Fishnet Jar

One day last week I was trying to play violin. Unfortunately, my e-string peg kept slipping. I was a bit frusterated. Fortunatley, when I got home, Patrick had a great solution: the local dollar store.  We went and bought some chalk line, which includes chalk dust that I could put on the peg to help it stick. Since I rarely just go to the dollar store, get what I need and leave (there are too many fun and funny things there), we walked around the aisles for a bit and wound up with some string.  Not just any string, but a 2 pack of "high quality" string. Pretty exciting, eh? 

Patrick is nearing the end of the semester, which means he is nearing the end of his degree. Thus, he has been staying up a bit later than he sometimes would.  I tend to just wait for him to be done and then we go to bed at the same time. This particular day I had finished dishes and the apartment was clean, so I had a few minutes to do something before bed. The string was still sitting on the table and I have a ton of pasta sauce jars just laying around (I don't know what to do with them all but it seems a shame to get rid of them). I decided to make a fishnet around the jar. 

This technique could really be used on any jar or bottle. It just needs to have a neck of some kind so the string can be tied at the top. First I cut six lengths of string. They were long enough that when I folded them in half and tired them around the jar, they were still about twice as long as the jar. I had plenty of extra string so I probably could have used less, but cut on the long side for your jar so you won't run out. I then tied each string around the top of the jar and organized them so they were evenly spaced. This gave the neck a thicker wrapped area on the neck. Alternately, I could have tied a shorter piece of string around the top and tied each of the longer strings onto that one to give it a different look.

Next, I took a single strand from a group of two and a single strand from the group next to it and tied a square knot to form a triangle. I then did this with the remaining groups all the way around. I tried to make the triangles roughly even, but I didn't measure. I think the imperfections give it more character (and is less work). If you want it to look even, you could measure each string and mark it at the same point with a marker and then tie on those markings. After the first level of knots, my jar looked like the picture to the left.

Next I did the same technique with my new groups of two. This time the strings mad diamonds. I again just eyeballed where I wanted the knot, but if you are measuring, this is where you will want to measure the next level. Don't just measure equal intervals all the way down at once because the knots will probably not be all equal so things with get off. 

At this point I contemplated just finishing . If you desire, you could just pull the loose strings straight down and tie them off on the bottom.  I decided to go on, but it would have looked roughly like the picture to the right if I had stopped. You can really stop at any point from here on, it will just give it a different look. 

To finish off I made sure to tie my last row of knots so they sat just on the edge of the jar when I pulled the string tight. I then took to sets of strings that were opposite each other and tied them tightly across the jar. It helps to get a tight knot to have someone put their finger in the middle of the knot as you tie it. I then tied another of the two sets that were across from each other in a knot around that knot; that is to say I tied the first cross over of the knot under the existing knot and then tied the second cross on top of the knot. I repeated with the remaining two string pairs.

I filled my jar with some clear and bluish marbles I happened to have, though you could put just about anything. Shells would look pretty. I think it turned out pretty well for an under-and-hour  project. If you have some writing on the lid that you don't like, you could simply spray paint the lid. I actually spray painted the lids of three other jars black. They are sitting on the shelf  in front of the mirror in my living room.

How the Couch I Tore Up is Feeding My Pillow Obsession

I have always had a bit of a pillow obsession.  When I was younger, I  thought the perfect room would be one where everything was made of pillows.  I grew up and realized that they have rooms like that and they are called padded cells. Still, I do very much like pillows.

When I tore up and rebuilt the couch, I did not use anywhere close to all the materials the couch had to offer. The back of the couch actually had a ton of stuffing (because it was basically made from 6 large pillows) that I did not use in the storage bench. Some of the stuffing near the outer edges of the pillow was rather disgusting, but a lot of it was still good. So, I saved it with the intention of making pillows to sit on my storage bench.

I made a few pillows here and there, but most of my pillows were made a couple Fridays ago while playing nurse to my brother-in-law who had just had his wisdom teeth removed. I started sewing covers for the pillows that originally came with the couch from the thrift store.  I sewed one but it was slow going because I was changing ice packs every 10 minutes. I thought maybe I would stop there and just cover the other pillow in the pillow case from the leftover sheets from the curtains, but decided I really needed to just get both pillows done. Then, five more pillows later, I decided I should probably stop.

One of the most involved pillows I made was the one to the left. I cut out  leaves from my sheets and basted them on a yellow square in a random scattered pattern. Then I used used a medium wide zigzag with a very small stitch to stitch around the outside of each leaf.I think it turned out okay. I got better at the process as I went along, so the leaves that look pretty good were likely some of the ones I stitched latter.

Pillows are really easy to make because you can make them from all sorts of scraps and you really only need very basic sewing skills to sew a basic pillow, but you can also do all sorts of complex things. Sometimes, however, they are just a bit to easy to make.  When I was making the pillow to the right (which is based off of this one from Joann Fabrics, though I didn't really read their instructions) I messed up my pattern and accidentally made 2 more pillows. Don't ask me how that happened, I am just talented sometimes. I probably should have read the instructions.

I have at least one more pillow I am going to make based on one that someone is selling for $159 here (Who has $150 to spend on a pillow?), but then I think I might have to stop for the front room. I already have a lot of pillows.

I still have a ton of stuffing though, as you can see from this bag to the left..  My bed might be getting some fun pillows to.

Mirror Frame and a Shelf

The house I live in is separated into 4 apartments, one in the attic space, one on the main floor and two in the basement.  We are in the larger of the two basement apartments, and we also have access from our apartment directly into the boiler room, which we use for some extra storage. It has also produced some exciting items.  For instance when we didn't have a lot of extra money around when David was born at the end of November, it miraculously produced a Christmas tree we hadn't known about before.

Another exciting item was a large mirror.  It was dusty and had a bit of damage around the edges, but who finds a 4 foot wide mirror? We pulled it out and cleaned it off and mounted it on the wall the nasty plaid couch I tore up and rebuilt (here) used to sit.

I used a piece of plywood left over from the loft bed (here) to make a shelf. I just spray painted the piece and mounted it on three decorative shelf brackets Patrick and I got at Home Depot (which is quickly becoming a favorite store). We placed it about 2 inches below the edge of the mirror.

I am not much into the distressed look. I mean, a few pieces of antiqued furniture are fine but why would you want to intentionally make something look dirty? In any case, I didn't really like the chipped looking edges, so I decided to frame the mirror. Patrick and I looked at Home Depot for just the right trim (I was thinking garden stakes or something), when I realized we had a set of broken blinds at home (Patrick had replaced them on a job).

I cut a section of blind long enough to edge the entire bottom of the mirror and another for the top. I then cut two lengths that were the height of the mirror minus the width of the two blinds I had cut. This formed a rectangle that lined the mirror (without hanging off the edge).

I then cut additional pieces to fit on top of this rectangle, except the ends were cut at 45 degree angles to fit together like a picture frame. This meant I had two rectangles that lined the mirror while sitting on top, but the edges of the pieces did not line up.

I glued a long piece with the 45 degree cut on top of a long piece without the angle with Gorilla Glue and clamped it in place. I then repeated with the other two long pieces. I similarly glued the short sides together with the non-angled-edged board centered on the angled one. I then fit the boards together so the angled board on the short side overlapped the non-angled board of the long and glued and clamped the corners. It looked like a giant picture frame. I then filled in the holes where the string held the slats together with wall putty. After it all dried, I spray painted the frame.

A couple days later to ensure complete drying of the paint, Patrick helped me used Tacky glue to glue it to the top of the mirror.  We glued it with the mirror on the wall  because that way we could hide the mirror fasteners. Unfortunately, that meant we had to tape it really well while it dried. I chose Tacky glue because, being water soluble, it will wash off. The mirror is not technically ours (though it was made in 1969, so I suspect the original owner doesn't really care). I thought about hot glue but I was unsure if it would a) hold very well and b) manage to not crack the mirror.

I am quite pleased with the result.  Just putting up the mirror really helped distract from the radiator that is the prominent feature of that wall, and the frame and shelf just drove that home.

Coming next: How the couch I tore up is feeding my pillow obsession.

Making a Swaddler

David actually has very few clothes of his own.  My sister Carol has lent me all of her son's baby clothes.  Since Henry is about a year older, this has worked out well. Among the box of clothes Carol lent me was a swaddler, a blanket designed specifically to swaddle babies with Velcro to keep it tight.

This has been wonderful for David. He won't sleep unless he feels pretty cozy and since he can now unswaddle himself, other blankets become loose and present a hazard. Though David can still get his arms out of the swaddler and as of late kick his feet out the bottom, the Velcro keeps the blanket wrapped around his abdomen securely.

Unfortunately, as can be seen in the picture, David is now much too big for this swaddler. He has been too big for a while, but I finally admitted it sometime recently. As I have already fought and surrendered (after about a week of him sleeping no more than 45 minutes to an hour at a time) the battle to have him sleep unswaddled, I decided to make him a new one.

My mother had sent me this bear flannel a while ago and I hadn't had a project for it yet. Though the original was made out of fleece, which is a good deal stretchier, I decided to use this flannel for the swaddler. As we are moving into warmer months, this will help David stay cool and I have swaddled him in flannel receiving blankets on numerous occasions, so I figured this would work as well.

I laid the original swaddler on the fabric and put David on top of that to mark how much taller it needed to be. I didn't actually make it much wider because the problem was length, but I did leave a little room for growth lengthwise. I just cut around the outside to make it just a little larger than I wanted it to be.

The original had darts on the shoulders and by the feet, so I wrapped David in the fabric and made similar darts, like in the picture above. I then cut out another peace of fabric to make the inner pocket he sits in. I folded over the open edge (the edge of the pocket on the top and left side of the picture to the left) twice and hemmed it before sewing up the edge on the bottom to the larger piece.

I then basted the bottom of the pocket to the edge of the larger piece.  I finally folded the entire outside edge over twice and hemmed. I made the darts go toward the outside, like in the picture, and just folded them into the hem as I went.

I then let the project sit for a week (optional step).  Finally yesterday, I got out the fusible Velcro, cut off two small sections, wrapped David in the swaddler, marked where I wanted the Velcro to go and put it on.  It probably took 10 minutes at most. I skipped sewing tabs like the original swaddler as I decided they were unnecessary.

I think he is pretty cute in it, but then I think he always is.

Wall hanging for free

I obtained the picture frame at the left from work. The glass had broken and someone was throwing it out.  I decided that it was still perfectly good for something.  Though I didn't have specific plans, I have a bad habit of collecting things that I think might have potential for something eventually (which is about anything I come across). Then years passed. I moved the frame with us, but it still remained exactly like it is on the left--until last night.

I had been toying with the idea of making it into a piece of art for my living room.  I considered putting some fabric over the frame but I decided against it because I wanted to make a branch.  Unfortunately, for the branch idea, the space I wanted to put it in required it to be vertical, so I decided to do a tall skinny tree with yellow leaves.

I used the same grey paint I used to paint the vase as well as the same white I used to paint the table, both of which were left over from Patrick's work.  The yellow is just some acrylic from an art set I got for Christmas when I was still in High school. I mixed it to match the yellow in my leaf fabric. That made the grand total cost to me $0.

The backing to the frame is some kind of fiberboard. I just painted it with a few grey coats.  I then free-handed the tree with the white paint. I considered drawing it with pencil first, but I know from some previous not so great experiences that I am actually much better at painting than drawing. I then went over the whole thing with the white again to keep the grey from showing through.  I then added the yellow leaves with two coats.  I finally added the white bird.  I went through with some more grey at this point and made a few touch ups, notably thinning down a branch that was too fat for where it was on the tree. I think I like it.

House Plant Dress-up

I used to work as a Custodian in the girls' dorms on campus. The last summer I worked there, we adopted a plant that was abandoned at the end of the summer by one of the residents.  We named it Harold. It was a rather resilient thing as we often forgot to water it for a while and it did just fine.

At the end of the summer, the place where we were keeping the plant had to be unlocked so we just decided to take it home. One of my coworkers took the main part of the plant and I took the random off-shoot it had begun growing from its roots.

Once home, we planted it in a very large, red plastic bowl. The plant looked lonely and forlorn in the oversize container and so I decided that, with the rest of the living-room makeovers, it deserved something new.  I went to the dollar store recently to see if I could find a new container.  I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, but I did find this vase.  It was clear glass. I do have to be careful to not over water the plant since it doesn't have a hole in the bottom to drain. Patrick also happened to have a whole can full of grey house paint.

While the paint will wear/ scratch off eventually with rough handling, I figured it would work fine for a house plant.  I just painted the outside of the vase.  I decided to do one coat and leave some evidence of brush strokes because I thought it gave it character (and David woke up from his nap). I then tied a yellow ribbon I had around it and had a stylish new house plant.

I do have to be careful to not over water the plant since it doesn't have a hole in the bottom to drain.

Building a Bed

I live in a relatively small apartment in a basement. I am not complaining and I actually like my apartment a fair bit.  However, space is sometimes a concern. Still, it is not as much of a concern here as our first apartment.

Our first apartment was in a house that was built sometime in the 1890s. It was one level and that level was divided into 4 apartments.  Our apartment was roughly 365 sq feet and heated by a gas heater in the corner of the bedroom. The heater did a fantastic job of heating the top quarter of the apartment (we had very tall ceilings). We had single pane windows and a poor seal on the door.  I found myself baking a lot to keep the apartment warm.

Sometime in January, I decided I just couldn't take it anymore.  We had no space and I was always cold. So, we came up with a great solution: a loft bed. Since we didn't have a ton of money to spend and queen size loft beds are not exactly really easy to come by, we arrived at the decision to build one. We attempted to design one, but I was not very sure of what we were doing, and as neither Patrick nor I had ever built furniture before, I was uncomfortable with our first piece being something that put us 6 feet in the air while we were sleeping. Thus, I found a website that sold plans here and we purchased them for $10.

The only thing we really did differently was that we built it using cheaper lumber, which meant more sanding, and we didn't screw in the slats, which made it easier to take apart. We built the thing over the Saturday and Monday of Martin Luther King weekend. We used leftover plywood to build a desk for me and some shelves (Patrick already had a desk, which we placed under the loft bed as well. A while later, we decided to stain it.  Because the room the loft bed was in was so small, it is a bit difficult to see what is a picture of it.  This a picture of my desk and the shelves.  We used Christmas lights for extra light, which can be seen on the ceiling.

When I was 6 months pregnant (and having a rather rough time getting up the ladder) we moved to our current apartment and left the loft bed behind for Patrick's sister to use (she and her husband moved in when we moved out). Our bed was back just on a box spring.

Figure 1

In October, I had a baby shower and got 600 diapers (which we just finished using a week ago. Diapers are a wonderful gift). I decided we needed more storage again. Since the ceilings were shorter (and I was still pregnant), a loft bed was no longer a good option.  We also had a box spring, which we had just tipped up against the wall with the loft bed (and I had used it as a bulletin board), that I decided to incorporate into the new bed.  Because Patrick was in school and I was not, I designed this one by myself. The height was decided based on the height of a box of diapers, but you could really make it any height (within reason) by just adding or subtracting the same amount from all the 4 x 4 pieces needed (Table 1). My original plans are in Figure 1 as seen from the side of the bed.

Table 1

I figured out everything for the bed would cost me roughly $30. I got help from a friend, Celeste, to go get the boards and that Saturday, we built it.

I must note at this point that I actually purchased about 7 feet of extra 2 x 4. This was because Patrick told me that my design would not be stable and would need a lot of extra cross braces.  Suffice to say, I was right and he was less right.  We built it almost exactly like the picture.

Something that will help with understanding the instructions for building anything with 2 x 4s is that a 2 x 4 (and a 2 x 2, 4 x 4, and any other board measured like this) is not actually 2" by 4".  It was 2" x 4" and then approximately 1/4" is cut off of each side as it is processed, so a 2 x 4 is actually 1 1/2" x 3 1/2" and so on.

Figure 2

After cutting everything to length and doing plenty of sanding, we glued and screwed  (with screws every 6" or so) each of the 53" 2 x 2  onto a 5' 2 x 4.  This was the one thing we did differently than the original plan.  Patrick wanted to make it more stable by putting the 2 x 2 up from the bottom of the 2 x 4 three quarters of an inch, thus allowing more space to screw the 2 x 4 into the legs. The picture (Figure 2) shows it lined up along the bottom. I don't know if it would have worked that way or not. In any case, if you don't line it up with the bottom, you need to make sure you measure it level and the same on all the pieces you attach 2 x 2s to. The 2 x 2 should be centered lengthwise. A 4 x 4 should fit on either side of the 2 x 2 without hanging off the edge, but there should also not be a gap between the two. In other words  there should be roughly 3 1/2"  between the edge of the 2 x 2 to the edge of the 2 x 4.  We cut the 2 x 2s a bit long and then trimmed the extra to get a tight fit.

 Next, the 4 shorter 2 x 2s were glued and screwed to the 83" 2 x 4s (Figure 3). Each was placed far enough from the edge to allow a 4 x 4 and a 2 x 4 (the short way) to sit tightly next to it and not hang off the edge (roughly 5" from the edge of the 2 x 2 to the edge of the 2 x 4). There was a space in between the 2 x 2s  big enough for a 2 x 4 to sit the longer way (roughly 3 1/2").

Figure 3

Figure 4

 Once this was done, we screwed the longer four 4 x 4s into the spaces we left at the end of each 5' 2 x 4 (Figure 4). The top of the 4 x 4 is even with the top of the 2 x 2 so that the box spring can sit on it evenly.

Figure 5

We used 3 screws (Figure 5) on this side in an L shape in order to allow us to screw in the other side with another 3 screws without the screws potentially hitting one another.

Figure 6

We then screwed the 83" 2 x 4s into the 4 x 4 with 3 more screws and the end of the 2 x 4s with 2 screws to make a rectangular frame (Figure 6).

The remaining 5' 2 x 4 was put across the middle in the space left between 2 x 2s and screwed in with 2 screws.  The shorter leg was then centered on this 5' 2 x 4 and screwed in from the top of the 2 x 4 with 4 screws to make it like Figure 1.

So far, the bed is very sturdy and it has been several months.  It would be very easy to change the measurements on this bed to fit different mattresses.  If you did a twin, you probably wouldn't need the center beam at all.