Eyeglasses to Embroider - DIY

by Kelly
 

While reading Craft this morning, I ran across a post about 'Tapestry Eyeglasses', and since I'm always in the market for something as geeky as DIY eyeglasses, I had to track it back to the original site.

These utilize 3D printing technology. The glasses are printed with tiny holes, which enables you to use the yarn or thread of your choice to make your glasses match your style. Aside from the design diva aspects here, I can already forsee at least one practical use for something like this. They would be a great temporary measure for those with broken glasses (not that I have ever borne the shame of eyeglasses held together by tape-of course not!), especially if they could be made to fit the lenses you already have. And since all eyeglass frames have design info printed on the earpiece, this would be easy enough to do, provided there was some kind of database that the printer could access.

These are from the site Fashioning Tech.com, which has quite a few other interesting articles, not least of which is this article about a research project devoted to integrating a sport coat with a mobile phone so that gestures made while wearing the coat can dial numbers or post your location. Were I involved in this project, I would have developed a gesture link that ties a common upraised finger gesture to a site like Navteq that notifies people of traffic problems. Sadly, that feature doesn't seem to be available...yet.

FashioningTech.com has just made my list of daily reads, at least for the moment. It looks like a great place to find out the latest news in fabric art mixed with technology.

Crocheted Edging Inspiration

by Kelly

I've been working on a project of my own involving crocheted edging, so when I saw this how-to on the CRAFT, site, I had to take a look.

The tutorial is here at  Miss Abigail's Hope Chest . She does a wonderful job of stepping you through the process with photos. She does use a ruler and an awl to make the holes for the edging, though, so I thought I would suggest an alternative to that part of the process.

Here's a little gadget you've probably never seen before :

I finally tracked this down through  a site called Quilt Me Happy. It's a little blade that fits on your rotary cutter. There are three different sizes, so you can choose one for edging a towel, or another for edging a blanket. I have only found one source for these, and they have a patent-pending notice on their product, so they may be the only manufacturers at the moment. Here's their site  Skip Stitch Products. The blades are pretty pricey at $11.00 and $13.00, and of course you're going to have to choose an edging pattern that will work with those holes. But if you're thinking of mass producing edged towels or blankets, this might be the item for you.

Unfortunately, I've decided that this little gadget won't work for me either. I'm working with silk, which slips and frays and is otherwise argumentative. I'm afraid that if I run a line of holes along an edge, then put the project down and come back the next day, I'll find the edge is already a hopeless mess of loose threads.

At the moment I'm working on an embroidered edge that makes loops that I can hopefully crochet into. My big worry is that this won't be sturdy enough, but time will tell.