Handy Dandy Handycrafty Thread

make toe socks schazy

make non-toe socks

make non-foot socks

Sock all the punsters

make non-foot socks

Given the existence of gloves, I recommend whichever of hand-socks or hand-shoes do not currently exist

The old craft thread was launched into the Superether so I'm reviving this'n instead because I'm sewing! Again.



Heracross here is made from midnight blue fabric which might be minky; I've never actually handled minky fabric before so I wouldn't know. It's slightly reflective, got a very short pile (<1mm), and I got a 1.5m x ~32cm piece for less than two bucks out of a bargain bin.

His antennae and arms are threaded with Gauge 20 wire, which is soft enough to bend with my fingers but likely to put up with a fair bit of posing.

The horn and facial mask are composed of three pieces - two big bits and a butterfly-shaped piece where they split apart at the top for his horn.

The whole thing's been a series of improvisations, but he's composed of simple shapes (U-shaped pocket for the lower body, hemisphere for the top, everything else has been tubes or identical shapes sewn back-to-back), plus the fabric is very forgiving and I've got no shortage of it so I've been freer to test and tweak the pattern as I go, for instance his lower arms (first run on the left, final version on the right).

He's distinctly wonky; the embroidery on his thorax isn't perfectly centered and his faceplate suffers for my not being ambidextrous. The overall effect makes him look like he's leaning in from the right, which is kind of cute in its own way maybe.

All I've got left is to find white polymer clay, make him little polymer clay claws, then finish his hands, right leg, and feet.

Other stuff I want to sew plush versions of at some point:

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Spoiler-A handful of confetti-like Joltik
-Volcarona
-Scolipede (need fabric)
-Pinsir (need fabric)
-Hydreigon
-Braviary
-Armaldo
-Tropius
-Venomoth
-Garbodor
-Baby Kangaskhan, eventually make a parent one with a pocket for it to fit in
-Spinarak
-Probably others that'll get retroactively edited in

If other people want to talk about or show off their sewing/crocheting/knitting/embroidery projects, I'd love to see you share them or discuss techniques!

Aspirations to godhood are all well and good, Schaz, but you can't just usurp the King of Olympus by taking his favorite pasttime

Important lesson learnt from this evening's sewing: Sewing small shit is a pain in the ass.

I'd been on the hunt for some subtly-patterned crepe fabric that'd be the right colour for a Joltik or twelve, and picked this one up when I went off on a fruitless search for polymer clay at the haberdasher's.

It's mostly trial and error (plus a bit of middle school geometry) to figure out what flat shapes make what round shapes when you sew them together. My main limiting factor was the beads I had on-hand for its eyes, so I drew those on a piece of paper and got a feel for how big the head would be, and consequently, the body. I could ramble about this for a while if it wasn't 4am but I need some record of how I did this for later, so. It's two rectangles, sewn partway down the long sides to make a tube with flappy bits. My original plan was this tube would be the body, with the flaps contorted and topstitched to make an approximation of this:



The resultant little pillow ended up looking like Joltik's face, with tiny forelegs underneath. The original plan was sew the ass-end of the tube shut, make a third panel with a bit of a curve to it that could be the front of Joltik's head, and sew that onto the body (and stick legs on the whole arrangement eventually).

This worked out smaller, ergo, better. I used superglue for the eyes though because I was pretty over this whole being conscious thing an hour ago. The result's sloppy, especially at the amended ass where I didn't have enough flap fabric to work with, but I can see where I messed up and do a better job on the second lightmite.



Also to add to the shopping list: bead needle, because I broke a bead trying to fit it over my thinnest needle, then to attach it to the face had to go needle, thread the bead by hand, thread back on needle, sew underneath to start point, put needle somewhere you won't forget it, repeat.

Ok good it's only been 5 months, this is a better pace than I'd honestly been expecting

This weekend, a friend and I took a three hour drive to stay with a friend in Hyuga. Said friend doesn't have a car so hitting shops of mutual interest (second-hand stores, dollar stores, and a craft supplies shop) made for a fun afternoon of fruitlessly insisting to ourselves that our fabric stashes did not need further additions.

On the bright side, more fabric meant nailing down a Craft Night at some point this week with friend, meaning I will have to make my room presentable within the week.

I bought a cute basket to stash all my nicer paperthings in, so emptied out the old one aaand...



(Sue me for the image, I started snapchatting it for Dini, who procured me the paper which ended up being the cover)
Having literally just sorted and labelled my boxes of craft supplies, I whipped out the toughest string I had (that green stuff), some PVA, and a few bits of corrugated cardboard, and got to work. I cut two bits of cardboard out, each with a spine-width bit scored up one side. The spine-piece of one was the same height as the stack of paper, the other was as big as that plus the width of the cardboard. I did a bunch of loose double-knots up the side, then stabbed strategic holes in the scored corner of the "inner" spine-card and lashed the bundled-up paper to at least one bit of cardboard. I then duct-taped the second board to the one with the pages tied in, first on the outside then tidily as I could manage on the top and bottom.



Like I said, Dini send me some cool paper with game birds on it, which I'd been dawdling about finding a use for. I cut it roughly enough to size, slathered the outsides of the book in PVA, then swaddled it in shiny pheasant-paper.


Some pleasant pheasants. Somehow, it didn't actually occur to me to bind it in this stuff until after I'd started putting the book together. I guess this is why people who actually make shit keep craft stashes????

I vaguely recalled from reading about bookbinding somewhere that after you fold the outer binding in, you paste a plate(?) on the inside covers, to make it all tidy. Two laps of the kotatsu later, I found a pile of pages with photos of animals, which somehow worked out the perfect size.

Results!

Huh. It never occurred to me that bookmaking could be that simple. That is a cool book schaz and thank you for reminding me as to how to make them

Bookbinding is rly easy (several method of it, even) and pretty fun! I make my own sketchbooks sometimes. :>

Big thumbs up @ that book and that birb paper

Very approve of use of birb paper

I made a cushion cover, with no cutting required!



I'd stripped the cushion of the old, extremely worn out cover somewhere in the region of a couple months ago, and finally went to toss the fabric in the bin today. I figured I'd strip off the zip to reuse it, started fossicking through my fabric stash to see if I had anything that'd fit the bill size-wise, and now I have a wicked rad pink cushion with bear-bearing scooters.

The most annoying part about this was the sewing, which I had to do by hand and do relatively small stitches because this thing'll probably take a lot of punishment. Also because I was pushing it size-wise and the seam allowances on the top and bottom of this photo are on the narrow side. I was a lazy piece of shit and the right edge is just the roughly 2x1 fabric folded against itself.

The white, still-open edge on the left was where the zip got attached. It's the selvage edge of the fabric, so it won't fray and acted as a good sturdy edge to sew the zip on.

E: I'm going to post my full craft collection at some point. Probably after lunch, and probably in a separate Hawkspace thread so we can make a game of it???

Look what I done did



I started on a crochet galvantuala, big enough to have wires in its palps, back in university or some shit. After repeated stops and starts at getting going on it again (mostly because I'd been searching fruitlessly for eyelash yarn in the right shade of blue), I bought some thread yesterday and took it (along with a 1.5mm hook and some scissors) to my friend's cafe to see where things led me.

I made a dark blue disc for the stomach about four rows deep before deciding "fuck this, this is a big enough body." I whipped up a head and top half of the body by 8pm, and (having done some cursory googling and finding the godsend known as a loop crochet stitch) made a leg with loop crochet on the base.

That looked like a heavily overused, de-bristled paintbrush head, but the technique worked a lot better for the butt (after a couple of misfires where the butt-fluff kept pointing down or across instead of up). I remade the legs, this time with single crochet in the outer loops only to give them the right amount of poof. I got two legs and the face done before calling it a night.

This mornternoon, I made some palps, the other two legs, and attached it all in some semblance of a tiny spider. Other than a spot of glue at the base of the palps to make them pointy, plus regular thread two sew on the buttons, this entire thing is held together and is made of a shit-ton of embroidery thread. Shazam!

beep beep

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The highest praise <3

While we were in Amsterdam with Sanzh we saw some really cute realistic needle felted critters (lots of birds, including a lifesize duck) but the artist didn't allow photos :c

I made a bug!



Volcarona is about 10cm tall in profile, and is made from fake fur (body), needle felted wool roving (wings, head, horns, feet, abdomen) wire in the wings, and two star-shaped acrylic beads for eyes.



The wings, ironically, were the one thing I didn't wing it. I made paper templates, very carefully divided up my red wool, and did my best to keep everything symmetrical. I'd been searching fruitlessly for the perfect print fabric from which to make the wings, but tbh needle felting was the best medium for those flaming wings. I can get away with a bit more fuzziness, too.

The wires were such a pain and a half-assed job to make it all fit neatly in the back. The wings are moderately adjustable and sturdy though so there's that.


It doesn't balance on just its butt, but the bottom wings can stabilize it ok-ish. It also rests very nicely in the crook of Scolipede's back as seen here

Stamps

more stamps

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Yes! Remind me to post those sooner rather than later.



It's gonna be a corgraduation gift for my sister, she's a month or so away from doing the whole cape-and-hat shindig. Which is kind of weird to think about, seeing as I've been out of the country for most of the duration she's been studying.

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oh shit, no, they're on a printout, the piece of paper I had closest to hand