phm is decently popular in japan and i mostly see this when i check twitter and see accounts posting pictures of handmade rocky plushies that are so fucking round looking it brings a tear to my eye
btw, idk if this will be seen by any of the countless people who already have seen and reblogged this post, but heres the original guide posted on how to make the chibi-rocky! the OP also has a separate guide for a more accurate rocky, though obviously less simple of a guide than the little thingy shown off
(im surprised this post gained any attention, haha, if i had known i would have just shared the guides, the more handmade pebbles in the world the better)
Sticking it under a readmore but this is how i make my shirts etc for like a fiver's worth of materials. I am far from being an expert btw im just playing with chemicals. also probably do this in a ventilated area or something
You will need:
Bleach (I use thick toilet bleach it's like 80p)
The thing you want to bleach onto (In this case, a tote bag for a friend. usually i thrift old black shirts.) You should do a patch test before any real bleaching -- dab a tiny bit on the inside of a hem somewhere before you commit. I don't show that below because i forgot to do it but you should. You should ALSO iron the thing before you bleach it. So it's flat. Do as I say not as I do etc.
Something to put inside / between your garment and the table (Asda brand weetabix box babyyy)
Paintbrush (Mine is from a multipack from Poundland. I also accidentally left it in bleach last time and it kind of dissolved so I had to cut off the most egregious of the stray bristles.)
Chalk (For snacking) (I'm joking please don't eat the chalk) (I only have big pavement chalk, again, from Poundland, but you can get a good point with a craft knife)
Step one: move the cat
Step two: insert cereal box into / behind the thing you are bleaching.
Step three: chalk on your design. this is the logo of a wine brand i have never tried but i like the snail. It can be super rough or very precise, whichever helps you know where to put your lines.
As you can tell it's easy to move stuff and redo it by just smudging the chalk away, or, worst case scenario, giving it a wash. Though that sucks if you're impatient like me bc you do NOT want to bleach this while it's wet. Once you're happy with your design, smack it around a bunch to take off most of the chalk, so you wind up with a vague outline. I didn't get a pic of this stage but here's what the iasip one looked like:
Step four: Acquire your bleach and put it in the special bleach jar your hosuemates labelled so you would stop drinking normal water out of it. Accept that Nyx hates you for not letting her drink it.
Step five: Go for it man. The bleach is kinda goopy so don't expect it to come out like paint, but it does mean that you can control the line crispness and width quite easily depending on how hard you press the brush down. I find it really helps for stuff like serif fonts.
You can dilute your bleach with water, which can help it get into all the little crevices esp if your fabric is a little bumpy, but do another small patch test before committing to anything on the main piece, because some fabrics absolutely suck up water and your lovely crispy lines will blow out like an old tattoo. don't do it. Unless you want that look, in which case get silly with it
The other weird thing abt it is obviously that you can't see what you painted right away, it takes a couple seconds to show up, so it's a pretty slow process. The fabric will first go darker where you painted, then lighten from orange to a pale yellow over about 30 seconds. DON'T go "this bleach aint shit" and paint over it to make it lighten faster -- overbleaching it can weaken the fabric and make it tear.
Tragic.
Here are some progress shots of the snail! When you're finished, you should wait for it to develop properly, but it depends how light you want it to be. I let the lines sit for a while before doing the details, and then washed it a bit prematurely so they'll stay a little darker. For nice pale yellow you want to wait around an hour.
Step six: drown her
Nice cold water, wash out all the remaining bleach and chalk. I chucked it in the wash for ten minutes because it's a weird shape and size to wash in the sink and I'm a lazy bastard. but handwashing works just as well.
Step seven: revel in your new bootleg merch. You made that. You did that. thrive. go forth and make weird shit.
I have seen a few sampler quilts with stars that I really liked online so I knew a star quilt would be in my future. Unrelatedly, I had picked up a copy of The Block Book by Judy Martin but I found it has a ton of star patterns. Then, at a quilters’ garage sale last month, I saw a $1 scrap bag of yellow fabrics. That’s serendipity if I’ve ever seen it, so I decided it was time to start my stars.
The first two were directly from the book. The third one is similar to one in the book but it was a 10.25” block and the others were 12” so I decided to tweak it a bit, resize it, and make it a paper pieced pattern. The process would have been far simpler if I had one of those 45 degree rulers, but with a little trigonometry I made it work.
For the layout I have in mind I’ll need about 16 of the 12” stars and 8 or so 6” stars. Right now, I think I will do all of the small stars in that cathedral window style, but we’ll see if I change my mind.
I just learned about this recently from a Viking reenactor! Indigo dye isn't blue until it oxidizes, so when you dye with indigo your cloth or thread doesn't come out of the water blue, it comes out and then reacts with the oxygen in the air and seems to spontaneously turn blue in front of your eyes. It's a really cool process to witness.
Links to my free sewing patterns!
- big manta ray
- smaller manta ray
- monster friend (those monsters with horns I’ve been making lately, but without horns)
- pie slice
- Fred, the Fish of Minimal Effort
- tiny cat (aka Jiji)
- mini mothman
- whale shark/donut whale shark
- juggling frog/toad (aka my smallest, simplest frog pattern of the three I’ve made)
- large frog
- tiny hedgehog
- minecraft bee
- minecraft zombie
- blorbo
- Strawberry Hearts quilt pattern
- starfish
- little octopus
- canvas tote (wider than it is tall)
- canvas tote (taller than it is wide, more of a grocery bag)
- basic bat and ghost
- mini mushroom friends
- whale
- hammerhead shark
- simple seal
- cartoon flea (the one from Emperor’s New Groove)
Tutorials:
- flannel baby blanket tutorial
- onigiri bag tutorial
- tomato pattern design walkthrough (how I design the pattern, not a link to the pattern itself)
- giant worm tutorial (I don’t know why it’s marked mature? it’s a worm)
Emperor’s New Groove flea pattern is added! I also added a link to the worm tutorial, which is not new but apparently never added to this post?
As always, if the timestamp on this reblog is a while ago, it’s worth clicking through to the original post, I update it every time I share another pattern on tumblr
Also, zero obligation, my patterns are free and will remain free, but I promised my mom I’d include a link to my ko-fi next time I shared my pattern post because she wants me to find a lottery winner who wants to support the arts. I told her I don’t think that’s likely, but she made me promise, so there’s the link lol
SIX, that's right, SIX small quilts i made in May this year. they're varying sizes, but all around 10" across (except the last one, the granny square; that's about 14"). these are all made using fabric i naturally dyed in my kitchen using things like osage, madder, cutch, wattle, black walnut, knotweed, goldenrod... some modified with iron or soda ash. playing with color and making sure scraps don't go to waste!
test weaving of penelope's tapestry on the chiusi skyphos:
reference:
there are some adjustments I need to make for tension, but I'd like to make the next version into a header band for a warp-weighted loom so I can try weaving the whole pot, including telemachus and penelope.
the proportions on the header band have improved, but I think I maybe should have doubled the weft threads for the warp.
also if anyone wants to knit the heddles for me, please be my guest. the last time I tied on heddles, I put the bar in the wrong place and had to redo the whole thing.
in true penelope fashion, I may need to unweave and start over, but at least now I've got the loom weights and heddles in place.
I started weaving the spear, penelope, and the right border via double-weave with the intent to leave the remaining warp threads unwoven (as they would be on penelope's loom on the pot), but predictably this is giving me tension problems. I either need to increase the loom weights or just weave the black layer and leave the orange warp threads unwoven, and then switch colors once I get to the heddle bars in the drawing, with the black warp threads floating on top. (I guess weft-faced tapestry would be a third option, if I add a ton more tension.)
either way, this is going to take me the full three years of penelope's stratagem, or perhaps the entire twenty years of odysseus's absence, primarily because clearing the sheds takes a monumental effort each time with this double-weave setup (which I'm not even sure is how it's supposed to be done, I kind of set it up based on vibes and what I thought made sense from floor loom setups).