A necktie quilt is generally a remembrance quilt. It can be used to showcase the ties from one person or an entire group or committee. You can work the neckties into a number of different patterns. The Dresden plate design works especially well. Follow these steps if you would like to make a necktie quilt to honor a special person or simply to display a large array of discarded neckties.
Pick a pattern. The Dresden plate pattern works well, or you might want to sew your neckties directly on a quilt with a simple block design. Go to the Wisconsin History site and look at Allie Crumble’s design for inspiration.
Plan the size of your quilt. Necktie quilts are generally wall hangings, so the size might be determined by the area where you would like to display it.
Buy your fabric according to your pattern instructions. You might want to bring your neckties along when you go to the fabric store so that the colors complement each other.
Prewash your fabric, dry it and iron it. Use spray starch, but don’t use steam.
Cut out your pieces of fabric, following the instructions on your pattern carefully. Remember to allow for 1/4-inch seams. Label you pieces to avoid confusion.
Stitch the pieces together into a quilt top. If you are using an applique method, sewing the ties on top, sew your neckties in place.
Place the batting in between the quilt top and the backing, with the right sides facing out. Baste the three layers together.
Quilt each block using a design, or stitch in the ditch if you are using a simple block pattern.
Apply binding to the edges of your quilt and sew it in place.
How do you actually manage time? The secret is in the categories. Look at your calendar for tomorrow. It’s probably already full of events and activities that you’re hoping to accomplish. As you work or afterward, you’ll be filling in the blank spaces.
Now look at the list and categorize it. How much time during your working day did you actually spend:
Putting out fires. An unexpected phone call. A report that’s necessary for a meeting that should have been printed yesterday. A missing file that should be on your desk. How much of your day was actually spent in crisis mode? For most people, this is a negative category that drains their energy and interferes with their productivity.
Dealing with interruptions. Phone calls and people dropping by your office will probably top the list when you’re assigning events to this category. Once again, for most people, this is a negative category because it interferes with (and sometimes kills) productivity.
Doing planned tasks. This is the most positive use of time during your work day. You are in control and accomplishing what you intended to accomplish. Planned tasks can include phone calls, meetings with staff, even answering email – if these are tasks that you have put on your agenda.
Working uninterrupted. You may not be working on a task you had planned to do, but you are getting to accomplish something, and for most people, this is a very productive, positive work mode.
Uninterrupted downtime. Those times during the work day that are used to re-energize and regroup. Lunch or a mid-morning break may count IF they’re uninterrupted. If you’re lucky enough to work with a company that offers on-site work-out facilities or nap rooms, that would count, too. Everyone needs a certain amount of uninterrupted downtime built into their day to be productive during their work time.
Learn the Art of Furoshiki: Japanese Gift Wrapping Style
When it comes to Japanese gifts, it’s not the inside that really counts. Gift-wrapping, called tsutsumi, is the most important part of the gift-giving it seems. How you wrap and tie the package is considered especially symbolic and carries a lot of expression about how you feels towards the person and the gesture of giving them a gift.
The wrapping around the gift is seen as being part of the entire gift experience, with the opening and revealing of the contents viewed as one complete experience. In Western culture, gift-wrapping seems mostly just meant to conceal the gift, with unwrapping often being very perfunctory or even crude. Japanese gifts are aestheic and beautiful on the outside, with the same full expression of the culture’s love of balance, nature, novelty and simplicty.
The root of the word tsutsumi is the word that means “to refrain” meaning to be discreet or moderate. Simple but gorgeous paper wrapping, tied with gentle natural fibers or thin ribbons make a bold but beautiful understatement when compared to the flashy papers and big bows found in American forms of wrapping.
There are a variety of places where dry-cell batteries can be recycled, including municipal sites and for-profit entities such as retailers and sanitation companies.
Some cities have established permanent collection sites for hazardous household materials such as batteries (and indeed some cities have outlawed the disposal of batteries and other toxic materials in municipal dumps, though federal law permits it). Other cities hold special collection days one or more times a year.
Consumer electronic chains such as Best Buy, Circuit City and Office Depot also typically have recycling kiosks inside their stores or outside the front entrance. Recycling batteries at these locations is usually free and consumers do not need to have purchased batteries at a particular retailer to take advantage of its program. Button batteries are often found in watches and hearing aids. Retailers of these items often recycle the batteries for customers for free.
Consumers can receive information about recycling centers from their municipalities, or they can consult Web sites such as http://earth911.com/, which is endorsed by the EPA, to find municipal and other collection sites. Visitors to the site plug in their zip codes and the types of batteries they want to recycle. Another site that provides the same service is http://www.call2recycle.org/. The site is run by The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp., which is a non-profit organization that promotes sustainability. Companies have sprung up to fill the need for recycling batteries.
For example, Battery Solutions will accept batteries by mail or will arrange pickups for customers. The Big Green Box is another firm that recycles batteries from anywhere. The company mails customers a cardboard box for safe disposal of up to 40 pounds of alkaline, lithium, mercury, zinc and other types of batteries. Consumers then mail the box back to the company.This can be a solution for home offices and small businesses.
There’s more to beans than curd and paste; they can also be made into elaborate artworks. Bean painting, where beans are used as the raw material, is a kind of folk art, adopting artistic characteristics from Chinese traditional painting, sculpting and decorative arts. Instead of completely imitating traditional arts, the genre boasts its own special flavor.
Bean-painting artists aspire to achieving realism in their works, paying a great deal of attention to mastering lifelike expressions and gestures. The most distinct feature of bean painting is simplicity tinged with exaggeration to emphasize an abundance of sensations.
Bean collecting adheres to a series of strict steps: Beans chosen for pictures must first be processed so they will not rot or mold. Bean painting not only serves as an ornament but also appeals to collectors. When making bean paintings, artists try their best to take advantage of the original colors and shapes of beans to express the proper themes incisively and vividly without damaging their natural appeal. Hence, properly combining the beans, and gluing and cutting them are also a must.
Compared to tooth and jade sculpting, beans are easier to deal with. However, artists must possess an extraordinary imagination to arrange these ordinary materials to make a truly unique picture. Expressing various themes, bean painting is a precious handmade artwork that calls on special artistic characteristics.
First of all, the picture’s composition must serve a decorative function; secondly, the original bean colors must be used as the main hue to produce a colorful picture expressing brightness and joy; and lastly, the works should reflect real life. Combining the merits of other folk arts and its own special characteristics, bean painting is deeply loved by Chinese people and foreigners. Such works have become very popular gift among friends and relatives.
For an especially polished table, cloth napkins can be folded into appealing shapes to add to the décor of your table. Napkin folding works particularly well on freshly starched napkins. Here are some common folding techniques:
The Trifold Napkin
Place the unfolded napkin in front of you in the shape of a diamond
Bring the top corner down to meet the bottom corner (fold it in half diagonally) creating a triangle with the point facing down
Fold the left and right corners down to the center point
Fold the top point down to meet the bottom
Lift the napkin from the center, allowing it to stand alone on the two folded sides
Windmere’s Fan
Place the unfolded napkin in front of you in the shape of a square
Fold the napkin in half either vertically or horizontally
Starting at the shorter end of the resulting rectangle, begin making ½ inch accordion pleats, stop when there are approximately 4 inches left to fold
Fold the accordion section in half so that the folds are on the outside with the remaining 4 inches at the center
Make a stand by folding the 4 inch section toward the base of the fan, allowing the pleats to fan out
A poem portrays our awareness of a specific subject with our private perception.
The subject of writing is varied from politic to romantic, but most people write romantic sweet love poems more than other topics, usually in short sentences. I myself prefer to write them than to write the longer version. They are easier to be understood, also take less time to make than the longer one.
Here are 3 simple steps to make short sweet love poems:
Steps #1 Discover your mood.
To make the professional-looking short sweet love poems, the first thing you have to do is to know your mood. Good mood is a state when you feel confident to do something. In this condition, you can compose a good quality poem. But what can you do if you find yourself in a bad mood?
Well, since most people find that they can not make any satisfying poem in this situation, I believe that the similar result would happen if you force yourself to do it. The best solution is to wait until you get your good mood back.
Step #2 Make a poem template.
Poem template is a helpful tool to quickly compose poems. I am developing this method to help many people to make their own poems. In this method, you are provided with incomplete sentences like this:
sight
night
eyes
days
Your task is to complete the sentences to make poems using your own words. Take a look at this example:
Remembering your sight,
is like having a dream in an endless night.
I could see through your eyes,
that love is eternal as the changing of days.
This love poem is made by someone who has no background in composing poems, but he eventually made a fine masterpiece.
Step #3 Project self confidence.
Many people find themselves has no confidence to explore their feeling. To compose short sweet love poems, confidence is a prominent thing. I believe that everybody has a personal talent that distinguishes him from others, so be confident in making your own poems because you are special!
Nail art has a very long history and is said to be in vogue, since 3000 B.C. At that time, nail coloring was an indicator of social class in some regions, whereas for others it was a beauty statement. Various products, including henna, were used for this purpose.
Today, we have a wide range of products and techniques that are meant for nail decoration. While some of these methods are better done by professionals, there are many that can be tried at home too. One of the latest entrants, marble nail art is one such technique that can be done at home. This article will provide you with some tips to create marble nail art using water.
All you have to do is to add a few drops of nail polish (differently colored) into the water kept in a bowl. Create a pattern with a needle/toothpick and place your fingernails on the pattern (formed over the water). The design will stick to your nails, and this is called water marble nail art. To start with, collect the required materials that are listed below.
Things You Need:
1. Nail polish of different shades (minimum two are needed)
2. A wide-mouthed bowl (big enough to dip your fingers)
3. Toothpick/orange stick/pin/needle (may use a marbling tool too)
4. Petroleum jelly or scotch tape (to cover the skin around the nails)
5. Top coat, acetone and Q-tips
6. Slightly warm water (filtered or distilled)
Creating Your Water Marble Nail Art Design
Before starting with the procedure, prepare your nails. Apply a base coat that goes well with the colors that are meant for marbling. If you are using lighter shades, go for a lighter base coat. Gather the required materials and follow the marble nail art tips that are given below.
Cover the skin around your nails with scotch tape. This prevents sticking of nail polish on the skin (around the nails), while you place the nail on the design. Alternatively, you may apply petroleum jelly on the skin. Once the nail art job is done, you can remove the tape (or petroleum jelly) and clean the skin.
Batik is an ancient art that reached its peak of development on the Indonesian island of Java. Dutch traders were so impressed by this craft that in 1835, they brought Batik artists back to Holland with them when they returned from trading trips. These ‘imported’ batik artists taught the process to factory designers and workers so the beautiful Batik fabrics could be produced to meet the European demand for it.
We have evidence of batik being practiced over 2,000 years ago in the Far East, Middle East, Central Asia, and India. Historians believe the art traveled along the caravan trade routes. Batik fabrics have been found in China that date to around the time of the Sui dynasty (581 – 618 AD) and also in Japan from the Nara period (710 – 794 AD).
What is Batik? It is a textile art that involves a specialized method of applying dye to fabric, usually cotton or silk. There are about 3,000 recorded batik patterns, some of which include flowers, plants, birds, animals, insects, and geometric forms are all popular motifs. The use of computers in developing batik designs promises to add many more new and exciting designs to this library.
The intricate and colorful batik we normally see is a complicated, multi-step process. The more colors a batik fabric has, the more times it has been through the process of applying wax, dying, and drying, then removing the wax. The process has to happen in a precise order that will produce the pattern or figures that are desired. Additionally, the order of which colors to apply also has to be followed.
As a result of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, batik crafters developed large copper stamps, or “caps” that allowed for larger scale application of wax. This also meant that the batik industry was able to keep pace and compete with the textile fabrics of Europe. It might not have been much of a competition, though given how popular batik fabrics were, and are today!
Yes, it’s true there is this efficient, Ninja-quick, Japanese method for folding a t-shirt that reduces all the motions to just a few economical ones. Anyone who’s ever worked in retail and had to spend countless hours refolding and stacking shirts and sweaters will totally appreciate this folding technique. And it’s super cool to use for your home laundry too.
Moms who find themselves doing laundry for a big family will find this a time-saver. Husbands and teenagers have even been known to fold t-shirts after seeing this method! Whether you have six or six hundred t-shirts to fold, why not fold them the fastest and easiest way you can?
This shirt-folding technique is easy to understand, ergonomic in movement, and takes just a few seconds per shirt to do! As with any other skill, the real trick is to practice. The next time you do your laundry, put all your t-shirts into the same load and when they are dry, sit down with the whole pile at a table or on the floor where you have enough room to lay them out flat and practice with the entire batch.
Most people find that after two or three “practice sessions” they’ve got the method down and can remember it, but don’t panic if it takes you a bit longer. But it really does turn out to be a real time-saver!
Stitch the pieces together into a quilt top. If you are using an applique method, sewing the ties on top, sew your neckties in place.
