1. ‘Photoshop Elements Crafts Book‘ by Elizabeth Bulger (Donated by the author)

This book has two main elements to take into consideration - the crafts and the computer program.
From a crafty perspective, while the crafts are basic they are simply examples of what you could do. One example is very cute - using photographic patterns and turning them into folded paper objects - the example is a folded paper handbag. Using old photos as a decal and applying it to different surfaces - they made a quite stylish candle holder. From a photographic manipulation perspective there are some very useful tips. How to work with layers, how to select images, etc. there is a good introduction to the program, how to use the menus and palettes, which if you are unfamiliar with adobe programs is very useful. If you have this program and you take lots of photos and you are interested in crafts then this is a good book to have around.

When I first looked at this book I was not really sure what to think. What a brilliant idea, but from a craft perspective the book seemed a bit dull, the images not very exciting, the projects quite basic. On further inspection I realised that it was really well set out and easy to understand. I took a step back out of my photography/design/craft mode and stepped into my computer program mode and assessed the book under that banner. Also another hangup I needed to consider when looking at this book was my pre-knowledge of photoshop - Photoshop elements is not photoshop, rather a simple photo editing program that allows easy control and enables simple fixes for the everyday photographer (ie most of us).

I did a bit of search to see what others had to say and found a review of the book on slashdot the nerdiest site around. Slashdot says Ultimately, The Adobe Photoshop Elements Crafts Book is a slick, well designed book with interesting projects. It is weakened from a lack of clarity and minimal explanations of why? that would greatly increase its utility in transferring the lessons to other ventures. It is a book well-suited to someone who already has a basic understanding of the Photoshop family, but perhaps one that may be a little unclear for real beginners. It will definitely appeal to readers with an independent spirit for creating or personalizing their surroundings.” Read the rest of the review which gives an excellent overview of all the sections of the book.

2. Visual Chronicles by Linda Woods and Karen Dinino (Donated by the authors)
Subtitled ‘The no-fear guide to creating Art Journals, creative manifestos and altered books.

The world of journalling and scrapbooking and visual diaries is so extensive and broad. Really anybody can do a visual diary or art journal, you certainly don’t need to be an artist, you just need to want to express yourself somehow. I have never been good at keeping journals, they tend to be a messy mishmash of thoughts and ideas and a clumsy attempt at illustration and design. I have spent hours in awe at the craft shop looking at all those bits and pieces for scrapbooking knowing I would never have the patience or money to spend on it all. I have often thought of journals though, I love looking at other peoples journals, at famous artists or talented friends who keep exquisite beautiful intricate journals filled with details and surprises.

Which is what drew me to ‘visual chronicles’ this is not about spending money on equipment, but rather on ideas to get started, ideas to embellish, ideas that lead to more ideas. I love that they suggest using simple materials and found objects such as paint palette cards, and further, what a colourful book, wonderful illustrations and typography too - perhaps they have gone a tad overboard on the scratch and grungy paintbrushes and use of lots of different fonts, but hey this is an ideas book and it all laid out in front of you. Before I begin to look at the projects I have to mention that this book is not just about making but also about thinking, lots of self help advice in here too.

Now for the fun bit, the projects.
The mini prompt journal - I love it. Motivational sayings, words to get you going. Just one word or quote per page, the pages are in fact small tag shaped and sized elements lovingly created out of different papers and attached through the top with a screw post to allow it swing apart. The instructions are good. The supplies list is simple, the photo instructions are clear and there is some advice on how to generate text and find the sayings to put on the cards.
Altered book - this is a fun idea, I have always felt strange about tearing up old books, but this seems kind of worthwhile and fun too. Turning an old book into a journal by glueing pages together, changing the shape of the book by cutting it with a saw and painting the book pages, then going on to use the book for your special purpose.

Probably the best part of this book for me is the fear busters. “I can’t draw” sort of stuff. The book address a number of these issues and breaks the stereotype of visual journalling. It gives tips on journalling in many ways, journals that travel, jourals to make with someone else - a joint project, mail out journals, self portrait journals, all good and worthwhile and interesting ways to keep in touch with yourself and family and friends. I want to keep this book.

3. Make your mark by Margaret Peot (Donated by Chronicle Books)
Subtitled ‘Explore your creativity and discover your inner artist’

This book is about tecniques, drawing and design elements, printing and stamping and stencils and paint. Using and creating texture, capturing forms, making collage. Visually a very beautiful book, stylish and elegant, well laid out. But what abou the content. From the first sentence this book resonated with me - the difficulty as an artist and as someone not always confident about what was to happen on the page, the hesitation before putting pencil to paper. Making that first mark.

This book goes through the basic art techniques, gives instructions and projects to get you started on and familiar with each of the techniques. Projects to either get you back into art or give you confidence to try your hand at something new or for experienced artists, exercises to keep practice. Techiques include using found objects as stencils such as laces and feathers and nature. Then there is stamping, making stamps and pattern making, other kinds of print making using beautiful leaves, and fish prints. I want to try the pattern dyeing of paper using similar techniques to tie dyeing fabric. What a beautiful book.

knitted tank cozy [via extreme craft]

Also check out the post about the knitted motorcycle love the knitted tool belt by the same artist - Theresa Honeywell

and extreme crafts flickr sets are great to sift through,

5 winners this week - win a copy each of Julie Jackson’s new book ‘subversive cross stitch‘, 33 designs for your surly side, to be given away, donated by Chronicle books.
(more…)

Week 3 theme is NO FEAR uploading is now open and will close midnight - as per the time on the top of the whiplash page of this blog on 1 May.

Week 3.
In this week there is one copy of three different books offered up as prizes
1. ‘Photoshop Elements Crafts Book‘ by Elizabeth Bulger (Donated by the author)

2. Visual Chronicles by Linda Woods and Karen Dinino (Donated by the authors)
Subtitled ‘The no-fear guide to creating Art Journals, creative manifestos and altered books.

3. Make your mark by Margaret Peot (Donated by Chronicle Books)
Subtitled ‘Explore your creativity and discover your inner artist’

To Enter:

1. Read the weekly challenge theme - posted on Thursday
2. Make something over the weekend - using your medium of choice but in the spirit of the theme
3. Take a couple of good photos of your work - one close up photo, and one broader view photo and maybe a photo of it in use. Some hints to take good images - use natural light not flash, put your item near the window in filtered light not in harsh sunlight which create dark patches of shadow. Take a couple of images and make sure it is in focus. - You don’t need to be a good photographer but you do need to use images that show off your item to its best.
4. Post your entry on your own blog - or to flickr, or to your friends site - it must be online somewhere with a stable link.
5. Grab the code for one of the whiplash buttons on the whiplash page (kindly designed by Jan at poppy) and paste into your post with your whiplash entry
6. Are you signed into whipup? if not login or sign up and get a password then login. - You will not be able to upload your link if you are not logged in.
7. Once you are signed up and logged in to whipup - you can upload your link - you must have the permanent link to your post - to get to the permanent link of your post you may need to click on the date or the header or the #, or the permalink button and it should be in this format http://yourwebsitename.com/pagetitle/date/orsomething
8. Where do you upload your link? - go to the whiplash page - see button on sidebar, and look at the sidebar of the whiplash page.



9. You can only enter once per week.
10. Entries will be judges by a panel of judges on three criteria - skill, humour and originality.

Winners of week 2 to be announced soon - any comments from readers - do we have a readers choice?

When I asked my dear friend what her soon-to-be-six-year-old son Ethan would like for his birthday she told me he would like some sort of super hero cape. “It can be really simple” she said, even though she and I both know that is something I can rarely manage. I get in the flow and half a day later I’m done.

But these are really great friends and their son was worth it. So we found a generic cape pattern in the costume pattern section of the fabric store. I decided on a reversible cape because it needed to be lined anyway I told myself. Super heros can’t fray you know. Graphic design whiz Bill developed a super hero logo for Ethan.

We printed it out on one of those sheets for doing photos on fabric (Timeless Treasures for inkjet printers) which is washable. This is important given that our super hero has to make trips to the grocery store, the library, the park, guitar lessons and Grandma’s house. We used fusible stuff (HeatBond Ultra Hold) to stick it on the cape and top stitched it to the one side before sewing it to the other.

And of course it needed a hood and Batman fabric lining for his alter ego. To prevent our hero from choking while saving the world, we nixed the tie around the neck and used Velcro tabs instead. A strip of grosgrain ribbon concealed the raw edges where the hood meets the cape.

It’s a lot of work but when you see a 6-year old boy wearing a black cape at noon on a hot, sunny day in June and loving it, you know it was worth the trouble.

Has everybody seen this but me? Did y’all know there was online treehugger TV? Well there is, and I am stoked about it. So far I’ve only watched one of their episodes, the one on sustainable style, but so far I am very impressed.

This here is Jill Danyelle who narrates the episode, leading us through the world of recycled clothing and sustainable style. Danyelle also runs a site called fiftyRX3, where the tagline reads “perusing the crossroads of style and sustainability”. Her own site, danyelle.org says this about her:

Her interest in design and environmentalism has led her to investigate methods for creating products which are sustainable without sacrificing aesthetics.

And she seems to be succeeding. Check out her featured recycled project for December:

Dudes, she made this out of old umbrella fabric. How awesome is that?

twelve 22 is one of my favourite craft blogs lately - it has been a while since I have been really excited by a bag fabric or pattern or combination but this one has really caught my eye.

another craft blog with interesting ideas is the felt mouse - I like this knitted bag using fabric strips project, recycling old sheets - great colour and idea too.

simple sparrow who started off the ‘use what you have‘ meme has a great idea for a beach bag.

Another blog by a very talented crafter is turkey feathers. This bag is just gorgeous.

You can get “help” from unexpected places. This for example could be beautiful quilts.

Re-making with paper and plastic we all have around is a challenge, and the more we can do of it the better. I also think the more fine and beatiful we make it, the more desirable and worthy it is to choose and cherish re-made items. It’s inspiring and humbling to see the craftsmanship that is paid to repurposed materials in places where supplies are harder to come by, and trash piles up due to lack of infrastructure.

Plastic bags

If you can crochet, you can make shopping bags into numerous things like a sturdier long-lasting shopping bag, (see another bag example) or even shoes! You can also weave plastic bags into rugs, with a homemade loom (wow). Of course, we’re better off refusing the bags in the first place!

But compared to the cheerful and quick examples linked above, this West African bag is amazing. These bags are made from finely woven repurposed plastic bags. Really lovely. (picture taken and posted by msjacoby on flickr)

Junk Mail galore

I saw these magazine bowls last summer.

The patina website shows some vases for sale, and mentions they are from vietnam, I think the bowls and boxes I saw were from vietnam too (you can click to zoom in, i think that’s vietnamese??) hopefully fair trade. there is a high-resolution image here so you can check it out

I tried to make a bowl, but I ended up with three coasters. I saw a tutorial about this on craftster by cbass on craftster, but they looked a bit chunkier than the ones in the photo here.

However, the craftster tutorial says you should fold the paper from corner to corner, which means the edges show, and i think they must be thicker in the middle, and this is why the turns do not look as smooth as the Vietnamese ones. And the rolls are also wider.

If anyone knows of more tips and tutorials for this it would be great to see them!

Now that I’ve tried it, I can appreciate how much time must have gone into these lovely objects.

There’s a new issue of Spun Magazine available online which includes knitting patterns, recipes and even a tutorial on making bath bombs.

It’s fiber festival season and Knitter’s Review has a huge online listing of the 2006 fiber festivals. If you’re going to MS&W, I’ll see you there!

Couple of fun looking knit-alongs — Wobbly Circles Tote KAL and One Skein Knit-Along.

More and more on lace from Eunny.

The Dye-o-rama! It’s too late to join, but not to late to watch the colorways that people create arrive at the Flickr group.

magic wool ball

This project comes from a warm, wonderful, old-fashioned book called The Children’s Year (Hawthorn Press). It’s a sweet project for kids who are old enough to handle small objects (otherwise it’s a choking hazard) and old enough to appreciate the charm of a magic yarn ball. It’s especially fun for those who knit, crochet, or do other yarny crafts.

And it’s so simple, it’s brilliant. Basically, a child (or adult) wraps cool little treasures up in a ball of yarn, and gives it as a gift. As the recipient crafts with the yarn the treasures fall out one by one, and they discover the fun as they knit or crochet.

This project is perfect for swaps. In fact, I made one to swap with my six-year-old friend Sophia. Here’s how I made mine.

Start with something round-ish for the center, and begin wrapping one end of your yarn around the object. I used a superball, but a stone, nut, large bead, or bottlecap pincushion would also do nicely.

Keep wrapping and adding objects. I added squirrel and sushi stickers, thrifted quilting poms, pieces of ribbon and vintage eyelet trim, and a few large beads. Children might also want to include temporary tattoos, tiny bits of crayons, special leaves or rocks, or small crafting tools. For example a knitter might appreciate a plastic tapestry needle, a few point protectors, or a special stitch marker.

At the end of the ball, finish with a few lovely objects that will show, and secure the yarn end. On Sophia’s, I added a ribbon rose that I bought at a stationery shop, which had a handy piece of floral wire in it to add to the yarn end’s security.

Now I want to make adult versions for other knitters and sewists. Anybody up for a swap?

Yay! Our own Julie, aka Booga J, has just launched the monthly “Pincushion Challenge”. Excellent idea, lots of fun. May’s challenge is fruit. Get on over to the site and check out the details.

Week 2.
theme week 2 - your surly side

Chronicle books has donated 5 copies of Julie Jackson’s new book ‘subversive cross stitch‘, 33 designs for your surly side, to be given away.

“A desperate search for art therapy” and a need to express herself led Julie to the cross stitch isle at the craft shop. There she found the cuteness and sweetness too much and discovered an an urgent need to mess it all up.

Julie’s book “subversive cross stitch” is not about following a pattern but rather a jumping off point to “liberate fussy bunny patterns”. But nevertheless it is a pattern book and give tools and techniques enough to complete the patterns given. There is some info on basic stitches and which needles and fabrics to use, but the main thing is the patterns. The deliciously snarky designs. Nasty and refreshing, not at all politically correct and not a sign of cute.

The subverted cross stitch sayings are gilt framed and hanging on ornate floral wallpaper - excessive and perfect. I showed this book to various friends and family who came over, and all of them, artists and bankers and middle management and grandmothers and stay at home mums, nerds and crazy friends all thought this book fantastic and all wanted me to give them a copy. Alas I have saved them for you - so get those entries in to win one, or I might just give them to all my friends instead.

“Irony is not dead” in this book. “you suck” and “too bad so sad” “is that all there is” and “get lost”.

Feeling down, want to express your surly side, sick of nice and banal and sweet. Take up cross stitch and “get a life”.

get cracking with that surly craft for the week 2 challenge.
you have less than 24 hours to upload your link.

1. sign in
2. go to whiplash page
3. look in the side bar
4. upload your link

updated - oh you have until the end of the 24th as per the clock on the whiplash page

One of my favorite illustrators is Meg Hunt. Her drawings have some depth and mystery to them, which make you wonder what the back story is, what’s the secret being whispered? Masks, animals, zombies, and monsters are recurring themes. She also did some really great mixed media with embroidery and layered fabrics a while back. She keeps a blog with what she’s working on at the moment, like her current series of freakshow drawings.

You can also get her great kleptopus patches at april fool.

If you’re a fabric aficionado/addict, you probably have your dream fabric shop all planned out in your mind. But what is the life of a fabric store owner really like? Cia Blum has been running the popular online shop Cia’s Palette with her husband Mark for four years now. Cia’s Palette is a favorite among quilt/craft bloggers because of her focused selection of modern and reproduction cotton prints, Cia’s indie business spirit, and of course her wonderful customer service. She took the time to answer my questions during a rather busy time — tax season, filling a gazillion orders for Denyse Schmidt’s new line, and moving into a brick-and-mortar storefront for the first time …

Whip up: How did you come to sell fabric online?

Cia Blum: My name is Cia, and I am a fabriholic. *:o)

I blame it on my mother, mostly. My mom is one of those people who can make anything at all without a pattern, in no time at all, and have fun doing it. When I was little, she made most of my clothes and we were always making little toys and fun things together. She would take me shopping for fabric and point out which were the really fabulous ones, and even though she says I was mostly bored with the whole thing it’s obvious that a lot of it really sank in because now I am totally in love with fabric. Obsessed even. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, Mark (my husband and business partner) and I went to visit friends in Winona, which is a town in southern Minnesota, and we spent an entire day raiding tiny little fabric shops out in the country, looking for “finds”. Even on my days off I’m looking for fabric. It’s sort of sick, really. Luckily, Mark is now interested (and surprisingly knowledgable) so it’s not a pain to have him along like it used to be. We used to live in Portland and I loved to go to the Daisy Kingdom (now closed, sob). In those days, he would have been one of the many husbands you’d see sleeping in a car out in front of the store. I suspect now he might actually come in (sort of a scary thought for some reason). He’s constantly cracking me up by knowing *anything* at all about fabric. I don’t know why, but I find it hilarious that he knows about fat quarters and toiles and can pick out an Amy Butler print in a fabric shop. Are guys supposed to know these things?

WU: What’s your personal stash like?

CB: Way too huge. I tend to focus on vintage stuff and nice repros. And I love Japanese prints.

WU: Are you a quilter yourself? If so, what kind of quilting do you do? What was your evolution as a quilter? What are your influences? What kinds of quilts do you admire most?

CB: Yes, I love to quilt! I really prefer hand piecing but I also have a Singer Featherweight that can stitch really really slowly, which I find very pleasing for some reason. (I think I must be a throwback to some pre-industrial age.) When I was first learning to make quilts, I completely immersed myself in the huge variety of patterns you can make using just squares and triangles. That eventually led me to a fascination with quilts from the 16th through 19th centuries — especially since I was starting to see so many amazing reproduction fabrics on the market around that time. Now I’m just into any quilt or fabric piece that’s artistic and well-executed — especially the quirky ones. If someone’s doing something unusual or slightly eccentric, chances are I will adore it. I love Chris Roberts-Antieau, the Lubbesmeyer twins, Nancy Crow, Denyse Schmidt, Jane Sassaman, Gwen Marston, Cheri Saffiote-Payne, B. Michele Maynard — there are so many. I’m always looking.

WU: What did you do before Cia’s Palette?
CB: Oh, a little of everything. I’ve done the standard restaurant thing, worked in a toy store, played drums in an indie rock band, worked in another fabric shop (which shall remain nameless). I was even a cabinetmaker’s apprentice for awhile when we lived in New York. Mostly just regular job jobs. Whatever it took to pay the rent (and feed my fabric addiction).

WU: Do you run Cia’s Palette full-time?
CB: More than. It’s one of those jobs where you take an hour or two off at a time. We’re often up until 2 or 3AM, answering emails and generally taking care of business. I’d love to get away for a week or two, but it hasn’t happened since we started the business and I don’t see it happening any time soon. Owning a business requires a time investment that I could not possibly have imagined before we started doing this.

WU: Is it just you, or do you have staff?

CB: I guess we have sort of a temp staff. Mark and I try to handle as much of it as we possibly can and get people we know to help out when we’re swamped. It’s looking more and more these days like we might need to hire someone full time, though. After four years of doing this, we’re hitting that point where we’re just too busy to handle it on our own some days. I guess that’s a good thing, right?

WU: Do you work from home or do you have a shop?

CB: Funny you ask–we just signed a lease on a storefront last week. Before that we were sort of half and half: We did part of the business from a home office but the fabric has always been in a warehouse. We tried doing it all from an office when we first started, but we only had a couple of computers at that point and we quickly realized that going to the office every time we needed to use a computer was not working out too well. Soon it will all be from our brand-new location in south Minneapolis where, for the first time since we started this business, we’ll be open to the public. I’m very excited about that because it means I’ll finally get to actually meet some of our customers. We officially move in on May 1. It’ll probably take a few weeks to get the place ready before we open.

WU: How would you characterize Cia’s Palette?
CB: Not too big. Hopefully easy to shop. Geared toward people who are looking for something out of the ordinary. The kind of fabric store I’d want to shop in if I didn’t already own the place.

WU: What are the biggest challenges and biggest rewards of being a fabric merchant?

CB: For the last couple of weeks, the biggest challenge has been filling all the orders for the Denyse Schmidt collection! It’s been really, really crazy around here ever since we put her stuff up on the website. Other than that, I’d have to say learning to run an e-business on the fly has been both very challenging and extremely rewarding. It’s been a real learn-as-you-go process. Mark and I have both worked in retail, but doing an online business is so different. For one thing, you never really get to meet your customers. That can be a little frustrating. It’s very odd knowing that many of my relationships these days are email-only, and that I’m good friends with a lot of people I’ve never actually met. On the other hand, I’ve formed relationships with people all over the planet–people I never would have met in the first place if it weren’t for the Internet–and that’s pretty incredible. And I’d have to say it’s one of the biggest rewards. Our customers are the greatest people. I feel so honored to be included in their lives and their projects. People send me photos of the things they’re working on, stories about their families and the people they’re making things for. When I’m cutting fabric, it’s fun sometimes to think about what the fabric might be used for. It may end up in a kid’s favorite blankie or some work of fabric art or a beautiful quilt that will be in someone’s family for generations. No matter what it is, I know it’s going to be a special part of someone’s life. And when a customer sends me a photo or a story, I get to share in that in some small way, and I love it. I know it’s silly, but I still get an enormous kick out of seeing a photo of something someone made from fabric they bought in our shop and being able to say, “Hey! I know that piece of fabric!”

The other great reward is seeing this business actually work. I’ve never done anything like this before and it was a total unknown for both Mark and I. We started with very little money, no experience in running a business, and no real reason to think we could actually pull it off. If we had been a little smarter, or we’d known in advance what was involved, I seriously don’t know if we would have attempted it. For one thing, neither of us knew much about computers. We didn’t even own a computer until about five or six years ago. Neither of us had really ever even used one. So it makes perfect sense, then, to start an online business, right? :) Our life has been completely changed by computers and by the Internet. And to be able to do this is just extraordinary. The first couple of years were so scary. We were right on the edge of poverty much of the time. The day I quit my regular job, I felt like I had just jumped off a cliff. You’d think it would have been one of my greatest days, but I seriously thought I was going to have an ulcer. But it worked and it’s working and I love it. It’s been the scariest, most difficult, most expensive and most time-consuming thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I’d do it again in a second. And I am proud as heck to be able to call myself an entrepreneur. Some days, Mark and I look at each other and go, “Hey! This is a real business!” It’s been a great experience.

WU: What are current trends in cotton prints? How have the trends evolved since you’ve been in the business?

CB: When I first started working in this business, Kaffe Fassett had just introduced his first fabric line. Most everyone I worked with thought it was an amazing collection, but it really didn’t sell very quickly for the first year or so — at least in our shop. Thank goodness Rowan knew enough to stick with it and make it available for several years (very unusual in this business) or a lot of people would have completely missed out. The quilting craze has really caught on with a younger group since that time and the fabric industry is changing to reflect that influence, but slowly. Amy Butler was truly a breath of fresh air and now I think Denyse Schmidt is also having a profound effect by providing what a lot of quilters and crafters have been looking for. The big Spring fabric show [in Minneapolis, MN] is just around the corner and I can’t wait to see what’s new from all of my favorite designers. It seems like the Shabby Chic thing is fading and we’re moving on to more interesting prints in unexpected new color palettes (hooray!). More and more lines are being designed by recognizable artists with a real flair for color and graphics. The trend toward not-so-solid solids, pioneered by Ginny Beyer and Patrick Lose, continues with lots more amazing (and highly usable) tonal prints (so much so that actual solids are starting to seem almost exotic!). And we continue to be totally spoiled by the sheer range of prints available in every style imaginable. When you think of the few icky little calicoes they had to work with in the ’70s, it’s a wonder quilting ever became so huge!

WU: You say on your “about” page that you only sell fabric that you love, and that you’re not trying to be all things to all quilters — will you talk more about that? Why not expand?

CB: We’re expanding all the time, but our “About” page sort of states my mission statement, which is to stay focused on the fabric and try not to get too diverted by the fact that it’s a business. I got into this because of my love of fabric and because I was inspired by a few great online shops that I thought were exactly what an online shop should be. There’s a tendency in this business to try to stock everything in the world, and of course some shops do that. But when I first started shopping online, I found most of the huge online megastore places weren’t all that convenient to shop. Shopping online isn’t like walking into a fabric store, where you can sort of take it all in at once. Online, if a shop has 20,000 fabrics, it quickly turns into information overload. I don’t find it fun to browse at that point–it just becomes a chore. Especially when most of it is stuff I would never want to buy in the first place. I’d much rather find a smaller shop that has a smaller, more focused inventory and is more dependably in tune with my tastes. I like it when a store has a personality–not merely a huge selection. I want our site to be fun to shop. That’s very important to me. So the idea was to skip the stuff that either I knew everyone in the world would be carrying, or stuff that I thought was just plain boring or ugly. I try to concentrate on things that are useful and special and perhaps a bit out of the mainstream. Of course we’ll expand and evolve like any other business, but I’m sure we’ll always be smaller (and hopefully a bit more focused) than the “big guys.”

In response to requests from my previous post about placemats, I quickly sketched the pillowcase binding technique we used. You’ll see this technique in a book in the future but for those of you that have said that you want to make placemats this weekend, I thought it would be nice to get you something now. For those of you that have The Modern Quilt Workshop, this is the same technique used for Unfinished Business. Many, many thanks for your kind comments.

One of the more interesting phenomenon in the online craft community is the popularity of ’swaps’. People from all around the world sign up to send gifts to complete strangers and receive something back in return. I always think it is so interesting that the technology of the internet, which many reactionaries thought would be the end of the traditional postal system, is now being used to encourage old fashioned mail!

There are lots of different places to get involved in swaps of all different sorts, many involve a specific theme, and can involve sending finished crafts, craft supplies, purchased items, or even candy! These are just a few of the places you can find swap opportunities:

Back Tack - the mother of all swaps, wildly popular. Back Tack III is now underway and sign ups closed shortly after they began. The theme this time is softies, with some very specific criteria.

Swapmeet - A new addition to the swapping family, the site was set up to organize swaps of craft supplies. A new theme is announced on the 15th of every month.

Another Swapmeet site, run by purplepinkandorange.com - a monthly swap of items ranging from books, to mixed cds, to gardening items to crafts.

Craftster has a whole section on organized swaps, and a good system for those learning how to set up swaps.

Candyswappers set up by supereggplant

Color-rific swap-o-rama organized through flickr- each month a new color is annouced, and participants send a package of items in only that color, including one handmade item.

Project spectrum postcard swap - a color themed postcard swap

Postcard swap, which has been run twice by my little mochi

The also wildly popular secret pal gift exchange for knitters and crocheters. Now in its seventh round!

tea swap - a swap of teas from around the world. In this swap, teas are mailed to the organizer, who collects an assortment into packages to be mailed back to the participants.

Mini swap a swap for kids to participate in, run by mommycoddle (now closed)

Winners 1, 2 and 3 are (email me with your address so I can get the prizes out to you asap)

Vegasandvenice underpants

pink chalk studio cat foot mat

the otis report bib.

Editors pic was the

coffee/milk bottle cozy by a girl and her blog,

and viewers pics were the

plush slippers by o tempo e o deserto

and the bag guard by eleleo.

What do you call window shopping on the web?

Well, whatever it is, that’s what I’ve been doing lately in search of businesses offering new clothing, made from old clothing. I’m sure no one will be surprised to hear that there is some very awesome clothing-to-clothing crafting going on out there.

Let’s start with Amour Sans Anguish, shall we? Those three photos at the top are from their site. Aren’t these pieces gorgeous? Unfortunately for anyone oohing and aaahing over these pictures, I went ahead and picked images of things already sold; but oh, there is plenty more good stuff where those came from.

Here’s what Amour Sans Anguish’s website has to say about itself:

We believe in the possibility of making and selling clothing and accessories without sweatshops, using recycled materials,and with specific attention to detail and originality.

Next, I fell in love with this awesome apron from Textile Fetish:

Which has beautiful colour combinations, don’t you think?

Here is how Textile Fetish describes itself:

Textile Fetish sells one-of-a-kind, handmade items, made mostly from reclaimed and recycled materials. We are a home-based, indie business that values family and a decent quality of life. At least fifty percent of what we produce is from recycled and reclaimed fabrics.

And finally for today, beautiful asymmetry in this top from Snowflake66:

whose link was passed on to me from whipup’s own Kathreen (thanks Kathreen!). Snowflake66 is a partner in craft at cut+paste, which is another highly recommended site for web-window shopping, and of course for real old fashioned purchasing shopping too.