Category: craft

Today I started my annual Paperwhite and Amaryllis bulb forcing – it’s one of my very favorite things, because it really lightens up the inside of our home when nothing else is blooming, and the paperwhites make whatever room they’re in smell *amazing*!

Here’s my setup:
I bought one amaryllis and 18 paperwhites – today I started the forcing the amaryllis and four of the paperwhites. I’ll force another three or four paperwhite bulbs each Monday until I run out (or decide to buy more and keep going ) so that we’ll have paperwhites blooming for a couple of months.
I use a bigger pot (the green/pink one) for the amaryllis, and canning jars and carafes for the paperwhites.
I also use a variety of stones and marbles to set the paperwhite bulbs in:

This is the pot for the amaryllis – you can use either water (like I do) or pro-mix to pot the amaryllis in. I’ve put some glass pieces in the bottom so that the bulb is stable:

Then I just pop the amaryllis bulb in, and fill the pot with water just to the base of the bulb (not any further, because then you might have to deal with bulb-rot (ick)) – but always covering every bit of the roots.

With that done, I took a quart canning jar, put marbles in to a depth of about three inches, and then just popped a paperwhite bulb on top:

This paperwhite I did differently – I have some carafes, and I just place the paperwhite bulb in the mouth of the bottle, and fill with water to the bottom 1/3 of the bulb. These are *really* neat because since the bottle is clear, you’ll get to see the roots growing.

Here are the paperwhites I started forcing today. I’ll just put them in a nice sunny window (they even do okay without a lot of sun – I’ve had them all over the house and no matter what, they always turn out really well, it seems). The only upkeep they need is to make certain that the roots always have water. They’ll start blooming between four-six weeks from now, and after they’re all done, you can save them and plant them in the yard to bloom for next year.

The November 4th episode of the new Martha Stewart daytime show featured her making ultrasuede Fall leaf table decorations – in particular, placemats (on her website here). I really liked the idea of making my own Fall placemats…and because I got the suede at 50% off at Hancock Fabrics, the whole project cost only about $18!

First of all, here’s what’s needed for the project, to make eight placemats:
One yard each of two complementary ultrasuede colors
One yard of Heatnbond
fabric scissors
fabric glue (unless you can sew) for making clean placemat edges
paper for drawing the leaf on. I just free-handed an oak leaf shape so they didn’t look just *so* perfect – more wabi-sabi. My oak leaf was about 12″ long.
scissors for cutting out the template (if you make your own)
a marker for drawing the shape of the template
iron

Directions:
Take the two colors of fabric, and decide which to make the leaves out of

Cut the one yard of fabric into eight placemats (I just cut it in half width-wise, and each of those two strips into four, so I would up with a total of eight). This makes the perfect size placemat.

Here are the placemats all cut out now. This is the part to either sew the edges, or use fabric glue to fold over all the edges so they’re neat and don’t fray.

Next, iron the Heatnbond onto the fabric that you’ll be cutting the leaves out of. While you’re ironing, you’ll be able to ‘feel’ with the iron when each section is bonded completely – it only takes a few seconds per section.

Next, draw the template leaf shape onto the fabric that has the Heatnbond ironed to it (you’ll be drawing on the Heatnbond paper), then cut it out. Don’t pull off the Heatnbond paper until you’re ready to iron it to the placemat. In the picture below, you can see that I took the scissors and marked leaf veins into this leaf….I did that to all of them and it turned out really well (although it doesn’t show up so much in this picture).

Now, peel the Heatnbond off the leaf. In the picture below (at full size) you can see that the fabric’s underside, where the Heatnbond was ironed to, has a new texture on it.

Turn the leaf over (the Heatnbond paper has been removed) and put it on the placemat exactly where you want it to go. Just iron over the leaf until it doesn’t peel – I did it one or two minutes, and that worked perfectly.

…and here they are, finished! I really like the way they turned out. I can also see how they could be embellished more, but for now, I’m just enjoying how simple and neat they look.

Katie Brown comes up with some of the neatest ideas – and they’re never difficult. A few months ago, I was watching a re-run of her show All Year Round with Katie Brown – it was the episode where she made a reverse applique baby blanket. The overall idea is so simple – I figured I could make the baby wrap with the measurements she uses, and also make the dimensions bigger for a separate adult-size blanket for long car trips or just whatever!

A few days ago, I got a mailing that Hancock Fabrics was going to have a big sale on fleece this week, so I went in earlier today and bought material for three different projects – two of the ones I finished tonight are below:

Here’s the adult-size reverse-applique blanket:

I bought two colors of fleece and asked to have them cut to be 2 yards long each. In the picture above, I’ve put one color fleece on top of the other, and started to trim them up so they’re an exact match in dimension.

Second, I decided to make the reverse-applique a heart shape, so I made a template out of just regular copy paper.

Third, I drew the outline of the heart with a marker, then folded the material in half and cut it out (so it would be perfectly symmetrical). Remember to draw the template onto the color that you want to be the window – for instance, I wanted the heart to show up in pink, so I cut the heart shape out of the lime green.

Put the two pieces of fleece back together. I smoothed out the fabric and carried it to a table to do the gluing.

Fourth, I took my Aleen’s Tacky Glue and ran a bead of glue all around (under) the heart-shape cutout. I left it alone for a couple of hours to set (overnight would be a good idea too).

Fifth, I cut a five-inch notch out of all four corners (this makes doing the fringe possible). Then, I took my scissors and made a 5″ cut through both layers of the fleece, about 1-1/2″ wide (you don’t have to measure, just try to make them uniform). On the left side of the pic above you can see the fringe I haven’t knotted yet, and to the right are the ones I have.

Just tie the two colors of fleece together, all around the blanket. It will look best if you tie them all the same way – just make a knot, but do it in such a way that you always pull the same color out of the knot hole (so for instance, I pulled the green piece to the side, and pulled the pink side out of the hole of the knot, so the pink pieces are pointing ‘up’ all around the blanket).

…and here it is! It’s really nice and cozy, and because it’s fleece, washing it will be no problem (although I’ll wash it by itself). Neat!

Here’s the baby-size wrap/blanket:

Hancock Fabrics had some nice baby-themed fleece too, so I decided not to to the reverse applique on this project. This is a really pretty lilac fleece with embroidered teddy bears. I cut two squares of the fleece to 45″ squares and matched them together.

Next, I cut the notches – I made 4″ square cutouts.

Then, I cut the fringe, going through both layers of the fleece. I cut them about 4″ long, and about 1-1/2″ wide.

All the fringe gets knotted.

Finished! I think it will be a perfect gift!

The fleece I used for these projects was just the brand that was available at Hancock. I just noticed that Katie says that she used Polartec brand fleece – that’s made by Malden Mills. Malden Mills is the company that had a huge fire in 1995 and 3000 people were out of work – but the owner, Aaron Feuerstein, paid everyone their checks for months – $25 million total, and rebuilt the mill rather than just taking the insurance payout (60 Minutes story here). Next time I will *definitely* buy my fleece from their online store.

BTW, Katie Brown has a new book – it’s called ‘Katie Brown’s Weekends : Making the Most of Your Two Treasured Days‘ (I’ve got it on order now) and her website says that she will be starting a new show this coming Spring on PBS called ‘Katie Brown Workshop’. Great!