Zatera Ul

I had a bunch of old blue jeans that I cut up and reused.

Project 1: circular rag rug (crocheted). Very easy, although cutting the jeans into half-inch-wide strips is tedious. I like how the variously faded jeans produced shaded rings in the rug.

Project 2: re-cover Bible. My Bible was originally a paperback, but later on I made a better cover for it, with a nice black duct tape surface. The problem was that I had mended the black duct tape with electrical tape. The electrical tape shifted and I kept getting black tape residue on my hands. Also, I had learned more about book-binding, namely how to interface the spine of the book with the cover: use a flattened tube (courtesy of Reader’s Digest’s Fix-It-Yourself book). So I made my flattened tube, glued it to a new cardboard cover with Shoe Goo, glued it to the spine of the Bible, and made a denim cover to slip over the cardboard cover. The only problem was that at first I didn’t allow enough depth for the tube, so the covers didn’t quite go to the edges of the pages. But it was easy enough to rip out and change the pocket depth on the denim cover. I thought about redoing it in black denim, but my black denim pieces weren’t quite wide enough. I might put a little embroidery on the cover, after the move, when I can find my embroidery thread again.

Project 3: wallet overhaul. My black leather wallet is at least ten years old, and it’s been through the wash a couple of times, and it fell into Lake Huron with me that time that I didn’t quite make the leap from one rock to another…. I like how the pockets are laid out in it, and I didn’t want to buy a new one. So I made a quick paper pattern from it, and then I took it all to pieces. Most of the inner pockets were still good, but not the inner lining, and definitely not the outside. So I made a new lining, stitched the old pockets onto it, and made a new cover for it out of the black denim. It was definitely a one-step-at-a-time process, but it turned out ok.