Craftside

21 Christmas Craft projects to create a festive holiday season

Over at the new Craftside blog there is a great list of 21 Christmas Craft projects collected from the past years.

How to Make Lace Ruffle Boot Toppers - Inspired by the Book, Crocheting Clothes Kids Love

I will use any excuse to make fun new accessories, and virtually any holiday will work for me. The next one is St. Patrick's Day and that means GREEN! And as you know, recycled sweaters are one of my favorite materials to craft with. Today, I thought I'd combine one of my faves with a brand new "yarn" called Boutique Sassy Lace from Red Heart to make these cute ruffle boot toppers inspired by the ones in Crocheting Clothes Kids Love: 28 Fun-to-Wear Projects.

The pattern in Crocheting Clothes Kids Love: 28 Fun-to-Wear Projects is for leg warmers, but I know I would be wearing these with tall boots so I only needed boot toppers.

To make my ruffled lace boot toppers, I started by cutting about 5 inches off the sleeves of a recycled felted rib stitch sweater.

To crochet the ruffle onto the cut edge of the sweater I used a small hook and the loops in the Boutique Sassy Lace yarn. It is a simple single crochet. Poke the hook through the cut sweater about 2 rows down, hook the Sassy Lace yarn and draw through the sweater.

Hook another loop of the Sassy Lace yarn and draw through the two on the hook.

I did a stitch about every 4th stitch in the sweater edge. The closer you make your stitches the fuller your ruffle will be.

To make the draw string, I simply did a chain stitch and then sewed it through the ribs of the sweater about an inch from the edge. All that was left to do was make 4 small pompoms and knot them onto the ends of the chain stitch draw string.

Christmas switch over-I think I will swap out the white pompoms for red at Christmas time :)

More about the adorable crochet pattern CPi book:

Crocheting Clothes Kids Love: 28 Fun-to-Wear Projects

by Shelby Allaho & Ellen Gormley

Whether you have kids or are a kid at heart, you’ll love making the fun and kid-stylish projects featured in Crocheting Clothes Kids Love. This easy-to-use book features twenty-eight designs for garments and accessories for school-age kids.. Projects include:sweaters, vests, a capelet, dress, skirt, tank top, and slippers in styles kids are certain to love.

 

Crocheting Clothes Kids Love also includes patterns for accessories, such as: hats, scarves, mittens, wristers, hair bands, jewelry, leg warmers, a backpack, belt, and messenger bag. Creative, fun photography by Nancy Langdon, who also co-authored and photographed Sewing Clothes Kids Love and photographed Knitting Clothes Kids Love shows kids wearing and using the projects to give you added inspiration.

 

All projects are designed using a variety of yarn types in fibers that are easy to care for. Yarns used represent selections from both LYS and big box brands, with generic descriptions, gauge and hook sizes to allow you to easily substitute comparable yarn. 

 

New to crochet? No worries. General crochet instructions are provided to make it easy for new crocheters to follow along.

 

Shelby Allaho has won numerous design awards, and her work has been published in Interweave Crochet and Inside Crochet, as well as in books from Sixth and Spring Books, and Sterling Publishing. She specializes in designing unique accessories for women and children, in traditional and freeform crochet.

 

Ellen Gormley stitched more than 80 afghans before beginning her design career in 2004. Now, Ellen has sold more than 200 designs, and been published numerous times in many crochet magazines including Interweave Crochet, Crochet Today, Crochet!, Crochet World and Inside Crochet. Her designs have been shown on the PBS show Knit and Crochet Now! Her two books are Go Crochet! Afghan Design Workbook and Learn Bruges Lace.

 

Shelby Allaho's blog: www.stitch-story.com ; also as StitchStory on Twitter and Stitchstory on www.Ravelry.com.

Ellen Gormley's blog: www.GoCrochet.com ; also as GoCrochet on Twitter and www.Ravelry.com

    

 

Happy New Year! Get Kindle Craft books at a great price today!

Today is a bit special for me and not just because it's January first. My book Sweater Surgery: How to Make New Things With Old Sweaters is part of today's group of Quayside Publishing Group's

$2.99 e-book deal at Amazon.

So if you've ever wanted a copy of Sweater Surgery: How to Make New Things With Old Sweaters, or any of the following books on your Kindle, you can get them at the amazing price of $2.99 today only. Oh, and if you want to give them as a gift, you can do that too!

Today's other New Years Day $2.99 e-book deals:

PatternReview.com 1,000 Clever Sewing Shortcuts and Tips: Top-Rated Favorites from Sewing Fans and Master Teachers by Deepika Prakash

Water Paper Paint: Exploring Creativity with Watercolor and Mixed Media by Heather Smith Jones

Scarves and Shawls for Yarn Lovers by Carri Hammett

Creating Glamorous Jewelry with Swarovski Elements: Classic Hollywood Designs with Crystal Beads and Stones by Jean Campbell

Making Designer Bead & Wire Jewelry: Techniques for Unique Designs and Handmade Findings by Tammy Powley

Jewelry Lab: 52 Experiments, Investigations, and Explorations in Metal by Melissa Manley

Check out Amazon for Kindle $2.99 deals on lots more Quayside Publishing Group books through January 10th, 2013!

 

 

How to make recycled wool felted sweater Christmas trees with the Sizzix fringe die cut

I know Halloween is this weekend, but when I got Eileen Hull's new Flowers 3-D #2 die and saw the part that makes a section of what looks like fringe to me, I thought of Christmas trees! And since Sizzix dies cut recycled wool felted sweaters like a dream, and being the author of Sweater Surgery: How to Make New Things with Old Sweaters, you know what's coming...these cute as can be recycled wool felted sweater Christmas trees!

Here is how I made my recycled sweater Christmas trees:

I started by cutting scraps of the recycled wool felted sweaters and getting all different shades of fringe sections. I had some cardboard cones already made in prep for this holiday season of Christmas tree making as I always make a few new ones each year. These cones were a bit too big and I knew I wanted to make 3 trees (as 3 is the minimum for a collection).

So off to the recycle bin, and I happened to have a cereal box, and a folder of some promotional material came in so I just rolled them into 3 cones of varying sizes. I recommend the color of your cardboard cone be similar to the shades of your fringe so if some peeks through it will blend.

I decided each tree would be a bit of a different collection of shades of sweaters, light, medium and dark.

I started at the bottom and hot glued each row of the die cut fringe.

All that was left to do was whip up a few pom poms to top them off. I did this using two different yarns and just wrapped around my fingers a bunch of times. Then I tied the loops around the center and cut the loops open.

If you want to see what else this fabulous die cut will make, use the Sizzix button on the top right side column to hop to a whole bunch more blogs to see what my fellow designers have created with Flowers 3-D #2 die cut.

Want to WIN a Flowers 3-D #2 Die? Pop on over to the blog Oh My Crafts and enter!

If you need more recycled sweater projects, might I recommend:

Sweater Surgery:

How to Make New Things with Old Sweaters

by

Stefanie Girard

Contemporary crafters are thriving on personalizing, modifying, and altering fashion, and as a way to take a greener approach to their creative lifestyle. This book shows you how to upcycle all your slightly worn, slightly damaged, or out-of-style sweaters into fabulous new items for your wardrobe and your home. Readers learn how to choose, cut, restitch, felt, and embellish old sweater fabric, transforming it into beautiful handbags, mittens, scarves, hats, hoodies, skirts, jewelry, soft toys, pillows, and more! You'll find complete instructions for 27 projects, plus a huge gallery of exciting ideas for further inspiration.

Stefanie Girard (Los Angeles, CA) has a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute and worked as a set decorator and prop master for 10 years in the entertainment industry. She has produced, written scripts, and edited Web content for television shows and has been covering these creative topics for HGTV, DIY Network, and Lifetime TV. Check out more recycled sweater projects at  www.sweatersurgery.blogspot.com.

 

How to make a Mod Podge bird house wind chime with a recycled sweater flower embellishment

It's back to work Tuesday, but that doesn't mean you can't take a break for a little craft video watching with....me! I was lucky enough to be asked to be a guest on Plaid Craft TV with Cathie Fillian and Steve Piacenza. See how Steve and I made a birdhouse wind chime using some great outdoor Mod Podge with a Sweater Surgery style recycled wool felted sweater flower embellishment:

 If you need more sweatery goodness then check out the Quarry book:

Sweater Surgery:

How to Make New Things with Old Sweaters

by

Stefanie Girard

Contemporary crafters are thriving on personalizing, modifying, and altering fashion, and as a way to take a greener approach to their creative lifestyle. This book shows you how to upcycle all your slightly worn, slightly damaged, or out-of-style sweaters into fabulous new items for your wardrobe and your home. Readers learn how to choose, cut, restitch, felt, and embellish old sweater fabric, transforming it into beautiful handbags, mittens, scarves, hats, hoodies, skirts, jewelry, soft toys, pillows, and more! You'll find complete instructions for 27 projects, plus a huge gallery of exciting ideas for further inspiration.

Stefanie Girard (Los Angeles, CA) has a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute and worked as a set decorator and prop master for 10 years in the entertainment industry. She has produced, written scripts, and edited Web content for television shows and has been covering these creative topics for HGTV, DIY Network, and Lifetime TV. Check out more recycled sweater projects at  www.sweatersurgery.blogspot.com.