Deltahedron Doughnut with CSRAW

Last year, I wrote a few posts on cubic super right angle weave.  Recently, I revisited this stitch to see what else I could do with it.  Here are 8 little connected cubes in the arrangement of a diamond-shaped doughnut.

It's made with size 11° seed beads in just two colors.

Here you can see a spinning one I got from Wikipedia.  This gif was my inspiration.  Nifty huh?

The shape is called a deltahedron, because all of the faces are triangles, and the capital Greek letter delta is a triangle. On my beaded version, each triangle corresponds to a loop with 6 beads (3 of each color).

 Thanks for looking!

Faux fur for warm hats and Halloween costumes

If you were thinking of making a faux fur hat from my latest hat pattern, but didn't know where to find faux fur, I put some pieces of fur in my shop to make it easy for you. These are remnants from other projects, but the pieces are ample for hat making, with enough left over for a tail. Stay warm and cozy this Halloween!!! 

This is a delectably soft piece of gray and white faux fur, a large remnant from an animal costume I made. I have also made several hats from the fur, and I love it.

This is a delectably soft piece of black, blue and white faux fur, a large remnant from a coat I made for my boyfriend.  I've also made several hats from this fabric.  It's really nice stuff. The pile is two length: 1 and 1 3/4. This is very good quality fur, better than most, and has proven to stand up to repeated (cold water) washings.

This is a delectably soft piece of black faux fur, a large remnant from a coat I made.  The pile is medium long at 1 1/2.  The last  photo shows me wearing a hat with the same fur in purple. The fur for this listing is black. The fur goes by the name "punky muppet."

Pattern Faux Fur Hat with Ears Horns for Babies Children Adults

This PDF tutorial and pattern combo shows how to sew a faux fur hat with ears and horns and bobbles that tie under the chin. The pattern has “actual size” pieces for you to print on your home printer in 5 different sizes: baby, child, adult small, adult medium, adult large. Just print and cut. This pattern is suitable for intermediate sewers. Basic knowledge of sewing is required, but if you've never worked with faux fur before, this is the perfect place to start.

Wild Thing Faux Fur Hat

Learn to sew a Wild Thing hat to help your little (or big) monster stay warm this Winter. There’s nothing like a faux fur hat with big ears and horns to really bring out your inner beast. The ear flaps end with fuzzy bobbles that easily tie under the chin. Little and big hands alike find the stuffed bobbles tactile to squeeze and fun to play with. The ties keep the hat from flying off while biking or walking in the wind.

Wild Thing Hat Pattern

If you know me, you know how much I love fake fur.  It's so soft and since I'm always cold, it keeps me warm.  Over the last few years, I've made over a dozen faux fur coats, and with the scraps, I make hats.  All my friends have faux fur hats.  I have made over two dozen animal hats, using lots of different faux furs, and this Wild Thing Hat design and tutorial is the result of a lot of experiments in technique and shaping.

Fake Fur Hat with Ears and Horns

This Wild Thing hat pattern is easy to modify into any number of animal costumes including cat, dog, Satyr, bear, wolf, and many others, like this one with three horns and no ears.

My boyfriend engineered the pattern pieces so that the Wild Thing Hat pattern pieces print ACTUAL SIZE off your home printer in five sizes from babies to adults.  My 14-page tutorial full of illustrations and photos will lead you step by step through the entire process of making your very own faux fur hats. 

Wild Thing Hat Pattern

My friends and I love wearing faux fur hats when we go camping and at costume parties. I’ve noticed that people smile at me a lot more when I wear a Wild Thing hat.

Informal studies suggest that if you wear a Wild Thing hat while you are running errands, you will get better service. If you use quality fabrics, these hats are very comfortable, super soft, and of course, very warm. I even sleep in mine on cold winter nights.

Here you can see a three-year old wearing the child sized hat (With the pattern, you can make one size smaller for babies, or up to three sizes larger for adults).  Isn't she cute?  She really couldn't stop playing with the little bobbles that were tied under her chin.  So soft and squishy!

The Wild Thing Hat pattern gives pattern pieces and complete instructions for sewing the hat, including a discussion of the various types of fabrics you can use for each of the parts.

You will need the following materials to make a hat.

Faux fur: (½ yard by 1 yard): Medium or high pile.
Lining: (½ yard by 1 yard): Best choice is silk charmeuse, but polyester satin, cotton sateen or even flannel will work.
Strap/Ears: (Scraps of fabric or purchase ¼ yard): polyester cuddle fabric, stretch velvet, jersey, polar fleece, or Minky.
Horns (Scraps of fabric or purchase 1/8 yard): including stretch velvet, gold lame´, linen, and cotton. Pick something relatively thin.
Sewing Thread: polyester or poly/cotton blend.

Thanks for looking!

Wisodom Mandala Pendant in Blue and Gold

Here's my latest pattern, the beaded Wisodom Mandala, named after the five Wisdoms.  Te photo shows the front and back of the same pendant. 

Playing with seed bead colors can be really fun and challenging. It took me a bit of practice to reliably get color combinations I like with the Wisdom Mandala, but I think I nailed it on this one.  For this mandala, I stayed within an analogous palette of blues, green and gold.  One side is basically just blue and gold, very simple.  The other side shows all three analogous colors: blue, aqua, and gold.  Staying simple helped make it work. 

One of my favorite things about making these pendants is that you get to use lots of different colors of beads, and you get two chances to get the colors to look the way you want.  By limiting my colors to I think I was able to get a harmonious design on both sides.  Nice.  See more Mandala Pendants here.

Illuminated Blueberry Buckle Recipe

In 2002, I got really into studying old books, really old books, the kind that were written by hand with a chiseled reed and burnt walnut shell ink, the kind that were painted on parchment or vellum with hand ground pigments of white lead, green malachite and blue lapis lazuli.    Most of what I studied were old religious texts, some dating as far back as AD 400.  After hours and hours of pouring over all of the books I could find on illuminated manuscripts, I learned to do calligraphy and how to glue real gold leaf to paper.  I wanted to make something similar to what I saw in books like the Book of Kells, but not being a particularly religious gal, I looked for some non-divine inspiration and found a recipe for a blueberry buckle, which I adore. 

I wish I knew who wrote it, but I don't.  It was ripped out of some home magazine in the late 1990s, and I won it in a party game with a mug of blueberries because I gave the best guess for how many blueberries were in the mug.   Here is my illuminated recipe for a blueberry buckle.  All that glitters is 24K.  It's a combination of ink and gouache on paper.  It's currently hanging in a fancy gold frame at my mother's house.

If you don't know what a buckle is, it's like coffee cake, with a crumble topping, and this one is overflowing with blueberry goodness.  Seriously, it's so good with all of that cream, butter, vanilla, cinnamon, brown sugar, flour, and blueberry goodness, I had to immortalize it in gold leaf with a rose vine, ivy, Celtic knots, and three different portraits of my late kitty, Boo.  If you like cooked blueberries, stop what you are doing and MAKE THIS RECIPE!  You won't be disappointed, unless maybe if you skimp on the butter and cream. 

By the way, if you click on the picture of the whole recipe, then right click, then click view, and click once more, you can see it large to get a better look at some of the details that are hard to make out at this size.  Thanks for looking.

Lotus Drop Pendants Bracelets

So there's a lot of different ways to link together Lotus Drops to make jewelry other than earrings.  In particular, you can make this pendant.

Or you can flip the drops with the petals pointing in and make this pendant.

You can also make bracelets like this.

And here's a Doceri drawing showing some other possibilities for bracelets.

New Pattern: Beaded Wisdom Mandala

Here's my latest pattern, the beaded Wisodom Mandala, named after the five Wisdoms.

The Beaded Wisdom Mandala is a symmetric beaded pendant that is reversible. It is woven with two layers of seed beads throughout most of the piece except for an abundance of crystals that show through the windows of seed beads. The layering creates a pendant that looks different on each side. It has five-fold symmetry on one side, and nearly ten-fold symmetry on the other.

 The mandala hangs from a beaded tube with jump rings to make an easily wearable pendant. The 22 page pattern shows a variety of pendants in different colors, a few of which I show here.

Beaded Wisdom Mandala

In the pattern, I explain how to make the pendant and the hanging tube in three different sizes so you can make a complete necklace, like this Earthy Mandala Necklace. The mandala is woven with a combination of double outline stitch, loops, square stitch, and peyote stitch.  Here you can see one of my early Wisdom Mandalas, before I figured out how to link the mandala to the hanging tube with jump rings.

The hanging tube is woven with super right angle weave (SRAW) with embellishment.

I really love that the front and back are so different.  Measuring just 1 3/4 inches across, and the complete pendant is just 2 1/2 inches tall, they are pretty detailed for their small size. If you like playing with color (and size 15° and 11° seed beads), you'll love making these.  Thanks for looking!