Dryer Balls

I have been desperately trying to get back into sewing.  There are a few reasons for this...

•  I truly do enjoy sewing, it is satisfying to finish projects relatively quickly, especially compared to knitting sometimes
• I have a bunch of great supplies I should be using, but of course, I never seem to have what I need!
• I have a bunch of project lined up for the nursery, the baby, nursing, etc.  All of these are items that are sold for much more than I can make them
• I am in the process of creating a great new sewing / craft studio.  My husband will be annoyed if I never ever use it!

Throughout my pregnancy, I have found sewing a little exhausting.  I have more energy these days, but it still tires me out to stand for a while ironing and cutting, and then to put it all together to sew.  I keep trying, but I'm not always very successful. It is much easier to curl up on the couch and knit, of course!

A few weeks ago I did finish up some dryer balls.  These had been on my list of things to do for a while.  We don't use fabric softener, but we do use dryer sheets.  I'm hoping that now we can stop.

The pattern I used is from the purl bee fabric beach balls pattern.  The pattern ended up being much to big (even the smallest ball), so I halfed it for the two of the balls I did. The balls are filled with wool sweater scraps and some wool yarn as well.  The biggest makes a huge racket while in the dryer, it'll just become a toy I guess, but the other two are in constant rotation through the dryer.

You definitely don't have to use cute colours for this project, but I really wanted to enjoy using these.  Fun and bright colours make me smile.  I'm just like that.

Once I sat down to sew these, they went pretty quickly.  There is a small amount of hand sewing for the final seam, but since these are pretty utilitarian items, the seam doesn't have to be too pretty.  This was a great way to use up some smaller scraps you might have kicking around from other projects.

Thrifty Finds - Felted Sweaters

This week was another 50% off sale at Value Village.  The sale, meant to clear out winter merchandise, was the best I've ever seen for feltable sweaters.  That said, I didn't bring home as much as I usually do. 

I've been shopping a lot lately, and felt a little guilty of all the stuff I've been bringing home.  Also, I haven't been sewing much.  I'm hoping I will want to sew more when I find out the baby's gender in a few weeks, but lately, I just haven't been feeling it.  For some reason, sewing tires me out!

I know I'll get to use the felted sweaters eventually though, so I did buy a few.

Here's what I found:

This one is brown

This was the most expensive sweater, regular priced at $12.99.
 It's a big sweater though!

This one is light green

Okay... It didn't seem like a lot of sweaters, until I started posting them here...

I found a few other fun things at Value Village too, but those will be shared in another post.

Does anyone have any great ideas regarding what I can do with all these sweaters?  Links to tutorials (softies, more practical items) would be greatly appreciated!

Warm and Snuggly

I have been a huge fan of my heating pad for a very long time.  I also love my buckwheat bag and pretty much anything else that will keep me warm.

I use the buckwheat bag to relieve sinus congestion and migrains and to ease achy  muscles and joints.  I use the heating pad for sore muscles, etc, but especially to warm up before bed.  These means that I ultimately fall asleep on it, which is definitely not recommended by the manufacturer. I recently gave up (over) using the heating pad and purchased a good old fashioned hot water bottle.

As soon as we brought it home, I knew I needed to make something that would make the rubber more comfortable.  My dog was very interested in it, because it smelled strongly of rubber (like many of her toys do), but that quality didn't encourage me to use the water bottle too much.  I guess I must have higher standards.

I seriously considered knitting a waterbottle cozy.  There are a lot of great patterns out there.

I really liked Bessiebear's Hot Water Bottle Cover, the Celtic Cozy, and Maks Hot Water Bottle Cover (all of these are free patterns) but I worried about getting gauge and mostly just wanted the hot water bottle cover to be done, so I could start using it already.

I ended up finding a pattern on Made of Cloth that would allow me to use some of felted sweaters I have been collecting.  It seemed like the perfect way to get a nice wooly hot water bottle cover quickly.

I used the two sleeves of this sweater that I picked up a while ago.  I love this sweater and the colours.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Before felting a sweater, I always cut it into pieces.  I cut off the sleeves and cut them open to prevent folds in the felted sweater (if the sleeve is not cut open, the folds will likely stay in place later).  I make sure to give the pieces a good iron on the wool setting, especially around the edges which tend to roll.
 
I pretty much followed the pattern on Made of Cloth.  Where the water bottle cover was to open, I used the finished hem on the sleeve (shown as the solid black strip in the 3rd photo below).  With sewing I was able to go back and adjust the size so it fits my water bottle pretty well.  I ended up doing adjusting a couple of times, until I was happy with the look and fit of the cover.
 
The result is a pretty / snuggly / warm and still functional hot water bottle cover.  The perfect thing to sooth those cramps and aches and pains away.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

New Felted Sweaters

Yesterday was another Value Village 50% off sale.  I went to two stores this time and found a bunch of great sweaters and even some great fabric.

Here's what I found:

Some great solids, a great blue, love that green and I've been dying for a brown.  Score!

A fun striped sweater.  I like these colours too.

A small diamond pattern.

I don't think this one is wool (it is unlabelled), but I liked it alot.  I'll make it work!

Finally, my favourite...

A true stranded knit, 100% wool.  I love these colours.

I saw a woman trying this sweater on and hovered around her until she dumped it.  I scooped it up so fast!

Tomorrow... The fabrics!

Catch Up and Scrappy Vintage Blanket

Sorry for my lack of posts lately.  There has been a lot going on behind the scenes here, you'll just have to trust me on that!

Lately I've felt a bit like I have been spinning my wheels, trying to get things done, without much success.  I had a day where I actually felt like sewing a few weeks ago, and then the bobbin case in my machine jammed and I had to quit.  Alain was away so I had to wait for him to fix it.  That has been done, but I have yet to return to my machine.

I've been working on a few projects that have been getting me down.  Between a project I was loathing (and then loved when I finally got down to it) and re-knitting several hats due to size issues, I have spent a lot of time knitting things I haven't really wanted to be knitting.  I often knit for friends, but I think that is going to stop, very soon.  There is so much I want to do for me these days.  I've decided it's okay to be a little selfish.

I'm looking forward to Monday.  Value Village is having another 50% off sale, so I can get some more sweaters to felt and make into stuff.  I'm planning on hitting two stores this time around!

For now, I'm going to leave you with a project that I haven't even posted on Ravelry yet (although I'm off to do that now!).  This one has been slow going, mostly because I don't have much time to work on it, and it is a big project.

I use a lot of Vintage Wool for the baby stuff I knit.  I love it and often end up with little bits of it.  I spent a long time saving these little bits, and have been working on a scrap blanket for a little while now.  There are so many ends to weave in it's scary, but I like how it is turning out.  It is certainly very colourful!

Ravelry Project Page here

Silly Chickens from Felted Sweaters

This weekend I organized my felted sweaters.  I have more scraps, but these are the sweaters I have accumulated.

I've been looking for some fun ways to use them lately.  I have a few ideas, but haven't gotten around to executing most of them yet.

I did however make these silly chickens.

I got the idea here but used felted sweaters rather than fabric.  It's sort of a vague how-to / tutorial / pattern.

I've decided that almost anything you can sew with fabric, you can also sew with felted sweaters.  This makes me very excited. 

Have you ever seen these toys by Cate and Levi before?  They are made by a Canadian designer from recycled, felted sweaters.  There are so many great ideas here. Sadly, I will have to take a DIY approach as the pricetags are quite high!

Here are a few more photos of my silly chickens:

Dylan's Surprise

When we went to Florida, we hoped to meet up with Janelle, her husband, and her darling son, Dylan.  Since her husband got sick, we didn't get to meet up, but I had already put together a little surprise for Dylan.

We were all pretty upset that our visit didn't work out as we had planned, but I know we will get together soon.  I hope this surprise made Janelle and Dylan a little happier this week.

I used the pattern for Peanut the Elephant from Last Minute Patchwork Gifts.  The pattern was written by Hilary Lang over at Wee Wonderfuls. I have actually made a toy of hers before.  Remember this Pointed Kitty from way back in February? 

I wanted to use up some of my felted sweaters.  I chose a blue one and the crazy stripe Gap sweater (I LOVE that sweater and only use it for very special projects).  I sewed him up in just a few hours.  I had a little trouble sewing through all that thick felted sweater material, mostly because I'm pretty sure I felted my first batch of sweaters too much.  There are a few spots, especially in the corners, that the thread shows through.  I'm pretty sure Dylan won't mind though!

Overall, I thought the pattern worked well with a felted sweater.  I'm excited to make more toy projects with the felted sweaters I've recently acquired.

UPDATE:  Check out Janelle's Blog for some cutie photos of Dylan and his surprise!  Thank you Janelle for the very sweet blog post.  It totally made my day!

Felted Sweaters

At the beginning of last week, our local thrift store had a 50% off sale.  I always make an effort to get there to stock up on wool sweaters for felting.  I had a pretty good haul this time around including some good solids, some cabled sweaters and my favourites, some stranded / fairisle type sweaters.  I looked a little harder this time around and even found a few (very cheap) scarfs and a hat.

Before washing, I always remove the tags and cut the sweaters apart.  This includes cutting open the the arms. 

This is how the sweaters look after that process is complete.

I usually end up washing the sweaters with like colours, which is why they are piled  this way.  In this case I washed the sweaters for one wash cycle on hot and than threw them in the drier on heavy duty o pull off any extra lint.  I think I threw a few tennis balls in the (front loading) washing machine too.  It worked great and the sweaters were felted, but not too stiff.

So, what does one do with felted sweaters?  I've been checking out Resweater for some great ideas.  She also sells sweaters in bulk here if you don't have the inclination to troll for sweaters yourself.  Her prices are pretty reasonable too.

For reference, I only buy my sweaters on 50% off days.  It takes me about 40 minutes to drive each way to the store and I spend about an hour there.  Each sweater is usually less than $10 - 50%, so usually less than $5 per sweater, but rarely less than $3.  Kris sells bulk sweaters for as low as $4 per sweater when you buy them in a bulk set of 10, and you don't have to do any of the work!

I recently finished a great project using felted sweaters.  I can't wait to share it, but it is on its way to it's recipient, so I don't want to ruin the surprise.  Be sure to stay tuned!