Home repairs

I have a sewing project that is languishing. I made a set of curtains for our office closet and I plan to make matching curtains for the office windows, but I can't make myself take the next step, which is to cut the fabric. 

However, I have been keeping up with my sustainability kick by taking on small repair projects around the house.  Shortly after I started visibly mending, I also became motivated to repair other things. Clear Gorilla Tape became one of my best friends on this quest. However, the tape did not work for everything.  Somehow I came across a product called Sugru on the internet. I then saw a package at my local Target store, which I picked up and looked at, but didn't purchase.  Then finally I decided it was time to try it out on these repairs that were piling up.  By that time, the local Target no longer carried it and I had to order it from Amazon and it arrived two days later, with too much packaging. 

On the day I received the Sugru, I took out a few things that needed repair. This included a broken tea strainer and a set of swim goggles that I now use when chopping onions. In addition, I had a sugar bowl that had no place to conveniently stow the sugar spoon. I also had a set of headphones that were in two pieces suspended by a wire. 

Sugru is a moldable silicone glue. The box I purchased had several packets of various colors.  Once you open a packet, the instructions say you have 30 minutes to mold the Sugru (I found I actually had more).  Then you have to let it cure for 12 to 24 hours.

 

The first I thing I did was to create a little holder for the sugar spoon. That worked out just as envisioned and now I have a place for the sugar spoon. 

Then I worked on the tea strainer. I left it on the counter to cure and my spouse moved it, which meant it ended up  back in two pieces again. I opened a second packet to redo the strainer. After it cured, I realized it was still not stable enough so I added more.  I haven't really put it to the test, but it looks like it will work for a while. 

I also was able to serviceably fix the headphones. I am going to add a little more Sugru to this project, but they are in much better shape than they were before I did the repair.

The goggle rims had a little tear on them. I wasn't able to get the Sugru to mold as I wanted on there, but since I am not using them in water it is ok.  

In addition to these items, I also repaired a broken umbrella. I also started to repair a cracked plastic chair. I will need to open another packet to finish that.  While my blog is generally not about buying more stuff, I did find Sugru to be useful to extending the life of several things. 

Repair again (and again)

Using patches and darning stiches to fix clothing has extended the life of several of my items.  But I get frustrated because these fixes do not last forever.  Sometimes they don't last long at all.

About a year ago, I patched the knees of my son's pants. I used material from old socks, ironed them onto lightweight interfacing and sewed them on the pants using a whip stitch around the outside and a series of running stitches down the length of the patch. 

This fix lasted a year. Last week my son fell and scraped up the knees of the pants and his own knees. Now there are new holes. I am not going to do anything further with this article of clothing because he is growing quickly and has nearly outgrown the pants.  

What happens to my own clothes has been somewhat more bothersome. Mending, especially by hand, takes time. Last summer I patched a pair of  comfortable pants using a home made patch and a series of running stitches. Just four or five months ago, I darned these socks.

When you are patching or darning, you create a strong series of fibers and stitches. The fabric you are mending may not be as strong as it used to be and often you will get more tearing along your outer stiches. 

Several weeks ago, I checked out the book Mending Life: A Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts by Nina and Sonya Montenegro from the library.

Nina describes her first time mending a pair of pants. Within a month a new hole appeared.  As she sat down to mend again, she had all sorts of thoughts about whether it was worth the time and whether a new hole would appear, but she sewed on the second patch anyway. She writes:

A while late, another hole did appear, but this time I didn't hesitate to get out my mending tools and choose a new patch to add. I breathed deeply and thought of how similar the work was to collage - intuitively adding layers of color and shape to make a composition I would be wearing on my knee. In time, mending became a ritual for me, something I tucked into my backpack and took along everywhere to work on whenever I had a free moment.  Just like our grandma, I came to understand that there is always time to mend.

After reading that passage, I realized that I should not be annoyed if I had to continue to mend an item over time. I took the pants that had a second tear
and added another patch in a contrasting color. I will be able to wear them at least a little bit longer.   

Then as I was writing this, I took a break to redarn those socks. Again, they will last just a little bit longer.

 

Going back to the old fashioned handkerchief

Whenever I see giant packages of disposable products, I can't help but think of the John Muir quote: 

This is creation. All this is going on today, only men are blind to see it. They think only of food. They are not content to provide three meals a day; they must have enough for a thousand meals. And so they build ships to carry the food that they call commerce, and they build houses to store food in, and other houses to buy and sell it in, and houses to eat it in, and load themselves down with the care of it so that they cannot get away. They can not pause long enough to go out into the wilderness where God has provided every sparrow enough to eat and to spare, and contemplate for even an hour the wonderful world that they live in.

Over the past 70 years, the size of the American house has doubled.  While more serious thinkers may have other theories about why this is, one of mine is that we need more space to store giant packages of stuff that we are going to use once and throw away. Then, bigger houses lead to more land use, more energy use and more driving because of the lower density of neighborhoods.

One of the most important reasons for reuse and repurposing is to use resources in a sustainable way. However, it does also have the advantage of taking less space (as long as you don't hang on to things you truly don't use).  Because we cut up old clothes and fabric scraps into rags that can be washed, we only store one extra roll of paper towel at at time.  We use cloth napkins so we don't store a lot of those either. 

Last year, I also started using old fashioned handkerchiefs for use at home (we are in the  middle of a pandemic so I get why we use paper products in public spaces). Tissue paper has been the mode of choice for blowing one's nose for most of my life, but we always brought handkerchiefs as gifts when we went to India in the 1970s and 1980s.   

I made some out of an old bed sheet.  Besides taking less space than boxes of tissue, one of biggest advantages of handkerchief is that they don't make a complete mess in the wash when you accidentally leave one in your pocket!

 

Garden trellis made of sticks

We had a week of unseasonably warm weather here in Minnesota, with temperatures topping 80 degrees Fahrenheit last Monday. While I moderated a conference session on the impacts of climate change last week and I know that this weather part of warming trends, I enjoyed it thoroughly. In preparation for growing season, I moved my upcycling outside.

As you know from my previous post on winter sowing, I am hoping to soon be planting peas. I could have purchased trellises, but I decided to make mine with found objects, namely sticks. I made one branch trellis last year so I had some experience under my belt.

In the weeks before, I had been collecting sticks during my daily walks.  During these walks, a few dogs looked at me longingly as I walked by with a stick. I felt bad in one instance and gave up my finds to the neighbor's dog. 

When I constructed last year's trellis, I tried various ways of attaching the sticks - nails, screws and rope. I landed on lashing as the most effective method and decided to use that exclusively on this trellis. I used a mixture of fabric strips and string to lash.

I started by trimming the smaller branches from the sticks that were going to be my vertical posts and laid them down. I then used fabric strips to tie together the first two sticks. I then attached the horizontal stick to a few more vertical ones. I used a garden stake to line up the ends of the sticks to ensure a level bottom. 

I kept adding sticks to crosswise until the trellis was stable enough to lean up against the wall of the house.  It is easier to work on the structure when it is upright.  

I continued to add sticks until the trellis was the size I wanted. Then I moved it to where I was going to plant the peas. I  tied the trellis to the fence so it wouldn't flop over onto an unsuspecting pedestrian.  Can't wait until the peas are ready to plant!

Behavior change is hard - trying to consume less electricity

Last year we had solar panels installed on our garage. They started producing energy in August. The solar company estimated the panels would cover 80% of our electricity needs. 

Over the course of a year, we would like the panels to cover all of our electricity needs. We don't have batteries so for us this means simply using as much as we generate.  We only have so much room on the roof so we couldn't install more panels. Our challenge is to reduce the amount we consume. 

With our solar panels, comes a system that provides minute-by-minute updates on electricity consumption and generation. If you don't have solar panels, there are devices you can purchase to monitor consumption in real time. It has been interesting to watch what takes up the most energy. So far, the winner of that contest is our clothes dryer. We assume later in the summer the air conditioner will take up a significant amount of  energy, but we haven't really used it since the panels started operating.  This is a screen shot of our energy consumption today. After noon and around 8 p.m. you can see high rates of consumption.  We were running the clothes dryer at these two times (plus at the later time, my kid took a shower so our electric hot water heater was going too).  

We live in a place that is quite cold in the winter.  I have seasonal allergies to so I am reluctant to hang things like sheets outside to dry during the warmer months.  We will probably continue to use the dryer, but we have started to make a concerted effort to do less laundry.  We noticed that we have been washing a lot of bath towels. Three people should not be sending 11 towels to the laundry in a week.  In order to help us, I made little badges from denim leftover from my garden apron project  with the initials of our first names on them. I binder clipped them on to each of our towels. I did this with our table napkins too, but that was less about laundry than about the fact that the napkins were getting mixed up and we were losing them. 

On the day last week when we started the new system, I gathered up all the towels in the bathroom and put them in the laundry. Then I took out a clean towel for each of us and hung them up.  A few hours later my spouse informed me he kept two towels on the back of his door because he needed a second towel for his hair (he has much shorter hair them me).  On the first night of the new system, my kid told me had used the new system and used the towel with his initial on it.  On the second and third nights, he forgot and took out new towels from the basket.  So I put this sign on  our towel basket. 

We put the two extra towels he used aside to use the next week. We managed to do only

 three loads of laundry this weekend including bed sheets, but we are still struggling with the towels. I just went into the bathroom and found a fourth towel that had no tag on it and that was wet. There are two possible culprits and since I haven't yet taken my shower today, it wasn't me. Let's hope it works better next week.

Garden Apron from Old Jeans

I belong to a few international Facebook groups for sewists who make upcycled creations. A few weeks ago, a fellow sewist posted a picture of a garden apron with pockets she made. I immediately thought, "I need something like that."  I am always setting tools down while gardening and then losing them. I still haven't found a pair of pruners I set down in our strawberry patch several months ago.  My spouse went out and purchased a replacement pair, which is not very eco-friendly. 

The first thing I needed was a pattern or model. I looked at a couple kitchen aprons we owned and didn't love their shape. Then I went online. I found some patterns that used flowery quilting fabric. I wanted something a little more durable. Then happened upon this apron pattern from Sew4Home. I liked the idea of durable and the split skirt.  Sew4Home has a more detailed pattern and instructions if you want to make yourself the more traditional way. What I will do is to tell you more about how to make an upcycled version of this apron.  

I started with two pairs of jeans offcast by my neighbors. One was darker blue and had more useable fabric and the other pair was lighter and a little more worn.

The pattern called for starting with a big 20 X 31 inch rectangle. I didn't have a piece of denim that large so I had to piece it together. On the darker pair, I cut the pant legs off just below the ripped area.  I used the seam ripper to take apart the flat felled seams. I could have cut the seams but I was in a seam ripper mood. I kept the inside serged seams intact. I also used the seam ripper to detach a couple of the pockets and belt loops.

I was left with two pieces of flat fabric that were not square. I pressed the two pieces then pinned them together right sides together and serged them together on the diagonals with what was the bottom of the jeans facing in opposite directions. After serging I unfolded the fabric and pressed the fabric so it laid relatively flat

From there, I cut the 20 X 31 rectangle, then used a printed pattern to cut the armholes.  I was able to cut out the two smaller rectangles for the split skirt from the other pair of jeans without piecing anything together. 

I wanted moderate cutesiness with this apron so I cut flower, carrot and leaf shapes from the denim to form applique. I used a fine zig zag stich to attach them to the pocket or the apron it self. I stitched the applique onto the base in a random order (some before I started sewing on the skirt, some after) because it was the fun part and I was alternately wrestling with my serger and sewing machine so sometimes I would be frustrated and switch to a task that I could do on the other device. 

I deviated from the pattern and did my own thing with the pockets, topstitching two of the existing pockets on and also adding a few beltloops to hang sharper tools, I put a small piece of denim on the back to add some stabilization to the belt loop areas. For the bottom pockets  I used the bottom of the pantleg and and part of the seam on another leg and another piece of fabric. 

In order to sew the bottom rectangles onto the top ones, I used a four thread serged stitch instead of the flat felled seam called for in the pattern.  

To hem the apron, I serged to finish the edges and folded over once and topstiched.  The pattern calls for folding twice and my machines are just not industrial enough for too many layers of denim. For a more fitted item of clothing, you might have to do some calculations on how this will affect the size, but this was an apron so I didn't really care, I wasn't in the mood to piece together the fabric for the ties because my denim wasn't long enough so I went into my stash and found  bias tape that would work.  I sewed that on using a box pattern. 

You can see a picture of me using the garden apron. This project was a family breakthrough because my spouse said he wanted one too, but in a more masculine pattern. 

P.S. After I used the apron I decided I am going to add some belt loops toward the sides of the apron to better accommodate longer tools. 

Can we behave as if the living world were a gift?

One of the best books I have read recently is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass. Kimmerer is a biologist by training and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In the book, Kimmerer weaves together her academic training with indigenous ways of relating to the world and nature. She talks at length about treating the fruits of the earth as gifts. She writes:

How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again? I know we cannot all become hunter-gatherers—the living world could not bear our weight—but even in a market economy, can we behave “as if ” the living world were a gift?

In other passages she writes about how gifts of the earth are present without us doing anything if we are open to seeing them. 

Most of my upcycling projects are about making something I can use.  And things appear in my life without my going to the store and finding something that was newly extracted from the earth. Since I am on social media and have been asking for materials, some of my neighbors will now just drop stuff off. Other times, I stumble upon something.  For example, I had denim idea projects swimming in my head. I can never find jeans that fit and my kid won't wear them so I actually don't have offcasts of my own.  However, on one of my daily walks, I happened upon free items on the curb, which included two pairs of used jeans with  usable fabric

A pair of jeans is from the earth and I have come to see these things that I happen upon as gifts, but unfortunately I am not sure that most of my fellow Americans feel the same away. I live in a household in which we all compost and recycle religiously and even have purchased Terracycle boxes. My kid is beginning to think his mother is super strange and has tried to physically lead me away from a dumpster on the curb (I found a bin of sewing materials in that particular dumpster bag).  My spouse's tactful answer about my projects is, "I like that they keep you busy."  Though he does like the Tupperware lid chaos reducers I sewed and put in the kitchen cabinets. 

I wonder how we shift our thinking about stuff and what we do with "garbage." This blog is designed to give you some ideas on what you can make or do, so that is one things.  But you and I are only two people.  We need to change societal attitudes about stuff and garbage. What a difference treating our things as gifts would make.  

Stay tuned to future blog posts about this subject.

Glider Makeover - Part 3

This is post three in series of blog posts about a glider I save from the trash.  Read Part 1 and Part 2. 

This is what the glider looked like after I recovered the seat and back cushions. It was a busy pattern and my son was denying that he chose the fabric I used. I did have some solid fabric in my stash that matched the tan color in the patterned fabric.  The solid fabric was from a thrifted duvet cover.  So I decided to cover the armrests in the solid tan fabric. My son claimed that the fabric was ugly, but I decide to proceed. 

The arm rests snapped off. I used the existing arm rests to draft a pattern and I cut out two for each side (four total).  There were snaps I needed to leave uncovered so the arm rest would snap back into the chair. I so used my machine to stitch up the long side of my arm rest shape right sides together and left both ends open. I turned the tube right side out and inserted the arm rests inside and then stitched the fabric to the existing arm rest on existing folds and seams. I used a zipper foot. 

I then folded down the ends and stitched those down. I had to use hand stitching for part of it. While I left the old snaps uncovered in a way that the old fabric was still showing, you can't really tell when it was reattached to the glider. 

I decided that I was not quite done. The chair was still pretty busy. Plus the thrifted fabric was a little thinner than the fabric I had removed once was. I decided to create a pad that would cover the seat and protect the seat cushion where it had worn most previously. I discussed the addition with my son who admitted it would help the aesthetic of the chair. 

I had intended to make a double-sided pad with tan on the outside and batting on the inside. I was using a scrap piece of velour as the batting. I also was getting close to mentally done with the project and I wanted to construct the piece so that I would sew right sides together with ribbons tucked in and then turn it outside rather than quilting the three pieces, then binding the edges. I used more tissue paper to make a pattern and tested it on the seat cushion. 

However, even after I had constructed many three-layer masks in a similar fashion, I stacked the fabric in the wrong order so when I turned it inside out the blue velour was on the bottom. I said to myself "oh well" and decided not to undo what I had done. I then added several quilting stitches to the tan side of the fabric and added the pad to the chair.

I told my son I wanted to take a picture of him using the glider, but my spouse sat down in it.  So I snapped a picture of him before taking one of the kid. 

And then there is a picture of the glider by itself. I may still tighten up the back cushion a bit, but that can wait until another cold day. 

Glider Makeover - Part 2

This is the second post in a series about salvaging a glider we owned. Read the first one here. 

I knew this project would take a couple weeks so I chunked out the work.  I decided to start on the seat rest cushion cover because that piece needed the most help  

I showed my son how to take the seat cover off the foam using a seam ripper. That was relatively fast. 

We then created a paper pattern by laying down the old cushion fabric on some tissue paper that had been once used for packing paper and traced around it.  The existing cushion cover was in terrible shape and I didn't know if it would make a good pattern so we added 1/2 inch extra all the way around so that we could have some wiggle room. 

We used the paper pattern to cut out the first piece of fabric. Then in order to match the design on the fabric, I used the first piece of fabric as a pattern for the second. 

I hand basted the cover, right sides together, with about a 1/2 inch seam allowance.  Keeping the cover inside out, we inserted the cushion  Then we hand basted some more to get the correct fit, including adding a couple gathers on the front. My son was not not happy about this task. 

Then I went to my sewing machine and I sewed the two pieces (still rights sides together), stitching just inside of where I had hand basted,  leaving an opening on the back of the cushion. I removed the hand basted stitches and turned the stitched cover back right side out and inserted the cushion to make sure it fit. 

The I turned it back inside out, trimmed some of the long edges with scissors and finished the edges by serging them. You could simply use a zig zag stitch if you don't have a serger.  Then I turned it back right side out. 

With the cover on the cushion, I turned down the seams at the opening, folding twice and pinning. I took the cover back off and then I topstitched those seams, with two rows. I had several sew on snaps that were part of the jumble stash I acquired.  As you can see they were quite old as that the package originally sold for 10 cents. I hand sewed on five snaps.  I used the ties from the previous cushion cover. I top stitched those on just on either side of the closures so the cushion could be secured to the chair. 

Then I put the seat cushion back on the chair. It looked pretty awful with the other fabric, which was a motivator for my son to work with me on the next part. 

We finished the back cushion in a similar fashion, but we didn't remove the cover fabric because it was stitched to the foam. To obtain our pattern, we traced around the cushion and then added enough extra all the way around to take care of half of the depth of the cushion (in this case about an inch), plus 1/2 inch for the seam allowance and another 1/2 inch to give us some wiggle room.

I used the same method to fit the backrest as we did for the seat cushion, hand basting one time around leaving an opening at the bottom of the cushion, inserting the cushion, hand basting again to get a good fit, then machine stitching to the inside of the hand basting. I removed the hand basting, trimmed some of the excess edges and serged to finish. 

Then I realized I forgotten to add the ties. So  I had to undo a couple inches of the topstiched seam at either edge of the cushion. Then I inserted two pieces of ribbon in two places on the the inside of the cover pinned it in place and then stitched over the ribbon. You can't see too well what I did here because I did not turn it back right side out to attach the ribbon. 

I hemmed the closure the same way I did the seat cushion and sewed on snaps. 

At this point the project was two-thirds done. Stay tuned for the final third of the project. 

Glider makeover - Part 1

A friend gifted us a hand-me down glider when I was pregnant. At that point the gilder was a decade or two old. We used it a lot  It was a good place to nurse, cuddle and read to an infant/toddler.  My son is now 10, but the glider is still in his room. He still uses it, mainly as an iPad stand.

The seat and arm rest covers began to show wear a couple years ago.  As you can see, I visibly mended it, which extended the life by 18 months. A few weeks ago the cushion fabric completely split open. A lot of people would probably have thrown away the glider at that point.  I probably would have done the same a few years ago. But now I salvage things. The wood frame was still in good shape so I decided to recover the cushions.

This is the first post in a series describing how I undertook this endeavor. 

I had to make some calculations when I started this project. The only part of this chair that  was designed for washing were the arm covers. The backrest cushion cover was actually sewn into the foam. I had removed the seat covering to wash it before I patched it previously, but I had to undo stitches and it frayed in the washing machine because the seams were not finished. I had never washed the back rest, but had simply turned the cleaner side to face out.

I definitely wanted coverings that could be washed. That meant finished seams and closures that could be easily opened. For the back rest, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep the grooves that you can see in this picture. 

The arm pads that did detach for washing snapped into the frame. I don't have a snap tool and the fabric around the existing snaps was in decent shape so I decided to leave them be and work around them. 

We also had to choose fabric to use. Luckily, there were some larger pieces in my 38-lb box.  My son selected one fabric and, although it was thrifted, it did not appear to be pre-shrunk so I washed it. 

My son later claimed it was not the pattern he actually chose once the project was underway. Alas.  

Another calculation involved getting my son off Minecraft long enough to work on this project with me. I knew that was probably going to be the biggest challenge in all of this. 

You can read more step-by-step instructions and whether I succeeded in keeping my kid off Minecraft in blog posts, I will publish later this month.