Make your own… A Borrowers zine

I liked the Borrowers quite a bit when I was a kid. I think it was the illustrations of their house that I loved the most. TangleCrafts has this super adorable Borrowers Zine. You can make it yourself! It sounds incredibly detailed with all kids of surprises.

Here’s an excerpt from her description:

This is a zine within a zine with some extra bits! ‘Make your own…Borrowers Zine’ has 20 A5 (half-sized) pages, plus a micro-zine & rescued page inserts (see below), a magnifying lens, an embroidery chart, not to mention a pair of miniature knitting needles modelled on Homily’s own! There are illustrations throughout, borrowed from the many different editions of ‘The Borrowers’ that have been published, over the years.
Based on the premise that Borrowers do, in fact, exist (there is yet to be a satisfactory alternative suggestion proposed for the consistent disappearance of small, everyday items), this zine traces the history of Borrowers from Lilliputian times onward in a comprehensive chronology. It also examines their representation in the literature of Mary Norton & others, and consideration is given to the most likely habitats for contemporary Borrowers.

Go read the whole description on the Etsy listing. It sounds so worth 10$!

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Lately I have been feeling like all of my clothes are looking a little worn or feeling a little tired. I don’t want to buy new clothes, though, so there’s been a lot of mending, altering and adding special touches to things that otherwise might get overlooked or not worn at all.

As an example, not too long ago I added a little bit of embroidery to a T-shirt, which was a lot of fun to do and made me start eyeing all my solid-colored garments and wondering how they might look with some stitching added.

Of course you can cross stitch on garments, too, whether T-shirts or woven tops, skirts, pants and more. But it can be tricky to transfer cross stitch designs to your garment to make stitching easier.

Much like with embroidery, it’s great to use a water soluble stabilizer to keep your fabric in place while you stitch and to transfer your design (or your cross stitch grid at least) while you’re stitching. Then you just wash away the stabilizer when you’re done and it will look like the stitching has always been there.

Ashley General Handmade uses Sulky Stick ‘n Stitch, which is a product I use, too. It’s easy to use and washes away cleanly.

To make it even easier, she designed some printable cross stitch grids at different counts that you can print out to draw your own cross stitch designs, but you can also print the grid right on the Sulky, so you can stitch on top of squares and then remove them when you’re done.

Brilliant, right?

She has pages as big as 8 count and all the way down to 20 (remember: the bigger the number the smaller the stitches will be) that you can download and print to make your own designs and also use to make stitching on clothing easier. I’m definitely going to try this the next time I want to cross stitch on fabric!

You can grab her printables over at Ashley General Handmade.

[Photo: Ashley General Handmade]

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