More Banners

I went a bit nuts making more banners for Cindy Lou's birthday party last month. I got carried away cutting triangles from just about every possible fabric in my stash, and ended up having to buy about 10 additional packages of bias tape. I made four more Fourth of July banners, and I was amazed at how well the other fabrics ended up falling into pretty neat categories. That way each banner would just have four to eight different fabrics in it, instead of 20. When I first starting making them, I was certain that I would end up giving a large number of them away as gifts. Once I had them all hung in the dining room, however, I wasn't sure I would be willing to part with any of them--it was like being in a circus tent.

One small note about cutting and construction: when you're folding over a piece of fabric for mass triangle cutting, make sure the first fold leaves the fabric with right sides out. That way when you're dividing your cut stack into pairs of triangles, they will already have wrong sides together, ready for stitching.

Fourth of July Banner

Wow! A project that I started and finished in one day! I've been seeing these homemade banners or pennant strings all over the mommy blogger universe for the last few years. They're great because a) they're easy to make; b) they can be made from whatever materials you have on hand; and c) they are limitlessly adaptable: color, shape, finishing, etc. There are lots of etsy shops selling them, but why would you buy something that's so easy to make?

Once I got the idea that I might try to make a red-white-and-blue banner, I looked through my fabric index cards to make sure I had enough different fabrics to make it work. Then I dove into the bins and pulled out anything susceptible, ranging from small scraps to pieces of a couple of yards each.

I had decided in my web "research" that I liked the look of strings made with varying sizes of pennants. I liked the body and stiffness and reversability that came from using a double layer of fabric, but I didn't want to sew the triangle pieces together with internal seams, that would require stitching, clipping, turning and ironing to make lay flat and look nice--too fussy. I preferred the look of banners made with unfinished or simply pinked edges, the triangle pieces stitched together with a zigzag stitch. You don't get much more of a no-brainer for the top string holding everything together than prefolded bias tape, and I had a extra-large, 8-yard package of scarlet double-fold bias tape--just perfect for two four-yard banners.

Once I had all my fabrics marshaled, I got out my cutting mat and rotary cutter and started cutting. For the smaller scraps, the size and orientation of the triangles was determined by the size of the scrap, but none were smaller than about four inches in length. For the bigger lengths, I cut a nine-inch or so piece off the end of the fabric, folded it in half to make the selvages meet, then continued to fold it in that direction until it was four inches or so wide--producing a many-layered rectangle with the same height and width as the desired end-result triangle. Fold in half one more time in the same direction (making a long skinny rectangle with all the cut edges together at the top and bottom), then use a quilting ruler as a guide to cut it diagonally. This should make two little piles of paired triangles, ready to be stitched together (and two half-triangles that can be discarded or tossed back into the scrap bag).

With right sides out, zigzag stitch around the two long sides of the triangles and trim hanging threads. (If I had pinking shears, I probably would have pinked the long sides of the triangles, too.) Then stitch the short side of the triangles into the middle of the bias tape, with little to no space between the top corners of the triangles, and leaving a foot or so of bias tape at each end to use when hanging the banner.

Voilà!



After making two full four-yard banners, I had just a few triangles left over, and no more scarlet bias tape. I did, however, have some red grosgrain ribbon in my Christmas wrapping box. Rather than try to fold it around the tops of the triangles, I used two lengths of it and just stitched the triangles between it. I used just navy triangles to make a short minimalist banner for above my front door:

Election Night Olio

I got so caught up listening to the election coverage that we completely spaced Newton's piano lesson tonight. Oops! Hope we can figure out a time to make it up.

Just after the election was called, around 8 pm here, I heard some ruckus, so I went to the front door to check. I could hear neighbors in at least three different directions out on their front porches, whoopin' and hollerin', and a few car horns tooting. I let out a whoop, too. Wonder when we'll get around to taking down our lawn sign, or taking the magnet off our car?

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I have taken to calling myself a Garbage Nazi. I try not to throw anything away that can be reused or recycled. I really knew it was bad when I was able to organize three Enrichment crafts just from materials I had on hand. So this morning as I was pulling out of the driveway to take Newton to school (and teach music there), I noticed that our next-door neighbor had some block styrofoam balanced on top of his garbage can. I immediately pulled out my phone and called to tell David to snag it and add it to our own basement stash of block styrofoam so it wouldn't go to the landfill. No, I don't have a reuse in mind for the block styrofoam. It's just enough of a pain to recycle (though less than it used to be) that I'll wait until I have a good load of it to do so.

Question: should I tell the neighbor I took it? Should I send an offer of recycling assistance on the neighborhood e-mail list? Or should I just keep my mouth shut and not turn completely into a recycling evangelist?

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Quite suddenly, the Wizard started being able to match pitch, a little, sort of. I had been a little concerned that it wasn't able to carry a tune or match my pitch when I was singing with him, even after I experimented with different ranges. Then, last week, he just started spontaneously matching me, between 10 and 30% of the time. Then he would say, at the end of each song, "Mommy! You sing just like me!" Very cute. I hope it does end up being spontaneous and effortless--I would hate for it to become an issue like it did with my youngest sister (she was a little later to match pitch than some, and we made fun of her, and she stopped singing).

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The Martha Stewart enameled cast iron dutch ovens have been marked down further, at least some of them. The smaller size is now down to 50% off, so keep an eye out for the larger size to do the same.

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For your edification and enjoyment, some recent shots of Cindy Lou:

Eco-Living

A while back, I mentioned something about our eco-roof, and Birrd asked for more info. Here it is, finally.

The eco-roof is not on the house, it's on the garage. We live on a very steep street, and our garage is right next to the sidewalk at the downhill side of our lot, dug in so that the back and uphill side are completely buried and the roof's more-or-less flat surface is basically at grade. Though the houseward corner of the garage is quite near the garageward corner of the house, the garage floor is several feet lower than the basement floor, and they connect via a sloping, curving tunnel with a reinforced concrete roof.

The previous roof was that black rubbery/tarry stuff, and though it's hard to know for certain, we are fairly sure that there was a leak at the houseward corner. Certainly there was quite a bit of rot in that area, and consequent sagging. We had done some stopgap repair of that corner when we bought our house eight years ago, but knew we would eventually be replacing the garage roof. We were doing a lot of other exterior projects last spring/summer, including repainting all the house trim and the front of the garage, so it seemed like a good time to undertake the project.

I suppose if we had replaced the garage roof at the time we bought the house, instead of just repairing it, we would have done something different than we ended up doing. However, in the intervening years eco-roofs have been getting increasing amounts of press locally, and I knew there were people who would help me do it and do it right. When I initially talked to Greg Haynes at Ecoroofs Everywhere, a couple of years ago, they were really only working with non-profits or people who wanted to recruit a volunteer force for planting etc. Fortunately, by the time I was ready to undertake my project, Greg was working as a consultant with people who were willing to pay market rates. He hooked me up with a structural engineer who could assess what structural changes needed to made to support the weight of soil and plants and a contractor he had worked with in the past, and the project started just about a year ago.

The contractor dismantled the old roof, beefed up the existing support structure, then created the structural foundation for the eco-roof. They were able to re-use a lot of the existing materials, just took out the rotted sections, and fixed the slope of the roof at that corner to better drain water. The roof now consists of doubled-up 2x10 support beams, a plywood underlayer, a waterproof membrane, a layer of padding (basically like a wool rug pad), a few inches of a soil mix containing a high percentage of pumice, sedums and sempervivums, and a top layer of burlap mesh. The plants will eventually completely grow through and cover the mesh.

I'm pretty happy with the results overall, though I was dismayed to discover that the reconstruction had not resolved the water issues near the tunnel. As it turns out, a bigger problem than any leak that may have existed was the issue of water wicking from the concrete tunnel roof (concrete is porous) into the wood structure. This necessitated, last fall, the removal of the material filling the gap between the concrete and the wood. Right now the crack is covered with roofing felt (detritus left by the metalworkers who put a new copper roof on our bay window) held down by brick pavers, but some time in the next six months we will have to figure out a way to permanently close the gap and still keep water out of the garage structure. If we can succeed in keeping it dry, the eco-roof can last upwards of 30 years. It cost more than a conventional roof would have, but will last longer and will reduce the amount of runoff heading into the river.





Besides the eco-roof, I'm always looking for other, smaller ways to green up my life. It was a big epiphany for me, a while back, when I realized that the three members of the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" trinity are not co-equals. No, dear readers, it's a hierarchy. Recycling is good, but reusing is better, and reducing is the best of all. So here are my recent small triumphs:

Reduce: I finally figured out that my cotton balls (which I use twice daily to apply toner to my face) were too big. Now I gently pull each one into two pieces and use a half, and it works just great. Yay! I've reduced my consumption by 50%, just like that. Cotton is biodegradable, sure, but the growing and manufacturing process couldn't be much less eco-friendly. So for my next bag I'll be purchasing organic cotton balls.

Reuse: Please tell me I'm not the only one who saves rubber bands and paper bags and ribbons from presents? Anyway, I had a big rubber band collection (8 years of regularly getting them with the mail and newspaper). I sorted them by width and made rubber band balls, then happened to catch my mailman one day, and he was thrilled to take them off my hands. More yay!

Recycle: For the last few years, I've been participating in Plastics Roundups run by the Master Recyclers. They will take just about anything plastic that is not recyclable curbside. The recycler who processes the plastics they collect recently expanded its film processing capability. No, not photographic film, any thin flexible plastic, including plastic bags, cereal and cracker liners, shrink wrap, etc. etc. etc. This is awesome. Even without plastic shopping bags (we mostly use cloth bags, and any plastic shopping bags that come our way end up being used for garbage bags), I've filled a large paper shopping bag three times just since the end of January. Our non-diaper garbage has dwindled to almost nothing. Yay!

Now, don't ask me when I'm switching to cloth diapers. That's still something I agonize over.

Baby Love

Several months ago, when my sister and sister-in-law were pregnant and I wasn't, I decided that I would make baby blankets for those two boys and for Number Two, who has only ever had hand-me-downs from his big brother. Somewhere in the process of making them, I found out I was pregnant, and so there was a time when I wasn't sure if Number Two would end up with the blanket after all. Now that I know Number Three is a girl, I'm back to the original plan, which is good because I was thinking of Number Two when I designed them.

When my parents moved to Utard several years ago, I inherited all my mom's stash of fabric. A lot of it is scraps from completed projects, and there were quite a few larger pieces from aborted projects. The latter category included 6.5 yards of baby flannel, surely originally intended for a baby quilt for one of my brothers. It's a slightly aqua blue, and has teddy bears and giraffes with gold bows around their necks, and roses with green leaves. The first category included some light aqua velours left over from a sweatsuit my mom made for me in the 70s (wish I could find a picture of it to include here!). Somewhere along the line I also acquired a turquoise velveteen bridesmaid dress probably worn by my mother's youngest sister some time in the late 1960s. It had a couple of faded spots that made it unsuitable for wear as a dress.

So, I cut up the dress into the largest regular-sized pieces I could, and started laying out fabric, filling in with the velours. An early decision over which I agonized was the size of the finished quilts. The size of the largest pieces from the dress helped me settle on 24x36. I had originally planned a simple gold satin binding for the edges, but then I saw a baby with a fleece stroller blanket with ribbon loops sticking out of the ends. Besides looking really cute, the loops have the developmental bonus of working the baby's fine-motor and hand-eye coordination. There were just enough smaller pieces from the dress left to make three bunnies, one to go with each blanket, using this pattern (thanks to Angry Chicken for the link).

With both nephews due in May, I had a deadline (always crucial) for my project, and I was able to finish everything but the bunny face embroidery before leaving for Utah last week. Hopefully the boys will like them as much as their mommies (and older siblings) do! I gave Number Two his blankie and bunny yesterday, and he is in love.







And here is new nephew #2--isn't he cute?!?!