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The Easy Way to Line a Hat

I could knit hats all day, but ask me to line a hat and chances are I'll never do it. Something about measuring a head, cutting out fabric and sewing it into a hat seems like way too much work.

I was recently deconstructing a cashmere turtleneck for another project and was trying to figure out how to use the turtleneck tube. Headband? Too ugly. Hat lining? Perfect.

Here's how to line a hat with minimal effort. Just some scissors, pinning and whip stitches.

What you'll need:
An old turtleneck
Fabric scissors
A person's head (not yours)
Straight or safety pins
Needle and thread

Directions:
Cut the tube of the neck away from the body of the sweater. I cut below the seam so it wouldn't unravel over time.

Turn the tube inside out and put it on a head with the seam in the back.

Put the hat over the tube and line it up the way you'd like it (if there's a seam to the hat, it should also be in back). Let the hat overhang the tube by 1/4 inch.

Pin the tube to the hat all the way around. This way it will remain stretched out as you sew it and won't cause the hat to pucker.

Remove the tube and hat from the head and thank your head for its assistance.

With thread matching the color of the hat, whip stitch the lining to the inside of the hat, trying to sew into the inside knitted stitches so as not to reveal the thread on the outside of the hat. The following photos are from a different hat and turtleneck.

Inside-out view

That's it! Now your hat is warmer and cozier.

Quick Craft: DIY Heart Shirt

Shirts with big hearts are big right now, but despite the fad I actually think they are pretty cool.

I've had a few old cashmere sweaters awaiting crafting and this was the perfect short-attention-span craft: cut out a heart, sew it on a shirt.

My husband had the idea of sewing on the heart with contrasting embroidery thread. It not only gives it some "pop," but it also adds more of a homemade touch.

Here's what you'll need:

An old sweater

A plain shirt

A large piece of paper or newspaper

chalk

Thin, double-sided fusible interfacing or Stitch Witchery

Embroidery thread

iron

large needle

1. Make a heart template to your liking. I just folded an 11 x 17 piece of paper in half and cut out a heart shape.

2. Place your heart template on the sweater and use chalk to trace the shape. Cut your shape out of the sweater.

3. Figure out where you'd like the heart to be placed on your shirt. Cut strips of interfacing or Stitch Witchery and place them on the shirt. Lay your heart, right side up, on top of the strips and fiddle around to get everything centered and flat. The photo below just shows where I placed the Stitch Witchery. In reality, the strips should not be facing up.

4. Iron the heart according to interfacing instructions, so it fuses to the shirt. This way it won't slip around when you're sewing and you won't have to worry about pins sticking you as you sew.

5. Cut a long piece of embroidery thread and straight stitch around the edge of the heart. Secure thread with a couple of knots on the inside when finished.

Ta-da!

Quick Craft! -- How to Undorkify a Sweatshirt

I've never been much for sweatshirts. The collars always seem too tight and the cuffs are too....cuffy? But lately I've been finding some really comfortable sweatshirts that look a little more flattering, such as this Lands End tunic:

Although $30 isn't a lot for a sweatshirt, a craft challenge was calling my name. Could I take a dorky thrift store sweatshirt and make it cool?

I can't tell you, but what I came up with is a lot more wearable; and it only took about 15 minutes. Hello Esprit! The epitome of awesome in the early 90s. Did you notice the double ribbing? Oh yeah, you could really work a church bake sale in this bad boy.

This is a no-sew craft, by the way.

Here, take a look again that this great shirt. Click on it for a larger view.

Materials:
1 thrift store sweatshirt in your size
1 shirt with a collar shape you prefer
fabric scissors
sewing machine (optional)
chalk

Directions:
Lay the thrift store shirt out on a flat surface, front side up. Place the shirt you like on top of it with the shoulder seams matching up as best you can.

Find the lowest part of your shirt collar in the front and mark it with chalk on the thrift shirt. Do the same with the collar shape at the shoulders. You're just using your own shirt as a guide. Remove your shirt and with the chalk draw a curve to mark your new collar shape.

Do the same with the back of the shirt.

Starting at a shoulder seam, carefully cut along your line.

Ta-da! New collar. Now you could pin under the cut edge and sew a hem around, which I did. But it looks pretty good without doing that.

For the sleeves, I just cut around the top part of the cuff, thus removing the cuff altogether. Roll up your sleeves and you're done.

Bingo boingo! Fast craft.

Alaska Guide to Boletus Mushrooms

Mushroom season is in full force and with a little knowhow, you can join the foraging movement and become a mushroom hunter.

Here is my DISCLAIMER: I've been foraging for mushrooms my whole life and I am positive that what I'm picking is edible. I am not a mushroom expert but I can give you great advice on how to discern boletus mushrooms from inedible ones. Pick at your own risk, but honestly, boletus are easy to detect and as long as you cook them thoroughly before eating, most mushrooms in Alaska will not kill you (but they might make you have some bad stomach problems).

Feel free to contact me and e-mail me photos of your finds if you ever have any questions. There are quite a few edible mushrooms in Alaska, but I'm only knowledgable about boletus.

So here we go:

There are several types of boletus mushrooms and you can find many of them in the Anchorage area. Most are edible and the ones that are poisonous will let you know by their scary color.

The U.S. Forest Service has a great Alaska mushroom guide. I highly recommend taking a look at it.

The only inedible boletes I've come across in Alaska are boletus ludiformus  and boletus coniferarum. Ludiformus is red, which to me is a signal to not eat it. The coniferarum has yellow flesh that when bruised or cut will rapidly turn inky blue. Keep in mind that many edible types of boletus will oxidize, but not nearly as quickly as the coniferarum turns from yellow to blue. It looks pretty cool, but tastes extremely bitter (but will not kill you if eaten).

Boletus ludiformus

Ok, now that we have the inedibles out of the way, let's start becoming mushroom detectives. Before you go out and pick these mushrooms, let me prepare you...

• You will probably get dirty and wet
• You will probably encounter bugs
• You will probably encounter little maggots (baby bugs!)

You've got to get over these factors if you'd like to carry on.

OK? ok....

First, all edible boletes have sponge under the caps instead of gills. Boletes are the only mushroom in Anchorage forests that have sponge instead of gills besides the hawks wing mushroom, which has hedgehog-like spines underneath (and it's edible if you boil it). You can exclude any mushroom with gills because it will not be a bolete. This one fact makes bolete hunting reassuring because there is so much you can rule out. There are deceptive mushrooms that really look like bolete caps, but when you turn them over and see gills, just let them be. They tricked you!

Here are the types of boletes you'll come across in Anchorage forests:

Aspen Scaber-stalk -- these are found in birch and spruce forests, typically around moss, low-bush cranberry and crow berry bushes. They have sienna-colored caps with dirty-looking stems (almost looks like the texture of a terry-cloth towel). The flesh also tends to oxidize and turn black when cut.

Aspen scaber-stalk

Stem of most forest boletes

Alaskan Scaber-stalk -- these look a lot like the Admirable bolete but smaller with a narrower stem.

Alaskan scaber-stalk

King bolete -- this is the purest, most prized bolete and is the equivalent of a wild porcini mushroom. These have light brown caps and white stems with no terry-cloth look to them. The sponge will turn yellow with age.

Freaky melded-cap king bolete. Still delicious

King boletes

In addition to the U.S. Forest Service, here is another great site about Alaska boletes.

All right, now let's set out to find some mushrooms! But where, might you ask? Well, boletes like to grow near spruce roots, birches and in mossy areas. You can often find boletes growing in people's yards. You usually won't find them in areas with long grasses and ferns or anywhere with tall vegetation. The trail system in Anchorage is a great place to start. You could also try Thunderbird Falls, Bird Creek and Girdwood.

The best time to pick boletes is from late July to mid-September. Over the years I haven't found a true rhyme or reason to how boletes grow. Sometimes you'll have a summer with hundreds of pounds and others you won't find any. Usually they grow during the rainy and damp times of Alaska summers.

Boletes can grow to be pretty huge, but it's best to pick them when they are just a couple of days old because bugs love boletes as much as humans do. They will flock to them pretty much as soon as they surface. It's rare to find a bolete that hasn't been lived in by a beetle or some sort of fly eggs, but if you pick them early on it doesn't affect the quality or taste of the mushroom. I'll show some photos later.

This large bolete was literally teeming with insects and maggots. Didn't take this one home!

Fresh boletes should have firm stems and caps, but it's ok if the cap is slightly soft. If you find a really squishy bolete, let it be because the bugs have laid claim to it. Sometimes you'll find a bolete that's firm on the cap, but when you look underneath it looks like bugs have taken it over. Not always true! Sometimes the bugs just get into the sponge part of the mushroom, which can be easily removed. Break the cap in half. If the flesh is white and has no holes in it, then keep it. Baby boletes are the best. Their cap and stem are both firm and delicious. They also look totally phallic. I just had to put that out there.

I recommend field dressing your mushrooms as you go. This means bringing a pocket knife along and whittling away the dirty root. I'm lazy and totally don't do this. It just means I'll have more trash to throw out at home.

Boletes are sturdy so you can collect them in plastic grocery or garbage bags, five-gallon buckets, or if you're feeling whimsical, in a lovely basket. It's up to you.

When you find a good bolete, pick it by the base of the stem, not by the cap, as you will probably break off the cap and tear away the flesh by accident.

The great thing about picking mushrooms is they literally pop up overnight so many people could pick the same spot and still find a good share. You can usually tell if another bolete hunter has been in the area by the discarded caps and overturned trickster mushrooms. This weekend we covered the same ground as another hunter and still came out with nearly 40 pounds of mushrooms!

Once you've collected your mushrooms, you'll have to process them. Here's how it goes:

Start by whittling away the root of the mushroom to remove any soil. If you come across any bug-eaten mushrooms, either toss them or cut into the stem or cap to see if it's salvageable. Sometimes the bugs will have only gotten to half the mushroom, so why waste the whole thing? Once you've removed the big pieces of dirt, you can run each mushroom under cold water and lightly scrub with a nail brush to remove excess dirt. Only rinse them if you plan to use them right away. Rinsing them and then storing them in the fridge may cause them to rot.

Now comes the part where you need to figure out what you're doing with your mushrooms. They can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days, but you'll want to prepare them as soon as you can. If you must store them, be sure to keep them in paper bags so they can breathe.

Boletes should not be eaten raw. They will probably give you an upset stomach. If I'm not cooking with them right away I either sauté the mushrooms in butter, vacuum pack and freeze them or put them in a food dehydrator for a couple of days, bag them up or grind them into porcini powder.

Either way, you'll need to slice them up. This is where you do most of the work. You might find that lots of your mushrooms are bug eaten. I tend to toss caps that are eaten even in the slightest, but really it's not gonna kill you so this is a matter of personal preference. You'll be able to tell if the mushroom is too rotten to eat cause it will look totally gross. But as I said before, you can always try and cut away the nasty bits and keep the good bits. I mentioned before that you can remove the sponge. I do this with most mature boletes because the sponge ends up becoming slimy when cooking. With really new boletes, the sponge is firm and doesn't need to be removed. It's a bit like getting to an artichoke heart -- the sponge will peel off easily and you'll be left with the yummy cap.

This king bolete stem has been eaten by bugs. Not salvagable

This aspen cap is totally nasty. Didn't keep any of it.

This Alaskan stem was soft and dark as soon as I cut into it. It was not good.

This stem was deceiving because it felt great from the outside, but was eaten up on the inside.

This cap had maggots in the sponge, but the actual flesh was just fine.

See? Looks great! Peel off the sponge and you'll be fine.

This is the inside of a good king bolete. Some parts have been eaten by a  bug, but I wasn't horrified by it so I kept it.

This Alaskan bolete has oxidized. Totally fine to eat!

This is a fresh king cap. The sponge is thin and firm. It doesn't need to be peeled off.

Once your boletes have been processed the world is your mushroom! Boletes are great in soups and sauces, but your best bet is to do a Google search for recipes for porcini. If you've decided to dry your mushrooms, they will need to be reconstituted. Boil a couple of cups of water or chicken broth and pour over the dried mushrooms in a bowl. Let sit for 20 minutes and reserve the steeped water for your soup. It'll deepen the flavor even more.

So, that's my guide to Alaska boletes. Please contact me if you have any questions, comments or even corrections.

And remember, if you're not extremely positive about a mushroom, don't eat it. Better safe than sorry!

For more Alaska mushroom information, check out this short film produced by the Alaska Teen Media Institute for the U.S. Forest Service

The Best Way to Hem Jeans

Have you ever gotten your jeans professionally hemmed? It looks all neat and tidy and they even manage to keep the original hem. If you have basic sewing skills and a sewing machine, then hemming your jeans is easy. Save yourself the alteration charge. Learn to shorten your jeans and keep the original hem. This is the best kind of project because it takes about 15 minutes. Here's what you'll need:

• Jeans that are too long
• Straight pins
• Sewing machine
• Ruler or tape measure
• Stitch Witchery double fusible tape (optional)

Newly hemmed -- and you can't even tell!

First, try on your jeans and figure out how much length you'd like to take off by folding up the cuff and measuring from the edge to the fold. With today's pair I wanted them to be two inches shorter.

Take your measurement and divide it in half. This is how much you're going to sew away. Remove your jeans (and continue crafting without pants if you'd like) and now fold up the edge of your jeans till the fabric below the hemline measures half of what you'd like to remove. In my case, I want to remove two inches, so I make sure there is one inch of fabric folded below the hem. Pin in place.

Start your seam in the inner leg and sew right below the edge of the original hem. Repeat with other leg.

You are now basically done and if you are truly lazy you could walk away from this project now. But why not make them look perfect? It will only take a few more minutes.

Turn your jeans inside out and iron the fold you just made. Iron the whole "flap" you just created upward. Take your Stitch Witchery and cut a couple of strips that are long enough to be tucked under the flaps. You may need to trim the tape if the flap is narrower than the tape's width. Sorry, no photo, but it's really not that hard. You're just fusing the flap to the leg so it doesn't flop around when you wear the jeans. Press your hot iron on the flap, using steam, for about 20 seconds and *PRESTO* your flap has been fused to the leg.* I love Stitch Witchery. It's one of my favorite sewing notions. 

Now, admire your professionally hemmed jeans and how you saved, like, $15.

*If you are shortening your jeans by a lot, such as more than four inches, I would consider cutting the flap till it's about an inch wide and running a zig zag stitch around the raw edge (which used to be a fold). Then fuse this flap to the leg.

Old Rain Jacket ===> Baby Rain Pants in 20 Minutes

Our son is just learning to walk, which means crawling is still his preferred method of transportation. Alaska summers can be wet and although yesterday was a balmy 66 degrees and every child on our street was playing out in the sprinkler, most of the time it's a bit chillier. 

Jack has been recently introduced to the outdoors that isn't covered in snow. It's too warm for a snow suit and he keeps mucking up his regular pants. What I really needed for him was a pair of outdoor pants.

I'd long ago posted about making pants from t-shirts and I've also made baby pants from sweater sleeves. Wouldn't it be perfect to cut up an old rain jacket and make pants out of it? Usually rain jackets have adjustable wrist straps, which would totally work to tighten over baby boots. Yes, it can be done!

And thanks to a church rummage sale yesterday, I did it for less than a dollar.

Here's how.

Ingredients:

One large adult rain jacket or windbreaker. Adjustable wrist straps preferred

chalk

fabric scissors

pins 

one foot of half-inch wide elastic

large safety pin

sewing machine

one pair of pants that already fit your baby

This project is super simple. You literally only sew two seams and then sew up the elastic. It took me 20 minutes from start to finish.

Directions:

You'll be using an existing pair of pants as a pattern. Turn them inside out. Take one leg and turn it right side out. Tuck it inside the other leg so it looks like you have a one-legged pair of pants. Fold the pants so the inseam is along the edge. Ta-da! Pants pattern. Study how this looks because you'll be doing this later.

Lay your pattern on top of one of the jacket sleeves so the hem of the pant leg is the end of the sleeve. 

Using chalk, mark the rise and waistband of your pants, about an inch away from the pattern on the rise and three inches above the waistband. This isn't an exact science, but you want enough room in the waistband area so you can fold it down twice and still be able to fit a diaper.

Cut your sleeve along your markings. My jacket had a breathable liner, which I decided to keep 'cause it worked out that way. 

Lay the leg you just cut on top of the other sleeve and follow along those cut lines for the second leg. You are now halfway done with your project.

Turn one leg inside out. As you did with your "pattern," tuck the right-side-out pant leg inside the leg you turned inside out. Line up the cut edges along the rise and pin in place. Sew this one seam. I double stitched it in case Jack is rough on them.

Un-tuck the legs and you should have an inside-out pair of pants with no waistband.

Fold down the waist about 3/4 inch and fold it down again so there are no raw edges. Pin all around the waist.

Turn the pants right side out and sew around the waistband, making sure there is just over a half-inch space to run the elastic through. Leave a small part unsewn so you can run the elastic through. You could do this with the pants inside out, but I like knowing what the outside seam looks like cause I sew totally crooked.

Put a safety pin through the end of the elastic and run it through the waistband. Use the pattern pants as a guide for how tight to make the elastic, or use your child as a model. Mine was sleeping so I winged it. When you've decided how tight the elastic should be, sew both ends of the elastic together with a zig-zag stitch back and forth a few times.

Sew over the opening in the waistband.

Put pants on your baby and let him get dirty out there!