Making Good: Weaving Embroidery Mending . Geometric Forms

I am so honored to be invited again by the wonderful Agatha from Green Issues by Agy to jump on board her new blogging train: Making Good.

And so, I have this favorite sports skort (skirt + shorts combo) of mine which has served me well over the past half a decade. It is so well-worn that unsightly tears are starting to show up...

I have been itching to try this intriguing weaving + embroidery technique which I have seen on Pinterest. It is originally a darning technique but tweaked to be used on woven fabrics.

I quickly did up a sampler to get a feel of how the technique works as well as to decide the weight of thread that I wanted to use.

I finalized on using a double-stranded needle with a single strand of DMC embroidery thread. The process was tedious but the end results were quite cool!

Materials and tools used are embroidery hoop,  DMC embroidery threads, mending patch, embroidery needle and a pair of scissors.

I got this mending patch from Daiso to act as a stabilizer. But, alas, it wasn't the most pleasant material to work with on my light-weight skort fabric.

In hindsight, I should have just used pieces of light-weight cotton (serged on the edges) as my stabilizers.

I selected some muted colors (pretty close in color value to the gray base of my skort) for the embroidery threads since I am going for a more subtle look (lest I made a glaring bad mistake which will stand out like a sore thumb) .

I first patched the holes with the Daiso mending patch.

I stretched the section which I wanted to embroider on with the embroidery hoop. Then, I drew in the shapes (with a water and air erasable pen) which would eventually be darned over.

Once the major holes are ment, I slowly built up the design with more embroidery and weaves.

And here is the final result!

On me

Here is a little video demonstration that I have made to show the basic concept of surface darning (weaving + embroidery). Enjoy! (I've used a single-threaded needle here instead. And looks like I have accidentally mispelt 'straighten'... Oops..!)

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The very creative Yaney went beyond thinking outside of the box and made herself a spanking new pair of insoles for her shoes with a common material which one might not even think of! Do check her post out!

Next in the line of this blog train will be Karen from Rude Record. She is big on living in a frugal manner and her life is revolving around thrifting, upcycling and refashioning without losing style! Can't wait to see her project!

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This post is part of a blog train hosted by Agatha from Green Issues by Agy on "Making Good". What is repair, and why do we even bother to repair the things we have?  Some see repair as a way of reconnecting with our possessions as we extend their lives. Others see it as a form of creative potential and an avenue to express their craft.  The rewards for mending varies from feeling immense satisfaction to prolonging the life of the product. Follow the “Making Good” blog train this month and see what we have repaired and reconnected with. Have you mended anything today?

A Little Bit of Home Decor: Hanging Test Tube Vases

Was really inspired by this hanging vases chandelier tutorial by a pair and a spare and when I happened to chance upon some hanging test tubes (albeit pretty small ones) at a local arts store, I was really excited and got a few of them to convert into mini hanging vases!

With some hooks purchased at Daiso, I managed to hang them from my window grilles. Quite pretty and I'm itching to get a few more test tubes to fill up the space!

Love the hb's DSLR. My iPhone and really old DSLR just couldn't capture the nice colors in the bad lighting!

O' Crafty Day #19: DIY Keys Holder/Ring

And I thought I would be doing up the post on shibori dyeing first.. But....

The keys ring that I have for a few years (gifted by a good friend) finally broke apart while I was opening my door, and I almost lost a few keys in the process. Instead of buying a new one, I decided to make my own.

I used a 19mm book ring as the core and hand-shaped some yellow polymer clay around one side of the book ring. I sculpted a cat-like figure. :) I did use a little Fimo liquid deko gel where the clay touches the metal ring.

The clay is then baked together with the metal book ring at the manufacturer's recommended temperature and timing. Once cured, I let the clay cool down to room temperature before doing some light sanding using a 320 grit wet/dry sand paper.

I then mixed up some acrylic colors and painted the details on my clay. Once the paint was dried, I did 3 coats of varnish and let dry overnight.

And while I was at it, I made a few more with more minimalist mod designs. They are still WIPs though.

DIY Tiered Display Stand (With a Mini Scene) Completed!

Pretty fancy, huh? =P Here's a closer look at the glass in the middle tier!

Not sure if you can tell, but I'm quite a "nature" gal. =) If you're interested in how I made this, read on!

As usual, I went to my favorite place, Daiso, to get the dishes and glasses, as well as some colored stones and mini decor glass pebbles. (At a time like this, it would be great to have some thrift stores around. But I don't have such luck around my area.)

All these dishes and decor stones set me back for less than USD15. Sweet! I also used my trusty E6000 glue to adhere the pieces together.

~~~~ The Steps ~~~~

When I did the bottom 2 tiers, I was meticulous. I traced the largest plate on a piece of 12" x 12" paper that I had on hand and cut the circle out. I folded the circle into quarters to mark out the center.

I placed the glass on top of the marked center, and traced round the base of the glass. After which, I cut out the inner circle and adhered the paper to the plate using washi tape. The part where the plate's not covered by the paper would be the exact middle. Before gluing the glass to that bottom tier, I marked out on the bottom of the middle tier where the glass brim will be adhered to. This time round, I used just washi tape instead. This was the start of me getting lazy. Hahaha..

Okay, back to that largest plate with the adhered piece of donut-shaped paper (sort of.. shape wise..?). In the middle where the hole is, I applied a liberal amount of E6000 to the plate and then pressed the glass firmly down. I waited for about 30 minutes before tearing the piece of paper away. I then layered the colored stones and glass pebbles the way I wanted it before using some toothpicks to apply some E6000 to the brim.

Then, using the 'washi tape'-marked areas as a guide, I adhered the 2nd plate to the glass brim. And this is what I got (Ignore the washi tape on top of the plate.. I no longer used it as I changed to a smaller glass later on..)!

For the second glass, I mentioned I wanted something fancier in my earlier post. I ended up creating a mini scene within the glass before adhering the glass to the second tier.

The whole process of creating the mini scene took me a few days. I started with making some fishes and water plants out of polymer clay. Since I'm going for the cream + green look, I used Fimo translucent white and white combo.

I then layered some ice resin to create that faux pond look (within the glass, of course!) which took a couple of days since there's some waiting game for the curing part.

While the resin was curing, I took the time to make a mini origami paper boat and crochet a green-colored seedling. And while the resin still had a little bit of tackiness left, I stuck the paper boat on one side. I then mixed up a bit of resin and let it go gooey before mixing in some small white stones.

I then slowly spooned this (pretty gross) resin-stone mix beside the paper boat. And while this mix was still tacky, I pushed my crochet seedling into it. I let this glass of resin goodness cure for a couple of days.

During which, I made 2 small pom poms out of this beautiful cream-colored merino yarn. I know, what a waste to use the yarn on this...

Once all the resin was fully cured, it's time to assemble what's leftover together. I first glued the mini scene glass to the 2nd tier. This time, just eyeballing.The pom poms were then adhered to the bottom of the smallest dish before gluing the dish to the brim of this 2nd glass. Voila! I have 2 clouds!

I then waited, again for 30 minutes, before finishing off the display stand with some braided yarn (yes, using the same merino yarn)!

Ice Pops! (Even though it rained today..)

Playing around with my Zoku Ice Pops maker (the single slot version)..

The box said I can make 3 ice pops in one freezing (as in putting the ice pop maker in the freezer for at least 24 hours before using it) but I guess the weather and temps over here made it longer for each pop to freeze and I took way too long to make the layered pop, thus I only ended up with 2. Nonetheless, they looked really cool and arty!