Chai Gelato

This is basically a bastardization of a recipe for Green Tea Gelato, I'd already tried making. It worked well for the green tea, and I figured that almost any kind of tea could be substituted in. I wasn't sure how great the chai would work so I halved the recipe. I have to say though, it came out pretty tasty. The chai taste is pretty strong so keep that in mind.
Recipe:
Ingredients:
3 1/4 cups whole milk (but I used skim and there wasn't a problem)
8 green tea bags
1/4 cup powered fat free milk
8 Large egg yolks
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup heavy cream

Directions:
Place the milk in a medium saucepan and heat to a simmer. Pour half of the milk over the tea bags in a medium bowl and let steep for 30 minutes; strain, pressing all liquid from the tea bags. Stir powdered milk into remaining milk and keep warm over low heat. Place egg yolks and sugar in a medium bowl. Using a hand mixer or whisk, beat until thick and pale yellow (the consistency of mayonnaise). While mixing, slowly add the hot milk and whisk until blended. Stir the egg mixture back into the saucepan and add the tea-infused milk; increase the heat to medium. Stir the mixture constantly with a wooden spoon, until the mixture is thickened like a custard sauce and registers 180 degrees when checked with an instant thermometer (I didn't bother using the thermometer. A way to know if you have a custard sauce is that the liquid will coat the back of a wooden spoon). Strain the custard through a fine mesh strainer into a medium bowl. Stir in cream and refrigerate at least 6 hours. Then just put in your ice cream freezer like normal.

Illinoise T-Shirt

This is probably the last t shirt I'm posting for awhile, cause my x-acto knife is getting pathetically dull. There is nothing more frustrating than a dull x-acto knife. Trust me. Especially when you're working on a design with tons of detail as I was last night.
However, the fruits of my labor:
The weird rectangular outline is merely the freezer paper ironed on the inside of the shirt and not some unfortunate by product of anything.
A close up:
Sorry the pictures kind of crooked. This was definitely the most difficult of the three shirts I"ve made this week, if only because of the sheer number of islands in the pattern. I don't know if anyone can tell, but I cheated a bit because the dots in the e's are added with black fabric paint. I did cut out the bits to make them with the freezer paper, but the bits were too small to stick to the fabric, or much to small to find later when trying to remove the freezer paper from the shirt. I can't find where i got this stencil from anymore, but perhaps someone with finer google skills will be able to. I lied. I just found it here

Thanks, flickr, for feeding my obessive nature

I'm still kind of getting obsessed with embroidery.

TARDIS T-Shirt

This is the week I make T-shirts?
It would seem. Here is today's offering:
The TARDIS stencil can be found here.
I'll probably post another T-shirt tomorrow, and it won't even have anything to do with Doctor Who. I swear.

Dalek T-shirt

In a continuing bid to impress everyone with my super cool Doctor Who crafts (anyone under the age of 10 anyway). I made this:

Which for those of you in the know, is a trio of Daleks looking a bit Davros's Angels. I think I got the stencil from Crafty Tardis. But I'm too lazy to search for the post so I'm just going to link it here.
You can click on the picture to make it larger. Other than that, I just used to freezer paper method. A pretty good guide to how to do that can be found here.

Now the fun part is having my friends guess who's getting this for Christmas. Hint: They're all getting one, I'm making twenty. Ha Ha, like I have twenty friends.

Sublime Stitching

I found this website for artist/embroider Jenny Hart via neatorama, and it is full of kick-ass stitchery. I like it lots. This image is a piece she did for Bitch which gives it extra coolness points, in my book. The site lots of other work on display, including this embroidered panel of The White Stripes.

What is also pretty sweet is that Jenny Hart also owns Sublime Stitching, a company that sells embroidery kits and patterns. I always thought embroidery was a sweet skill, and I think I might even be able to pull this off if this is as easy as the website claims. I need something idiot proof. This would be sweet to have if I ever get around to making an apron.

Tardis Blanket

If the fact that we all thought it was a good idea to start a crafting blog called "Bitches Make Shit" didn't clue you to the fact that we're all a bit nerdy, this next bit definitely will. Hint: Because there's nothing not nerdy about deciding to make a blanket that looks like the TARDIS. Except for the part where it's AWESOME.

The basic idea and pattern came from The Doctor Who Pattern Book by Joy Gannon. It's currently out of print, however, you can find copies on Ebay or Amazon.com relatively cheaply.

I deviated from the pattern a bit. I started off with two pieces of blue pre-quilted fabric that were each 2 1/2 yards long. The first thing you want to do is cut one of these pieces in half longways, since the blanket is one middle panel with two side ones. The detail to actually make it look like the TARDIS is just ribbon sewn to these panels. I used 7/8th inch satin ribbon for the long lines, and 5/8th inch satin ribbon for the window detailing. Keep in mind you're going to need A LOT of ribbon. A lot. I used at least 43 yards ribbon. I'm not kidding. It was intense. Like the circus. The book recommends sewing all the pieces together first, but that would everything more difficult because not only would you have to sew all these details on, you would have to deal with a huge bulky mass of blanket, which is a severe pain in the ass. (I know because I forgot to fully sew down a window just as I was about to put the binding on the whole thing)

1. The first step for the side panels is to put two parallel lines down one side of the panel. The first line should be 1 1/4 inch from the where the seam for your edge is going to be. The second should be one inch from the center of the first line. Repeat for the other side of the panel.

2. Put three parallel lines horizontally across the top of the panel. The first one should be 2 1/4th from the where your top seam will be (mine might be more like 3 1/2 inches from the seam because I was unsure of how I was finishing the edges), and the next two 1 inch from the center of the ribbon above it. I found it helpful to finish the ribbon by sewing the edges under by hand before sewing it to the panel. It doesn't have to be neat, because my hand sewing is a bit crap, the idea is just make sure the ends stay under. Trying to just tuck the ends under and pin them in place just ended badly for me.


3. Next come the window type things. The squares were 11 inches high and 7 inches wide. Again, I found it helpful to sew the ends and the squares together by hand. Again, no need to be real neat, it's just to keep the ribbon from shifting too much. For the window, you just made a basic square but added two more vertical lines and one more horizontal. For the background fabric I found it easier to pin the window to the fabric and cut it out that way. I tried just cutting an 11x7 piece of fabric, but it didn't fit the ribbon frame for the window. It's easier to just make sure and cut it out using the window frame like a pattern. Sew the 3 squares and one window in the middle of the panel evenly spacing them vertically.


4. Repeat steps 1-3 for the other half panel on the other side.
5. Making the main back panel is basically putting two side panels together. The tricky part is the two sets of vertical lines down the center of the panel. Factoring in the seams, find the center of the back panel. Sew a line of ribbon 3/4 inch to the right of this center line. Sew another line 1 inch from the center of the first line. Repeat only sewing a line of ribbon 3/4 inch to the left of the centerline.
6. Make the two sets of parallel lines each 1 3/4 inch from the seam on either side of the panel. So on, so forth, just like the side panels.
7. Finally sew the side panels to the back panel and finish the ends anyway you'd like.

Inaction shot of the finished blanket.

Heyy

Once upon a time, there were some nerdy girls who decided it would be funny to make a blog about crafts called Bitches Make Shit. And those girls really were nerdy, so they decided to go for it, and here we are.