow ribbons closer to the middle, and line all of them up so there is 1/2″ overhang on one side. Stitch along the outside edges of the wide ribbons.

Continue to weave the narrow ribbons through the wider ones. Work with the bag inside-out – that will make the final corner easier. You shouldn’t need to sew more than the far edge of each side (so, no maneuvering the sewing machine in the inner corner).

Of course, if you’re me, and you cut your narrow ribbon to be 8W instead of 10W, you might utter some unladylike words and have to cut new lengths of ribbon to cover the fourth side of the bag. I cut them much longer than necessary so I could line up the ribbon pattern in the corner.

When you get to the last corner, pin the narrow ribbons right sides together and stitch, just far enough out from the corner to avoid catching the wider ribbon. Trim to 1/2″ and press open.

Now you need to cut out lining pieces. Follow my directions for the flap; if you prefer for the rest futuregirl has a tutorial complete with worksheet. The flap piece should be (flap height + 1)” by (flap width + 1)”. The other piece is (2*(bag height) + bag depth + 1)” by (bag width + bag depth + 1)”, where “depth” is the front-to-back measurement. [Here, precision is more important, so in metric, replace 1″ by twice your desired seam allowance, and in the following, replace 1/2″ with your seam allowance.]

Center the flap lining on the right side of the flap and stitch around the outside, catching only one of the two kinds of ribbon in your stitching but otherwise stitching as close as possible to the weave. You may need to scrunch the ribbons down on the middle wide ribbon, since they are not sewn in place. If you want fancier corners, as I did with my angled cut-off, I found it easier to stitch squarely with the ribbon side up, and then turn it over to stitch the angles. That way you know you are not stitching too close in, but you don’t have the visual distraction of all the ribbons.

Trim the seam allowance and turn. My ribbons didn’t take well to ironing, so I topstitched close to the flap edge to keep the lining from puffing out.

Fold the larger piece of lining material so that the bag width is preserved (fold the 2height+depth direction in half; you are making a seam that will run up the center of each side of the bag). Stitch the two edges perpendicular to the fold, with a 1/2″ seam allowance. Press the fold into a crease. Cut along the fold line outside each stitch line.

Open the seam allowance and fold the side down so the seam line runs along the bottom crease. Mark a line (bag height + 1/2)” down from the top edge, perpendicular to the seam line. Pin and stitch along that line. Do the same on the opposite side, cut the corners off at about 1/2″ from the stitching, and press them up toward the side seam. (If your wide ribbon is not sheer, pressing down toward the bottom of the lining is also fine.)

Fold the top edge of the lining down 1/2″ all around, with the raw edge and seam allowances to the outside, and set the lining into the ribbon bag. Line the lining seams up with the center sides of the ribbon bag, pin, and topstitch all around the bag. Again, you may need to make sure the narrow ribbon hasn’t arced up on the middle wide ribbon in front.

You may want to turn the bag inside-out and stitch from the ribbon side, to make sure that on the back of the bag your stitches line up with the ribbons.

To make the bag fold in at the top and improve its shape, turn it inside-out, pinch the sides in half vertically, and stitch close to the fold line for 3/8″ to 1/2″. Turn the bag right-side-out again, pinch the four corners (try to catch the lining in the pinch all the way down) and stitch vertically close to the fold top to bottom.

Finally, sew your coin (or button, or beads) centered at the edge of the flap. A snap or magnetic closure could be added underneath, or a button could be sewn on the front of the bag and a loop sewn onto the flap. I did none of that, so my bag does fasten shut. But my remaining international coinage has a prettier place to live now!

[1] edit: apparently Dollar Store Crafts took down their “April is Stash-Busting Month!” page after April. The idea is to buy nothing new for the month; craft only out of your existing materials.