Salvation Army

The Salvation Army on Bedford avenue and N7th street is one of my favorite shops in the world! really, it's so awesome.

First of all, they have great cloths in really cheap prices, which I like!

Second of all, they have really cheap cloths that though I might not be able to wear, like an extra extra extra large red sweater from Moreno wool for 3.99$, I can still buy and use as material to work with and make stuff from.

Third, I really love wearing second hand cloths, not only someone else did all the work and wore and washed them till they got all soft and nice and not too clean and crisp to wear, it's also better for the environment cause cloths gets to go around and last longer in the world.

Forth and probably the nicest thing - I love the way that this is contributing to the community, people who wants to get rid of cloths, have an easy way of doing it, people who wants to buy cloths have a good place to do just that. Stuff get reused and people with no money get to have great stuff if they want to.
Also, for some of the people that work there this is an opportunity to have a real serious job for the first time in their life and gain confidence and work abilities on the way of rejoining to working community. I love to see the same faces there every time and how much better they become in working there.

So today, with an idea about a pink fox in mind I went shopping, I intended to just get a pink sweater and get back to the house, but then some other stuff caught my eyes and this is a result:


1) a pink sweater size Large, as planned....

2) An Ann Taylor Loft Stripy skirt, probably to wear, it's really nice and I can't wait till it's warm enough to actually wear skirts.

3) Another skirt with a brown and pink Paisley motif. I thought of using the fabric as material, but now I think I like it too much as a skirt and don't want to destroy it.

4) A Gap sweater. This was on their posters last fall, and I saw a lot of people wearing it for a while so I'm not sure I'll be able to bring myself to wear something so recognizable, however, it'll make a cute elephant or something if I decide to cut it up.

5) a Red and blue star Tshirt, bought mostly for the stars and for the fact it was 0.99$

So, good day of shopping, 16$ spend on 5 items and spending time in my favorite business in the neighborhood...

Above you can see Henzel the Fox which is made of a half of a salvation Army sweater I got last week at half price of a 3.99$.

Stab stitching tutorial

This is a tutorial for my currently favorite book making method. A Japanese style stab stitching cook, it's perfect for making small notebooks, sketchbooks and albums, as well as bigger hard cover books (though I personally haven't tried those.

The benefits of stab stitching books are - since all the pages are stitched together, there are no signatures and so you can bind any number of pages together. Also, there is no glue involve which make this craft a lot less messy (though you won't be able to judge that by how the studio looks right now.


Materials
A rubber ballet or a hammer, paper cut to size, I used about 25 pages for this one, nice paper for the cover and pack cover, also cut to the same size at the pages inside, an awl, a ruler, craft knife, pencil, floss, needle, 2 clips.

Step 1. Attach all the pages together using the clips, put the clips in about a third from the top, leave at least 1"-2" clear to work on.
Step 2. with the ruler and the pencil, mark a straight line on the top part of the book (where the stitching will go). Mark 5 points in equal intervals.


Step 3. Using the awl and mallet, puncture 5 holes where you made the marking. make sure the awl made it all the way through all layers of paper and that the holes are nice and even. If you down have an awl, this can also be done with a nail.

Step 4. make a knot at the end of your floss and thread it through a needle. Start by passing the needle through the center hole from the back of the book to the front, then loop around the top part of the book and insert the needle again through the same hole.

Step 5. Then, pass the needle through the hole to the right of the center hole, and loop around the top part again. turn the book to the back part and move to the next hole to the right (the last one) and loop around it as well. Loop around the side of the book and insert the needle through the first hole to the right again. Then stiched back to the center.
Step 6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 to the left side of the book, then tie a knot at the end and trim the floss.

Ta-Da! the book is done, you can decorate it with rubber stamps, bits of paper, beads, drawings or whatever you like. Or, if you are too lazy, you can hop on to my store and buy one. Writing the instruction is honestly more complicated then actually making one, there are very few options to where the needle can go and it's really really easy to make.

More book binding information
Book binding glossary
The how to make books book
Japanese book binding
Center of book art
The Arm - a wonderful gallery and letter press shop, that offer classes and is just a great place to visit.