MAKING - little acorn friends - craft time

I like acorns. I also like putting faces on things. This could only naturally lead to putting faces on acorns.

Here's how I do it.

Start with some clean acorns.

Their hats tend to fall off, if the hats aren't loose, I like to twist/tilt them loose. It seems like they are going to fall off anyways, so why not beat them to it.

You can use glue to put the hats back on, I chose to use black puff paint. The acorns had some black discoloration and this blended right in.

I used nail polish to give them rosy cheeks.

I used a small tipped pen with waterproof ink to draw on their cute little eyes and mouths.

Here are a few with their dry cheeks and happy smiles.

To help preserve their faces and make them all shiny and nice, I painted a liberal coat of clear nail polish on the nuts.

Here they are all glossy and happy and done.

Lately I have been into painting the stems gold. I use Testers enamel paint (the kind for model cars etc...).

FIXING - boys will be boys - pants mending

Against better judgment a friend of mine climbed onto his apartment building roof late one night at a party. While on his adventure he caught the seat of his pants on a nail or something and tore the corduroy material. I said I would fix it.
That was months ago. I kept the pants an extra long time as a penalty for doing something so stupid.

Here is the rip with some pink paper behind it, to highlight the damage.

I took a scrap of similar baby/fine wale corduroy, trimmed the edges with pinking shears, and used spray adhesive to properly position it on the rip. I put the patch on the inside. Here it is.

Here is the outside of the tear after affixing the fabric patch inside. I trimmed all stray threads to make the torn edges clean.

I used a wide short zig zag to cover the rip. About 5 rows back and forth tracing the path of the tear. After that I sewed the perimeter of the patch in a small straight stitch. Along the pocket edge I sewed along the existing seams. I sewed along the lines of the corduroy about every half inch to really attach the patch (because the fabric there was stressed from the hole).

Here it is on the inside.

Here is the mending after from the outside.

FIXING - wool glove - darning

A stitch in time saves nine.

I try to instill this this in the minds of my friends. Especially those I do mending for. Small hole darning is so much easier than recreating a fingertip or elbow.

One friend of mine gets holes in his liner gloves. He also has kept that stitch in time adage in mind.

Here is the before picture. The holes are so small it is hard to see them.

BASIC DARNING INFORMATION FOR SMALL KNIT HOLES.

Here is a hole.

With your mending thread of choice, secure the perimeter. Find the intact loops of stitches on the edges of the holes and run your darning thread through them. Sometimes you have to go back a row or two to find a good loop to go through.

Recreate the fabric for the hole with long stitches in one direction (this example, vertically).

Now start recreating the fabric horizontally. Weave the thread in and out of the vertical threads.

If the hole is very small, like in this case, after securing the perimeter you might just have to stitch the hole shut.

I do not have a darning tool, so I use the handle of my knife sharpener for finger darning.

For the first hole I used some grey sock yarn.

Here is the first hole, mended.

The sock yarn was a little too bulky, so for the fingertip mending, I used heavy duty quilting thread.

Here is the hole before.

Here is the hole after.

Here is the glove, all mended up... for now.

FIXING - jeans - zipper replacement

My friend had a pair of jeans that needed some fixin'. The zipper broke. I maybe would have repaired the zipper, but decided to replace it, since mending this kind doesn't usually work.

As you can see, the zipper pull has detached from one side, rendering it useless.

I couldn't find my stitch ripper, so I carefully used my xacto knife.

I undid all the stitching that held the zipper in place. There are a lot of seams, this is tedious.

I attached the new zipper at the base first. Here it is.

I figured out how long it needed to be and trimmed the top, then tucked it into the open seam at the waistband.

Here it is, replaced and fully functional.

This zipper has a locking top. Very important to know, if you don't lock it, it unzips instantly.

I try to make things look a little nice when returning them. A little yarn wrapped around with a bow does the trick!

Music is important for sewing. Today I listened to my Trapp Family Singers record.

 

LAST WORDS ON THIS PROJECT

Girl/womens jeans with short 'low rise' zippers are quite a bit more annoying to fix than mens/regular length zipeprs. There is just so little space to work with/within. They turned out, but I have to say I do a better job with classic length zippers and real denim, not this stretchy thin material.