Denim Rug Project Part 4

Eight foot lengths of denim in coils.

I have made some progress on this project.  I'll recap briefly for new readers.  I started this project for a denim rug planning to make it using the minimal instructions from a magazine article.  Once I started the project, I realized that I really did not like the way it looked.  Mainly, the denim unraveled and had a lot of strings and lint.   It really was not the rug I wanted.  The problem was now I had a lot of strips of denim and had to figure out how to use them.  This begins a cautionary tale about changing your mind about a project when you are well into it.

Ready for sewing into strips.

My next attempt was to sew folded strips of fabric right sides together to make a long tube and turn the tube.   Forty-five minutes later, I was still trying to turn the first tube right side out.  The denim was bulky and did not want to turn easily despite the strips being two inches wide.

Denim unraveling into long threads.

I still wanted a denim rug, so I began by zig zag sewing around each strip to try to corral the threads.  Then I started sewing the strips together and tried crocheting a rug using a size G hook.  I actually liked the look and feel of the strip, but the threads were still my nemesis.  I actually did about twenty-five feet of denim in this manner, and trimmed threads as I came to them.  The next day I came back to my work and there were more threads.  It was as if the denim had decided to unravel itself more over night.  I decided that I could just not live with those threads.  I was tracking them everywhere through the house.  So, it was on to Plan C or is it Plan D?  I have lost track.

A strip of crocheted denim, which was my Plan B.

It is no use blaming the material for how it behaves.  It is what it is. (Note:  heavier denim did not ravel as much as lighter weight denim.)  So now the plan is to encase the threads.  I sewed the strips of denim into eight foot long lengths, folded them in half wrong sides together and ironed them so that I would have a center line.  Each edge was folded to the center line, and ironed.  Then the strips were folded in half and ironed again so that the raw edges were on the inside as if making binding for a quilt.  The fabric was pinned along its length and then sewn down the length of the fabric.  The raw edges are no longer in sight, so no more escaping threads.  However, this process is very time consuming.  It takes much longer than you might think to make and iron the strips.

Of course, now I have a number lengths of eight foot long strips, although not yet nearly enough for the project.  I sew them during the day when I have some time to be on the sewing machine.  In order not to have a tangled mass of strips when I am ready to use them, I rolled the lengths of fabric into coils and tied them up with some thread.  The coils needed be stabilized so that they did not come loose when they were being moved or stored.  The thread wrapped and tied holds the coils nicely.  So far, I have seventeen coils, which is about 128 feet of  fabric.  I have five more strips pinned and ready to be sewn and about four more strips that have been joined into eight foot lengths but not ironed or pinned yet.  This is not all of the fabric needed.  It is only where I am on the project right now.  More on the fabric needed next time I post on this project.

That brings me to my next subject.  This project is going to be quite time consuming. Rather than subjecting readers to multiple posts on how much material I was able to manage to sew in a week, I will be blogging on other projects as well. 

Regular readers may remember that last years long term project left me with a bad case of creative burnout.  I plan to pace myself on this project so the same thing does not happen again this year.  I will be blogging intermittently about one project or another.  I generally try to limit myself to three projects going at one time.  I am just getting ready to start a second project.  A third won't be started until after I finish sewing the strips for the denim rug project.  So for now, expect to see a post on the denim rug project about every other week.

Home Improvements: Kitchen Update

New Countertop and sink.

Last blog post I mentioned that I would not be blogging on the denim rug project this time.  I wanted to update family and friends on the latest in our home improvement projects.  Over the last few years I have blogged about renovating the downstairs here at the house and our cabin up in the mountains.  Now we are starting on the upstairs of the house again.  Hopefully, some of our insights on the work will be of use to my readers.

Cabinets were refinished top and bottom.

Eighteen years ago we renovated the kitchen.   That renovation was triggered when the stove started having problems.  We put in a Formica countertop, new sink, stove, under the counter water filtration system, wall paper, bead board, and chair rail, and flooring.  Eighteen years later, the stove was in poor shape, the cabinets looked worn, and the Formica counter top was worn in an area in front of the sink.  Time to renovate the kitchen again.

The grain of the countertop.

Over the years, tastes have changed and home owner and purchaser expectations have changed.  It used to be that people expected to buy a home and then renovate it to make it into their own tastes.  Then television channels dedicated to home improvement appeared.  After that, people began wanting and expecting homes that were move in ready and that they would not have to do any improvements to it once they moved into the home.  It has made it more difficult to sell a home without updating it.  So while we were about it we decided on some upgrades that might be useful in the future as well as something that we want.

The new stove.

One of the things that home buyers want is granite countertops. They are pretty, and people are wanting them when they look to purchase a home.  However, they are really expensive.  There are some different options out there that are also an upgrade from Formica that are worthwhile and even have some advantages over granite.  One of them is a composite countertop.   The composite countertop is a mixture of stone dust, gravel, marble, granite, and resins.  They come in a variety of finishes and color.  Even better, the composite material does not need to be sealed every year.  We decided to go with that rather than granite.  That choice saved us a couple thousand dollars.  It looks like marble.  Most people do not know it is not real stone material.

Since we were replacing the countertop, we decided to investigate having the cabinets refaced.  Cabinet refacing is when they replace the doors and put new veneer (or paint) on the box part of the cabinets.  It is so over the top expensive that you might as well move if you have to reface the cabinets.  The salesman came out, and showed us options.  The first time through, with new doors, soft close drawers,  pull outs in the cabinets, and new veneer, etc. came to twenty-three thousand dollars.  The second pass through we chose less ornate doors and ditched some of the nice to have accessories and the price was down to nineteen thousand dollars.  Ultimately, we decided that overall the whole process was way to expensive. 

Rather than have the cabinets done by a company, we decided to refinish the cabinets ourselves.  This was not the first time we had refinished the cabinets.  We did it on the last remodel and once in between also.  So we removed the doors and began a marathon refinishing job to get the cabinets refinished before the new countertop arrived.  They look great.  Maybe there are a few dings in the cabinets here and there where the veneer had to be repaired, but for the most part they look brand new.  The best part is it only cost about fifty dollars.

We also scrubbed the hardware and returned the tarnished handles and hinges back to their copper finish.  They are electroplated copper on steel.  In some places, the copper has worn off and the steel is showing through.  My husband is researching the pieces trying to find new ones.  Those handles are still available in copper, but the size might have changed slightly.  We are going to order some to see if they are the same.  If not, we might consider sending out the handles to be electroplated.  (After all, we saved so much money on the cabinets.)

If you do choose to refinish your cabinets you will need a place to work that it well ventilated and free from dust or blowing dirt.  Don't try to refinish them outside.  We were lucky that the weather cooperated with us.  It was warm enough that we were able to open the door and windows.  The doors will have some place to rest while the stain dries.  When you take the cabinet doors off, number them on the back and also number the place on the cabinet itself so that the cabinet doors will go back in the same spot. 

I guess one surprise that we had was just how much stone dust was going to be generated when the crew came in to put in the new sink.  We had just refinished cabinets and now were going to have to clean all the surfaces all over again.  There was so much dust that I had to was the floor twice before it was clear of footprints. 

I could go on, but this blog post is getting a bit long.  In a couple of weeks, I will come back to this subject.  Home improvement is a big project and there can be pitfalls and unintended consequences to the choices made.  There are some things you might want to know about sinks and stoves. Sometimes it is worthwhile to have some insight into projects before getting started.  Check back on this blog for future information on our home improvements.

Denim Rug Project Part 3

Nine feet of fabric yielded 16 inches of stitching.

The transition from light to medium fabrics.

There is an old adage that states, "Don't change horses in mid-stream."  It is not always a great idea to make some major change to a project once you get underway.  However, this time I found it necessary, or at least worthwhile to make a big change in the project once I had it started.   Last blog post I wrote about I decided that I really did not like the look of the denim rug that I wanted to make.  It looked nice in the picture, but up close it looked shabby.  It was really not the look I wanted in my room.  So, with lots of lengths of two inch wide (5.08 cm.) denim strips cut, I changed my mind about what I wanted to do with them.  Sometimes it is worthwhile to have a Plan B, and even a Plan C.  I finally hit upon the plan that would give me a look that I liked.  It was actually hard to choose.  There are a number of ways to make a denim rug. 

The transition from medium to darker fabrics.

I have already learned a lot about working with denim.  A couple of things I would like to pass on immediately because not one article I read on denim projects mentioned it.  Lint is a big problem.  It clogged up my sewing machine.  I have quilted for years and I have never had my machine so clogged with lint.  If you are using a sewing machine in your project (more on the machine sewing in the next paragraph) be prepared to clean it out much more frequently than normal.  I was also breathing in abnormal amounts of lint.  It was in my nose and I was feeling stuffy.  With 20-20 hindsight, it might have been advisable to wear a dust mask.

When you cut up denim, it starts to unravel.  Little bits of thread were falling off all over the place.  My floor was covered with thread.  I had to sweep up regularly to keep from tracking it all through the house.  The unraveling threads were enough of a problem that they had to be addressed one way or another.  For the sake of time, I decided to zig-zag stitch around each piece.  My other option was to fold the pieces in half length wise and turn under the open edges and stitch them in place.  I did not choose that option because it would have created a lot of bulk on one side of each tube and more bulk in joining the tubes together. 

Now that the advice part is out of the way, let me tell you about my project.  I have made a lot of progress, but you can hardly tell it.  The entire week I have been zig-zag stitching around pieces of denim.  I think I have fourteen pairs of jeans cut up into two inch (5.08 cm.) strips.  I would sew around one and drop it into a box.  Then the next.  I ended up with a pyramid of fabric about twelve inches by fifteen inches at the base (30.48 x 38.1 cm) and  twenty inches high (50.8 cm).  It seemed an intimidatingly large amount of fabric strips. 

To make it seem like the week had not been a total waste of time, I started joining the strips of fabric together.  Another decision had to be made at this point on joining the pieces of fabric.  I could join the fabric as if I were piecing blocks on a quilt, with edges lined up evenly.  Or, I could piece the fabric as if I were making a bias binding, so that the edges of the join run diagonally across the fabric.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both.  A straight join is going to add more bulk in one area, which will make some stitches difficult, but it is quicker than making the diagonal join.  The diagonal join means that there is less bulk in one area of the stitch, but it wastes a considerable amount of fabric.  A diagonal join is made by laying one strip across another strip at right angles.  Then the seam is sew from the lower edge of the top fabric up to the opposite corner at the top.  The excess triangle of fabric is then cut away.  I went with the straight join.  I would rather deal with an occasional difficult stitch than lose the fabric.

The combination of the fabrics was another decision.  There are many variations in the colors of denim.  I had asked friends to donate old, blue denim jeans for the project in order to keep the cost of the project down.  I received jeans in many shades of blue.  Some were very light, some very dark, and most of them middle values of blue.   I only had a few dark indigo ones.  I decided to attach the fabric in strips going from light to dark and then starting the sequence over again.  However, because the I have so few of the dark indigo, the indigo will be used in much shorter pieces.  They will be accent points.

I started attaching the fabric in roughly three foot lengths of each color (0.91 meter) .  I say roughly because the fabrics are cut in all different lengths to gain the most fabric from a pair of jeans.  If I started to cut up the fabrics so that each piece was exactly a yard long I would end up with a bunch of little joins eventually.  Close enough is good enough in this case.  Besides, I like to add a bit of randomness to my projects.  You never know how the bits of fabric are going to line up. 

For the record, there is a better way to make strips of fabric than the one I used.  If I had started out with this method it would have been easier.  However, since I changed my mind on how to make the rug, it was not an option for me.  You start at one end on a panel of the leg and start cutting, making turns as you reach each corner, and continuing to cut around the entire panel so that each leg panel is one continuous length of fabric.  (The back panels would be slightly shorter lengths since you have to work around the pockets.)  You would end up with four long lengths of fabric from each pair of pants.  That will save a considerable amount of time and reduce the number of joins needed to make the rug.  However, you will still have to deal with the issue of unraveling threads.  And, those long lengths of fabric are going to tangle into big knots unless you roll them up into balls or onto some type of tube.

After putting about nine feet of fabric together I started testing how well it was going to crochet.  I folded the fabric in half as I crocheted so that the joins of the fabric would be on the inside.  I did not feel the need to sew the outer edges together.  I tried it with a size G hook to get a feel for what the rug might look like.  It is too early in the process to start the crocheting, but I needed the energy boost of seeing what the project might look like.  The size G hook crocheted a length of stitching about sixteen inches (40.64 cm) long from nine feet of fabric (90.91 meter).  This is just an experiment.  The stitches are a little tight.  I need to remember to loosen up.  However, this strand has a very hefty feel to it.  It feels like a rug.  The photos shown here are all made with a G hook.

At this point I have not yet decided on how to proceed with the rug.  I also want to try a size T hook.  The stitches would be larger and the amount of fabric needed to make the rug could go up.  Since I have not tried it yet I would have to guess, but a nine foot length of fabric might only crochet up to a ten inch strand with the T hook.  The rug might not feel as thick since the stitches might flatten out somewhat.  I will have to experiment.  I will let you know.

This is about as far as I have gone on this project so far.  My plan for this week will be to join as many strips together as I can.  I may get a little bit of the crocheting done if I do it in the evenings while watching television.

I will be blogging on another subject next Sunday.  I will be blogging again about the denim rug in two weeks.  Check back for the latest updates.

A Quilting Project Completed

Last week I had said I would be posting on my denim project.  Progress has been made, but not enough to make it worth taking pictures.  I ran into a few snags along the way that put me behind.  More about that in the next week's post.  I will be blogging on the denim project again then. 

For now, I wanted to post that one of my long term projects has been completed.  I finally finished the hand quilting on my Star and Leaf quilt.  The finished quilt was a long time coming.  I started quilting it in January of 2017.  I can hardly believe that it took two years to finish this quilt, but it has.  I guess that is just how long it takes to complete a king size quilt.  The finish piece is 6 feet by 6 feet  (1.83 x 1.83 meters).  Also, I did take some time off from quilting in the hottest months because it is just to much to be trying to quilt when it is so hot outside.

Another thing that delayed the quilting was that I developed a problem with my shoulder last year.  I think quilting may have been a part of the problem.  While quilting I had to hold my arm in a certain position for long periods of time.  My shoulder was stiff, then I tripped and fell.  Between the two, I have had a problem with my shoulder all year.  I went to physical therapy for three months.  It was just too painful to quilt for a while.  When I was able to start quilting again I had to limit myself to an hour a day.

The quilt was hand pieced and hand quilted.  The starts are pieced and the leaves were appliqued on solid blocks.  The quilting is fairly simple.  Most of it is straight lines.  The leaf blocks have a number of small quilted leaves surrounding the maple leaf. 

I am glad that I backed off my initial plan for quilting.  I had visions of all these wavy lines and fancy mandalas.  It just proved too complex in the long run, and it would have taken much longer to quilt.  It is just as well that I simplified things given the should problems that developed.  As I said to a group of my friends, "If I had known that this was going to be my Opus Magnum of hand quilting, I would have chosen a different quilt pattern."   

This quilt will probably be the last quilt where I do the quilting by hand.  I may be hand piece the blocks, but I expect that I will do the quilting by machine.  At least I say that now.  Who knows, given some time, I may want to quilt by hand again.  At the moment, I am ready to let that go. 

However, another project is completed.  I feel the need to give myself a pat on the back for sticking with it despite all the obstacles.  When I first started making projects there were a lot of UFOs (unfinished objects).  It took me a while to learn to stick with it long enough to make something worthwhile.  I hope that anyone reading the blog will be inspired to stick with a project when they feel bogged down in it.

Check back next week for more on the denim project.