Return to sewing

"A hobby is only fun if you don't have time to do it."
~Leo Beenhakker


Well I had a very nice holiday season and I hope all of you did too! Now that all the Christmas-crafting is over, it's time to resume sewing. Boy do I have a bunch to do. Right before the holiday season hit I felt no motivation to sew. Luckily for my birthday, in December, I received several gifts that will help me sew- tools and inspiration:

My mom gave me a nice cutting table and a craft lamp. Now I don't have kneel on the floor to cut and I'll be able to see much better to sew after dark.

and I got a great Japanese sewing book from my friend Gwen.


There are so many cute clothes in this! Sadly I don't think I'm actually small enough to fit into their largest size, since Japanese women tend to be on the petite side, but some of the items would make great gifts, and perhaps the patterns can be modified to fit me. All of the pictures feature polka dots, which I adore!!! So thanks Gwen, I can definitely see lots of inspiration coming from this book.

Now, after my hiatus from sewing and my new tools in hand I'm feeling the motivation. Sewing machine here I come!

Penguin Progress hinderence

Riddle: What do you sing to a penguin on its birthday?

When I needed a break from working on the penguin costumes the last few weeks I worked on another project inspired by the costumes, and a birthday present for my friend and co-worker, Natalie since she loves penguins

I had to wait to post this until after her birthday so I wouldn't ruin the surprise, but without further ado here it is:



It's a wall hanging of a penguin with little interchangeable accessories, and friends, that are held on with velcro. A great majority of this was made with scraps from the penguin costumes, and other scraps from my bin. I'm quite happy with how it turned out! :)



Aside:
One of my kittens, Grace, LOVED the little heart. No matter where I put it she found a way to get to it and then carried it around the house. Finally I broke down and made her one. Here she is enjoying it.



Answer: Freeze a jolly good fellow.

Past Project Wednesday

"Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew; especially as they are never more at home with their own hearts than while so occupied."
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, 1859


I needed a gift for a friend who sews - actually my friend from after the dress who started *me* sewing. So, I felt like it had to be a good sewing kind of gift, and since I really enjoy making gifts, I made this pincushion

side 1


side 2



following this tutorial . It was actually pretty easy. I made a couple of them, and lo and behold decided I liked this first one I made. Why did I make a couple you might ask? Well first of all after I finished the first I learned how to do invisible stitches. Since the first one had my own version of a closing stitch and I wasn't real happy with it, I felt I needed to make another. Also, the first version was pink (her favorite color) and white on one side and green and white on the other
so I thought I'd try to make an all pink and white one. Ultimately though, I liked the contrast of the pink and green, so I decided to fix the closing stitch, and give the first one.

Finally, I made shrinky dink pins from this tutorial using the graphic of Gwen's designer label to put in the pin cushion. For the pins I used inkjet shrinky dink plastic.

This is the final product.

Tiger bag complete

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." ~Will Rogers

I finished the bag I was making for my mom for her birthday.

My mom teaches at a high school where the mascot is the tiger and their colors are orange and brown. I think it will make a cute school bag for her.

The inside has a big pocket and a divided pocket.

The details:
This bag was quite a project and I only got it done in a weekend because I pretty much did nothing else the entire weekend. Next time I think I'll give myself a little more time for gift making.

The bag is formed by the patchwork layer (cotton fabric), a layer of buckram, 2 layers of fusible fleece, and another cotton fabric for the lining. Sewing all of that together was a bit difficult for my machine. I broke the needle 3 times. One time because the lining had bunched up so it was extra thick. Once I realized what had happened I had to take the stitches out and redo it which was a HUGE pain considering I was using a small stitch length. Also, getting all of those layers under the foot was a feat in itself. I think my machine is a bit grumpy after all that.

I hand stitched the binding on the top, and that was quite a chore, though I eventually got the hang of making the slip stitch and it got much easier. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with it despite the fact that more swear words were used in the making of this project than all of the others combined. :) I don't think I'd make it again necessarily, but I'm glad I tried it once.

Well my quote works two-fold. There's a slight chance (very slight) that my mom might read this and the cat will be out of the bag, and also one of the kittens decided to take a nap in it and I managed to snap a picture before she hopped out.

Birthday present project

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."
~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895

My mother's birthday is coming this Friday. Eep! I had no idea what to give her. So I decided to make her this bag


McCall's 5598





















Finding a bag pattern I liked was easy. Choosing 4+ fabrics is turning out to be not so easy. I spent over an hour last night dragging poor B around making him help me make decisions only to say to him "well I dunno that I really like that, actually." :) He was quite a trooper though.

My first thought, since my mom is a French teacher, was to find some cute fabric with scenes of Paris or the Eiffel tower on it like these Michael Miller fabrics














But they didn't have anything even close at my local Joann's. We scoured the shelves and came up empty handed. As an after thought we checked the red tag clearance and found a nice cotton fabric with tiger heads on it. The reason for the tiger print is that the high school where she teaches' mascot is the tiger, and their colors are brown and orange. She has a lot of school spirit - she wears orange and brown clothes, she has tiger stickers that she puts on the students papers sometimes and she has various other tiger school supplies - so I think she might really like it if the patchwork was some combination of tigers and brown and orange fabrics. Though I only found 3 fabrics that I liked for the patchwork so I was thinking of repeating the tiger fabric for one of the 4 squares.

The cool thing is that my mom used to sew. She still does a little, but I think mostly to mend. She never got a chance to teach me, but now when I have questions I can call her up and ask her and she does the best she can over the phone. So I think she'll really appreciate the handmade bag.