made some more flowers

A black one with a silver skull in the middle (for Halloween time, but so very tempted to wear it on vacation with my in-laws). And one made out of a thin greyish brown menswear type fabric with a dark silver button in the middle. Love this one - very autumn looking. Oh, also made one with alternate light pink and black petals and a beaded black button center.

In other words, I really need to stop making flowers.

I got industrious yesterday and tried to make a skirt. Nice material, zipper, back slit, the works. I am glad that the fabric was just remnants because I butchered that thing.

After the first hour I told myself I would just finish it for the practice. I wasn't using matching thread anyway and my seam on the zipper was majorly wonky. Finally managed to get correct zipper placement and figure out the back slit. All sewed together. Trying it on to see where I needed darts. I will finish this, I will finish this, I will this...

Oh look (she noticed several hours into the project) The front panel was sewn on with the wrong side of the fabric facing out.

Pardon me, but screw it. All done. Off to the scrap bin with ye. I could have ripped out the side seams and re sewn, but there is just a point where it isn't worth it anymore.

Now I am hauling out my pattern for a fitted wide elastic waist skirt. I am sure I will try the fancy schmancy again, but not for a while.

the projects

First up are the flowers. The brown one with green polka dots is the same corduroy material I used for the bag. It has a purple button center. The hot pink one is left over from various projects and has a silver patterned button center. The green is a very shiny olive with embroidery (hard to see, was originally a scrap of curtain material) that has a white iridescent button center. These are so much fun to make!


This is the beginning of the pillow for my dad. I'm not going to show the finished project because it is fairly lumpy. I don't think my dad will mind though. The center is a piece of embroidery that his mother did years ago. I just found it in the stash of fabric I inherited. I know dad will love it.

still here

And still been sewing stuff. Just not going to post pictures right this minute since the camera is way over in my purse which is in another room. And I have to leave for an appointment in a few minutes.

But I made a pillow for my dad. By the way, why can I make a bag and skirts and whatnot, but my pillows always suck?

I have also been making fabric flower pins. They are way fun and require minimal effort. Fabric, button, sewing machine, glue gun and pin back. I can whip one up in about 15 minutes. I think it is going to become an addiction. But I have no idea what I will do with all of them.

I will hopefully take pictures later today and post them.

scarf crazy

I made two more scarves. The weather has been pretty warm actually, so I am not exactly sure why. Probably because they are pretty quick to make. I use the front and back sides together, so when I say I cut out three panels, I mean three pieces in front and three pieces in back - I end up sewing them together. So 2 pieces of fabric = 1 panel.



I still had a charcoal mens XL tee shirt laying around. Now that it is September I am not keen on making tee skirts anymore. So I divided it into three panels, cut it out and sewed it all together. Over all I like it, but I didn't trim both ends of the middle section so you can clearly see it was a tee shirt.





I decided I wanted to try again so this time I picked up a couple of purple mens L tees at Target. This time I divide each tee into two, so I had four panels to sew together. I used the original tee shirt hem for both ends of the scarf. Basically I made one long tube. I was going to just stitch closed the ends after turning it right side out. However four panels made an incredibly long scarf so I decided to flip up the ends and make pockets. I turned up each end 6.5 inches and sewed along the sides. Because it was originally a tube, I ended up with a double pocket on each side. It looks kind of funky but it will keep my hands warm when I walk the kids to school in the morning.

All done with scarves for a while - I need to make my Dad's birthday present and also am going to try to make a shrug type thing.

reversible scarf

As per usual I am queen of the blurry picture. It is a skull patterned fleece on one side and a blue patterned silky polyester on the other. I shall call it my bi-polar scarf.

forgot to post an older project

These are a couple of re-usable coffee cup sleeves. I am in the process of experimenting to see which shape fits better. My test monkey (just an expression, please don't kill me), Coffee Mom has one. She has been very helpful. I now know that the one on the right is too big on top and too small at the bottom. Which means the one on the left would not work at all. Now that I know how to modify the pattern I should be able to make a bunch and give them as gifts.

finished project

This is the "Bird Watcher Messenger Bag" from the book The New Handmade by Cassie Barden. I used four different fabrics - hot pink, olive, floral and brown polka dot corduroy. I had all of the fabric in my stash except for the brown and that was a very inexpensive remnant. I also had to buy two different kinds of interfacing.

It took me a while to make it. Mostly because I was intimidated by the project. It took me almost a week just to get everything cut out.

However, I finally got it all cut and decided to start making it yesterday. And finished it in a few hours. I am guessing that this could be a two or three day project. It looked complicated but was actually pretty straight forward. The instructions were clear and easy for me to understand.

There were a couple of mistakes - I cut the flap too small, sewed the top hook strap thingy all wonky (that is why there is a ribbon rose stuck on - it hides the stitching), and I forgot to sew the flap between the lining and bag (so it has a rough bit, but no one can see it).

I would also make two changes. The strap would be shorter (too long for shorties like me) and I would use the heavy interfacing instead of the medium on the body of the bag to give it more shape.

All in all a satisfying project. But I think my next one will be a scarf. I need something simple after all that.