Last week I blogged that I was just coming out of a bout of creative burnout. I actually worked on a project. There was a joke that pre-dates the internet that is applicable to this project. One time a motivational speaker came in to a business class I was taking. They handed out colorful circles with the letters TUIT printed on it. Then the speaker said, "You now have a round Tuit. It is time to get started on the thing you said you were going to do when you get around to it." That is exactly what I worked on this week. One of those projects that I said I would do when I got around to it.
This was not an art project. It was a utilitarian project. I have a mop for cleaning laminate and hard wood flooring. When the mop was purchased (seemingly ages ago) it came with some reusable, washable terrycloth covers that slipped over the mop head for cleaning the floors. I used the mop covers until they started to wear out. When I went to purchase more mop heads, I found that the reusable, terry cloth ones were no longer available. All the mop covers were being made out of microfiber. At least locally, no terry covers were to be found. I hesitated to order them online. Shipping and handling are so expensive that it is not worth sending the product back if it is the wrong size mop head.
I hated the microfiber mop covers. They left streaks all over the floor. I kept saying that I would find replacement mop heads. In other words' "getting around to it." Finally, with only a single mop head left I decided to try to make my own mop head covers. It did not look like it would be that hard if you happened to have the needed materials at hand.
I hate to say it but I am a terrible pack rat. I save little odds and ends leftover from projects because I may need them for some future project. I hate to throw out bits of wood, metal, beads, elastic, or thread because I never know what I will need. I like to be thrifty. If I have something on hand, it helps keep the costs of my art and crafts down. It seems like I have an incredible amount of stuff stashed away in my studio. At some point, the room is so full that I need to purge some of the stuff. I am at that point again, but before I throw anything out I try to use up as much of it as possible.
My sewing notions are overflowing at the moment. I have buttons, elastics, zippers, hook bias binding, and loop tape. I have bobbins that are half-filled with thread. I have thread colors that were purchased for specific projects that are languishing in boxes with no purpose. I decided that the mop head project would be an ideal way to use some of them up. I don't care whether the thread color matches if I am using the item to wash the floor.
I measured the mop and added a little extra so that the mop cover would come up over the back of the mop head and be held on by elastic. One of my pet peeves with the purchased mop heads, even the terry cloth ones was that they were so tight that it was hard to pull them on. Sometimes a cover would slip off because there was barely enough fabric to cover the base. By adding a little extra fabric I reasoned that the cover would stay on better. What I finally settled on was an eleven by sixteen inch (27.94 x 40.64 cm.) rectangle. Of course that works for my mop. Measure your mop if you plan to try this project.
A worn terry cloth towel was cut into the rectangle. I rounded off the corners. Then I sewed around the edge of the rectangle with a triple zig zag stitch to prevent the towel from unraveling. After that, I added elastic around the entire edge using a straight stitch. In case you have never worked with elastic: you anchor the elastic to the project with a few stitches. Then pull the elastic tight and keep it stretched as you sew it down. When you have gone all the way round the project anchor the two ends of the elastic by overlapping them and sewing over them. When you allow the elastic to relax, the cover curls up towards the center. Since the elastic I had on hand was no-roll elastic, it was too rigid to fold over and sew down on the underside. This is more of an aesthetic problem than a functional problem. I really don't care if there is an edge showing on the underside of the elastic. The edges are zig zaged and won't unravel. If I had thinner elastic, I could have folded it over the fabric and sewn both edges down at once.
This was an easy project. From cutting the fabric to finishing off the elastic only took about sixteen minutes. I made five of them. That should give me enough mop heads to clean a number of rooms. Because this was the first project I had worked on in quite some time, I had to clean and oil my sewing machine before I started. Now the machine is ready for my next project. I can't wait to get started on it.
Check back next Sunday on the start of a new project.
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