Planet Nice Crafts

  Hello Everyone! Finally, some rain the past week which lead to a few free hours to write to you instead of setting up and watching sprinklers. I hope the summer has gone well for you so far. Funny that kids are going back to school next week but summer goes until September 21 technically. The emphasis as of late has been the garden, not just watering, but feeble attempts to contain the weeds, harvesting, cooking, and taking photos. The longest duration harvests have been kale and poppy seeds. The green beans came in with a flourish but were finished and just not looking very good, so they were extracted and a few bean seeds planted in their place. The tomatoes have started ripening, the fruits are big and tend to be very juicy and messy. The peppers look great and just started too with the tomatillo and ground cherries not quite hitting their stride yet. The cucurbits - cucumbers, watermelon, and pumpkin - are growing and doing battle with the cucumber beetles. We ...

Hello Everyone! I hope the winter holidays have been a good experience for you. 2020 is a challenging year to put in perspective. Foremost, it is accomplishment enough to be able to witness the end of the year as so much tragedy has occurred. But then daily life needs come in to the picture which can be complicated and stressful such as going to the grocery store. What keeps me going are the stories of the spectacular such as a high school student, Emma Davenport , leading the IL effort to create masks and those individuals using this time to make giant strides in their personal growth. Enough of high philosophy, however, it has been busy at Planet Nice Crafts with creative activities and I am sure you have been quite busy too. A common creative activity this time of year is holiday decorating. Because so many of the tree stands had sold out in my area, I purchased a Christmas tree on December 8 th , about two weeks earlier than I usually do. I chose a white pine, which I had one befor...

Hello Everyone! The popular refrain to stay safe and sane continues. June has been an incredible, momentous, and exhausting month. Planet Nice Crafts has felt the emotion of these times. It has spent time reflecting, but also continuing to stay the course. As of today, 257 masks have been delivered to the MasksNowIllinois group and others in our orbit. The MasksNowIllinois group in totality has completed over 15,000 masks with almost 29,000 requested – so the group is more than half way there. It has been asked where these masks are going. According to the updates, before the beginning of June, healthcare facilities and disabled/senior centers were the main recipients. Now the focus has changed to non-profits and under-resourced places such as orphanages, safe havens, homeless shelters, food pantries, and child care services. This affects Planet Nice Crafts because now only the 2-layer masks are sewn instead of a mask that has a pocket for a filter. The sewing of masks is one of ...

Hello Everyone! I hope everyone is staying safe and sane. Since the last post, temperatures have warmed up, the sun is higher in the sky, and the trees have flowered and are now almost in full leaf. This is significant as there is not much natural light filtering to the workspace now but the trees do keep the temperatures cool. What hasn’t changed is facial mask production. At the time of this post, 180 masks have been completed with another 25 waiting to be sewn. This is a picture of the last drop off a couple weeks ago. The actual sewing is going well. It has been interesting to handle so many different fabrics from iron clad cotton (perhaps due to high thread count?) to stretchy knits that I think are the most comfortable to the standard, reliable quilting or bedding cotton and cotton/poly blends. There was an opportunity to take a pause from the masks to sew up some pillowcases. Pillowcases are a standard beginner level sewing project and I have been sewing them...

Hello Everyone. We are working overtime in the current situation – that has been the biggest change here. One of the outcomes of this tremendous activity is that we have a LOT to share. As I think it is normal when an organization gets going, there was a plethora of chatter about individuals sewing masks as the ILMasksNow effort. While that was settling into a system, Planet Nice Crafts decided to go ahead and finish the oven mitt last mentioned in January. Remember? The hand sewing portion was finally finished and the main part of the mitt was machine quilted with a grid, that worked out nicely. The last step was to put all of it together with a bias binding. My first bias binding attempt was not successful because it was not wide enough to contain all the fabric layers. So I made the second attempt really chunky which I thought was fine for an oven mitt. Here is the elaborate pinning job. Even with the extra width, it was still a challenge on the curves. I...