Crafts Archives - Summers Acres

How to Make an Egg Gathering Apron from a Pillowcase

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When we were living on the 40 acre homestead before we downsized, we had over 50 laying hens. There were lots of eggs to collect each day. The egg basket that I was using wouldn’t hold them all so I switched to a 5 gallon bucket. I quickly realized that a large bucket was a quick way to break eggs and carrying eggs in my T-shirt wasn’t cutting it either. I needed a solution to this problem without spending much money (“much” to this mama is about $10)…I finally decided that I would make an egg gathering apron out of an extra pillowcase and a little bit of ribbon. The apron was made in under 15 minutes and there has been no issue gathering eggs since!

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DIY Eggs for Sale Sign from Reclaimed Wood

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Last month I decided to make some pallet signs to hang on our mailbox at the end of the driveway. I love pallet signs and I am constantly drawn to them in craft fairs, Pinterest, and so on, but I have never made one myself. With Jon’s affinity for chickens and our overabundance of eggs, my initial goal was to create an “Eggs for Sale” sign to let the neighbors know that we had farm fresh eggs for sale.
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How to Hem Pants By Hand

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About the only sewing I do these days is mending, but I actually do know how to sew. I made several of my maternity clothes with my first child and many a Halloween costume when they were little. However, it is more expensive to sew your own clothing these days most of the time. The price of patterns and material is outrageous. I have a pair of dress pants that I recently bought that the hem came out of. It seems that nothing is made very well any more. I needed to repair the hem and thought I’d do a little tutorial.

Hemming slacks is something that I do by hand rather than on the sewing machine. Hems on a sewing machine will be very visible as the stitching will show up as a continuous line. Typically the hem of dress pants are not very visible. Thus, the need to sew by hand.

Because this is a mending job, you can clearly see by the creases where the hem should be turned up to. If you are hemming a brand new garment or the crease is not obvious be sure to measure for the proper length by trying them on, turn up, and tack with a pin.

Visible Crease of Hem

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Easy Double Crochet Adult Beanie

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Since my first crochet scarf, there has been a lull in my crocheting. Summer and fall are so full and busy with gardening, harvesting, canning, and so forth that I just didn’t get back to it. As the weather turned cold and I began to hibernate I started pondering my next crochet project. I decided to go with a double crochet beanie that I found on ravelry to match my new scarf.

My First Crochet Beanie

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DIY: Bathroom Redo and Painting Tip

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All of our main bathroom fixtures were a horrible powder blue. Yes, that’s right powder blue! I have hated it from day one for the last 14 years. Let me tell you, all blue toilet, sink, and tub really limit your painting and decor options. And now due to about 25 years of age they were really wearing out. Much of the glaze had worn off from the inside of the tub making it ugly and dull and hard to clean stains. The walls of the shower were tile and had been repaired multiple times and really just needed to be completely removed or redone. Every time I cleaned the sink and counter little blue chips of the sink was starting to flake off.

So finally, over the course of the last couple of months we have been gradually redoing our bathroom. Jon replaced the toilet and sink/cabinet a couple of months ago. Jon started with the toilet as it was just the easiest part of the process. Then a few days later, the sink was a particular challenge as the nook it sets in is not any standard size and we refused to pay custom cabinet and counter top prices. But with some special cutting into the sheet rock and 2 sink/counter tops later it was in and looked good. Tip: If the counter top is a tight fit, the bubble in the level says it isn’t quite level, and it is still slightly wedged between two walls do NOT sit on it and bounce to coax it the rest of the way down. If you bought the cheap affordable cabinet with the cheap thin counter/sink it may spider into a million pieces. We can laugh about this now, but were not laughing at the time.

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My First Crochet Scarf

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It seems we are having several “firsts” around here lately (first plum, first apple, first egg) and now I have finally completed my first crochet scarf (although it did take me 3 trips to WV and 1 to SC)! Technically this is my 4th crochet project as I did the Beginner’s dishcloth 3 times before it all clicked and I got it right (mostly). I am very excited about learning news skills even if it is taking me longer than anticipated.

Back in March we were driving to West Virginia to pick up Jon’s boys to stay with us on their spring break from school. I wanted to get a new project picked out and started before our drive up so that I could work on it on the ride. I made a goal that with each new crochet project I would learn 1 new stitch or crochet concept. It can be quite difficult to search for a new pattern that only has 1 new thing rather than 3 or 4! I was worried about getting overwhelmed so I kept searching until I found just the right “simplify scarf pattern” on ravelry. This pattern uses the chain, single crochet, turn, and the double crochet (my new stitch to learn). Some crochet patterns can be a bit confusing to read, but Sally’s pattern was simple and concise, just what I needed.

I got on youtube and reviewed several examples of the double crochet until I had figured it out.

Double Crochet

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Nesting Box Curtains

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Shortly after we integrated the new chicks into the flock, we had noticed some of the younger chickens were roosting in the edge of the nesting box. Although we had not seen any of them just hanging out in the nesting box there were signs (chicken poop). It is possible this would not develop into a bad habit, but I did want to break them of this before it became a problem.

So, last Saturday I decided to make some nesting box curtains for the coop. I dug through my big bag of various material and scraps. I toyed with using some black and white cow print material that was left over from one of my son’s Halloween costumes as a child. He is graduating college in a couple of weeks….if that tells you how long I’ve had it. But then I found this old pink and white material that was perfect.
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