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Upcoming Events

Monthly Member Meeting: June 22, 7:30 pm

This month’s member meeting will occur at 7:30pm sharp! The meetings are a great way to keep up with shop business, discuss upcoming events, and have your voice heard. Typical run time is 30-45min.

Pig Roast: June 24

Pig Roast is coming up fast, and prep work is starting to move into it’s final stages. You may have heard our radio ad, recorded by Jeff Cotten a few weeks ago, or seen one of our flyers around town! This is looking to be our largest pig roast yet, so come hungry! If you’d like to bring a side or dessert, check out the wiki page and sign up!

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Member Michele Cotten has put over 70 hours into her latest costume.

This her her own personal design, and is her take on Batman’s Poison Ivy character done in the Japanese Lolita fashion style.

The work for this was done upstairs in Makers Local 256′ sewing area.

ivy1 ivy2

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Fall Wreath

As some of you may have noticed, there is a giant new laser cutter at the shop! Since my interests are less acrylic and wood and more fabric and yarn, I decided to ask Tyler to laser cut some leaves out of felt for use in a fun fall wreath.  Here is how I did it:

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You can check out videos of the yarn dying process here.

Credits: Jonica had the original idea, Kirstin pushed the organization, Shae was entertaining, and Jennifer documented the whole thing.

Kirstin, Shae, and Jonica excited to do some yarn dying
Jonica, Shae, and Kirstin excited to do some yarn dying

During the week after our original idea to dye yarn, Shae purchased Jacquard acid dyes and undyed yarn. Kirstin purchased a stainless steel pot for dyeing along with white vinegar and filter masks. Kirstin did all of the research on required ingredients listed above, and what types of dyes should be used on a type of fiber. We decided to use acid dyes on protein based fibers, since that meant we could work with our most familiar and accessible material, animal fiber yarn. Acid dyes can be damaging when inhaled or absorbed through the mucus membranes; fortunately, Kirstin is also a lab tech in her day job, her expertise kept us safe during the process.

We assembled Saturday March 28th with the expectation that we would make mistakes and learn. After we carefully applied our safety equipment…

…Kirstin started with red dye and a small skein of alpaca yarn. We dumped the yarn into the pot, heated the water to a simmer, turned off the heat, and applied dye. We waited 30 minutes for the dye to set, and the resulting red yarn was beautiful!

Next, Shae chose blue, Jonica mixed yellow and green, and then we mixed all four colors into a large skein.

The small skeins were dry a few hours later, but the large skein took most of the weekend to dry.

We made the expected mistakes, and learned much.

1. Get all the yarn into the water with the dye.
2. Make sure the yarn is not tightly clumped together so all the yarn is exposed to the dye. We learned this requires cutting the ties that keep the skein from tangling.
3. An addendum to the second point is, use smaller lengths of yarn.

For our next session we’re hoping to re-dye the big chunk of yarn that didn’t get fully colored, and separate
the other large skeins of yarn into smaller skeins for more experiments.

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Inspired by Crashcart‘s use of Adafruit badges on the Makers Local 256 project wiki, Omegix rises to the challenge of sewing some of the Adafruit patches represented on his wiki page onto his Makers Local Hoodie.

The goal was to have the hoodie be like a boy scout’s merit sash, something wearable around the shop to proudly display hobbies, and help be a conversation starter with new members looking expand their skillsets.

Not sure if I’ve really earned a sewing patch yet, but after some lessons from Enabrintain, Gregabyte, and SqueakyKittie, I can now make the sharp thing go up and down on the electric thread contraption.  At least enough to attach a patch 🙂

For effortless attainment of a Makers Local Hoodie, you can purchase one here: http://makerslocal.spreadshirt.com/

Alternatively, Makers Local 256 will soon be getting a hot press, and you can have an opportunity to make one of your own design 🙂

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