Category: Crafts

The Frankenpants Saga

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Kids have a really incredible innate ability to destroy things in ridiculous ways without even trying. The most frequent victim of this destruction: their clothes.

Sometimes I will get lucky with a tiny hole that just needs a couple stitches, or a busted seam that requires a quick trip through the sewing machine. Other times, I’m faced with challenges like this:

That is pretty much a new seam where there wasn’t one before. But that also means there is no extra material to create a seam. There is actually a lack of material. So I first attempted a flat seam with just a zigzag stitch. This worked…while the pants were in the drawer. So I grabbed some twill, used my new serger to create a patch.

Then I used three rows of zigzag stitches to cover the color and old stitches. So far this has worked, and isn’t too noticeable. Here’s hoping it works for a long time.

I Made Up My Mind…

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to make the Make Up Your Mind tank by Julie of Knitted Bliss. I fell in love with the Mr. McGregor’s Garden comfy sampler from Knit Picks (unfortunately not available anymore) and decided I would find a pattern for it once I got it. I tried to make my own first, but that didn’t work out quickly enough because I wanted this to be my project on vacation.

After a little searching and swatching, I decided Make Up Your Mind was what I wanted. I cast on provisionally for the 40 in size since my gauge was a bit smaller and I wanted it to be a little more flowy since it would be going over another shirt. I did mostly stick with length measurements from the 34 in size, except when it came to how many times to repeat decreases. Actually, I fudged a lot of the numbers because I kept getting off with the stitch patterns and would just decrease until I had an ok amount for the pattern. I was on vacation; I didn’t want to have to actually count my stitches.

This pattern was fairly easy to work, and very easy to follow. I’d say it’s a good bridge between beginner and intermediate skill sets.If you can knit, purl, yarnover, increase and decrease, you can make this pattern, too. Best of all, no sewing seams! You just graft the shoulders together and weave in the ends and you have a ready-to-wear shirt.

Lego My Table

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One of the boys with a June Birthday is completely obsessed with Legos. So I knew I wanted to do something Lego-themed for his present. I didn’t just want to get him another set to build, though. The perfect gift came across my feed one day when I saw this on IKEAHackers. Considering my entire room is furnished from IKEA, I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to make a simpler version.

Truthfully, the most difficult part was probably deciding how I wanted to glue everything down. We used Legos to hold the plates together (I found these plates on Amazon) before gluing them in place with rubber cement.

Altogether, the whole project cost around $30. Much better than the alternatives I found at Toys ‘R’ Us for about $100 more. Not counting drying time (or searching for the table in IKEA), it took around thirty minutes to finish this. Best to have at least two sets of hands, though. Even with the Legos holding them together, the four plates can get a little unruly.