30 July 2015

Aragorn's shirt




Aragorn's gray shirtThis is my take on Aragonrn's grey shirt. He is wearing it in "The company of the ring" and, luckily for me, it is mentioned in the extra material of the Lord of the Rings box set I received for Christmas years ago. 

Aragorn's gray shirt - toileI started using a commercial pattern: Butterick 4486. I then proceeded to change it almost completely. I have added a yoke. The white toile has a too-small-yoke that I then enlarged. 
Aragorn's gray shirt - smockingI have replaced the cuffs with draw strings and I have divided the sleeves in to pieces. The top part was replaced by a smocked section. The drawstrings and the neck closures are cords made on the lucet.







16 July 2015

Packing Paper Baskets

These are made using the paper that amazon uses to pad their products. They are long sections of recycled paper they have ripping dots at regular intervals and I always feel bad throwing them away. I usually fold them and keep them. They can be useful if you move house and need to wrap your glass and crockery but for a while I could not find much use for the paper.
I then saw a picture showing baskets made of paper strips that had been stitched together. 
woven paper baskets
This is how I have interpreted the concept. 

I calculated how long each strip had to be to make decent sized baskets. I found that I had enough for a large one and a small one. I have ripped the paper at the length required. 
I have folded the paper lengthwise twice and stitched it along the edge.

I have woven the strips with the help of an army of clothes pegs and this is the result:

I have trimmed the edges and added a bias tape and handles. The handles are more for show than anything else. They are useful to pull the baskets towards you from the high shelf where I have them but I would not trust them to hold the baskets when full.