Years ago, someone posted a pic of a scene made with dryer lint. It was so good I saved it. I’ll try to find it.
I remember learning to hand-sew so I could put my chevrons on my uniform, and was able to do a presentable job. Not great, but neat and fairly even.
I first tried my hand at machine sewing when I was seven (trying to "fix" the torn space suit of my Mercury 7 GI Joe...and I put the needle right through my right thumb...all the way through where it came out the other side! (I have a little white scar there, just above the thumbnail next to the cuticle.
My mom didn't know I was messing around with her machine! (and I didn't tell her about my thumb...I was accident prone and got so many tetanus boosters growing up that I didn't have to worry, but I was always worried about shots and stiches!)
But later in life, I tried using it a few times, and was successful. So...I kind of get it. A few weeks ago, a guy I work with designed computer caddy and I offered to make him a cover for it.
I just thought it in my head, went to the store and got some cheap fabric, cut it up with scissors and sewed it together with a rectangular hole for the handle to poke through and a hard foam board inside the cover that protected the monitor when you carried it...it was fun...:)
My wife was impressed, I didn't even jot measurements down on paper!
That's my first contribution to the Create, Make, and Share Thread.
I am also into 3-D printing (does that count?) and I refurbished my dad's retirement plaque from the Navy, with his sword, and had to design, 3-D print, assemble, and paint a scabbard because my younger brother lost my dads scabbard when he used it in a school play back in the Seventies, but I had my dad's sword...:)
Printed and ready for assembling and painting.
Assembled and painted, awaiting mounting on the re-finished plaque.
Refinished plaque with a printed holder for the sword and scabbard to replace the wooden one, dilapidated and falling apart after fifty years. It is the black square the brass emblem is mounted on.
That eagle on the front is big, thick, and heavy, an inch thick and eight inches across. It was so tarnished and nasty looking, it took me hours to polish up with Brasso, then I coated it with a sealant. Great fun!
I have been working with my grandmother’s and great grandmother’s Christmas garlands, glass beads at least 70 and maybe as much as 120 years old.
No point in keeping them if I just keep them in cotton and never use them. They are large beads, fragile, the ends of the beads chipping at each other, and the garlands as a whole, kind of clunky looking. I had made a go of restringing them for my mother 40 years back with unsatisfying results.
But I was inspired by something I saw on Etsy, so now restringing them with little round beads protecting the ends of the large ones and spacing them out with bugle beads. Much more graceful, lighter, longer. glinting catenaries dancing on the tree.
And I repaired the chipped ends with colored foil from Lindt truffles - such an excuse for indulgence.
Also trying to finish a needlepoint started long ago. 14x14 stitches per inch, 14x14 inches. Close to 40000 stitches. One of the pair is done. I need something to listen to while working. I look at far larger hand-knotted carpets and think, dear Lord, there’s so much work in there.
And quilts for grand babies.
https://store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/collections/miscellaneous
Also at that website are rare plants and rare cultivars of food crops from around the world
