"It just needs to hold down
these pieces of fabric in a more aesthetic way than my basting stitches..." I'm pretty sure it's going to look really cool
in the end, I just... can we get to the end?!? ...and I'm happy to say that the
stitching is really helping sort of bring this design together and make it
look a little bit more like ~something~ and a little bit less like my scrap drawer
just puked all over a piece of canvas! ...what it did kind of force me to do was
just to make up stuff. Just make stuff up! This is the "Alternating T-Rex,"
again, very official, but look at that! Hello friends, and welcome or welcome back! As
usual, I'm Shannon Makes, scrap fabric hoarder by day, circus artist by night, and this week's
project is going to be an attempt both to bust some of my stash, but also to bust my more...
control freak tendencies in the sewing room, because I'm going to be using my scrap bin, some
leftover notions, and a bit of embroidery floss to explore the crazy quilt style of patchwork.
Now this was heavily inspired by Kristine Vike, who has an absolutely lovely video on the
topic which will be linked in the description, and as soon as I saw how cute her results
were, I knew I had to try it for myself, and since I had a short, overseas contract
in my future, a portable hand-sewing project seemed like the perfect activity to
bring with me. Now, spoiler alert: I enjoyed this project so much that I actually
wanted to do *another* patchwork project, this time with some community input from all of
you, so stay tuned to learn a bit more about that later on. But first things first, let's just
hop back in time and learn a bit more about the origins of this project. Past Shannon: So I've
got the concept, this crazy patchwork quilt idea, and I also know that I want to use it
probably to make some sort of knitting bag, again inspired by Kristine. It's recommended to
use some sort of stiff-ish sturdy backing fabric to put all of your patchwork on, so naturally I
was just going to go digging through my stash, and see if I had something in there that would do
the job, but before I even had time to do that, I literally stumbled across the perfect thing in
the garbage --like I always do-- so, I came across this while I was walking Cannelle. It was in the
garbage bag, and it is exactly the right material, it is a pretty darn good size, and it's in perfect
condition, like it still even has the tag on it, so you *know* we are absolutely going to use
this as the backing fabric for our project. Which means that the next thing we need are all of our
scraps of fabric. Now one of the things that most attracted me to the crazy quilt concept is the
fact that it essentially uses just leftovers and scraps from previous projects, and since we all
know that I am a hoarder of all crafting debris, it should be a surprise to absolutely no one that
I have an entire drawer full of exactly that! So not surprisingly, as I'm staring at
this, since these are all scraps from my own leftover sewing projects, there are a lot of
fabrics in here that not only do I really like, but that go pretty well together
because they're all kind of, you know, related in terms of their color scheme. So
I think what I'm going to do, I'm going to dump this out on the table, spread it all out,
and we can have a look at what's going on here, and if there are some fabrics that maybe speak
to us more than others for this knitting bag. [Music] All right, so I've got everything all sorted out
out by colorway here, and we've got sort of four distinctive piles. So we have the cooler blues
over here, we've got the neutral whites, creams, and grays over here, we have the rather large
pile of earthy hobbit tones, and then we have the one red fabric. This is from my Our Flag
Means Death robe, which was a super fun video, great show, one of my favorite reveals of all
time was, uh, the montage for this, but I don't really wear reds, they don't work super well with
my skin tones, so this-- *Wilhelm scream* Easy, out of the question. Which means I have to
decide between the blues and the hobbit tones, and I mean, was it really even a question
ever? Of course, obviously, I'm going to go with the hobbit tones, but if you would like
some justification other than "my heart says so," there is actually a-- a logical reasoning
behind it, and that is that of my neutral tones, there are several fabrics that have a white
background and a colored print on it, and all three of the prints have hobbit colors on them.
So all of these are going to go match much better with the earth tones I've got going on here. That
means that these are out of the question, and our bag is going to be a mix of neutrals and earthy
hobbit tones, which I think sounds just lovely. So now I think the next thing I'm going to do is take
this bag apart, get all the stitches out of it, and get it laying flat; I think it's just going
to be way easier to work on that way, and then I can sew it back up at the very end, and then we
can basically start laying everything out on here, and actually creating the crazy quilt part of it,
which I'm super excited for, so let's get to it! I basically went through my entire room
digging out ribbons, buttons, trim, beads; basically any miscellaneous crafting supplies
that I've been collecting and hoarding from thrift stores and dumpsters over the past few
years, and that were even vaguely Hobbit-colored. All right, let's get the stitches out of this
puppy. This is not the normal way that I would assemble a bag, which means I probably...
probably should take pictures of how it was assembled, so that I know how to put it back
together. That would be the smart thing to do, wouldn't it? ---or some video! I-- I have
cameras, I could literally just take video of how this was assembled! The good news is
this should be fairly easy to take apart, because the stitches are ginormous.
Even the serged stitches here are huge, so should come apart fairly quickly. *singsong
voice* They're big stitches, but there's a lot of them. It's like they always say, "if you
don't know how to tie a knot, tie a lot" [to self] Oh, that's why it serged. That, my friends, is why it's serged. So
definitely going to run this through the serger. One side down, one to go. [off-key
singing] Give them the old razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle 'em. Well I feel like I say this every video, but
it remains true: that took way longer than I thought it was going to, but it was 100% worth
it, because now all of my raw edges are very nice and taken care of, and we aren't going to have
any sort of Hansel & Gretel situation going on, leaving little fabric scraps everywhere
I go. Which means that it's going to be time to put this lovely sewing machine
away until the very end of the project, because the vast majority of the sewing from
here on out is going to be done by hand, and probably on a plane, or in another
country... it's going to be An Experience Then I started laying out the scraps on the
bag, trying to find an aesthetically-pleasing arrangement with all of the colors, patterns,
and textures that used up as much of each scrap as possible without cutting anything
down too further and making more scraps. This was a process of placing,
replacing, fiddling, reordering, tweaking, and rearranging until I was
happy with the placement, overlap, and balance of colors and shapes on the bag.
Then I could fold all the raw edges under and baste the fabric in place, a step that I
definitely didn't want to skip in this case because I knew the project would be open and
closed several times in the travel process, and I didn't want to worry about the
fabric shifting around or pins falling out. [Music] So it's it's been a couple hours already, and
I am not even halfway done, and I just need to keep reminding myself that I need to let
go of the control freak that I usually am in the sewing room, and that the whole concept of
the crazy quilt is that the beauty comes from the randomness and the hodgepodge nature, and the
colors, and the textures, and all the effort that comes in the stitching afterwards, and *that's*
where I should really be focusing my energy, not on trying to piece this in the most
careful method possible. So we keep rolling, we keep piecing, and basting, and trying to
trust the process. I have no doubt that it's going to look good in the end... well I have
a tiny doubt that it's going to look good, but I'm pretty sure it's going to look really
cool in the end, I just-- can we get to the end? Right now it just looks a little bit
like a mess. Let go of the control freak! And so I kept on working long into the evening, trying to get the entire bag laid out
and basted before I got on my flight. [Music] The next day, with my canvas all prepped, and
my suitcase in hand, I started right in on the embroidery the minute we passed through security.
[Music] Now as you can imagine, sewing a large canvas in a tiny airplane seat is maybe not the
most ergonomic of endeavors, but it actually wasn't that bad; definitely way better than trying
to sleep sitting up, which inevitably (at least for me) finishes by drooling on your neighbor, and
waking up with the most exhausting of neck aches, plus the best part was definitely the built-in
scissor hook on the back of the seat in front of me, which was actually incredibly useful for
not losing them over the entire 6-hour flight! All right, so here is where we're at after
roughly 6 hours of sewing, and I say 6 hours because I did end up sewing for almost the entire
flight ,and I'm happy to say that the stitching is really helping sort of bring this design
together and make it look a little bit more like *something* and a little bit less like my scrap
drawer just puked all over a piece of canvas, so that's good news. My plan of attack so far
has been basically to try and just pick one main stitch and use that on each seam to hold
each piece down without getting too elaborate or involved or ornate; I figure right now, my
main goal is just to get everything held down, and then I can go in later, once that's done,
and like add some decorative touches. Now, was I fully successful at doing that? No, I
did kind of go into some elaborate ornateness on a couple of these themes(?) but I did, for
the most part, keep it under control. But now, uh, it is almost 1:00 Montreal time, and I
have to be, you know, functioning and, uh, awake in a few hours, so I think I'm going to
go take a little nap before I catch my second flight. But she did not, in fact, go take
a nap. She pulled out her embroidery floss, and her needle, and legend has it that, to this
day, in the right light, you can still see her sitting there, stitching away on her crazy
quilt instead of getting some proper sleep. Hello friends! Um, nothing says "jet lag"
quite like a little 3:00 a.m. stitch sesh in the bathroom, am I right? Naturally I thought, I
can't sleep, and I might as well just work on this some because it's the perfect jet lag project,
it's quiet, and I thought I would just sit here and stitch a little bit and share some thoughts
on I was having with you on the process, kind of what I was thinking about all this, so let's get
going. So the original plan that I had was, before getting on the plane, I wanted to go and look at a
bunch of different types of stitches, so I wanted to go look at some some examples from magazines
from the 1890s, kind of like what Kristine had. She had a booklet with, like, lots of examples
of contemporary stitches from the 1890s. I also wanted to go, you know, scroll through Pinterest
and look at some more modern crazy quilting or embroidery stitches. But the packing process 100%
did not go, uh, quite as smoothly as planned, it was very rushed and last-minute, and I did not
have time to do that. Which meant that I got on the plane rather underprepared -- for me. I like
to really plan things out, I like to know what I'm doing ahead of time. If you've been here
a little a while, you'll know that I am by no means an embroidery expert - my cape that I made
last autumn, my embroidered hobbitsey cape, was the first time I had ever embroidered anything...
ever, and it turned out really well, and I'm very happy with it, but it's also a very different type
of embroidery than this, uh, so there's not that much carryover, quite honestly. And I did feel a
bit underprepared for this, um, but what it did kind of force me to do was just to make up stuff.
To kind of let go of that desire to have a game plan, and to just wing it, and honestly I think
it was kind of a good thing. It kind of forced me to make some stitches up, just make stuff up.
It resulted in some really successful stitches, and others that are, honestly, a little bit
questionable. It was kind of liberating to just be like "you know what? It's fine. It just
needs to hold down these pieces of fabric in a more aesthetic way than my basting stitches" and
let me tell you, that is a pretty low bar. Also, if anybody is wondering what I'm working on at the
moment, I'm actually using this slightly lighter colored orange thread to go in and tack down this
herringbone stitch right here, because the green wool right here is quite thick, so when I folded
it over on this edge, it's sitting much higher than the gray wool underneath it, which meant that
my herringbone stitch had just kind of a big air gap underneath it, because the green was so thick.
So now I'm just going in with this lighter orange and literally just tacking down the herringbone
stitch right at that seam where the big gap is, and this is again something I'm just kind of
making up, like I didn't see that I should do this anywhere, but it just felt like, because this is
going to be a bag, that I wanted all my stitches to be fairly tight. I don't want anything to be
like like loose that could snag on something, and so I was like, you know what, this is just
going to look like a decorative touch, but it's also going to be pulling double duty, because
it's going to be holding these darker orange stitches down a bit tighter... at least that's the
theory, like I said, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just winging it. So those are my late night
musings, uh, at the moment. I will come back to you later when I'm in a better light and show
you where I'm at, because I am quite happy with how it's going, can give you a rundown on some of
the stitches that I'm using, whether they're made up or real. So yeah, let's just.. I'll talk
to you tomorrow, okay... later today... bye! So, fun story, we are actually supposed
to be at the theater right now, working, hence all of this. But apparently after sitting
in stop and go traffic for almost an hour, our driver showed up at the wrong hotel, so
we're back up in our rooms, uh, just hanging out and waiting for him to show up at the correct
hotel to pick us up, and in the meantime time, I've just been plugging away at this, and I am
super happy with how it is turning out, so I thought I could give you a quick rundown of sort
of the four main stitches I've been using to tack these panels down. Because there are in fact only
four that I've been using, and variations of them, and all of them can be conveniently located in
this corner here. So first, I've been using the Herringbone stitch, up on top, then underneath, it
the blanket stitch, followed by what I am calling the T-Rex Stitch because it looks a little bit
like T-Rex Footprints, right there, and then this guy right here, whose name I always forget. I
think it's feather stitch? Vine? Seed stitch? I'll put the name up once I figure out what it is. So
those are the four stitches that I've been using, and then just kind of doing variations on them, so
like over here, you can see that this one is is a much larger herringbone than that one, or if we
go find my favorite one, this is the Alternating T-Rex - again, very official, but look at that!
It's like they're doing a little dance! A line dance! So those are basically-- just been kind
of alternating on using those. Where I'm working at right now is another variation on the T-Rex
Stitch, uh, this one he has five toes instead of three. So I'm just going to keep plugging away on
this until our driver shows up. I would say --if I can get it off my foot-- I would say that I am
about between a third and halfway done with doing all of the main stitches, and then I can go back
through and do all of the extra embellishments on it, which I'm kind of seeing as optional. As
long as I can get all the main pieces tacked down, then I can add the lining, and I can go back
in later to do embellishments if I want to, while the lining is in there. And I think I'm
definitely going to be able to get this done by the time I get back to Montreal, because---
[phone starts buzzing off-screen] Ooop! [Music] [Music] I brought my sewing with me, because
usually backstage is a ton of waiting, especially on a contract like this, but
we were really pleased when we were in, built-up, performed, cooled-off, and loaded
out within the span of a few very busy hours, leaving me no time to sew, and only time
to make a few furry friends on set. Then, after a couple days visiting the city,
we were back on a plane on our way home. [Music] So I've gone through off-camera and added some
more notions, some buttons, ribbon, rik-rack, and miscellaneous beads, all of it being
just stuff I had laying around my stash, collected over the years (as I suspect many of
us do), and a lot of it came from free sidewalk garbage piles, all that kind of crafting stuff
that I couldn't pass up even though I didn't know what exactly to do with it at time. Well
now I found somewhere to put it! And this was also a great time to experiment with more,
let's say "organic looking" arrangements, like here, for example, because with the beads
and the buttons and such, it's just-- that's not a style of creativity that I'm as comfortable
with. My comfort zone is very much more Type A, a very controlled and orderly sort of creativity,
so I think that this was a really good project for me to try some new styles, and let my creativity
go a little bit freer, and and now I'm at a point where I think it looks good enough that
I'm ready to call it done and sew it up. [Music] So back when I had just seam-ripped the
whole bag, and it could be laid flat, I used it to measure out the lining for this bag. So really quick let's talk about this community
patchwork project that I mentioned at the start of the video. I've absolutely fallen in love with
the crazy quilt concept, for so many reasons, and also there were just a lot of thoughts
and techniques, details on stitches, and other parts of the process that I didn't get
to touch on in this video, that I want to explore it further and make another video on it. But I
was thinking I want you to be part of the process, if you want to that is. So I've rented
a P.O. box for the next couple months, and I would be absolutely chuffed if you would
consider sending me some of your fabric scraps to add to my patchwork project. I would love to
build the entire thing out of patchwork from you, my viewers, if that's possible. And I will say
that I do feel kind of bad asking you guys to do something that requires you to spend actual money,
so I want to be clear that you don't have to, uh, and if you decide you want to, I'd be happy with
scraps that are small enough to fit into a normal envelope, like a letter with minimal postage.
So if you have a scrap collection, and the time, resources, and desire to be a part of this next
patchwork project, I would be honestly honored and touched if you would consider contributing.
The last time I did a community patchwork project was my robe from Lord of the Rings, and every time
I wear it, it's such a lovely reminder of all the people in my neighborhood who came together to
donate to that project, so if you're interested, my P.O. Box is here up on screen, and it'll be
in the description as well, plus if you're in one of the following cities, I will actually be
in your area in person performing at some point in November or December, and you could potentially
skip the postage and give me your scraps in-person if you are so inclined. So feel free to message
me on Instagram, or send me an email if you're in one of these cities and would like to try and
meet up, and also make sure you're subscribed so you can follow along on the adventure, and so
that you can be sure you actually see the video when it's released! And if you can't get enough
Shannon Makes, I do have a Patreon if you want to support the channel further, but also it's the
holidays, and I know everyone is tight on cash, so honestly just giving the video a "like," leaving
a little comment, and especially sharing the video with your fellow crafters and quilters goes a
huge way towards boosting the channel. But for, now enough talk, let's roll the beauty shots! I'm
clearly super happy with my first foray into the crazy quilt concept, since I want to continue and
make more. Now, is this the perfect knitting bag, specifically? Maybe not; finding that bag in the
garbage was too good of a starting point to pass up, but it also wasn't the ideal size or shape
for a knitting bag, so while this definitely will work in the meantime, I may have fallen in love
with another design that's specifically meant to hold knitting supplies, so I think that
might be my next video. Stay tuned for that, but in the interim I have an absolutely gorgeous
patchwork bag that's cozy, and hobbitsy, and was the perfect place to use up at least some of my
orphaned crafting supplies, collected through the year. Have you ever tried crazy quilting? If not,
are you now inspired to? Does it seem like a good way to use up some of your own scrap collection
if, like me, it is rather large? Let me know down in the comments, and if you'd like to check out
Kristine's video, the one that inspired mine, it's right here, and if you haven't seen my patchwork
robe and you're up for some great storytelling, that's going to be right here. Thanks so much for
watching, I will be looking out for everybody's mail if they feel like contributing scraps, and
I'll see you in my next video! Byeee! [Music]
