I'm not good at crocheting. I decided I wanted to learn about 7 or 8 years ago. And so Sarah, from Undiscovered Virtues, showed me how. It was really funny. She was about 13 years old at the time. (By the way, she was quite the hysterical kid). She would tell me, "put this thingy here, and then put this thingy here, and then make it look like this." It was great. I still figured out how to crochet though. But I haven't worked at it very much over the last several years. This is why I'm not good at it.
I started crocheting a scarf, with the idea in mind that I would give it as a Christmas gift. It took me several hours to remember how to crochet, and I kept starting a couple of rows, and then unraveling them because they didn't look right. Finally I consulted YouTube and realized I was missing a couple of stitches. Ha! After that things got better. When I was about half way through the scarf, I realized that my stitches kept getting tighter and tighter. No matter how much I tried to keep things loose, I couldn't seem to make the rest of the stitches look as loose as the ones in the beginning.
So this is how my scarf ended up. Notice the bottom layer of the scarf? See how one end is larger than the other. Yeah. Oops. Apparently it's been quite a while since I last crocheted...about 4 or 5 years.
Although this is not terribly noticeable, I decided not to use this as a Christmas gift and keep it for myself. The looser end really bugged me, but I was definitely not willing to unravel the whole thing and start again. Then I got an idea - what if I cinched up certain parts of the scarf? So this is what I did.
It was a pretty easy fix. I simply threaded a large plastic needle with matching yarn, tied the opposite end of the yarn onto and edge of the scarf, and wove the threaded yarn straight across to the other end, and tied off the yarn. Simple. Then I repeated it three more times in various areas of the scarf to make it look uniform throughout.
Not so bad, right??? Well...I think so. I'm thinking I should cinch it a couple more places, and maybe a little tighter? Just a thought.
So the next time one of your projects doesn't turn out quite right, get creative and see what you can do to recover it! :)
My goal for this Christmas season is to make as many gifts for others as possible instead of buying them. I have been making a mental list of the gifts I want to give my family members for a couple of months. A couple of days ago, I realized that Christmas is next month! So I need to get started on all my fun DIY Christmas gifts. I'm not sure if I will be displaying all my gifts, since several of my family members read my blog. I don't want to ruin the surprise. (Maybe I'll post some after Christmas...we'll see).
I made my niece a scrap fabric tutu for Christmas. I've seen a couple of them on Pinterest, but I ended up doing my the tutu my own way. I wanted to make a tutu that had an adjustable waist band, and I didn't want to sew it. (I don't like digging through the back of my closet for my sewing machine and then hauling it downstairs.) So here's my version on the No-Sew Scrap Fabric Tutu.
All I used was:
Scissors
A strip of elastic long enough to wrap around my niece's waist
A bunch of scrap fabric - cut into strips about 1.5 inches thick and anywhere between 17 to 22 inches long. I varied up the length of the fabric, just to add a little more depth to the tutu.
Making this tutu was unbelievably easy. First tie the elastic into a loop according to the width of the waist is. Then using a cow hitch knot, secured each fabric strip around the elastic. (Are you impressed that I knew that it was a Cow Hitch Knot? You should be. Ok not really. I googled it just before I typed it. Ha ha.) Don't know how to do that knot? Look below.
Fold the fabric strip in half and pull the middle section of the strip under the elastic. Pull the middle section, which now looks like a loop, above the elastic.
Then pull the end of the fabric strip through the loop and tighten. Repeat this with each of your strips all the way around the elastic until you have a full tutu. I would recommend putting your elastic around a coffee canister or something around that size to keep the elastic tight as you tie on the fabric.
It should end up looking similar to this.
Once you have knotted your fabric all the way around the elastic, push the fabric away from the knotted end of the elastic,
and hide the knot by tying a cow hitch knot around the elastic knot. And that's it! Easy, right? And since I only tied the elastic with a knot, I can easily loosen or tighten according to my niece's waist size.
Total cost: absolutely free!!! I used scraps from my collection, and I already had elastic.
Total
time: about 2 hours. I measured the strips out and cut them with
scissors, but if you have a rotary cutter, it would go a lot faster.
I cannot wait to give this to my niece! Too bad that I don't have a
little girl to model this for me. So for now, you get to look at it on a
hanger. ;)
Liked the post? Let me notify you of new posts. Don't worry, I hate SPAM and won't abuse your email address. :)
