Dotty

I'm going back to school in the fall, so naturally I need a new bag to carry my books and pens, right?

This is Simplicity 2600. I used upholstery fabrics from Joann's and should have used a heavy-duty bag zipper. (I bet I'll have to replace the zip before midterms.) Sewing the bag took much longer than my usual bags, but most of that was because I am a space case and because the bag has a million little pieces and is constructed by creating your own quilted fabric (you can also buy pre-quilted fabric, which would make this go together much quicker), which takes ages.

I changed the pattern a little bit, omitting a few miles of the recommended bias tape that was supposed to cover every single seam.

Overall, I love the bag. It fits my laptop perfectly, with plenty of extra space for all the extra junk I carry everywhere. In fact, I have it with me right now as I type in a seriously overly air-conditioned coffee shops. Should have tossed in a sweater!

Bag lady

Ever since I've been sewing, I have been churning out handbags in an effort to create the absolutely perfect bag.

Appropriately enough, this one, which I love enough to have made it twice, comes from the book The Perfect Bag, which I borrowed from the library. I love this bag because it's big enough to hold a paperback and is designed so it's easy to use several different fabrics.

For this version, which I slapped together over two evenings, I used a couple of small pieces of quilting cottons given to me by my boss (OK, his wife) last Christmas, along with a stripe from my stash and a giant pink button, also from my stash. My favorite feature of this version is the pleated pocked, where I stash my cell phone.

Pickled

Although this summer's drought conditions and blistering temperatures have wreaked havoc on our garden and yard (and our bodies!), somehow the cucumbers don't seem to mind.

Even though I've learned a ton from this summer's canning class (offered through MU Extension), I'm still learning. One batch became positively dangerous--they were bubbling like crazy when I opened a jar, and although my brother-in-law claimed they tasted OK I was terrified I had poisoned us all. Especially when I read in the canning book I should dispose of bubbly pickles somewhere neither humans nor animals could possibly eat them.

Luckily, I have plenty of cukes for more practice batches. These dudes are going to make it, I think. The recipe is this one, for refrigerator dill pickles from the excellent canning blog Food in Jars.

Happy birthday, Dad!

My family got together this weekend to celebrate my dad's birthday. I've gotten out of the habit of buying him gifts since he lives in a giant house absolutely crammed with stuff and has the money to buy what he wants. Instead, I bake him something he loves--in this case, his favorite cake.

I felt a little guilty about not making it from scratch, but homemade angel food cake requires an obscene amount of egg whites (a dozen!). I went with a mix but assuaged my guilt by making an incredibly complicated, fluffy and delicious frosting from scratch.

Party foul: The sprinkles were beautiful but added a degree of crunch that angel food cake really does not need.

File under "easy"

  

This might be the fastest, easiest craft project I ever did. 

I started with an old, ugly file holder.

Then I used glue, two sheets of scrapbooking paper and a lot of tape to make it cute.

 Now I don't cringe every time I look at it.

Sew simple

This spring when I switched out my heavy winter curtains for the summer ones, the summer versions looked too tired to hang up. Without thinking, I made a trip to Target, where I spent way too much money on curtains that were way too blah.

After hanging them up I realized that not only were they ugly, but I was going to have to hem them. Thinking about sewing reminded me of the tubs of fabric I inherited this winter from my sister-in-law.

D'oh!

In my defense, my usual stash tends towards the small pieces of crazy prints, so I assumed I didn't have anything that would work for curtains. But to my happy surprise, I came up with plenty of suitably plain fabric plus interesting scraps to jazz them up.

Now I just need to find time to return the very expensive rejects to Target!

Bookish

Of all my crafting skills, bookmaking is one of the most useful. I made this coptic-bound book from scrap paper collected at my office job in Georgia (the country), along with embroidery thread and a cardboard box from a package of rodent food. When I asked my host mom to save it for me, I think she believed (or hoped!) she heard me wrong.

Once she saw the book, she got it. Sort of.

Journal project

My art club started a round-robin journal project about two years ago and finally finished, so I got my book back.

My theme was "Scraps and Fragments." I made my cover from a dumpstered pair of Hee-Haw overalls, using the straps to hold the book, really just a portfolio for loose sheets, closed. I filled it with 9x11 canvas sheets (found in the art paper aisle at Michaels) so people could make their pages however they wanted.

I knew from a previous round robin that I didn't want to worry about binding the finished product, since people tend to make thick pages that are hard to corral. The finished book has everything from melted plastic to crazy quilting to needle felting.

Groovy African shirt

I bought this way groovy African shirt at a thrift store, thinking my husband would love it. He did, but couldn't fit his manly muscles into it. So I un-gave it and took in the sleeves a little (I do not have overdeveloped biceps like some people in my family).

One more addition to the tomboy wardrobe. (I got a haircut last weekend, too.)
(But, for the record, I'm wearing a dress today.)

Crochet flower sweater

Here's a great sweater I bought at a thrift shop this summer. It fits perfectly but has a two-inch wide nautical-style Izod emblem front and center, embroidered right into the fabric so I couldn't pick it out without wrecking the sweater. Bleh!

I tried pinning a brooch over it, but all my pins are heavy and floppy and not quite big enough to cover the emblem. Then I found this crochet flower left over from my crochet-madness phase last winter. It's the exact right size. I stitched it on with embroidery thread and added the button to cover the hole in the middle.

This is much more my style.

Duct-tape dress form

I'm no dummy, but I finally have one.

I put on a throwaway white t-shirt and a cling-wrap miniskirt, then got my husband to wrap me in two rolls of duct tape. (He enjoyed it a little too much!) I started getting claustrophobic when he did my ribcage. It took almost two hours to put on three layers of tape.

When the form seemed sufficiently thick, he cut the dummy up the back and helped me out. I taped it back together and stuffed it with old pillows and spray-in foam stuff (not recommended-- stick with polyfil). I plan to put a pole in her and stick her on a dumpstered outdoor-umbrella stand. I've already used her to help me take in several t-shirts.

I used instructions from Threads.

Wardrobe Refashion

I joined up for six months! Yeeps.

Basically, I've pledged to refrain from buying new clothes for six months. Luckily, underwear & socks are exempt, so I was able to justify this weekend's Target purchase of three pairs of leggings, as I consider them tights designed to keep me wearing skirts into the cold months.

Also, they came from the kid section, where everything is cheaper. And one pair is covered in silver skulls. I know, major loss of punk cred! But cool.

Halter top

I've decided to add a few things I made over the summer. This was the easiest shirt ever-- it's just a sundress cut down to shirt length and hemmed. (It wasn't all that long to start with, which was part of the problem!)

It also tied around the neck, which is a sensation I can't stand, so I changed it to regular straps. I had to fiddle with the placement along the back to get the straps more or less in line with my bra straps.

Screen printing

Last night was the fourth session of my screen printing class, and I finally feel like I understand the process. Watch this space for the decorations and ink splotches soon to appear on everything.

The biggest challenge: choosing a design from the thousands of possibilities.
What first? A yoga shirt? Something funny about knitting? Last night I burned a scan of a 45-record spindle. I can't wait to print it!

Crazy dog lady

Camera pouch

This is a pouch I made out of an old, felted sweater from the Goodwill. It's lined with a scrap from a pink corduroy shirt a friend gave me in a box of scraps.

I think I used a pattern I saw at Molly Chicken's blog, which I love love love, but I can't find it so I'm perplexed. It was a basic box shape, blanked stitched up by hand with pink embroidery thread. I added the lining later.

It's just the right size for our camera. That was a lucky accident. I didn't have anything in mind for it when I made it. That's how I roll.

Charlie Brown shirt

I made another recycled t-shirt.

For this one, I used Butterick 3030. It takes a lot of imagination to see the potential in this pattern.

I chopped up two t-shirts that I thought went together fairly well. Again, I salvaged the original neck band, though this time I had to actually sew it back on.


In this pattern, "small" means large. I consider myself medium.

Also, I remembered that I am long-waisted. So my edits to this pattern include putting a big, ugly dart in the sleeve (hard to make out in this picture, but believe me, it's there) and grafting in a big old stripe from the other shirt. Hence the Charlie Brown title.

Still, a wearable shirt.

Scrappy tote and pouch

This is another project made from scraps.

I started with a long, skinny scrap of ‘60s flowered upholstery fabric that I loved. I paired it with some blue pinwale cord that had previously been a jumper, I think. I just made a simple square bag—no pattern, just going by how much fabric I had.

The bag’s lining is the fabric left from an apron, and the handles are a thrift-store belt that I trimmed the hardware off and chopped in half.

I made the unlined zipper pouch to use up every last scrap of that great fabric. The stripe goes the other way-- that's just because it was easier to sew it up that way. The zipper is from my stash of thrift-store zippers—I pick them up any time they cost 25 cents or less.

Boden rip-off shirt

This is another top I ripped off shamelessly from the Boden catalog. (Boden's version at left) Again, I found a close-enough-to-the-shape pattern during a 99-cent sale at JoAnn's, then scoured my stash for two prints that went together relatively well. The upper piece is a purple with tiny white dots-- fabric that was once a kitchen curtain. The bottom is some vintage stuff from a garage sale, I think.



(This is the pattern I used-- Butterick 3385. I picked version "C" version shown in green in the lower right)












Mimicking the Boden shirt, I used contrasting bias tape on the neck and sleeves, but after wearing the shirt, I decided to turn it to the inside and topstitch it under. I like this one enough that I made another version in "good" fabric after tweaking the pattern a little, but it turned out too small. Sadly, I had to give it away.

I did not try to mimic the Boden model pose in this picture. I'm just naturally elegant.

Heart shirt

I turned a plain, boring old XL t-shirt into a cute fitted medium one.

First, I took an old XL t-shirt and cut it down, using a 99-cent snug-looking juniors t-shirt pattern from a JoAnn's sale (McCall's 5105). I positioned the pattern to keep the original neckband & sleeve topstitching intact.

Then I sewed it back up, using a tiny zig-zag stitch for stretchability. Luckily this photo is blurry, or you would see how wrinkly the sleeve caps turned out. I ended up with extra ease, so the tops of the shoulders are a little pleated. We'll call it a design detail and move on.


Next, I shamelessly lifted a design from the Boden kid's catalog and cut a stencil out of freezer paper. After ironing the stencil down and stuffing the shirt with cardboard, I dabbed white fabric paint in the negative spaces.

Voila! A new cute t-shirt that fits.