Big changes have come to The Irresistible Ewe on Etsy. I've been juggling three Etsy shops for almost three years. I started off with The Irresistible Ewe almost eleven years ago. I've carried yarns from Universal Yarns here in North Carolina. I next added Tangled Moons where I sold Zentangle products and made over 1500 explosion boxes. As arthritis in my hands has increased over the years, I've found myself knitting less and less and rediscovering sewing and lately machine embroidery. I opened a third shop, Maplewood Textiles, February 2019 where I've sold fabrics. I decided recently that this is getting to be a little much to keep up with and one of them had to go. Since the Ewe is the oldest, I decided it would be easier to close the youngest site and move my fabrics and handmade items in with the yarn. So far, it's going well and my sales are transitioning nicely. Tangled Moons will have to stay open for a while. I'm selling some of my husband's Star Trek memorabilia for him there now, but no more explosion boxes. Yes!
I find that a lot of crafters do more than one craft, so combining fibers and fabrics pair well together. To kick off these changes, and to share a project I just finished, here is a tutorial for recycling a pair of jeans into a rigid heddle holder. I have two sizes of the Cricket rigid heddle looms and storing the heddles is always a challenge. I used a pair of my husband, Henry's old jeans for a wall bag for the small size. I found a lovely embroidery design from Embroidery Library of a weaver at the loom. It was a dense embroidery fill, but stitched out beautifully on the denim. I used Sticky Tear-Away from Sulky in a 6"x10" hoop and floated the denim on top to embroider. Here are the steps I took to make this.
I compared the two sizes of heddles and decided to go with the smaller 10-inch size. The top of the jeans was too much and I needed a straight part. The section under the pocket was a perfect size. Next, I trimmed off the excess fabric, first cutting off the inside seam and zipper to make it easier to trim.
I evened out the bottom and top of the strip after trimming the side that had been cut. This made it easier to mark it with a heat-erase pen for positioning in the hoop.
Time for the embroidery before sewing the side seam. This took quite a while with 42,005 stitches and quite a few color changes. After the embroidery was finished, I unhooped the denim and carefully tore away most of the tear-away stabilizer.
After embroidering, it's good to square up the sides of your fabric. The denim had drawn up just slightly, so before stitching, I straightened up the sides, top and bottom again, then laid the entire piece out with a piece of coordinating cotton batik fabric for the lining to make sure they were the same size.
I sewed a half-inch seam down the sides of each piece, then across the bottom of each. I wanted some depth to this bag for the three or four heddles it would hold. I boxed the corners of the denim and lining. First, I measured and cut out a one-inch square in each bottom corner. Then, I lined up the side seam with the bottom seam to form a triangle on each side. Note in the photo of the denim boxed corner. Make sure not to fold both of the sides in the same direction, or you will have too much bulk. Also, make sure the two boxed corners are not leaning in different directions from one another or you'll get an unwanted twist at the bottom seam. I used a quarter-inch seam for the corners.
Sorry, I didn't take photos of adding the lining. Basically, after completing the lining and denim sections (both followed the same sewing directions), I turned both right sides out. I turned under and pressed one- half inch all around the top edges and pressed the folds flat. I inserted the lining into the denim, wrong sides touching and pinned two six-and-a-half-inch pieces of grosgrain ribbon between layers, one-half-inch from the outsides . The heddles are heavy and I thought distributing the weight would be better than one loop in the back. I sewed a half-inch stitch around to tack everything down. I could have stopped there, but I felt it needed a nice trim and I was just completing an inkle loom band which worked perfectly.
I measured the length of the band I wanted and sewed across the band on each end with a straight stitch to hold the stitches in place before cutting the length. It was then sewn around the pouch starting and ending on the back side. Yay! It's finished and turned out even better than expected. Now all I need are two nice hooks to hang my new heddle pouch.
