Recently I purchased an entire set of “Make It Yourself” books — 20 volumes of neat 70s projects, including knitting, crochet, sewing, embroidery, rugs, crafts, and of course…..macrame. These were published by Columbia House in 1973 and each volume came with it’s own folder of full-sized patterns — all the other patterns are in the books. My set has all of the patterns and an index — it’s so great. This cute beaded alphabet is from volume 14.
My sister and I each made a beaded hippie purse out of a car shammy and tons of seed beads. I thought it was difficult because the shammy kept stretching so the rows were hard to keep even. She and I made so many projects out of Woman’s Day and Family Circle magazines when I first moved to Seattle in 1970. My favorites were these styrofoam heads we covered in paper mache, molded to create facial features and painted — I think they were supposed to be wig holders, but I used mine to hold my giant headphones. Although it was not planned, my head ended up looking a lot like Bette Davis. Here’s a photo of Bette on top of my first television — a black and white tube “portable” from the Goodwill that I painted and wallpapered.
