Garlands!

In the 8 or so weeks since the college academic year began, I've been experiencing what feels like - for want of a better term -  a kind of mental spaciousness. It's a very good thing, but it's also a very surprising thing, because I'd been anticipating for months (okay, years) that the empty nest phase of my life would feel a certain way, and this was not it. I'd been advised, for instance, to expect misery, yearning, and lostness. And certainly in the weeks leading up to moving each kid onto campus, there was some anticipatory buildup of dread, but that was quickly replaced with a lightness and deep thrill and joy at the thought of those kids thriving, exploring and discovering a bigger world than their high school, or their neighborhood, or the convenient acquaintances of their childhoods. I'm sure that their being in-state contributes greatly to my sanity, as does their general interest in keeping in touch and asking regularly for cat photos. Or maybe it's colored by my own experience of having lived away from home across the world for almost half my life, yet being enriched by learning how to anchor and tether between those tens of thousands of miles. 

Whatever the cause, into that mental spaciousness have fallen the most curious projects; truly random, whimsical things which some years ago would never have made it anywhere even near a to-do list full of far more Important and Time-Critical things like concert gowns and prom dresses and halloween costumes. Example: a couple of weeks ago, I crocheted that cat beanie and two tiny candy corns. For fun, mind you. With no deadline other than "possibly before Thanksgiving". How bewilderingly exhilarating! This was not to say that sewing sparkly, fancy gowns back in the day for children I adored was torture by any means; it was all incredibly fulfilling and felt like a solid accomplishment, especially when the last stitches were put in mere minutes before the photoshoot began, or the recital, or whatever. No - I chose it. I loved it. I would totally go back and do it all over again (except with maybe less procrastinating). 

But these recent non-serious, tiny, finishable-in-a couple-of-days, colorful, happy projects? Just soooo much fun. And, by some miracle, also holiday-relevant! Like, when was the last time LiEr actually made something in time for Christmas? Or Chinese New Year? Made in the same year she started it, I mean? 

Right?

So, here's an ikatbag origin story. A long time ago, I saw this photo in the newspaper. 

It was the year my youngest was born, so I had three wee ones under five, the most recent of whom was mere months old, and I'd been nursing round the clock with just my laptop and the 3 am internet for company, and I'd just discovered there were such things as craft blogs written by other sleep-deprived moms of tiny infants and we were all on the cusp of that magical Handmade Era with its table tents and peg people and hobby horses and felt food and dress-up boxes and Waldorf dolls and silk scarves dyed with Kool Aid. Yes, that era, the one that gave birth to a myriad of truly, truly inventive, unique and innovative ideas. Remember? 

Anyway, that day, a month before Christmas, there appeared that adorable garland in the paper, because even the news media (the print news media, because - thank the stars - Pinterest, with all its spiraling, inbreeding algorithms hadn't been invented yet) had caught on and wanted to inspire people to handmake something beautiful and fun. Let me tell you, I needed to make that garland, and in another life, 20-something-year-old LiEr would've done it without batting an eyelid. But that midwinter postpartum LiEr was already backloggged with garments that needed to be sewn for ever-growing children and decided that beautifying the house and paying handmade tribute to the holidays would have to go to the very back of the line. So she saved that newspaper, as she did so many other pages ripped (again: before Pinterest) from magazines and catalogs and filed them away in random binders and accordion organizers for Another Day in Another Era.

I forgot about that garland in the ensuing years: two very full decades which ushered in so much joy and unprecedented creativity that even I don't have a good grasp of the complete scope of it all. At some point, I'd started writing ikatbag, partly inspired by all those craft blogs I'd devoured and admired, but also so I would have a place to document the manic energy and ideas that flowed out of watching and playing with my own kids. And ironically, among the many projects we made together were garlands - but always paper, because that was the medium with which my kids were most comfortable creating independently. They were always temporary, instant-gratification things duly strung up in the house, then taken down and tossed in the recycling when the holiday was over. 

This October, the memory of that newspaper garland must have found its way through the aforementioned mental spaciousness and it felt like it was the right time to make it. And not even for Christmas - why wait when there was Halloween right around the corner? And perhaps the girls who were away at college might like one each to festify their respective campus residences in a way their mom didn't with their own house 18 years prior? And maybe the other kid who'd graduated and come home might also like one for her room? 

Everyone said yes, please; how fun.

Well, then. 

Here are the preliminary sketches. The final versions were the result of consulting the internet for prettier versions of the shapes I'd had in my head, adjusted for size and ease of cutting. I'm sharing the templates at the end of this post, so you can make your own garland. I recommend printing them out on cardstock rather than paper, because the individual templates can then be traced around more easily with pens like these heat-erasable Frixion ones.

This is the Halloween set.

I was initially planning to be all perfectionist and coordinate the thread with the color of the felt, but decided ultimately to be sensible and go with white for everything. I ended up really loving the high-contrast white stitching.

These are Milo and Maisy, our two cats. Milo is a very naturally Halloween kitty, but we didn't want Maisy to feel left out, so we included her, too.

Here's a mini tutorial on how to get really even edge-stitching on both sides of a double-layered felt thing. Simply cut the front piece the correct size, and cut the back piece much larger. Edge-stitch all around the border (and along any other lines needed)

 and then trim the back piece to match the front. 

The spider web is probably my favorite of the cutouts/motifs. Thought I'd include a quick step-by-step on how I made them. First, consider that if this were a paper spiderweb, you'd fold it into six segments, cut once through all the layers, and open the thing up to reveal a perfectly symmetrical shape. Felt is too thick to fold as you would paper, so we'll work with just one segment at a time. I traced out the hollow cut-out sections onto the felt

like so (please excuse the random cat hair - thanks, Milo)

and fold just that one segment in half. Cut out the shapes along just that one fold i.e. mirror the cuts in the folded paper template.

Like so. For the purpose of this tutorial, I focused on just one of the 6 segments. In reality, you could also have traced and cut out the segment directly below this one at the same time. 

When you open that out, you'll have completed one segment.

Repeat to cut out the details in a second segment,

and do the same for the remaining segments, until you've finished the web. It'll go faster than it looks, especially if you cut out two opposite segments at a time.

Setting up the actual garland took longer than I'd anticipated because the whole thing had to fit the space we intended it for, and then some Math needed to get done to work out the distance between each of the cutouts etc. In the end, I used a 5.5" center-to-center separation. I also used invisible thread in the bobbin and stitched on the backside of the cutouts to attach them to the ribbon tape. With this arrangement, it didn't even matter that I was sewing black cats and bats with white thread in my top spool as only the invisible thread showed on the front.

This is our Halloween garland!

The Fall Set consisted largely of leaves. I will be honest: they were a bear to cut around, so I made only one of each of the more lobe-y or serrated ones.

To the leaves I added three other shapes: an acorn, a toadstool and an apple,

and then felt like it needed an overlap with the Halloween set, so included a pumpkin and candy corn as well.

This is the final combined set of all the cutouts. I made multiples of some of them to make up the numbers needed for all four garlands.

This is the Fall Garland in action.

Click here to download the templates. 

I used acrylic felt, incidentally, but if your budget allows, 100% wool felt will obviously produce vastly superior and longer-lasting results. Even among acrylic felt, there is great variation in quality - the stuff by the yard, which I used, is much better than the sort you'd get in 9 x 12 sheets. Here's an old post on felt if you'd like more info. Happy making!

Pete the Cat Beanie

I crocheted a hat for one of the girls last week. I used this Youtube tutorial for the hat, this one for the nose, this one for the yellow oval eyes, and eyeballed (literally and figuratively) the black and white iris and pupil.

The boxy beanie, when worn on a round head, produces cat ear corners. Who knew? (Apparently, the entire internet, considering the number of tutorials and tiktoks of hats like this).

Partway through the hat, I went off on a procrastination tangent to make these tiny candy corns, using this tutorial. Felt somewhat of a hypocrite, as not that long ago, I swore off amigurumi because the skinny yarn and miniscule hook and stitches made me want to rip my hair out.

And yet!

I mean, it's candy corn with happy faces! Gah.

Sardines!

Hello!

Apparently, it's been a year since I last posted. And what a year it's been! Lots of changes, for one. Our eldest graduated from college in the spring. We sent the youngest off to that same college this fall. The lead-up to both transitions included last concerts, last sports meets, graduation ceremonies and parties and other things that were simultaneously celebrations and mini-endings. And now that the hours in my day no longer really revolve around precision-timed meals and after-school events, I'm finding myself in a transition of my own. It's good, but it's new and slightly weird, and I know it'll have to grow on me. Or maybe it's the other way around.

You're an empty-nester now, people have informed me. What will you do with all your extra time?

Well, I'm surprised to discover that I don't actually seem to have a whole lot of extra time. I mean, the day finds directions to go, so I follow it, and it leads me to supermarkets and the cats and appointments with friends, and side craft projects and who knows what else. What's more noticeably different, though, is the purpose and the structure in my day. I miss the energy in the house with all the kids in it. And I miss the two girls who are away at school - the freshman who left in a flurry of excitement and uncertainty, as is typical of first-years, and the sophomore who moved out a little more incrementally, having already performed the dramatic exit the year before.

In anticipation of this big shift, I'd started teaching some workshops at the Minneapolis Textile Center a couple of years ago. They were a bit of an experiment to see what I thought of returning to the classroom, as it were. Turns out I loved it, and it somehow felt like the most natural thing in the world to be teaching anything again, really, so this winter I'm going to be doing more of that. In the works are more sleeve drafting, and a new bag-making workshop. I'm also hoping to teach a couple of more entry-level soft toy and general sewing classes with community ed. 

I've also organized my instagram accounts and started a new one that's for all my crafty, sewingy things. Come follow me here @ikatbaglab! There's a QR code thingy below and also in my sidebar. The feed itself is laughingly sparse at the moment, but it will fill up in time as I get my sea legs.

Speaking of sea legs, I made these sardines. The internet has informed me that since sardines grow to a length of only about about 6", these - at 10" - are technically pilchards. Same fish, but distinctly named for size. Just between you and me, I like sardines, so oversize or not, let's continue to call them that, OK?

As you can tell from all those prints and hues, I wasn't going for realism, but I suppose their colorfulness was what I subconsciously needed - 

that, and the mass producing which, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, is the sort of obsession that keeps me grounded in that same way that one feels most sane when one is doing something quite silly and frivolous.

So: manic bulk sewing as an antidote to missing one's brood, along with the patterns and familiarities of one's old life. I am happy to say that it helped. I filled the sardines with lavender, so they smell wonderful, which also helped.

These sardines are inspired by a very similar souvenir I bought on an international summer trip, and I didn't initially intend to make bunches more, but then the summer ended and college beckoned and, well . . . let's just say it was cheaper than therapy. I've been giving some away to friends and have also put some in the shop, but here also is a tutorial to make them. They are excellent stash busters and - if the response from the recipients is any indication - make great gifts. 

First, download the template here:

And remember that, like all my other downloads, the templates do not include seam allowances, so you'll need to add 1/4" around all the edges when you lay them out on fabric.

Step 1

Cut apart the head and body of the fish, so that you're working with two separate template pieces.

Step 1.5

Optional, but I thought I'd include this additional step of creating a plastic template for two reasons:

One, it allows you to print a very neat black circle for the eye with a foam brush, rather than trying to hand-paint it.  I cut my plastic head template without SA (i.e. it's exactly the same size as the paper one), but you can add SA to yours if you like.

Two, if you happen to be mass-producing these for Christmas gifts, say, this will speed up the process greatly - both in positioning the eyes on multiple fish heads, and in neatly printing them all with clean edges.

The eye highlights still need to be hand-painted in, 

but they are literally white blobs and dots, and don't need to be precise. I used acrylic paint for both the black and white details.

I should mention that you can paint the eyes at any step during the construction of the fish, even after the whole thing has been sewn up and stuffed. However, for mass production, this - before the head is attached to the body - is the most efficient point in the sequence to do it, 

Fish heads with painted eyes drying

so let's go ahead and call this Step 2 and insert it right here:

Step 2

Paint the eyes.

This is where we begin the assembly. You will need (remember to add SA around the templates!):

• Two x fish heads in white cotton
• Two x fish bodies in printed cotton
• One 4" x 1/4" ribbon
• Some polyfill stuffing and (if you want this to be a scented thing) dried lavender flowers.

Step 3

With right sides (RS) together, align the straight edges of one fish head and one fish body and sew them together. Press the seam open and then press both SAs to the head side. On the RS, edge-stitch on the fish head along the seam line and through the SAs. This is one completed fish piece.

Step 4

Fold the ribbon in half to make a 2"-long loop. Place its ends together on the tip of the fish head and sew them to the SA of the head. You're functionally basting the loop in place, but using small stitches because the attachment point is so small.

You'll sew the loop to only one of the head pieces; the other is left as is. Here is what the pair of fish heads would look like if I were mass producing; again, it is most efficient to attach all the loops to all the relevant heads before adding any bodies.

Step 5

Repeat Step 3 with the second head and body piece to make a second fish piece. This one will have no ribbon loop attached. Place the RS of the two completed fish pieces together, with the ribbon loop sandwiched between them, and align all sides. Sew around the entire outline except for the bottom edge of the tail fin.

Step 6

Snip or notch the SA along the concave sections of the seam (where the tail joins the body, especially) to allow the seams to lie flat. Turn the entire fish RS out through the tail fin opening. Press all seams flat.

This is my pile of flat fish, after pressing.

Step 7

Fill the fish. 

The photo below shows the general Big Picture plan of what happens next, including the approximate ratio of lavender to polyfill that I used, but go ahead and adjust that proportion to your liking. I decided not to fill the entire thing with lavender up to its tail so that I didn't have to deal with lavender bits spilling out later when sewing shut the tail opening.

The tail itself is like a natural funnel,

but if you want to be extra like me, or if you're mass-producing (i.e. also like me), a paper funnel 

attached to a tube will speed up the process of getting the lavender flowers all the way down into the fish head.

Fill up the tail fin with stuffing. This helps keep the lavender in place so that when you are sewing the tail, nothing spills out.

Step 8 

Using a 1/2" SA (not 1/4"; this will become clear later), sew the tail opening shut.

Step 9

Use pinking shears to trim off about 1/4" (this is why we left a 1/2"SA in the previous step). I used my scalloped-edge shears but regular zigzag edge ones are great, too.

Here is the finished, stuffed sardine.

I took a ridiculous number of photos of the whole lot, in various configurations, because they looked so earnest and silly together.

Come visit the shop to stock up early for the holidays! And check back here soon for more updates, including some very backlogged posts that have been sitting on my dashboard forever. I am determined that they see the light of day very soon!