Tag Archives: sewing

Glad I bought it!

I certainly don’t need another craft book, but I’m sure glad I picked this one up.

It’s by Sue Kim and I didn’t even connect that she’s the lady behind I Think Sew, and I certainly didn’t know she lives in Toronto just minutes from me!

See all those cute stickies flagging pages? Yeah, I want to make all those. I’ve got a bag problem . . and a sewing problem . . . *sigh*

I also picked up this one to add to my collection of fabric printing books. Hopefully I’ll get to spend some time reading them someday. I’m dying to get into making my own fabrics.

Create Along Friday

Wow, so I guess I was busy this week. Friday is now my full day at work, thanks to this whole day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 thing we do in my school board, and I realized as I was drifting off last night that I hadn’t actually written today’s post. Then of course a day of work, a busy evening and last minute craft show prep has kept me from actually posting it. But here is my dumpling pouch a free pattern from my pattern selling friend Keyka Lou. **Her patterns are still just $5 until November 27th**

I love the fun rainbow/froggies in the rain print. For the inside I just reached into my scrap stash and grabbed something.

The pouch opens up ridiculously wide, it would be great for lots of little things like make up, art supplies, or crafting stuffs. The zipper goes in really well once you cut the little notches in it and my dumpling is only a little bit wonky on one side.

Just tilt your head a little and it looks like a really good pouch. Now I have no idea what advice to offer to get this side looking good. Maybe “close your eyes”?

I have absolutely no stinking idea how that happened and I’m stumped on how to fix it. I’ve turned the pouch and tried to resew that seam and every time I turn it back right side out that one corner is all stupid. Soooo oh well I’m just going to have to live with it. However, I will be trying again once I had some spare time! But if you don’t look to hard, or need the pouch to stand up on it’s own it looks great!

For my next trick I’m going to be sewing up one of these handy things. I’m usually fumbling for my headphones in the car to use my phone, or they get all tangled up in my purse or gym bag. I’m hoping this little friend will solve all those problems. Plus it’s got no corners so I can’t really mess it up too much!

Camera strap reveal.

Finished my camera strap, once again my sew-a-long project was finished on a Thursday night. Photos taken today, yeah I live on the edge. I’m also a bit of a dork since I put the strap on my camera and it was all pretty then realized it was going to be tricky to take the photos. Yeah, I’m rocking the brain power lately folks.

If you’ve created along with me lbg also has a Flickr group for sharing things made from her tutorials and patterns. I promise her convertible tote will be in this feature some day soon.

I used my new dying of cuteness fabric, had a hard time cutting into it but hey what else is it for? I paired it with some scraps I have kicking around.

I didn’t have fusible fleece so I just used some scrap fleece i had lying around instead. It feels pretty puffy but I’m not sure that’s the way it should be.

Next challenge a boxy pouch! Perhaps you’ve made one of these, perhaps not. I haven’t and I’ve wanted to for a while. Now that I’ve got zippers and flat pouch making down I’m ready for this twist.

I found 2 tutorials that seem like they’ll work, these first two are lined and the first one will be seamless and the other will have seams on the inside (which means no tricky turning), this one isn’t lined at all and might be good for a thicker fabric. So choose your weapon and come play along!

Magic ratio?

A while back I picked up this little pieced bit of applique.  It was in a thrift shop that also sold antiques and handmade items.

I’m thinking of adding handles and turning it into a tote, because I don’t have 365 yet and can’t change every day.

So my question is – is there some magic way to figure out how bit your handles should be based on the size of the bag. The ones I have seems a bit small so I’m not sure. Anyone have any ideas?

I promise,

I’m going to work through all these PDF patterns & turoials I have! Honest.

I was going to plan something silly like 52 weeks of patterns (yes I have nearly that many) but I realised I probably can’t comit to actally getting 1 thing done per week. So instead I’m just going to plow through them and share what I’m doing along the way.

I’ve built up quiet the stash of various patterns, since I’m always up for trying something new. Some are free, some are tutorials on blogs, some I paid for. I own nearly every Keyka Lou pattern not to mention a bunch from I Think Sew and

I might even get ambitious and post my planned project a big in advance and we can have a sort of sew along . . . perhaps once I settle into this back to school/work thing and get my classroom running smoothly.

So until I share here are images of some patterns I have on hand and plan on tackling soon. Let me know if you want to see anything in particular or if you’d like to play along.

Wheee!

Ok, I got the most amazing scraps in one of my scrap swap packages. I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome the pieces were and how great they fit with the fun fabrics I love! Not to mention she threw in some fun stuff left over from when she ran a Japanese store online.

Here’s some eye candy.

Some of these Japanese prints are amazing! I don’t know if I can bring myself to cut them up and actually sew with them.

This one is great but I’m totally baffled on what it’s about. Must be another strange Japanese fairy tale, seems to be a lot of people on fire in those.

Anyhow, I’m smitten with the contents of this package. And remember to store your strawberries in a DRAY place.

My plan for today.

In an attempt to procrastinate from the really important things I should be doing I plan on making myself a lunch bag using this pattern.

I don’t have those particular fabrics but I do have other things that are equally as cute!

I’m also hoping to whip one up for Wesley. He turned a blank white pie box into his lunch box (or so he thinks) by drawing police cars all over it. I decided to make him one with some plain cotton fabric and give him my pile of Sharpies to draw all over it. He only goes to school 1/2 days and so only carries his water bottle and a snack so I hadn’t made him one last year but I think I’ll go with this design and I’ll use this tutorial as a guide.

I’ll post when they’re all done.

Have a great labour day and for all your back to schoolers have a great first day tomorrow!

Whew!

Well this has been a great week.   Sadly we’ve been basically internetless, we got texts yesterday that we had hit the limit of our data plans, thanks to tethering to our phones while here in the bustling metropolis of Kearney, Ontario. It was sort of nice though, I was really conscious of what I *had* to do before I hopped on my lappy and set to work getting things done and then walking away. It was a bit liberating, even if I did miss tweeting late at night.

So here’s a peek at my week in instagrams, since those are small enough to sneak through on my phone.  
Hope you enjoyed my guest posters, thank you so much Amy, Molliehttp://wildolive.blogspot.com/ and Janee!

Quick and practical

I made one of them there plastic bag holder things!

I saw a tutorial and then couldn’t seem to find it again so I just sort of made it up. I mean how hard can 2 elastic pieces in a tube of fabric be!? The thing that took the longest was finding the perfect fabric, I wanted it to hang in the kitchen and didn’t have anything in my stash that would work.

I love how it fits in perfectly. It was also really easy, I think I’ll be destashing and making a bunch for people I know. We have so few plastic bags around now anyway but it’s nice not to have that cupboard of them that attacks you when you open it!

Whew! 50 cozies, a broken machine, sick children and an e-course.

Boy have I had a busy last few days! I worked all weekend to get my giant order for 50 cozies ready by Monday.

I missed it by a day thanks to a broken sewing machine late, late Saturday night. The bobbin casing lifted up and I ended up pulling it out with the bobbin. I’ve *never* taken it out and had no idea how it went back in. I did some Googling and finally thought I had it right and started to sew again. Everything was fine going straight but once I switched to zig zag I bent a needle. Totally bent, it was a little U. I really should have taken a picture. So I tried again, took it all apart and started over. Yeah, then I broke a needle. I tried to use my old-reserved-for-juice-pouch-sewing machine but it felt all wrong. So I packed my broken favourite up and had to wait until Monday morning to take it in for some love.

Monday the kids were going to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa so I had a chance to get it fixed and rush home to finish the sewing. I still had the buttons to sew on when the children were returned. I went out to the driveway to greet my lovely children only to discover Nate was sick in the car, his clothes and seat were a mess. I thought he was just car sick but he was burning up. So I spent the entire evening on the couch ‘guggling’ a sick 2 year old and holding a bowl.

Luckily he went to bed early because I realized I was 2 cozies short on one of the designs so I had to do some late night creating. Tuesday morning Nate was pretty listless so I had time to sew the buttons on in the backyard while trying to keep Wesley active and quiet. The package went out Tuesday afternoon, not too bad considering everything.

I crashed Tuesday night, I think the adrenaline of the cozy fest left and I went to bed early, didn’t create a thing that evening! Wednesday it was onto my contribution for Make Art a Part (of your life), which was due Wednesday. So away I worked as much as possible during the day and into the night, sewing and photographing.

Sadly Thursday morning I awoke to a crying 4 year old saying his tummy hurt. Now I would have thought a day with my 4 year old on the couch would be easy. Oh it was exhausting! “Mommy, Nate’s being loud! He’s in my way! I can’t see the show!” repeat. Poor Nate was going stir crazy, like me, and it was bliss when I got Nate off for his nap and Wesley was still sleeping on the couch. There was a wonderful 30 minute overlap where they were both sleeping . . . ahhhh.

So it was slow going but I managed to get my part of the e-course done . . . again a day late. It’s a really fun little sewing project that I show you how to hand sew or take it up a notch and machine stitch. It’s really open-ended leaving loads of ways to personalize it and make it your own. Go check out the info here, registration opens August 4th.