Green Options

As part of the Pretty Little series, Pretty Little Potholders has step-by-step instructions and some patterns for several very different kinds of potholders.

Since I won’t be wearing any of these potholders, this crafty green book review, unlike my review of Weekend Sewing or The Crafty Chica’s Guide to Artful Sewing, doesn’t have to think about whether or not the patterns are appropriate for my body. Instead, I’ll look at whether the patterns look like something I would actually want to make for myself or for gifts.

I’m also interested, in this review, in how amenable the patterns and instructions are to the use of natural or recycled materials. Are natural or recycled materials asked for, or, even if they’re not, can I easily see places in which they could be substituted?

Here, then, is what I decided about Pretty Little Potholders.

As I mentioned in my review for Weekend Sewing, here are my criteria for a crafty green book review:

How amenable is the book to using (or how easy are the instructions to modify to include) natural or recycled materials?

How appropriate is the book’s sizing for my body, if it includes adult clothing projects (I have a 42″ chest, a 36″ waist, and I’m 5′2″)?

How reader-friendly are the instructions (I have at least the basic skills for any craft, with my best skills being in sewing, probably, but since I’m self-taught in everything there are often huge gaps in my knowledge)?

Here, then, based on those criteria, is my book review of Crafty Chica’s Guide to Artful Sewing, by Kathy Cano-Murillo.

This place is not your grandma’s pottery painting studio, I’ll tell you that much.

In Wisconsin for Matt’s grandma’s garage sale, the family and I took a couple of days to recover up in Door County. Along with cheese curds, beaches, and dairy farms, we spent half a day at the Hands on Art Studio in Fish Creek.

Holy cow.

For a lady who loves to dabble in anything DIY, who hates cookie cutter crafting, and who plans to move everyone out to a farm before the eldest baby is more than a decade old (I’m speaking of myself, here), the Hands On Art Studio? Was awesome.

The best thing about making stuffies and soft dolls is how eco-friendly the craft can be. You can make stuffed toys and animals and dolls from recycled materials, such as felted wool or the fleece that is made from plastic bottles; from natural materials, such as hemp or organic cotton or peace silk; from any of your stash fabrics or the tiniest bits of pieces leftover from other projects. You can stuff them with buckwheat hulls, cotton, eco-friendly fiberfill, crystalline silica-free play sand–anything!

Even if you’re an experienced sewer, however, three-dimensional design can be hard. I sew well, for instance, but when my daughter asks me to sew her a stuffed dinosaur toy or I want to sew a stuffed turtle for the child of my partner in a Craftster swap, it’s many (silent) swear-words later before I can come up with something half-decent.

So unless I’m trying to create something really weird, I often check out from the library the crafting books that have the best patterns for stuffies, and I’ll make or modify those. Here are five of my favorites:

I know, I know–most of these holidays are just ploys by greeting card companies to get us to buy stuff. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day–it’s a plot by Hallmark to get me to spend my hard-earned money on a bunch of nonsense.

I have two little kids, though, and a loving partner. There’s no WAY I’m giving up the glory of Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, and heck, I’ll do my part on Father’s Day, too. And it is nice to have a sanctioned event handy to remind us to honor and celebrate our loved ones, to demonstrate our gratitude and appreciation of them. Especially when we’re honoring mothers. As in me.

Everyone in my family knows, though, that I only like gifts that are 1) handmade, 2) food (especially if it’s also homemade), 3) camera stuff, or 4) craft supplies. And nobody hardly ever gets me camera stuff.

So here’s a list of five nifty, crafty, handmade gifts that you can make in plenty of time for Mother’s Day. Just in case, you know, you don’t have a good camera store near you: