Sunday, May 10, 2009

Crafty To-Do List

I got this idea from Deirdre. I'm now keeping my list of crafts to do on my blog. My list on paper had been missing for quite some time, but I found it today. It was behind a bunch of junk--it had fallen behind my craft table to live with the dust bunnies. (Maybe that's why my allergies are acting up!) On my blog, it will never be lost. Hopefully.

On a side note, Andy got me a sweet new iron for Mother's Day. He gave it to me 3 days ago and I still haven't even had a chance to plug it in. Ah, weekends.

Monday, May 4, 2009

for all the junk in my trunk

I've made a few things out of Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing but here are my two most recent: The No Cash Wallet and Pleated Beauty Handbag.

The book comes with patterns in the back that you enlarge on a photocopier in order to get them to the right size. The wallet was made this way and came out WAY too small. Maybe the scaling on the Kinko's copy machine was off... but I followed the instructions to a T (and I hardly ever do.) This is the outside of the wallet. The button is just for show—it actually snaps closed.

Here's the inside of the wallet. As you can see, my cards are standing vertically in the pockets... I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be in there horizontally. Oh well. I keep membership cards, gift cards and the like in there and still use my trusty old travel wallet for money and credit cards. One of these days I'll get around to making an oilcloth wallet that holds all of it. It's on my list of things to make... someday.


Here's the purse I made. I made the base of the purse from some random fabric in my stash—it's probably nylon or polyester—it wouldn't hold an ironed crease at all. Blech! The patchwork parts are from a charm pack Kathryn gave me for Christmas. Love them! Overall, this purse went pretty well. I used it today, and it's HUGE! So much bigger than the purses I'm used to carrying; I lost things in it. I had the same amount of stuff that I usually carry in a smaller purse in this new purse and it felt empty, like I was going to have to crawl inside it to find what I was looking for. (And it's really not all that big.) I plan on making another with added dividers and pockets so it doesn't feel so cavernous inside.

I guess I'll never really be caught up...

This quilt was made by our group as a birthday gift for Nikki's boyfriend, Tony. It's the first group quilt that has been finished, because though we worked on Kat's first, she has been immobilized by back pain and can't even sit up to sew. I completed an extra 9 or 10 blocks for her quilt in the hopes that she'd be able to work on her quilt after a steroid injection, but it has done little good to this point. (I should have taken pictures of those blocks to post here, but I was so excited to give them to her that I forgot.)

Anyway, back to Nikki's quilt. Since it was a quilt for a guy, we had to make it manly, and Tony is way into fish and water and surfing. Nikki gave us the dimensions and the flowy, organic water theme and let us run wild. Below is my strip:
I cut the background waves out with my rotary cutter and straight stitched through the middle of each. Then I realized I would have to zig-zag stitch the edges down to avoid too much fraying. I found scientific illustrations of the fish on the internet, separated out the colors and chose fabrics for each of the colors. I then made a freezer paper applique of each of the colors and fused the top ones to the base fish shape. Then I machine stitched the 3 fish to the strip, and around each of the appliqued colors. Then I hand-embroidered the details (eyes, fin lines, etc.) on each fish. It was quite a process, but it was fun and I was able to try some new things.

Here are everybody's strips together on the morning of our show-and-tell meeting.

This is everyone, minus Kathryn, plus Tony. (L to R) Marina, Deanna, me, Tony, Nikki, Sara and Deirdre. Tony's birthday is the day before Ava's, so Nikki gave him his quilt at Ava's party. His parents and sister were also in attendance—it was great to meet them and to show off our "mad crafty skills" to a new audience. :)