Étui
French, from Old French estui, prison, from estuier, to guard, from Vulgar Latin *estudiāre, to treat carefully, from Latin studium, study. The étui (or etui) is a cylindrical box or case of very various materials, often of pleasing shape or adornment, for holding sewing materials or small articles of feminine use. It was often worn on the chatelaine, a set of short chains worn on a woman's belt, or sometimes around the neck, for holding keys and other small useful items.
Welcome to my miscellaneous pages! I thought it would be fun to keep track of all the little off-shoots I try my hand at for a while, and then maybe take stock at the end of the year to see the roots of any new crafts I end up sticking with. Really, I got too many very cool, and very distracting, new books for Christmas this year, and I'm already sidetracked! Anyway, it should be pretty funny to see where my wanderings lead.
1-14-07: I have a couple new things in here that I've been holding for the holidays. First, I have embarked on a little stumpwork detour, by working a couple kits by Jan Kerton from Windflower Embroidery in Australia. They have really beautiful designs in kit form, and I had such a blast! They also have a lovely collection of display items for your finished projects, lovely little satin boxes, gold, wood and enameled pots, even tussie mussie brooch bases! I've done two so far, a beaded blackberry scissor fob, and a Berries Box, to make the start of a pretty little sewing kit for SG.
Then, our January Craft Club meeting had another great project, in a medium I've never tried before. We've ended up calling them picture tiles, but I don't know if there's a better word for it. We prepared a sectional wood picture board, laminated our own picture of choice to it, and then epoxy-ed the whole thing to a high gloss and durable finish. What fun! I ended up doing my first one with an old calendar picture I saved, for my younger sister's birthday - she's really into dragonflies. The finished tiles fit in a standard 8" x 10" frame.
4-11-06: I recently have formed a little crafters club for local crafty folks, and our most recent meeting was held at a new bead shop here in our community, where we took a class on bead crochet. It was so much fun! I think I know what some folks will be getting for Christmas this year...
3-7-06: You know, I have been remiss in showing you what I have been up to in spare hour here and there I have been able to find lately. If you haven't yet checked out Marilyn Scott Waters at The Toymaker, there's no time like the present. A lovely lady, a lovely site and a wonderful artist. Go check it out! Below is a shot of my growing toymaker landscape... They're addictive!
6-17-05: Argh! Another yahoo group! I have recently joined Early Perfume, a group dedicated to the exploration of historical perfumes and cosmetics. I stumbled across the group while browsing the website of Sally Pointer, a teacher and researcher of all things historical about perfumes, cosmetics and plants. Based on articles I found at her website and info from the Early Perfumes group, I embarked on a quest to make period "washballs" from my Castile soap. What a blast! After a bit of experimentation at home, I conducted a workshop for my fellow Croft-ers after our last meeting. Now I'm busily trying out all kinds of salves and lotions, as you could guess from reading list! Here are a couple pics of my first finished washballs process, the ingredients, blended, and formed into finished balls. Soapers out there, you have to try this!
3-11-05: I'll be going to Tai Chi camp in April for the first time, for five days, and I'm very excited. It's expected that we dress a little more formally for Master Tung, so I've been making myself some Chinese jackets to wear with black pants from the Folkwear pattern. I've made two so far, and will make at least one more, probably two. This has been fun for me, I don't sew much from commercial patterns, and am not too familiar with conventional sewing details, so it's a real lesson in the basics for me. I've always liked the patterns available from Folkwear, but have only made the Poet's Shirt years ago. Anyway, I made the first jacket very plain, just to get the idea of their directions. It's not lined, but it's faced out the wazoo, which was a major chore, though a good exercise for me. I made the frogs myself by hand, using their "Costume Lore and Authentic Detailing" pamphlet, and I'm pleased with the results, but I won't be making any more of my own frogs until my set of Fasturners arrives. Turning the little tubes with this cheapo tool I got from Michael's isn't going to happen again! The second one I decided to dress up a little. I lengthened the sleeves a bit and cut in a color panel insert of some recycled kimono fabric I got in a grab bag from Kimkatz Vintage Kimono. I like the effect, I'll probably do more of that. I also used store-bought frogs in black for a bit more definition. The jackets are both in some raw silk noil I already had on hand. I'll be doing some in linen and heavy silk crepe, too, I think. Maybe try my hand at some piping along the way.
2-13-05: So today Lonnie came over to play and we made this "automata" Fire Dragon by Walter Ruffler, which came as a kit for a real "paper machine." Isn't he cool? The crank really works, the whole thing is really sturdy, and it's all made from card-stock! Lonnie made sure I copied the originals from the kit onto my own paper, with the dang A4 paper from the UK, we had to reduce by 90%, but we're already talking about doing an army of these in all sizes and colors, maybe playing with color and details in photoshop. This first one will be our "prototype." It really is ingenious. You can find this kit and many others at the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre's automata online shop. They have little mpeg's of some amazing things there, go check it out!
1-12-05:
One of the cool little books I got for Christmas was Mary Wood's
The Craft of Temari. I've always been interested in these little
"thread balls," some of them can be incredibly intricate, and they seem like a
great way to use up all the odds and ends of threads and strings I tend to
accumulate from lucet cords and inkle weaving. I happened to breeze
through a "by-the-pound" fabric store over the weekend that had bins and bins
full of clearance sewing thread on cones, which is used to make the base
(unadorned) mari. So I snagged a bunch. And have now made three
temari in two days. And joined
Talk Temari, yet another
yahoo group. I foresee starting a temari gallery soon, I'm having a blast
with these, and I'm still on my first basic pattern! For more info and
help getting started, go to TemariKai.com,
this site is great!
1-5-05:
So was anyone else disturbed by how bare and unadorned the house looked after
the Yule decorations came down? I was practically beside myself. So
I embarked on a plan to at least put a wreath back on the front door, and the
closest upcoming common holiday I could come up with was Valentine's Day.
I put this together over two days, from every scrap of red fabric and ribbon I
could find lurking in the cloth dungeon, plus a few selections of SG's and
Lonnie's too! This project turned out to be great way to shake the sewing
cobwebs off my fingers that had accumulated over the holidays, and was a sweet
walk down memory lane of all the projects the scraps came from. I also
ordered a box of "display" chocolates (for photographers!) from
Superior Studio Specialties that I
originally thought I would tack on as well, but now I'm not so sure. It's
pretty cute how it is, I think, and made for a fun couple of afternoons.