instagram and stuff

do any of you have instagram? i find i post a lot of little projects and things there--things that aren't quite big enough to warrant an entire blog post on their own. 

 i made this chain maille bracelet the other week and spent a while adding charms to it--the charms are all inspired by willow rosenberg and tara maclay from buffy the vampire slayer, which i've been watching a lot of lately. 

 little ghostie cross stitch!

 i'm pretty proud of this one, i patterned it myself. i went a little too close to the edge with the border, though.

some ribbons!

you can follow me on instagram at @wormtongues or just click this link!

a little ghost stitch

i'm in between pretty major projects (the upcoming one the most serious cross stitch i've undertaken yet, which i'm a bit nervous about--i'm ready to get started but i'm waiting for a thread order to come in the mail) and in desperate need of something to occupy my hands while doing massive reading for my literary reinvention class so i stitched up this little ghost. i messed up the pattern by a couple stitches but im pretty happy with him! i'd like to do a couple ghosties like this framing some words, but i haven't decided what yet, and since i messed this guy up he's solo for now. 

tshirt quilt: part one (and also two)

so i got a new lens for my SLR, meaning i can finally post decent-quality pictures! unfortunately the lighting situation in my apartment is still one of great suckage, but at least the resolution is better. 

i have a lot of tshirts. like, a lot. particularly a lot considering i wear them relatively rarely, but somehow i amassed a pretty incredible collection that i have managed to squeeze into various drawers and closet corners in my tiny apartment. i decided to make a tshirt quilt out of the ones i really don't wear for whatever reason--some have sentimental value, some aren't really flattering, and others i just bought and liked and then never wore. 

i used this tutorial (link) since it seemed pretty simple and easy to follow, and because i'm pretty sure t-shirt quilts are something that nearly every DIY blogger does, i'm not going to try making my own tutorial for this. the one i used was useful, and although i have step-by-step pictures, this isn't a tutorial proper.

 starting with a tshirt, ironing mat, and scissors.

 i cut off the back of the shirt so that i would only have to cut through one layer. the tutorial i linked (and used) had a quilt made from both the front and back of shirts, but since i had enough that i could use just fronts, that's what i did. you can keep the extra fabric for other projects, but i didn't because pretty much the whole point of this was to reduce clutter in my house.

 i ironed the shirt flat so it wouldn't cut weird.

 this is my makeshift pattern. i just used a 12x12 piece of cardboard and cut around it with a rotary cutter over my cutting mat, but you could just as easily do this with fabric shears. 

 pinning the squares together. 

 checking to make sure the right sides are facing up.

 sewing
(i used a ball point needle because those are more appropriate for knit fabrics like t-shirts are usually made from)

i sewed five of these long strips of five squares, then pinned them together to make the quilt.  

checking the alignment. you want to make sure you've pinned the top of your bottom row to the bottom of your top row (if that makes sense) 

 sewing the long strips together.

and here it is! unfortunately i don't have enough space in my apartment to lay it all out flat (and yes i need to clean a bit) but i'm pretty satisfied with how it all came together. the alignment isn't perfect--some of the corners don't quite match up, which i tried to alleviate when pinning--but i'm never too concerned with those little details if i'm making something for myself. if i'm making a gift or something to sell i concern myself with matching up all the seams n shit but i dunno, i don't mind when something i make for myself has flaws. considering how reckless i was with the seam allowance (very) it actually looks way cooler than i expected!

ok here is the second part of the post. i was originally going to do two separate posts because i didn't think i'd get around to sewing the backing on today but i did so i figured i'd just edit this post instead of making two in one day

 i had a big piece of fleece fabric for the backing, and i hate measuring, so i decided just to pin my t-shirts on and cut off the excess after they were all swered.

 fleece + shirts--right sides together

 pinned

i sewed all the way around, leaving one side of one panel open so that i could flip the quilt right-side-out

 here's the bit i left open

 tucking the ends in and sewing over for a clean finish

 finished! the tutorial recommends anchoring the t-shirt side to the fleece by sewing the corners of each square, but i didn't do that. i might in the future if i think it'll be a problem if i don't do that, but for now i'm leaving it alone.

cross stitch: basic shit

i craft in phases.

like, i get really into one thing and do that almost exclusively for a while and then i find something else that's really interesting and turn my attention to that and sometimes forget about the first thing forever.

right now the thing is cross stitch.

it's really a lot easier than i expected it to be, although it's time consuming--it definitely helps to pass the time while marathoning on netflix, but it can be pretty slow going. this one took me about three episodes of buffy along with this week's elementary.

it's pretty simple, though, and i mostly got started because i had everything on hand (besides the aida cloth) already so it was pretty easy for me to adopt.

you need:

-embroidery floss (DMC seems to be the preferred brand, and you can pick out colours very specifically with that, but i've just been using a jumbo-pack of embroidery floss i had on hand because of a bracelet-making phase)

-aida cloth (i'm using 14 count)

-needle (i'm using embroidery needles because, again, that's what i already had, but there are special cross stitch needles out there)

important: most embroidery floss comes in skeins with six strands. you have to actually pull the strands apart in order to stitch properly, otherwise the design will be chunky and unwieldy. the standard is two strands--so cut a length of floss, then pull two strands out to sew with and set the other four aside for when you need to rethread.

 to start a stitch, push the needle through one of the holes in the cloth and pull the thread most of the way through to the right side of the fabric.

 leaving a little tail of floss on the other side, bring the needle back through the hole that is diagonal to your initial stitch, and pull it through.

 i know it's sort of hard to tell what's happening in this picture, but the next step is to bring the needle back to the right side of the cloth using one of the two holes bordering the square that you're working on that you haven't stitched through yet with this cross. if you don't pull the thread all the way through, there will be a loop on the back side of the cloth. pull the end through the loop to secure it, then pull the stitch tight.

 cut off the extra because if you don't it will poke through on another stitch and fuck your whole day up

 ok that's a cross stitch now what??!

when you run out of thread or need to switch colours, just bring your threaded needle to the wrong side of the fabric and slip it under some of the stitches you've already made on the back of the piece. pull it through and cut it short to secure it. 

 when you're making a long row of stitches that are all the same colour, or filling in a large area, it's fastest to stitch the whole row at once but only one way. 

 then, you can come back around to complete the stitches, going in the opposite direction.

 theoretically, all of your stitches should be going in the same direction so the piece will look its nicest. i'm not quite there yet, it's too much of a headache for me to remember which stitches are over and which are under.

 because i wasn't working off a preexisting pattern, i did my longer word first so that i could properly center the smaller word. 

and here is the finished piece! the heart was a last-minute decision because i felt there was too much white space.

i'm not 100 percent satisfied with this, because i'm still experimenting with how letters fit together and how they look. the s-es kind of look like a's to me, and i think some of my connections between letters are too short (and some are too long).

practice makes perfect or whatever i guess

i made this one yesterday, although using cross stitch plastic instead of aida cloth. i'm not sure what i'm gonna do with it, but it was my first attempt at backstitching (the littler letters on the top and bottom) and i'm happy that i think i've gotten the hang of it~

decoden! mostly an experiment

i had to touch up the caulk on some tiles in my bathroom and decided to attempt some decoden with the leftover caulk!

i was inspired by crafty chica's decoden tutorial which is sort of already a spin on actual decoden which is a japanese thing used to decorate phone cases & such that often ends up looking a bit frou-frou (google search it if you don't know what i'm talking about, it's pretty hardcore).

anyway here are the materials i used:

-thing to decorate (obvious). i used a lil hand mirror sephora gave me in thanks for consistently spending way too much money at sephora

-DAP alex plus silicone caulk (it comes in clear also which would probably work too? i used white)

-a whole bunch of charms or cabochons or, yknow, whatever

-glitter

 put the thing on the thing

congrats u did it 

this is maybe not the most professional way to do things but i just smooshed it around with my finger until it was kinda even. it does really look like frosting. don't eat it  

 im just gonna take a moment here to apologize for how much my pictures suck. i need to get a new lens for my SLR so i'm stuck using my iphone right now, and the lighting in my apartment is TERRIBLE. i use those eco friendly shit bulbs which is like good for the environment but bad for taking pictures and also for my eyeballs

 ok heres a nice evenish relatively thick layer of stuff

 it has to be thick enough to actually put things into it. like press them in a little bit. arrange them how you like. squish em in. yes

 ok this is satisfactory

i am wearing sweatpants that say trick or treat because everything in my life is halloween

 i used this glitter. it's black licorice by martha stewart crafts. it's really really pretty but kind of expensive, i wouldn't have bought it if i didn't have a gift card. whatever u got

put some glitter on it. while the dap is still wet, obviously 

ok now shake the excess glitter off and immediately regret that you did this on a paper towel and not a piece of newspaper or something that would more readily allow you to funnel the extra glitter back into the thing. try to do it anyway. make a mess 

 ok here is how it looks now. let it dry. 

~time travel~

 now it's dry. use a softish brush to sweep the extra glitter off

 now it looks like this

cool