Finding creative things to do with old blue jeans is a bit of a passion of mine. Think about all you’ve been through together, those great-fitting friendly old jeans and you — who can bear to just trash them, when they get beyond wearing?

A recycled-denim quilt is, to my mind, the perfect solution.

Years ago I had a cosy and durable quilt made simply from diamond-shaped pieces of heavy flannel, plaid wool fabric, and recycled denim from old blue jeans. (Kind of like Dorothy Ainsworth’s quilt o’ Levi’s from Backwoods Home, but much smaller.) It went everywhere, and just got softer and more comforting with age… until age eventually caught up with it, and the fabric began to wear thin enough that the batting showed through in places…

Well, yesterday I came across a pattern — a quilt tutorial really, by the multi-talented Doreen Baros — for a Circle Blue Jeans Quilt that looks like a keeper.

The pattern is a little bit Cathedral Windows and a little bit Rob Peter to Pay Paul, and you can really get creative with the choice of lighter-weight fabric to show in the denim “windows” on the quilt.

Finish the edges of the circles with machine zig-zag or satin stitch, handsewn blanket stitch, or a neat-but-fiddley narrow hem, according to your taste and patience; or just sew it down and leave the unfinished denim edges to fray artistically in authentic blue-jeans style, like the sunshine-y summer-of-love-ish Circle Blue Jeans Quilt that Jessica Levitt made a few years back, following Doreen’s instructions.

Working with a material as heavy as denim, I’d definitely skip the batting on this one and also work it in squares of maybe three circles by three, depending on the size of the circles you decide to go with.

Wouldn’t this quilt be an interesting project to make with teeny-tiny miniature circles/squares? I wonder how small you could go and still handle the pieces… Hey, let me know if you decide to take on that challenge!

If you’ve seen a zig-zag quilt, you’ll immediately see the fascination. It looks like giant bands of rick-rack trim sewn into a quilt — but really, the zig-zag effect is achieved with a series of triangles and a trick of the eye.

Now, you might look at a zig-zag quilt and figure it’s pretty straightforward to make — but it turns out there are a couple of different ways to cut your triangle pieces and a couple of different ways to assemble them, too.

Check out these quilt tutorials for great instructions and, better yet, for the photographs and illustrations that are soooo essential to make sense of each quilter’s cutting and piecing methods –

I love the way this shows how the quilting community tends to share ideas and build on each others’ creativity, too:

Taylor Groneck has a quick tutorial for a zig-zag quilt based on a pattern in Denyse Schmidt Quilts, and with the advice of…

Nettie Pete (of Etsy and A Quilt Is Nice fame) who shares her Zig-Zag Quilt Tutorial for the quilt inspired by…

The Purl Bee’s Zig Zag Quilt. The Purl Bee is the blog of Joelle & Jennifer Hoverson’s awesome and inventive crafty-sewing shop, Purl, by the way — and if you visit The Purl Bee, better plan to set aside a couple hours to explore… and you’ll want to check out their Triangle Tutorial, too, if you’ve ever had trouble making nice trim corners.

In fact, most quilters (except maybe the real quilting divas among us) agree that the main challenge of a zig-zag quilt — once you’ve picked the fabrics and planned the colours layout — is to take care to get the points of the triangles lined up right when you’re sewing them together.

Another help for this might be the triangle templates and clear how-to illustrations in a new free zig-zag quilt pattern that Anna Maria Horner, author of Seams to Me: 24 New Reasons to Love Sewing, offers as a free PDF download on her blog. “The Folk Dance” is what Horner calls her version of the vintage zig-zag quilt pattern.

Remember when hankies were made of fabric — for every day use, not just “for show” or for special occasions like weddings? When I discovered the handkerchief craft tutorials at Bumblebee Linens, it was an instant trip down Memory Lane…

As a small child, I learned to iron (a skill I seldom practice these days!) on Dad’s big cotton handkerchiefs. More interesting, however, were the hankie dolls and animals that my mother showed me how to make when I was confined to bed with chicken pox (or possibly mumps, one of those childhood illnesses, anyway) for what seemed like weeks…

The handkerchief-craft tutorials at Bumblebee Linens include a mouse, an angel and the cutest little Easter bunny you could ever imagine making from a rolled-up and folded piece of embroidered linen.

I distinctly remember making a handkerchief mouse from one of my father’s big plaid hankies, and feeling slightly outraged that he didn’t have any that were more appropriately mouse-coloured. There was a doll, too — just big enough to fit in the palm of my young hand — but I’ve long since forgotten how to make it, and haven’t yet found the instructions anywhere…

At the moment, though, hankering for spring, I’m all about this handkerchief bunny –

All you need is a hanky (or a hanky-sized piece of lightweight fabric), a length of ribbon, a handful of cotton balls, and a needle and thread — but don’t worry about the needle and thread, if sewing’s not your thing or you want to create an Easter Bunny as a project with your kids, because that’s just to fasten on the little cotton-ball tail. (The instructions say to pin the tail on the rabbit, actually, but you might as well take a couple of quick in-and-out stitches with thread and not worry about having a stray pin falling out on the carpet — not that this is something that would ever have happened to us!)

Full instructions for making a handkerchief bunny — with step-by-step photographs — are at Bumblebeelinens.com Hankie Bunny tutorial.

Enjoy!

Allow me to introduce the lovely and talented Ching Ya, a dear friend and social media geek with a delighthful creative streak. Today, she’ll teach us how to fold our own paper stars in this photo tutorial. Enjoy! ~ Jen

The Cute Little Stars

Twinkle twinkle little stars
How colorful and adorable you are…

I’ve always loved them, it’s my dream to hold the stars in my hands and admire their beauty.

Guess what? My dream came true after all!

Cute isn’t it?

I sprinkle these little ones around my Christmas corner, along with the tree of course.

So, do you want to spice up your Christmas decorations with these little ones? I can assure you, by the time you finished reading these instructions, you’re gonna shout out, “OMG!! It’s THAT simple??”

How To Fold Your Little Paper Stars

What do you need?

A half-used colored/wrapping paper (I prefer recycled ones, you could use brand new if you like), a ruler and scissors. That’s it.

Are you ready to rumble?
Here goes:

Step 1.
Measure and cut a strip approximately 1cm width and 20-25cm in length (depends on your liking).

Step 2.
Do it as if you are making a perfect knot.

Step 3.
Make sure ‘A’ is on top of the tail. Then continue to tuck ‘A’ inside the hole.

Step 4.
Pull ‘A’ through gently and flatten the knot.

Reminder – Make sure ‘A’ is neither too long nor short. A considerable length as shown in the picture will be just right.

Step 5.
Bend the excessive end to the back. (Cut it off if too long.) Now a pentagon is formed.

Step 6.
Bend the long tail according to the sides of the pentagon. That is, go up from underneath the pentagon as illustrated, following the direction of the blue dotted line.

Continue the ‘pentagon-wrapping’ method (see next 4 photographs) until it almost reaches the end.

Here’s what your star will look like at this point:

Step 7.
Slip the tail into the body of the pentagon. Cut off the excessive part if necessary.

Step 8.
Hold your pentagon as shown in the next photograph. Press in hard until the pointed ends are formed.

Continue pinching with other sides until the star becomes “puffy”…

… and VOILA!!

Now you can carry on with as many of them as you wish. Even fill up a jar with stars, and give it as a present to your loved ones. Now they’ll never running out of wishing stars for Christmas!

Ching Ya loves traveling, photography, and acoustic guitar! She owns a blog It’s My Life ~ It’s Now Or Never where she talks about her interests in movies, music, events & occasions, fun sites, personal thoughts as well. It’s her passion to write and share the fun with her readers. That’s why she has a Christmas theme on-going right as we speak!It’s All About Christmas so why not check it out and get into the groove? Or visit Ching Ya at Drama Sum It Up, where she follows her favourite TV drama -– currently, that’s “Prison Break.”

When you’re looking for a craft tutorial, nothing’s better than a good clear how-to video. This one, from Rochelle Dahl, shows a simple way to make polymer beads. The project is easy enough for beginners and kids, but the results — as the video shows — can be stunning and quite sophisticated.

Tutorial Summary:
Polymer clay is formed into a ball, pierced with a needle, and pressed between a pair of matching stamps to texturize it on all sides. (One key tip is to use talcum powder or cornstarch to prevent the clay from sticking to your tools.) Bake the beads in a toaster oven and then, as Rochelle says, the fun part begins! Using craft paints, colour and decorate your polymer beads in any way that your imagination suggests.

Jo Brooks (of Lampwork Art, where I discovered this bead-making video) reports that she tried this with her kid a few days ago, and the family bead-making project was a great success.

If you want the word on authentic Italian cooking, where better to find it than in Italy? Today’s guest post is contributed by that modern-day Renaissance Man best known as Guilherme Zo’C — and I think you’ll enjoy his joyful approach to cooking! ~ Jen

How to cook original Italian style

Many of the delicacies gourmets use and abuse these days, were created to overcome food difficulties of the past.

Sun dried tomatoes, just as most other dried food, were invented mostly to overcome food shortage on winter. In southern Italy, people dried the tomatoes in the sun and, to make them last even more, they conserved them into olive oil, a mix that could easily last for a long winter.

These days, anyone can have dried tomatoes just because is delicious, and just because of this, about a month ago I decided to make my own conserve of Sun Dried Tomatoes.

Because I had never done one, I found it appropriate to google a bit before I start. I found many pages with similar, although different, procedures. After a bit of reading I put my thoughts in order and my hands into it.

You can dry the tomatoes yourself by cutting them into halves, cover them with a mix of sugar and salt and let them dry in the sun for a couple of days, but I decided to buy them already dried because it was the conserve I was actually interested in.

For the conserve, pick a clean and preferably sterilized glass pot and pour some Extra Virgin Olive Oil nto it. Put a layer of sun-dried tomatoes, then cover them with olive oil, then another layer of tomatoes and so on.

Be sure the olive oil covers entirely the tomatoes. Cover and let them rest for 2 weeks before using it. If the oil properly covers the tomatoes and you keep the jar from dust, they can last for the whole winter as in the old days before the refrigerator and canned food.

So far, so good, but what is so interesting in this conserve, why didn’t I just buy the conserve, once I have bought the tomatoes already?

Well, the fun part is that you can chose your favorite oil other things to go into the jar with the tomatoes and oil. Among the recipes I read, I found suggestions to add garlic, basil, oregano, peppers… but I also found a warning:

Sorry, I must disagree!

A good part of original Italian cuisine was developed by housewives, little local restaurant cooks and even the poor and the people in general trying to survive to winters, wars and misery. What makes it so good is the intimate cultural relationship they have with food, that naturally becomes a cooking instinct.

I think the only way to really cook Italian style, is to develop an instinct and invent your own dishes on a daily basis, even if your first attempts are so bad that Italians themselves would laugh at it.

Guilherme is a Web Designer and works freelance in northern Italy.

He is happily married to Anna, and in his free time he enjoys cinema, traveling, cooking and eating.

Emily’s patchwork tote bag

Emily dabbled with bits of sewing when she was really little — driving the sewing machine madly around a piece of scrap cloth while her grandmother made sure she didn’t get her fingers under the needle, mostly!

But now she’s a teenager (gah ! when did that happen?) she’s starting to develop more of an interest in learning to sew, so she’ll able to make her own one-of-a-kind gear.

Last week she raided the sewing cupboard for remnants of fabric left over from other sewing projects, and put together this fabulous patchwork tote bag.

(Excuse the lousy photograph — I just grabbed a snap while fixing supper for the crowd.)

Pretty good, eh? She had a lot of fun picking out the different colours and types of fabric scraps and putting together the patchwork.

A tote bag is a fabulous project for a beginner to learn to sew — all straight lines and not much to mess up — and a patchwork tote bag is even better because it will be completely unlike anyone else’s bag, a true statement of personal taste.

Ribbons and Trims: 100 Ideas for Personalizing Your Home

Emily and I were talking about making a plain fabric tote bag, too, and embellishing it — maybe with ribbon (or fabric-strip ribbon) roses, like we learned to make from Ribbons and Trims — that Annabel Lewis book I had the pleasure to review a few months back.

Pattern?
We don’t need no stinkin’ pattern!

But Super Eggplant has an excellent tutorial that will walk you through the steps of how to make a basic tote bag. It’s all rectangles. Even sewing a slick box bottom to the bag is easy, the way Eggplant shows it.

The design of the patchwork and other decorations, however, are up to your own imagination… and to whatever fabric remnants and notions you’ve got lying around the place, just begging to be sewn into a nice new bag!

Here’s another clever Advent calendar to make yourself, all thrifty and creative…

And I’m really liking this as a great way to re-use those styrofoam flats that are still widely used for protective packaging (like when you buy electronics gear), because many recycling programs won’t let you put them out in your recycling bin.

Anyway, this particular Advent calendar is the invention of a crafty Texas chick who goes by the name of burstandbloom on the Craftster forums. She’s thoughtfully provided a tutorial for making this advent calendar, with photographs of each step — but here’s the general idea:

1. Cut out 24 circles from a block of styrofoam — and see how nice B&B’s calendar looks, with an asymmetrical arrangement of different sized circles! That took a little advance planning, for sure!
2. Cover the raw edges of styrofoam with festive holiday paper, using a rough decoupage technique (glue it all down and shellac over it with Mod Podge or a similar clear protective goop), then embellish your calendar as you like.
3. Cover a piece of thin cardboard with pretty paper and glue it on the back.
4. Cut circles of cardboard large enough to cover the circle cut-outs in the styrofoam, and decorate them as you like, pinning each in place with a tab and a brad so they can be flipped up to reveal a tiny surprise inside.

You’re on your own for deciding what should go in each day’s hole in your Advent calendar, but I have faith that won’t be a big problem! You can’t go wrong with foil-wrapped chocolates…

B&B picked items that had special meaning for herself and her boyfriend — like a miniature cow, referring to an inside joke — or an object that signified a special holiday activity that she had planned for that day, like miniature cookie cutters for the day they’d bake Christmas cookies together or a tiny gift box for the day they’d be wrapping up gifts…

I spotted these sleek chrome-and-snakeskin mirror frames while doing a bit of online window shopping at Wallis Designs — and that’s a brilliant place to pick up ideas for a mid-century or modern decor, by the way.

Now, for those of us not in the swanky Scottsdale neighbourhood (or income bracket), this look is still do-able.

The proper way, of course, would be to matt a chrome-framed mirror with faux snakeskin and bind the inner edge with bent aluminum chrome trim to match the frame. But that’s not going to happen.

I’m not exactly a real whiz at bending metal so that it’s nice and tidy… so I’d probably just fake the general effect.

It can be done quite handily with a pair of chrome picture frames in two different sizes, a mirror, and a piece of faux snakeskin fabric or printed vinyl. Snakeskin-printed paper would do nicely, too, if it’s a good quality and not too easy to rip.

You see where I’m going with this?

Fit the small and large frames:

The smaller frame is for the mirror (nice if you can buy a suitable chrome-framed mirror to start with, instead of having to take the extra step of fitting a mirror to the frame). The larger frame will surround the whole shebang.

Now, those picture frames are probably backed with cardboard (we’re talking WalMart frames here, DIY’ers!). So, slip the cardboard backing out of the large frame, lay the small frame down on top and center it, and trace lightly around with a pencil.

Cut out the rectangle you’ve just marked on the cardboard.

Now, take the comes-with-it cheap mat board for the larger frame and trim it to match the rectangle you’ve just cut in the backing, if necessary. A sharp Xacto knife will do the trick, because you may just need to shave back a tiny sliver…

The goal is that the smaller frame should sit down inside the hole, so it’s more or less flush with the larger frame when the mat is put back in.

(If your picture frame comes with glass, just set it aside for another project — you won’t be needing it here.)

Cover the mat board with faux snakeskin:

Now, take that large mat board and cover it with strips of your faux snakeskin. I’d fold the corners at a 45-degree angle to make a nice professional-looking mitre join at each corner. Or you could also cut a mat out of one big piece — if you look closely at the picture, you’ll see it’s done as if one piece, with the pattern continuing from top to bottom — your choice.

Fold the fabric or paper down smoothly over the edges of the mat and just use a tiny drop of glue here and there to tack it in place. That’s in case you want to tweak the fit as you put it all together.

Assemble the two pieces:

Set the mirror face-down on your worktop, and slide the snakeskin-covered mat (also face-down) onto it. Slide the large frame’s cardboard backing on in the same way. Set the mirror, with mat and backing on it, into the large frame and fasten it securely in place.

How far the small frame (the mirror) will protrude at the back will depend on the relative thickness of the frames, of course, which is why you’ve been working upside down.

If the backs of the frames come out flush, you can pat yourself on the back for the choice of frames. Either way, no big deal. Cover the back with heavy brown paper and stick down the edges with gummed brown paper strips, nice and neat.

Fasten on a wire for hanging — and I’d fasten it to the mirror part, because that’s the heaviest. Also, if the mirror sticks a bit more out the back than the main large frame, that way it will still hang quite nicely against the wall.

And there we go — a high-priced Modern style faux-snakeskin mirror on a DIY budget!

A pop-up photograph has a lot of the same appeal, for me, as a shadow box or diorama.

Wouldn’t it be fun to make a 3-d holiday display from family photos and bits of festive embellishments — ribbons, glitter, tiny ornaments, maybe a bit of angel-hair faux snow?

And then tuck the whole display into a glass-fronted shadow box…

Too much?
Go for a simple flat photo frame, then, and let the pop-out elements add their own special interest to the picture.

If you look carefully at one of those fabulous pop-up books that we knew and loved in childhood, you’ll see that the secret of the three-dimensional effect is a fold and two straight cuts, to make a pop-up box that sticks out from the main page or photo. This is what you’ll glue the individual cut-out elements onto, to make them stand out.

Another thing I love about this craft is that you probably have everything you need to do it, on hand, right now:

• Scissors or a craft knife
• Glue
• Several copies of the same photograph (so you can cut them up)
• Cardboard (recycle an old cereal box?) to stiffen the back of the photo if you’re going to display the work as a stand-up piece on a shelf or table top.

Hey, what about making your pop-up photograph into a greeting card?

Truly, a unique way to send your holiday wishes and share a special memory with friends and family…

[WikiHow via erinloechner at curbly]

Technorati Tags: pop-ups, photographs, crafts

What do you think, is it too soon to start planning ahead for Halloween party?

Only, that southern fashionista Amy has me thinking ahead, with her mention of a toga contest over at My Scoop… complete with a photo of beer-drinking women in the most stylish togas you’ve ever seen (ah, inspiration!) and handy instructional diagram:–

Haven’t been to a good toga party in years… it’s almost worth a road trip down to Alabama, no?

Yes, you guessed it — there’s a new shop on the block, garden fans! Goods for the Garden hits my list of sources for garden art and accessories, partly for its earth-friendly attitude… but mostly, I have to confess, for the sheer luscious beauty of the products.

The Campo De’ Fiori line of terra cotta planters, for example — like this Sevilla Plant Set. A curvy iron plant stand with a copper saucer, holding a graceful terracotta pot (not your ordinary plant pot, though; just look at the upward sweep of its line)…

Have you ever seen anything that so clearly evokes the classic English country house and conservatory?

The mottled white-ish grey-green colouring on the terracotta is a large part of the subtle charm — it’s real living moss that lends the antique heritage-garden look.

Here’s a craft tip, DIY-ers :

If you want to give the same antique appearance to your own brash-orange brand-new terracotta planters, there are two basic ways to go about it.

1. To grow your own moss…Soak the plant pot in water over night. Blend together a handful of live moss and a cup of non-pasteurized yogurt (if you don’t have yogurt on hand, you can use beer with a spoonful of sugar mixed in) until very smooth. Brush this onto the plant pot where you want moss to grow. Keep it in a shady place, and mist it with water occasionally until the moss begins to grow.(Note, this method won’t work on plastic or metal — moss prefers a porous material like clay or Hypertufa or concrete.)
2. To paint the illusion of moss…For hot dry climates, or for planters to use indoors, you may choose to go with a simple faux paint technique to add that elegance of age.Dab on a touch of craft paint or ordinary latex house paint, in a soft pale grey-green. Let it just barely start to dry, then dry-brush over it with white paint. Wipe most of the paint off with an old rag, and that’s all it takes!Be scanty with the paint application, to make sure the terracotta colour of the pot isn’t totally hidden — this is a case where “less is more” and you can always add more later…

For more inspiration, and for garden shopping with an environmental conscience (wholesale or retail), do check out GoodsForTheGarden.com.

Committed to preserving the earth’s green spaces — from public gardens to at-risk eco-systems — Goods For The Garden owner Matt Silvern says this:

To spend my days providing beautiful objects to everyone from the part time gardener to the largest landscape architecture firm, brings me great joy.

As a gift to my children, to theirs, to you and yours, I am as committed to my community as I am to these artisans, and that is why I try to give back every time I take in. I pledge to continue to raise funds for public gardens (5% of every order is donated), great humanitarian programs like Potters for Peace and to increase my support for community organizations.

Goods for the Garden will contribute 5% of the purchase price of every product to an organization of your choosing or to the 1% For The Planet fund.

And that’s a beautiful thing, too.