Fiber Monday

 

No One Asked For It, But Here It Is Anyway:

Hey, so it's uh... it's really hard to crochet 7644 tiny single crochet stitches when it's super cold (and it's been between 8℉ and 23℉ (-13,3℃ to -5℃) all week), so I haven't got the next part of the Secret Project done yet. 

It's going along, just... slowly. And with very cold knuckles.

Weirdly enough, I can still sew with cold hands, though I do risk stabbing myself with the needle more often that way lol. The difference is probably that when I'm making my draft dodgers, I'm using old towels, which have more loft and warmth to them than smooth, thin cotton thread in single crochet lol.

Speaking of which, you'll need the following if you want to recreate a draft dodger, a fabric tube designed to keep drafts from coming underneath a doorway or windowsill and a necessity in older homes in colder climates:

• An old bath towel
• Two old wash cloths
• Thread
• A curved mattress needle (available in a pack of upholstery needles at places like the Family Dollar stores for the grand price of a single American dollar... aka they're cheap and I'm wordy)
• Scissors (We'll just be using these for the thread)
• Pins (optional, since I couldn't find my t-pins lol)
• Patience & something to sip on when you get frustrated or just to warm your fingers with - I recommend either coffee or tea, since the warmth is very good for cold days and also I overindulge in both lol

Also, you may want a camera to photograph the process, but not one on an older Samsung Galaxy because apparently those die horrible deaths... Yeah, I'm a bit bitter over about 3/4 of my process shots coming out with black lines all across them. And also annoyed that it randomly crashes when I'm at around 50% battery... grumpgrumpgrump...

Now that my crankiness has subsided here is how you do this thing:

Step 1: Fold your towel in half lengthways.

Step 2: Roll your folded towel from the open side so that the ends are hidden inside the roll. Roll as tightly or loosely as you want. Tighter will have a narrower circumference (not great for blocking drafts on doors with wide gaps at the bottom, but great for jamming up against thinner spaces for a more aggressive stoppage), looser will be much floppier and better for taller gaps or places where you need to bend it (say, a window or a particularly poorly insulated section of your room). 

My desperate attempt to show how you roll a folded towel, though it's hard to tell...

It should kind of end up looking like this:

There should be no bound edges showing!

Step 3: Sewing Time! If you have pins, pin your folded edge down along the body of the dodger, then thread your needle. You'll first want to secure your thread at the start however you like (by knotting the thread, making some kind of stitch that knots things, or however you feel most comfortable and/or works best for you), and then start making a... it's called a ladder stitch? I think? I don't actually know.

Make a stitch on one side of the seam you're making, pulling the thread all the way through

Then make a stitch on the other side of the seam, trying
to start it parallel to where you finished off your last stitch!
Tighten your stitches as you go and they should disappear!

Stitch all the way down the length of the seam. Yes, you're trying to connect two floppy rounded pieces together. No it doesn't matter if it's perfect your first time, but at least forcing the needle through one layer of actual towel and not thicker fabric like the bound edges  is really easy, so it's worth doing it this way. I recommend pinning, though I didn't have mine on hand, since if you pin the seam in place, it won't squish and flop all over the place like mine did and that will cut down massively on frustration! Once you reach the end of your long, long seam, secure that end as well.

Something I learned from hand-sewists on YouTube is that you shouldn't have too long a thread or it will get tangled. They're right. You probably don't want your initial thread to be longer than your armspan, and if you're being very cautious, maybe don't make your initial thread longer than a single arm. I went for armspan and it only took two threads to get from one end to the other. I am very short, though, so your mileage may vary. Literally.

Step 4: Let's cover the ends!

This step is optional, but I find it looks nicer if you do it,
since your stitches will stand out a lot on the thinner sections
and the end of the roll is pretty ugly, tbh

First, take one of your washcloths/face cloths, and lay your tube about halfway up it:

As seen here

Then wrap the tube in the cloth:

Like the ferrule on a pencil!

Here's where I got a bit... artsy. You can actually just fold the top over and sew it all together so it's a little bag, but I liked the idea of folding things all creative-like...

Sorta folded the top of the cloth down like a present?

And then crossed those corners over each other

Now unfortunately, all of the images I took of me sewing this section came out with black stripes and bars across them, rendering them useless, but basically I sewed the corners together, then sewed the folded-down hem to the rest of the cloth, then sewed the bottom of the wash cloth to the actual tube itself, making an origami-like cap to the end of the tube!

Repeat the process on the other end, and you have a draft dodger! Or draught sausage! Or whatever you want to call it (door snake? Should I add googly eyes?!)

A completed Draft Dodger!

I will admit, it's not the prettiest thing in the world, and I do worry that the ones I made might lose stitches here & there because I'm not the most confident hand-sewer (which looks like such a dreadful word in print...) but I am assured that they work! I made a smaller one by rolling half of a towel, sewing that into a tube, then cutting off a leg from a pair of torn-out leggings and sewing the cut end shut, putting the towel tube into the legging bag, and tying a knot to keep the towel-tube in place - that one's for a window specifically.

In the future, since I'm getting better at hand sewing, they'll look nicer, but what works works and I won't feel bad about helping someone keep warm! If you live in a cold place with a drafty house and you have some grungy towels you don't mind sewing up on-hand, I strongly recommend trying this out. If you're a strong handiworker you may even be able to machine-wash these without them coming all undone lol!

That'll about do it for me, guys. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them (I'll see them - I get an email when you try to post comments so that I don't get anymore spammers :|)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC