Wheel Love

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Happy Valentine's Day world. Nope, still not a big fan, but I love all of my readers and followers, so gush, gush, kiss, kiss.

Now that that's out of the way...

Last year I made it a resolution to learn how to spin. I spent part of my very short summer vacation trying to learn just how to do that. All I had was a spindle from Craftsy and another I'd obtained from somewhere else I can't quite remember. Anywho...it didn't work out too well. I did spin some fiber, but the spindle was frustrating to me because of the back spin, the constant starting and stopping, the multiple coordination skills involved... Basically, I just decided it wasn't for me! 

So I went on about my way, feeling that I had at least tried something new. But there was an empty place in my heart. A place that could only be filled with wool. Wool spun into yarn. And I wanted to do this special spinning using a traditional wheel. Which, in the world of wheel spinning, is called a Saxony. There are many different styles available; everything from modern electric spinners and pvc wheels, to more traditional castle and Norwegian styles. They all pretty much do the same thing, but it depends on what you're willing to learn and what you find attractive. 

I love the look of an old-style wheel. Rumplestiltskin always fascinated me (straw to gold? yes, please) and Sleeping Beauty is my all-time favorite Disney princess. Yes, I have some femininity in there somewhere. I even have a daughter named Aurora, though my intention was not to name her directly after the princess, it was just a happy coincidence. So I searched long and hard for my perfect match. Bearing in mind I only had around $450 to spend. I finally found her. 

I chose a Kromski Interlude for many reasons. 

A. She was priced just right at sale price of $460. These generally run around $529.00. I picked mine up at the Woolery on sale, so keep your eyes open. You can still pick up the smaller "Prelude" for about $399 unfinished at KnitPicks.com. 

B. She was beautiful. I would have to stain her, since the sale price was only reasonable on the unfinished style, but I could pick any color I wanted and bulk up my wood staining skills. (no, it wasn't fun. yes, I would do it again.) She was also in the traditional Saxony style I wanted without the huge price tag. 

C. The Interlude is a good beginner wheel. Easy to learn, single treadle, single drive, good size bobbins, and a good low to high ratio with expansions available for faster flyers. 

D. It's size means that I can travel with it fairly reasonably. The wheel comes off easily and remounts just as quickly. So I'm looking for that perfect, secluded place where I can meditate and spin. 

So after choosing my wheel, I was so pleasantly pleased with the customer service from the Woolery, their super-fast shipping, and excellent interactions that I have to put a little plug in here for them. They're on my list of go-to places for future shopping, since they carry a lot of accessories and wool.
It took me 2 days to stain it after I got it.

Out of the Box and ready for staining

 I chose a light pecan to go with the floor in my craft room.

Partially stained. 

After staining it, I used a lot of Yosemite Sam cussing, a video on YouTube, and the instruction manual to put it together in about 3 hours. I could do it in probably 20 minutes now, but I had NO IDEA what all the pieces were and where they went, so it was difficult to say the least! If I had to do it all over again, I would do a "dry run" on assembly, so I at least understood where to put everything and what portions should NOT be stained before they are put together. That was one of my downfalls, because I had to sand off some of the stain. The pieces are perfectly fit and even a 2 layer stain causes problems.

finished and put together

I also purchased a video on Craftsy called *Foundations of Spinning. It was fantastic and helped me learn not only how to spin, but about my spinning wheel.

The results of my first roving hank spun

 I'm about half way through it right now and have spun 2 1/4 bobbins from some roving I had on hand. Yes, you can find 100s of free videos online and countless books, but I always find that my Craftsy videos give me the most information and help me learn how to do something right! Plus, there's no searching around for it, it's just right there when I sign in. 

3 bobbins full 

First time the roving went ON the bobbin

The yarn isn't pretty and perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's taken me about an hour a day over the course of a week to get to this point. Not too bad, really. I was getting much better by the end of the third bobbin and spinning more consistently. Now I get to learn to ply!

If you really want to do something, and your heart desires it all of the time, you CAN do it. It takes practice, dedication, and persistence, but that's all in your desire to learn it. Anything you really want to do, and find worth doing, you can learn. 

Collecting the Shabbiness

Shabby chic is in full blown collection mode. I have scoured Pinterest, made new boards, collected paint samples, planned so many new things to do with the furniture and additions to make, and I went thrift store shopping. Yes, I know, it was very dangerous. But I made it out with less than $50 spent and a really great collection of new projects.

Probably the one I am most happy with and love is the little bunny doll. I don't think she's very old or even vintage, although she was covered with a good bit of dust. But everything from her flowery dress with lace collar, to raffia ears and bows, to her little wooden body and missing basket made me fall in love with her. And for $1.99, how could I say no? She will become a permanent fixture in the sewing room. 

My new bunny

wire cage

My other finds include what I believe to be a plate cover that will become a hanging lampshade, a little wire and stick birdcage that will be filled with mosses and fabric roses, a clock with a Celtic knot (that will probably stay just the way it is, with new hands), a basket for the bathroom, 3 little buckets I'm hoping to make into light shades for the other bathroom, and a hat rack. 

rose lights! For the bedroom

soon to be lampshade with butterfly, basket, and the buckets for lampshades. 

The Celtic Knot Clock. (Please forgive the messiness of my crafting table!)

I love the hat rack almost as much as the bunny. Almost. I plan to paint it and distress it first. Then it will become a plant hanger for the craft room. I love my greenery. 

Hat rack destined to be a plant hanger

Three Months?

Yes, it has been three months since I was able to post on my beloved blog! Honestly, most people haven't even noticed or cared, but it is something that grates on my nerves in a big way. I started out great this year and kept it going for about 6 months. That's longer than most New Year's Resolutions.

But now we're approaching the end of the year. And the beginning of a new one. Christmas is always busy for me, but especially since going back to work and trying to finish up my final quilt. Yes, I said that too. My final quilt.

I was so excited to get it finished and out of the way! I could finally say, "I am done," and not have another bag full of t-shirts waiting for me to cut, starch, cut again, plan, sew, sash, quilt, and bind. No more worries about what the final product will look like, if I messed something up, if I couldn't find 100 t-shirts into a quilt designed for 20, and time for other pursuits. I can knit and crochet, craft and bake, clean house, shower, exercise, and live without guilt about what I SHOULD be doing in the sewing room.

And I'm also on to new pursuits. I'm hoping to have some exciting information to share in the next few months. One thing that has changed drastically since September is that I am now home educating 3 of my 5 children. This changed a lot of things for me, and one of those is that I will be returning to full time mom and business owner. I'm eager to return to what I do best: teaching. So after the first week in January my life will once again turn course. It's exciting, and a bit scary, and a little sad. I'll miss the munchkins at the art center. Kids really have a way of getting in and burying themselves in my heart. I'll go back to visit, but I'll also have more time for my own children, which always take precedence.

I also have another blog. This one will go along with the home education AND art. I have a passion for creating, as you may or may not be able to tell. This blog helps me to plan and show what we can do to integrate art and education. It is www.littlelyonshomeschool.com. I hope you'll take a look at it! Even if not for a homeschool, it is still going to be filled with crafty ideas and some art journal pages!

So what are the plans for Eclectic Technique? I'm going to continue with what I started at the beginning of the year. I will focus on completing and continuing with featured days. Maybe not one every day as in the beginning, but at least 3 a week.

What were your favorites? What did you like best? To get an idea, please use the page tabs up top and tell me what you would like to see in the future or continued from the past.

I will also be designing my own patterns and hoping to do something even more exciting. I can't reveal it yet until all is finalized, but once it is, I'll let you know!

Craftsy's Big Fall Course Sale

It's that time again! The time for hot cocoa, crisp and cool mornings, walks along paths littered with colored leaves, and knitting. If you're lucky enough to live in one of the cooler climates, you can knit by the fireside or bundled up in a blanket. Or maybe you like to sew, decorate cakes, crochet, and a variety of other crafts to keep you occupied on those chilly fall and winter days. If not, but you've always thought you might like to learn, now is the time!

Craftsy's BIG Fall Course Sale! (sponsored post) Have you heard Craftsy's BIG Fall Course Sale is happening now? Learn from the world's best instructors in the comfort of your home, when you shop up to 50% off ALL online classes! Once you enroll you can watch your classes anytime, anywhere, forever. Hurry, offer expires September 22, 2014 at 11:59 PM MT. Shop Craftsy's BIG Fall Course Sale and save.

You can never go wrong with a Craftsy class. Great for watching on those days you just want to be creative, or any time you feel the need for more crafting. Get inspired! 

Saturday Show and Sell 13

An InLinkz Link-up

Crafty Saturday Show and Sell #12

An InLinkz Link-up

Crafty Saturday Show and Sell #11

Send in those links and let the world know just how crafty you are!

An InLinkz Link-up

Crafty Monday: Make a Sewing Basket

In our Sewing Thursday series we're making pockets from samplers intended for a sewing basket. But what if you don't have a sewing basket or something nice to hang your pockets from?

Let's make one!

To make your sewing basket you will need:

Materials: 

1. Popsicle sticks (about 400 or so. Just get a big box of them. You'll use them again.)
2. School Glue (I used the Glue All type)
3. A wooden block or knob for the top (you can find these in the wood section of your craft store or you can get really inventive and use other items. Just make sure you can glue it to your box.)
4. A large piece of paper

Crafting Time: Approximately 3-4 hours

I wish I could take 100% credit for this idea, but I can't. I got it from the Big A** Book of Crafts by Mark Montano. I did, however, make it and will suggest some changes varying from his instructions, as they were slightly confusing and a little vague. I haven't re-made the basket yet because my kids discovered my sticks and glue and went to town, but I have marked these suggestions in red if you'd like to try them and see if they will work. 

To begin working your basket, make an octagon from your paper with 5.5" outside edges. There were instructions in the book on how to do this by folding a piece of craft or newspaper, but they were confusing to me. I'm not a paper crafter, so it was hard to figure out and I ended up cutting the wrong side or something. Anyway, you can see where I taped it back together. If I'd followed THESE INSTRUCTIONS I may have had more success. 

So if you successfully wrangled your base out of paper, it's time to lay out the sticks. Start by laying four sticks on opposite sides. 

first layer, make sure your angle are even

Then lay four more sticks on the remaining sides, overlapping the ends. Place a dab of glue on the ends of the sticks to attach them once you think they're fairly even. *Start with the sticks facing in along the fold lines of the octagon so that they meet in the middle, then lay your sticks around the edges. The book has you do this at the end, building your bottom after the basket is made. I think by laying them first, you'll have a better chance at getting them even. 

Suggested layout

Now start building up your layers by gluing the sticks on opposing sides. Kind of like building a log cabin where they are layered in a criss-cross manner. 

building up the layers

This will take you a while. I suggest turning on a good movie or audio book and getting into a rhythm. Work until your basket measures the height you want it. For our pockets, we'll need about 7-8". However, I only made mine about 5" tall for the demonstration.

When you've reached the height you want it, start layering your sticks so that they are offset by about 1/8" and moving toward the inside. As you glue these next layers, your sticks will start to have longer ends and you'll need to move your glue areas in a bit. This creates a nice structural effect on the basket and makes the top look like a very nicely carved piece of wood. It also creates a nice lip to hang things from. *You could get even more creative here and make your sticks look like the top of a vase, moving them first in, then back out. 

Start offsetting the sticks toward the inside

Another view of the offset toward the inside

Now to build your lid. Without gluing it down, add a layer of sticks to your last layer. Glue another layer of four sticks to this layer and start building up, continuing to offset your sticks inward and making the top smaller. *Put a piece of paper, a pencil , or some other object between the layers of the main basket and the lid once they have dried slightly so that you can see where it begins and ends. 

Work your lid until you have an area small enough to lay your sticks across it in a straight line. I found that with the 1/8" offset, this took about 4 more layers than suggested in the book. Remove the top from the basket and finish on another piece of paper or newspaper.

*Lay your sticks so that you have a square. 

*Lay sticks on top of each other to even out the layers and create an area where the ends of the sticks will overlap the edges and have something to grab onto.  

Make a layer straight across the top,closing up the hole. 

To finish the top, glue the wooden block or your chosen handle to the top and allow it to dry. 

To make the bottom as described in the book, lay sticks along the folded edges of your paper and glue to the empty area under the second layer of the base. If your main basket is dry enough and you're feeling adventurous, you can flip it over and go without the paper.

Lay the sticks from one side all the way across to the other side. Fill in the opposing sides laying sticks in the opposite direction. Add a layer of sticks from two of the remaining sides going across the first layer and filling in the empty triangles, then fill in the remaining two sides as you did previously. 

I do suggest laying these first though, as described above. I actually think it would make more sense to lay out the bottom of the basket first, layering the cross members along the seam lines, then laying sticks in one vertical and horizontal layer, then repeating in the opposing directions so that you have a base to work from. I think that making the square would allow for more precision in making sure that the edges and angles were even. 

See how there were gaps between the sticks with this method? :( 

I had to make accommodations for the gaps by layering a couple of the sticks off center. 

Also added additional sticks for the cross members so I had something to attach the sticks to

And now you have a sewing basket! If you follow my suggestions or have a better way of doing this, please comment below or upload some pictures to our Flikr group. You could also paint it. I like the wooden/wicket look of the basket, but I may paint it white. Show me your baskets!

Crafty Monday: Art Room Organizers

Good Monday morning! I try to stay cheerful about Mondays. They get a bad rap most of the time. But I always believe that without Mondays, we would not have the rest of the week to look forward to! Since we do have a Monday, and we show you some pretty cool crafty stuff on Mondays, let's say happy Monday and start on our Crafty Monday project.

Collaged Storage Box 

Along with trying to expand a tiny closet in our bedroom, we're also trying to refurbish a sunroom at the front of the house that is the kids' playroom. They have toys everywhere in there, and I still haven't come up with good storage solutions for all of the toys. It is also exposed to everything because we have giant windows (non-insulated mind you. What WERE they thinking?) and it faces the front of the house. While the geography of the sunroom is completely wrong (faces North with a west and east sidelong glance, should face south) there are a few things we can do with it. Mainly, I've been wanting to change it into an art room capable of doing double duty as a playroom. Art and play go together in my mind!

Right now my kids don't have a centralized place to express their creativity. We use the dining room table, the coffee table, floors, and whatever other space they can find. The same with the art supplies. They're in various places around the house and to actually do a project we have to hunt things down. So I've been organizing some thoughts on a Pinterest board for this project and came across one the other day that was simple, fun, and with a few tweaks could prove awesome.

Follow Freckle Dots (Tammy Lyons)'s board Building a craft room on Pinterest.

Of course, we're going to put up some curtains in this room, which I'll probably hand paint because I'm totally hooked and hubby bought me paints and brushes for Valentine's Day. But we also need storage in there.



This simple organizer was made using paper towel tubes and a shoe box. Her shoe box was very pretty on its own, but I didn't actually have a shoe box available. I had a juice drink box. I also didn't have very many paper towel or t.p. rolls because my husband found my stash and they hit the trash bin. (Bad husband. Bad.) Still, we were having an "ice day" here in the south, the power was out, and the kids were bouncing off the walls.

Supplies

I gathered up the box that I had and scrounged around for containers. I'm always saving back plastic containers of some sort. I also grabbed the Mod Podge, some brushes, old magazines, scrapbook paper, an old calendar, fabric scraps and the kids.

Scrap Supplies

I had to make my box work a little better for our purposes. It had a rather large hole in the bottom of it where the flaps came together. To "fix" it all I did was cut off the top flaps with a box cutter and fill in the hole with one of the flaps. I hot glued it down and I had a sealed bottom.

box

flaps cut off

flap that fit

glued that sucker in there

Scrapbook paper went on first

More collage

And more

And more

Collaged container with fabric, magazine pictures, etc. 

Collaged container

Beginnings of the organizer! 

We spent the afternoon cutting, pasting, collaging, and having a great time. In the end, we had a very unique pen/pencil/marking utensil organizer. We didn't do anything extravagant, but it was fun and we expanded on an idea that someone else had. You could decorate your box with all kinds of great things, even just plain fabric and paints. Hot glue or white glue could be used in place of Mod Podge. It's an awesome way to recycle and create a piece of art - for art. 

Crafty Monday: Time Management Fail

Right here should be a really awesome blog post about making a closet in a weekend. Yep, that's what I had planned. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. Things just didn't come together, I didn't have the right materials, and I spent my Saturday doing something else. Not that I would've done anything differently on my Saturday, but it was just one of those projects where I had an idea, thought it would work, but nothing. Nada. Zip.

I got one part of it done, but it took me most of the day on Sunday. By the time I wanted to finish it, Sunday was nearly over. We were also dealing with two sick children. I also run a charity similar to Warm Up America, but I try to keep it local. It's called Warm Up the Boro and if you're interested, please stop on by our Facebook page and check us out. I spent most of the morning handing out hats and scarves to those that didn't have any at our local soup kitchen. It was so much fun, and such a blessing. Little kids walking out with warm hats that they didn't have previously, and adults that wore theirs the entire time they were there. Even here in South Georgia it's been very cold and the wind chill has been killer. It took a year's effort and many donations to make it happen, but it did. If you follow anything about knitting, you probably saw the scarf on the statue last week? I think that should be up for "Best Possible Use of Yarn Bombing EVER!"

The post that should've been here, that isn't, should be by next Monday. I did put forth good effort. But, things happen I guess. And it gives me fuel for tomorrow's Knitting Tuesday post. :) 

Crafty Monday: Recycle Plastic Thread Spools

The Internet is full of functional and crafty reuses of vintage wooden thread spools. Let's admit, these things are cool. We certainly don't want to throw them away because they are vintage. And they don't make them anymore. Now we have plastic thread spools. But what do we do with them?

I hate throwing them away because they take up room in landfills and leave a horrible carbon footprint. To put it lightly, my 4x great grandchildren could come across a discarded thread spool in the remote future. Hopefully people are still sewing by then and they will know what it is. Or at least have some idea what it is. But it will be in near perfect condition without any signs of disintegration. Wow. Ok, now back to the post. 

So I need to put those things to good use NOW. I was on Pinterest the other day (surprise, surprise) and came across a post where someone was selling fabric covered vintage wooden spools. I thought, now why can't I make something like this with the plastic ones? And how would I do it? 

Answer: Decoupage. 

I really love decoupage. It's quick and always turns out great. Well, almost always. 

So here's what I did: 

Materials: 

scrap of fabric (hey! great way to use up scraps too!)

Mod Podge or something homemade

scissors

thread spool

foam brush or paint brush

Directions: 

1. Measure the inside distance of your spool. Mine was about 1 1/8 
   
2. Cut a piece of fabric the width of the spool
   
3. Wrap the fabric around the spool and trim so that it overlaps by about 1/2". You could also wrap a fabric tape around the middle making sure it overlaps and cut your fabric to that size. 
   
4. Using the foam brush, apply Mod Podge to the spool
   
5. Smooth your fabric over the top of the Mod Podge and pull it around. Apply a little more Mod Podge where the strip overlaps to secure it down. 
6. You can choose to let it dry or go ahead and cover the fabric with another layer of Mod Podge. I just did mine, because I'm not real patient. 
   
7. Let everything dry for a few hours. 
8. Go back, marvel at your new creation, and then use it as a decoration is your sewing room. Hang it from some jute cording or ribbon to make a banner. 
   
   
   

I only had the one to use, because sadly I have been throwing mine out. Now that I see their potential, I'm thinking of other uses for them. Like wrapping unused elastics around them and securing with a pin. Ribbon, binding, cording, piping, and so many other things that end up scattered around in piles or boxes could also be wrapped onto these. They make adorable decorations, too. As a quilter, I generally have many empty thread spools at the end of a quilt. You could also Krylon paint the spools to make them look more like wood or any color you want before adding the fabric. You could use scrapbook paper instead of fabric! The possibilities are unlimited. 

If you make something, would you please consider uploading it to our Flickr group? I'd love to see your creations, as I'm sure many others would too!