Planet Nice Crafts

After a mild start, we are in the thick of a nice normal Chicago winter with plenty of snow and cold to go around. The days are getting longer and the Southern exposure of the sun, when it decides to come out, is the best light ever. To go with the weather, the Spring semester started – it must be a sign that time should be spent indoors on homework. Before moving to Planet Nice Crafts updates, I would like to share this Ralph Pucci advertisement, found in a recent issue of Architectural Digest. I think the chair bears resemblance to a bean bag chair, don’t you think? The last week of Winter Break was very productive with two museum visits and progress made on the Planet Nice Crafts bean bag chair.  The construction of the cover started with the pocket – specially cut so it would blend with the one of the panels. I hope you can see it below. The big stitches are temporary basting stitches used to keep the pocket in place while the pocket was attached by machine sti...

We made it through the holiday season and Planet Nice Crafts’ first year to 2019 and the blog’s second year. As predicted, the holiday season was quite hectic with cleaning, shopping, writing out cards, baking, decorating, wrapping presents, cooking meals, and socializing. It was sometimes a blur, but I am happy with how it all turned out.  I hope all of you had an enjoyable holiday season. As for the holiday recovery process, it has concluded. The Christmas tree is gone, the chairs are back in storage, and any leftover cookies were put in the freezer. This is good news because the new Winter semester is starting next week Tuesday. What put the final touch on the transition was the resuming of Planet Nice Crafts activities. The bean bag chair was initiated. This has been a good project because it has given me an opportunity to become more comfortable with a plaid fabric. The chair has two layers: a lining bag that will hold the pellets and an outer bag. The pattern suggested ...

In these first moments of Winter, I would like to send seasonal greetings to you on Planet Earth from Planet Nice. At the moment, there is a pause in holiday preparations to just catch my breath. What has been the recent activity here at Planet Nice Crafts? Finishing up the semester and then cleaning, lots of cleaning. It is always good to start a new season with a freshened up, cleaner setting. This cleaning extravaganza did include the craft room which alone needed sessions across three days. It probably does not look any different, but that is OK. I did attend an activity at the Newberry Library as part of Art Design Chicago called Chicago Style: Typography and the City. A year ago, I didn’t know what typography was beyond changing the size and fonts in Microsoft Word. Now, at least I know there is a design area of typography. Some definitions are: Typeface : a family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and styles Font : collection of characters of...

Hello Everyone! I know it has been a long long time, and I again apologize for that. School activities tied me up as I spent considerable time in October and November sewing in the costume shop of the Theatre Department at the College of Lake County. The latest production was A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. One of my main projects was this velvet jacket: This project was interesting to me as it was the first time I worked with velvet. Because of the necessary speed, I did not spend time worrying about matching the stripes at the seam lines, the main goal was just to cut fabric as straight as possible.  The fabric was quite stiff so we handled it as much as possible to create a little of the worn look. I had the opportunity to take these pictures but I only had my phone with me and with such dark fabric, some magic with Adobe Photoshop was required to have visibility. No progress has been made on the decided upon bean bag chair but instead some Planet Nice logo work...

Yes, that is the mission of Planet Nice – when you need to take a step away from Planet Earth, spend some time on Planet Nice. It has been a week since the Autumn or Fall Equinox, I am looking forward to cooler temperatures, lower humidity, fewer bugs, and less impact from allergies despite the furnace being turned on in the near future. Another positive is as the leaves fall and the sun swings south, the best crafting light will return to the workshop. There has been absolutely no crafting activity since the last post. Consequently, this post is mostly announcement related. After flipping through several issues of Architectural Digest and the book Perfect Palettes by Stephanie Hoppen (the designer of the blue decorating fabric pictured on the August 14 post here ), it was decided to try the smaller bean bag chair as the next sewing project using pattern Burda 8373 (also pictured in the August 14 post).   Why? There is A LOT of the blue fabric and the pattern offers the best ...

I apologize greatly Earthlings for postponing a blog post time and time again. Planet Nice is still in existence..it is still rotating on its axis…it is just stretched a little too thin from time to time. I was able to take a short fieldtrip to the Art Institute of Chicago with the main purpose of seeing the Georg Jensen: Scandinavian Design for Living special exhibit (the closing date was September 9 th ). It was very worthwhile: many silver pieces and a few furniture and other home product pieces in addition to the background information on the designers and their sketches. The notable time periods were Art Deco and the iconic, sleek Mid-century modern. I never know if photos in museums will turn out worthwhile so I focused only on the chairs, but in two of the photos you can see tableware pieces in the background. Here is the sample: The one below has a light fixture too, I believe its style is called artichoke - very similar aesthetic to the pieces I saw on my travels ...

Hello Everyone! The humidity continues this summer – there has not been much of a break, and I have been trying my best to stand tough though I do get fatigued more quickly. Speaking of breaks, the three weeks to Fall semester is soon over as a week from today I will have my first day of classes. Does anyone complete as much as they really want? From a project perspective, the green hat was re-done successfully! I was meticulous about counting stitches and used more stitch markers leading to no mistakes so I was content at last. Here is a photo of the now completed hat: I can let you know of three differences compared to the previous hat: two rows added to the bottom band, more uniform diagonals, and lace pattern going higher. Also, there was only an itty bitty piece of yarn left. So, I am ready to move on to yet another hat with the previous purple yarn used for the fingerless mitts. Though Planet Nice Crafts is planning to continue with two more knitting projects,...