I Finally Got A Convertible

If you thought I was going to write up a whole post about a car, you've found the wrong blog and you should just move along.  Nothing here is going to excite you.

Now, for the sewing, fabrics and bags enthusiasts, have I got something for you!  This is the Convertible Totepack from Sewfisticated Craft Designs .   I needed something bigger than what I've been using because inevitably, I always want to carry more in my school bag than space allows.  

I have been using the Nocturne Bag from Rivet Patterns for about a year but it's just too small.  It might have been easier to use if I had used a 2 way zipper on top but it wasn't suggested in the pattern.  

I have outstanding hindsight and it was too late to change the zipper once I realized my mistake. 

Every time I pack my bag, I think it's time to make a new one but I didn't have one in mind and I couldn't really visualize what I wanted.  I can't remember now how I stumbled onto this Totepack but the more I looked at it, the more I thought I could narrow down some of the choices and really get it exactly as I wanted it.  I just needed time and the right fabric.  

And to get just a little more irritated with the one I was using.

When it was my turn to do another strike for Waymaker Fabrics, I knew it was time to move.  When she released the new prints, the Enchanted Meadow looked perfect for what I wanted and I kept seeing it with denim.

Side note.  I have a strange love affair with denim fabrics and bags.  And pink.  There's always some kind of pink involved if I'm making a bag for myself. 

The Totepack has a lot of options and I found it hard to wrap my head around the many possibilities.  I also didn't understand the reason it was called a Convertible Totepack so I did what I do and started poking around instagram and the Sewfisticated Craft Designs website.  Things became much clearer as I started to see what people had done. 

Right away, I started to see what I did and did not want in my version.  And the convertible means that the straps/handles can be used over the shoulder, as a backpack or as a grab handle.

I knew I only wanted an over the shoulder bag and I'd never want to change that, so I didn't need the convertible part.  It meant I had to figure out something different for the straps, so I decided to sew them to the exterior where they'd be hidden by the outer pocket.

The exterior pocket that I chose was only on one side of all the examples I saw, but I thought it would be nice on both sides.  It's fairly snug to the bag and I'd never be keeping government secrets in there, so I didn't need any kind of closure for it.  I also wanted to be able to feature the strike fabric so these outer pockets were perfect for that.  

And look how well they cover the straps! It's not like straps are top secret and they need to be hidden, but I did kind of like the way they seemed to come out of nowhere on the original pattern, so I wanted to do something similar.  This way, they didn't become the major feature of the exterior of the bag.

I always like to use what's called "seatbelt" straps.  They are nice and firm and don't stretch and they last forever.  AND, they don't dig into my shoulder.  These are 1.5 inches wide.  The 3/4 or 1 inch wide straps tend to sit just inside my shoulder bone and dig in.

Along with my obsession with denim for bags, I also have never seen a strap I haven't needed to "enhance".  I topstitched everything in this bag with 2 strands of pink thread. When I added the straps, I couldn't stand how empty they looked.  Sometimes, I use the bag fabric to run a line of fabric down the center of the straps but I didn't have enough.  I finally decided just a line of topstitching down each side of the straps would be fine and I really like it!

Padded bags are kind of my thing.  I don't love a bag that's just one or two layers of canvas because once you put things like a laptop, ipad, book, etc, the bag starts to look flimsy.  I had used some padding in a previous bag so I used the same for this one.  I think it was about 1/4 thick foam.  I quilted it so it wouldn't end up bunching or sinking to the bottom of the bag over time.  What I didn't think about was the quilting taking up a little bit of the fabric so my pieces weren't quite the exact size they were supposed to be once I was done.  In the end, it really didn't matter but you probably should pay attention to that if you do the same.  

I quilted all of the denim pieces for the exterior and since there was an option for a built in laptop pocket, I quilted those pieces too.  I left the very front pieces unquilted and unpadded.  I didn't want the whole thing to feel like a Vera Bradley bag because to me, those are more like overnight bags.  I wanted this to still have some structure.

My quilting "pattern" was just lines on the diagonals in both directions.  I wanted to use my walking foot but it was all too thick, so I needed to use my jeans foot.  I was thrilled to discover that the metal guide that fits my walking foot also slid right into my jeans foot, so I had a guide.  Otherwise, I would have had to measure and draw all of the lines and that would have been tedious.  With the guide, I was able to just lay the guide on the previous line to get the right distance between the lines.

It took me a while to figure out the pattern and decide what I wanted to use and what would be of no use to me.  Once I had that figured out and I had my fabrics, the quilting really took a long time and slowed everything to a crawl.  I love the result but this is not a bag I'm in a hurry to make again and time soon.

My current bag had small pockets on the sides but they are too tight to do anything.  This bag held the promise of side pockets that I can actually fit things in and would be sure to use.  Some of the example pictures showed water bottles.  I should know that my water bottle is always bigger than what people usually use, so mine does not fit in here.  I'm going to adjust the elastics because right now, they are pretty snug.  A little looser would let me slide something into it easier and then keep them from falling out because the elastic snaps back into place.  I used bra elastic because I had it on hand but it probably is a little too strong for this purpose.

The inside of the bag can have more zippered and open pockets that I'd know what to do with.  I knew I needed to have at least one zippered pocket because that is the place where the entire bag is turned right side out.  Other than that, I didn't put any more zippered pockets because I don't use them.  

If I were still teaching, I think I'd have a lot more things to carry in my bag and I'd use more pockets than I do now.  What I needed from this bag is the laptop sleeve and just a couple of pockets.  I measured the laptop sleeve and my own laptop but I was skeptical the entire time that it would really fit.  I was so pleased when it fit and fit well!  This is the first bag I've seen that has the laptop sleeve fit it lengthwise and I really like it.

I used to really dislike zippered bags but over time, I've learned to like them, especially if I have to be in the rain at all.  For this bag, I chose to use a pretty wide zipper because I find them to be durable and also easier to zip in a hurry.  I don't even know what the pattern suggested because I already had this zipper and I knew it would fit.

The zipper gusset is pretty cool and I thought I had a firm grasp of how it worked.  I use the same fabric on the inside and the outside and I knew which was which because the interior had the white edge from the margin.  Somehow in using the visuals and reading what to do, I misunderstood.  

As I flipped the entire bag through the zippered pouch (I'm STILL not sure how that worked and I had to do it twice!) I was so disappointed to see that it was upside down.  In  making the gusset, there was trimming involved and I didn't have more of the Enchanted Meadow fabric.  If I had to take out the whole zipper gusset, it was going to be a real problem.

One of the things I love about the sewing community is the Facebook pages for all of the different designers.  I'm part of the Sewfisticated Craft Designs Facebook group, so I posted the video of my zipper issue and someone immediately replied that I needed to take the interior and exterior apart and then flip the zipper gusset over.

This required pushing the whole bag BACK through the zippered pocket.  If you've never "birthed" a bag or then "unbirthed" it, only to "rebirth" it a few minutes later, you really haven't lived. 

I was pleasantly surprised that just removing the interior and exterior from each other let me quickly access the zipper gusset.  I removed that and flipped it over and that was really all that was wrong!  It still took some mental gymnastics to visualize it all and trust the process but it worked!

The only thing I'm surprised about, is that the zipper opening doesn't feel as big as the actual bag.  This could be my choice of zipper getting in the way because the teeth are big.  

Every good bag should have a nice firm bottom panel so things don't make it sag.  I put two layers of some kind of pellon that lets you sew through but it's almost like plastic.  Again, I have no idea what it's called.  I was nervous that it wouldn't bend enough to allow the bag to be birthed but it came through just fine.  

I quilted that too and I even though no one really sees the bottom of a bag, I like how it ties everything together.

I like all of the options that came with this pattern.  It took several readings to understand how it all worked but once I realized how it was laid out, it made a lot of sense.  From what I could see in all of the pictures I found, people really like the straps being able to play different roles.  There was also an option to add hardware that would let me clip another bag, like a lunch tote, to the front.  If I bring my lunch anywhere, that's a whole bag of its own because of how much glassware I use for storage, so I didn't want to have that option with this bag.  I didn't add any of the recommended hardware.

This fabric is available on the Waymaker Fabrics website beginning March 6, 2025.  

Chocolate Salty Jos Cookies

Have you ever had a Salty Oats cookie?   I don't know if the just local to me.  They're made where I live but I get the feeling they sell in fine grocery stores everywhere.   They come in a few flavors.

They cost a fortune.  

I rarely will pay a fortune for desserts but one day, I stumbled upon a package and they sounded like something I'd like.  I had a moment of weakness.

And they were amazing.  The chocolate was my favorite.

I don't think I've ever reversed engineered a recipe, but a few years ago, I was determined to figure out how they were so good and make them at home.  I found a knock off recipe but it wasn't quite there.

Then, I discovered that it needed coconut.  And maybe more of some things and less of others.

A little tinkering and BEHOLD:

The Chocolate Salty Jos  Recipe:

2 eggs
3 T. cocoa powder
1 stick (1/2 c.) melted butter
1/3 c. coconut
1/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. flour
3 c. oats
1/2 t. baking soda
Up to a half cup of milk
Small amount of coarse salt
Chocolate chips are optional.  (I've stopped using them because I find they interfere with the flavor.)

Combine the eggs, cocoa powder and butter first because the cocoa powder needs to be brough under control immediately.  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Depending on how stiff they are, you might want to add some milk.  I don't want them to turn into granola, so I always add milk for a little moisture but it's never an exact amount.  You want enough that it will form a shape and hold it.

Scoop out a tennis ball size amount and press down to flatten it to about 1/2 inch.  Repeat until you've used all the dough.  Sprinkle a couple of grains of salt onto each cookie and gently press down.

Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes.   You want them to be firm to the touch but not burned, so check at 15 minutes and go from there.

They take a boat load of ingredients and don't make many, so treasure each one.  Around here, you'll get a beating if you eat more than 2 in one sitting.

A Letter From the Sewing Community To That A-hole Autocorrect

 Dear Autocorrect,

We hope this email finds you well (in fact, many of us hope this email finds you under the front wheel of the 513 bus).  Those of us who sew would like you to know some things and perhaps update your files.  

We sew.  While seeing is extremely important in the sewing process, we are not looking for seeing machines, we don’t seek advice from other seers, and we don’t generally sit around and see things together.  We sew.  We using sewing machines.  We look for other sewers (we know this is easily confused with sewer, which we never want to seek advice from but that’s above your pay grade).  We sew things together.

We use sergers.  Not servers.  While we indeed use servers to get the pdfs we need and to come and complain about you on Facebook, we do not surge or serve what we make.  We are serging on sergers.

We are not treading or retreading anything.  While those  in the carpet installation business do indeed tread and retread, we are over here threading and rethreading these machines.  Spoiler alert: we don’t enjoy threading our machines and tensions are usually high, so when you  “help”, you make us rage.

We raise and lower the presser foot.  While we usually put ourselves under a great deal of pressure, the foot is not a place where we exert any force.  

While there are exceptions, most of us are not over here making Muslims.  We make muslins so we know how the pattern looks and don’t walk around wearing trash.  We sometimes sew on muslin, too.  Not sure how anyone could sew a Muslim, but surely that’s a very small number of people who do not need your service.

While you’re looking for your latest software update, perhaps you could have a chat with the Emojis?  Maybe they could create some sewing machine emojis?  Not everything is done with that one blue spool of thread a a hand needle.  

Maybe some embroidery emojis too?  More quilt options?

And don’t give us one Emoji that’s a cheery old lady with grey hair in a bun sitting at a sewing machine.  All kinds of people sew.  

And sometimes, we are not cheery.

We know you take your job very seriously and you do not give up.  It’s your job, after all.  But when we correct you 8 times on the same word, in the same minute, and you still go back and “correct” us just as we publish, you might see why we think you’re an a-hole.

Thank you for your attention to this matter and we look forward to you getting your act together,

The sewing, crafting, costume making, leather crafting and anyone else who touches a sewing machine community.

Kitty Sleep Sacks

It's been high time for some new cat beds for over a year.  I made some last year that were fleece but I made the horrible mistake of using black fleece which is too much of a magnet for everything, not just cat hair.  I should have thrown them away after the first time they used them.

I also did a terrible job trying to make the covers removable and they were just a hot mess.

I saw this idea for fleece sleeping bags that they could crawl into and I thought that would be fun and easy.  And then I remembered these cats like to stomp down any kind of bed that I've ever bought where they were supposed to climb in and hide, so after I started my planning, I changed course.  My edited on the fly design makes a lot more sense for these bed stomping fools.  

In my mind, each bed would house a cat and they'd sleep the nights away all curled up in row but it's rare that all 3 of them sleep in them at the same time.  And nighttime is high time for shenanigans so they have no time for sleeping.  

They've never had designated beds.  They seem to allow each other to sleep in whichever bed they come upon.  This maximizes getting ALL of the hair all evenly over ALL of the beds.

The tutorial on the site gave me enough to get started and then I went a little nuts.

I had this saddle pad that was clean but stained and I've never liked it.  I wanted to get rid of it on Facebook but that never happened.  I realized I could get 2 of the 3 bases I'd need out of this saddle pad and then I could make something for the 3rd one.  That would take care of upcycling the saddle pad and I knew they liked it because they'd been taking turns sitting on it for weeks while I'd been deciding what to do with it.

Making the circle and then figuring out how much fleece was needed to go around it required math.  This is that math that never ceases to amaze me.  The kind where you apply a formula and it works EVERY TIME.  You'd think I would love math with its formulas because formulas are a certainty and I like certainties.  But I can never remember how the formulas work because I don't use them enough, so math remains elusive.

The tutorial already had the math done for me but I wanted a bigger circle, so I had to redo the math.  Get yourself a pen and paper because I'm going to share the simple formula: take the diameter of the circle (that's the line across the circle) and multiply it times pi (3.14).  Factor in how much of a seam you're going to add when you sew the piece together and there you have it.

When I bought the fleece that I thought would be a better color to hide some of the cat hair, there were two bolts that had the same print but neither had the 3 yards that I wanted.  I took them both to the cutting counter and said I would need 3 one yard pieces, however she wanted to make that happen.  

The next thing I knew, she had cut me 3 one yard pieces and I was shocked.

Many years ago, at that very cutting counter, I needed to buy a lot of batting for some pillow quilts I was making with students.  I told the woman I would like it cut in 2 yard increments and she very sternly told me she would not do that because that was making her do my work.  I said "if I walk in  a bunch of times and get 2 yards each time, you'd have to do that, right?  So why can't you do this for me here, where you have all this space and the ease of rolling it out?"  She refused and said they don't do that.

Apparently in 2025, they do! 

The original tutorial had you making these out of felt.  This made me think I should use felt between the two layers to help the sides stand up a little so they could sort of have walls around the bed.  I knew they'd crush them down, but at least they'd come back up if I fluffed them and not look like deflated doughnuts.  

I happened to have some felt left over from a costume I made a long time ago, so I got it out, did some more math and put it between the layers of fleece.  But... never turning down an option to make an easy project that much harder and more time consuming, I decided to quilt the layers together.  That way, the felt won't shift around and when they get washed, everything should stay where it belongs and hold up over time.

Once I quilted the fleece/felt sandwiches, I sewed them to the circles of saddle pad and the extra bottom that I made.  I decided they were too tall because I had used the original dimensions, so I folded them down.  

I wanted to tack them into place by hand because it would cover the seam, but at this point, I had 4 layers of fleece, two layers of felt and the saddle pads had fabric, batting AND foam, so there was no way a hand needle was going to get through all of that. 

I had to use my jeans foot on my sewing machine which allows the foot to rock back and forth over the layers so you don't have to use a hump jumper and all of the layers can fit.  This was just about the maximum amount of layers that machine will handle, though!  It was easy for it to get through, so it wasn't like 8 layers of denim, which would tax the machine, but it was just so thick!

These cats have never met a new textile that they have sat upon within 5 minutes of it entering the house, so I was sure that as soon as I laid them out, they'd be in them and I could get some pictures.  

It took all afternoon but eventually, Bo gave one a whirl.

I couldn't get a picture of Daisy enjoying them, but Luke tried one out.

These are a much smarter idea than the first set that I made.  And this style didn't need a removable cover because there's no filling so they won't take up a lot of space or take forever to dry when I wash them.  

They'll still collect all of the hair (theirs and mine) but it might look a little less hideous with this cute plaid print.

Pattern Testing Is Not For the Weak

I started sewing when I was in high school, mostly figuring it out as I went along.  By the time I was a senior, I was confident/foolish enough to decide to make my prom dress.  I LOVED that thing.  The color was outstanding.  I had no idea what I was doing but I did all the hard things: invisible zipper, boning, a crazy version of that off the shoulder thing because I couldn’t quite figure it out.

I think there was a bow across the back of my hips too.  It’s was 1992.  Bows were a thing.

Back in the 1900s, the only pattern options we had were the big 4: McCalls, Simplicity, etc.  We’d go to the fabric store, look through giant catalogs of what was available, and then go to the biggest filing cabinets you’d ever see and try to find the pattern.  A lot of things still surprise me about this process.

1.  We could help ourselves to the cabinets and it seemed like people mostly respected the organization and didn’t move patterns all over the place.

2.  The pattern envelopes had colored line drawings of people in the clothes that sometimes looked like photographs but not really.  

3.  Occasionally, you could find a pattern with a real photograph on the cover.

4.  If you needed help or ideas, you had to ask your grandmother, neighbor, sewing teacher from middle school home ec.  There was no contacting the designer directly.

You’d walk into the fabric store with an idea and then you had to look through the catalogs to see if someone else had designed your idea.  Then, you had to find the pattern.  Then you had to figure out fabric and notions.

I had no more patience in the 1900s than I do in the 2000s, so I wasn’t willing to buy a pattern one day, think about it and analyze it and then go back other days for fabrics and notions.  For me, it was one stop madness.  

Fast forward to the 2010s or so and I got back into my clothing sewing groove when my sister told me about these people who design patterns on their own, sell them as PDFs that you print on your own and do all kinds of things to support sewists.  

Welcome to sewing in the social media era.  

This is not your mother’s home ec class with all of the rules about pre sewing rituals and pressing this and steaming that.  This is a band of wild hooligans who throw sewing rules to the wind and do it their way.  

Maybe that’s a little dramatic. 

We aren’t  all reckless banditos tearing up the sewing world, thumbing our noses at the centuries of sewing experts who told us we have to do it this way, and this way only.  But many of us frequently confess that we “just” did it this way or “didn’t bother to” do this and you know what?  The clothes fit, they don’t fall off, and the world continues spinning with a lot of happy sewists doing their thing.

The best part of this modern sewing community is access to the designers and the design process.  When someone is ready to release a pattern, they ask for testers of all sizes, shapes and abilities to go through the tutorial and the pattern itself with a magnifying glass.  Find all of the errors.  Tell me all of the misinterpretations you had of my instructions.  Make 5 muslins if necessary so I can see how it looks on your body and make the necessary changes.  Stick with me as I feverishly redraw this whole section because eveyrone is showing me that it’s too long here, too short there, just not right there.  I should be done by 3am.  Please reprint no later than 3:10am and make another one.  (Just kidding, it’s not that harsh).

Pattern testing can be brutal for both parties.  

1. You’re mostly working with a bunch of strangers you’ll never see in real life.  On one hand, this means you don’t have to care what you look like, how dirty your mirror is, what the room behind you looks in your pictures.  On the other, you don’t get to know much about the other people and for someone like me with a wild imagination, it’s hard not to imagine life stories for each person based only on a few pictures and their comments.

2.  As a tester, you’re exposing a lot of your flaws.  None of the tester pictures are used except the official finals, so we see everything from terrible lighting to half dressed people to combinations of fabrics that shouldn’t see the light of day.  

3.  Both the testers and the designer see and talk about crotches, butts and boobs more than any other community, I would imagine.  Because no matter the pattern, unless it’s a bag, one of those 3 spots is the undoing of many a  sewist.  Trying to get any of those curves to work for every size is the hardest part of the whole process.  What works for one shape won’t work for another and that’s where the designer and the testers work together to share ideas, visuals and suggestions.  One “expert” says one thing, another “expert” chimes in with the exact opposite suggestion and sometimes we get caught in the middle, not sure if we should burn down the sewing room and call it a day.

4.  I can’t imagine being a designer, developing my idea and making it work for me, and then putting it out to the masses to test.  Especially when a big revision has to happen.  I’ve tested some patterns that seemed to need no tweaking and I’ve tested patterns that no matter the tweaking never looked good on any body except that of the designer.  I’m also one of those people who takes a pattern and then changes things to suit myself.  Designers must die a little when they see what some people do to their patterns.  I don’t think I could deal with that as a designer.

Most of my pattern testing experiences have been positive and I’ve learned a lot.  Most of all, I’ve learned that designing is not for me.  Taking a pattern and doing little things here and there that I think might work?  Definitely me.  But putting pen to paper and drawing out a design and all of the intricacies that go with it and then sharing it for others to make and change and possibly complain about?  No thanks.

These Boots Are Made For Walking

 I might have reached the pinnacle of my sewing career because.....  I altered boots!

If you were not provided with the gift of patience or you don't have enough time to read through this missive about boots, click here and watch my video.  You can even speed that up so you can cut to the chase. 

If you enjoy my lengthy stories, carry on reading and then go back and watch the video.

I was not given the gift of height and though my legs are longish for my height, most winter boots look silly on me.  If they don't come to the middle of my kneecap, the best they can usually do is hit just below it and it feels like I'm clomping around in someone else's boots.

I'd say I feel like I'm clomping around in my mother's boots, but a) she's shorter than me and b) in my lifetime, I have never seen her even entertain putting on a pair of boots like these.

It's like I'm parading around boots that belong to someone far taller than myself.

If I ran the boot world, I would offer several shaft heights for all boots, just as they can offer widths in many shoes.  I bet many shorter people would love to be able to ask for boots that are several inches shorter so they look stylish, feel comfortable and actually want to wear them.  Even the wildly expensive boot manufacturers don't offer more than one shaft height, as far as I can tell.  

If shoes can come in wide widths, why can't boots comes in 2 heights?

It would also be GREAT if companies selling boots could get on the same page about where exactly the shaft height is measured.  They do not always pick the same starting point so even though a lot of them now offer that information, 15 inches from one company doesn't fit like 15 inches from another so it's still very frustrating.

Sidebar:  while I am an English rider, I do not wear tall boots and never plan to. I don't show, so I don't have an reason to actually buy them, but one of the many reasons I don't wear them is due to the shaft height.  I realize riding boots come in different heights but I don't trust that they will fit well and comfortably.  

I'm also not great at maintaining my leather when it comes to riding.

And also, I can't imagine being trapped in tall boots at the height of summer heat and humidity.

Paddock boots and half chaps have always sufficed for me.

Anyway, back to fashion boots.

I've had this pair of boots and I like the fit in the foot but every winter, I look at them thinking I'm sure I can take them down an inch or two and they'd fit so much better.  I will only buy boots that are actually leather, and I avoid elastic in them as much as possible.  This means they are usually more expensive than what I want to pay (faux leather and super stretchy boots tend to be a lot cheaper) but I prefer real over fake so i occasionally haul out the cash.  

Every time I started to toy with the idea of cutting them out and resewing them, I'd think about how much they cost and how sad I would be if I ruined them.  Was the taller height that I don't want a better choice than possibly ruining them and having nothing?

This week, the answer to that question was yes.  If I'm going to continue wearing these boots then they have to come down a notch or two and if they get ruined, I wasn't going to wear them much as they were, so I was ready to cut my losses.

The process was nowhere near as hard as it seemed like it would be.  There's a slight elastic gusset that gave me pause but I plowed ahead and made it work.  The hardest part was taking everything apart because they were sewn and glued.  The glue released pretty easily and the sewing was very easy to replicate.  

The zipper wasn't that hard to deal with because they didn't have zipper stops at the top, they just curled the tape into the facing, which is what I do with zippers as well. I have no idea how to put in zipper stops and I wasn't going to reinvent the wheel here if the factory hadn't even done it.

Several people asked if my sewing machine was going to be strong enough to handle it.  This particular leather isn't very thick and the facing and lining are quite thin too.  The hardest part was deal with the zipper teeth so I just hand cranked over that part.  My Bernina 1001 sailed right through as I expected it would.  It's not a digital machine and it has the heavy duty feeling I don't get from more modern machines.  I didn't try my Bernina 350 but I think that would have been fine too.  Trying to work with this as an actual boot was tough because it limited some of the movements I wanted to do, but that wasn't anything related to my sewing machine.

The result, as you will see in the video is definitely similar to the original.  Looking at the inside of the original, it wasn't quite as neat as I would have expected, so when mine was less than perfect, I felt like it was comparable to the original.  I don't think these boots are the highest quality out there, so I'm sure less than perfect seams wouldn't have put these in the reject pile.  I did get them from DSW, so maybe they were rejected.  Who would know?

I don't know if I'll do this again.  I'm certainly not on a quest to shorten all the boots out there and I would never do it for someone else.  I have a pair of black tall boots that are on the verge of being too tall but I don't know if I will tackle shortening them this winter or if I really care.    This little experiment has made this pair much more wearable and that was my goal.

If you're too tired from all of these words to scroll back up, here's the link to the video.

What's Old Is New

A few months ago, I was given a tote full of these squares that k-ster's great grandmother had crocheted and given to his mother. I didn't look carefully at them the day she gave it to me, but I knew there were a lot of squares in there that needed to be put together.  She said she included the string they were made from and that she wasn't sure how many were there, but it was a lot.  She said she didn't care what I did with them but she didn't want the bedspread that her grandmother had probably intended them to be.

An idea started brewing that maybe I could make a couple of throws out of the squares and give them to his mother and aunts and uncles for Christmas.  

In case you're new here, one of the many things I learned how to do on Aunt Mildred's porch (this is where the blog name originated, by the way) was crochet and I was pretty sure that as long as all of the squares were done, I could put them together to make something.  If I had had to actually make more squares, that would have been a bigger challenge since there was no pattern included and I haven't done this specific kind of pattern before.

I also like to take on challenges because I'm a sucker for complicated things.  This didn't appear to be complicated, but they never do.

I planned to work on it in the summer, when I could work outside and let everything air out because everything was pretty musty smelling.  Imagine my surprise when it was November and I realized I had never taken them out of the box, let alone aired them out or put them together.  

Or even looked at what was really in the box.

I decided I really couldn't do anything until I at least washed all of the squares once.  This would start to get rid of the musty smell and mold spores and also tell me if they were going to survive or if they were too delicate.  I had a feeling they'd be just fine. 

I put them through one wash and dry cycle so the initial mold spores would wash and dry out but the smell lingered.  It wasn't awful, and I knew I could work with the squares and still breathe, but I had to also figure out a way to get more of the smell out.

I was shocked to find she had already sewn most of the squares into 5 square strips.  This made things much more clear and I knew it would make the whole thing easy to put together.  The first thing I had to do was decide how big I would make these throws so I could figure out how many it would make.

               

Three strips made a pretty narrow throw.  Something you'd literally put on the back of the couch, but I couldn't imagine anyone putting it over their lap.  Four strips was better but now it reduced how many I could make.  And left me with strips I didn't know what to do with.

I finally settled on 3 blankets:  two would be 5x5 and one would be 4x5.  This left me with one strip that had 2 stains that I couldn't get out.  I decided to keep that strip and put it across the top of my piano.  Maybe over time, the stains will come out.

After everything was washed and dried and I knew how many strips to put together, I had to figure out what size crochet hook she had used to put the strips together.  You can see the stitches are very tiny.  I have a lot of hooks but even my tiniest one wouldn't do anything that small.  I'm a pretty tight crocheter but my smallest hook and tight hands made stitches that were too big. 

I went to the store and found a 5 pack of extremely small crochet hooks.  I figured one of them had to be the right size.  Just for comparison, I put it next to my "typical" crochet hook that I use.  The tiny one is like the size of a sewing needle at the tip, but it's exactly what I needed.

When you put crocheted blocks together, some patterns say to get a tapestry needle and sew them together and others say to crochet them together.  Since she had already crocheted together all of the squares for the strips, I wanted to do the same.  I also thought it might be stronger and last longer than if I just sewed them.

Some of the blocks were a little stretched out, so I got a little inventive as I crocheted them together so everything would fit.

After I finished each blanket, I draped it over my drying rack on the patio and let it sit in the sun and air all day.  Then I put them all through the laundry one more time.  This helped a lot with the smell.  There's still something there but it's not offensive.  Over time, they will each take on the smell of the house where they now live and as they get washed and dried and used, the original smell will be gone.

When all was said and done, I gave one to his mother, one to his aunt and I kept one.  I originally thought I might dye ours a light blue to go with the living room colors and to make it a little more colorful than just the off white.  Now that it's been in the living room (and well used during last week's super cold weather), I'm not sure I'll bother.

I imagine her original plan was to put these together in a bedspread.  But, with this many strips, it would have been much bigger than a king size bed and it would have been very heavy.  Even these throws are surprisingly heavy when it's just "a bunch of string".  This is another reason I think crocheting them together was a better idea than sewing them.  When you move the blanket around, it's a lot of pulling on the seams.

One of k-ster's uncles said I "sewed" together 3 generations by putting these together, which is true.  And if they make it to any of the grandchildren, that will be a 4th!