Autumn Projects

Working on a few a more things for the shop...

Another cute bag!

I made a new bag! What do you think? Isn't it cute? Should I make more? The pattern is from KeykaLou. I totally love it! I don't usually carry purses, but I think this one is adorable.

Holly Hobbie Tote Bag

I just added this tote bag to the shop. I love how it turned out. I want to keep it, but I have too many bags. I'm trying to organize my fabric stash and use up some of my scrappy bits...because I have a mess of fabric scraps. After making my first bed sheet skirt, I had some oddly shaped bed sheet scraps left over. I kind of made this bag up as I went, but it turned out so well! I had to do some strategic cutting and piecing of the fabric because there wasn't much of it left. I like this simple bag. If I find some more awesome bed linens, I'll make some more. I'm kind of missing the Strawberry Shortcake sheets of my youth.

More Tinys

I'm nearly done with tiny pouches for now. I only have a few tiny zippers left in odd colors. Hmmmm....what to make next? The wiener dog pouch is for myself. Does anyone who knew me at university recognize where this fabric came from? Hmmm? I won't go into detail, but it's from a piece of clothing I've had for years, but couldn't bear to get rid of because of the little dachshunds. I ♥ dachshunds.

Tiny Zippy Pouches

New Tiny Zippies in the shop! Aren't they cute? I had a small stash of various colored zippers that had been sitting around for a while. They were just asking to be turned into tiny zipper pouches. Once I find my stash of D-rings I'll make some pouches that you can attach to key rings, fobs, clasps... I have a few more tiny pouches to add to the shop, then it's on to the larger pouches and perhaps some more boxy bags. The shop is pretty sparse, I know. I'm working on it!

Hello, Boxy!

First one's in the shop finally! The rest should come quicker. I'm starting on some more tonight! Whee!!

Three Little Cubes

I wanted to wait until I had some of these in the shop before I blogged them. But I finally determined last night that the dimensions are not quite right. I love the cube size, but the opening needs to be bigger and the zipper a little longer. So, this cube project is on hold until I order my next batch of zippers. On the other hand, I do have the supplies to make some longer boxy bags. They'll be just like these little cubes, but longer.



The pink elephant cube was the first one I made. Turned out well for a first try, eh? The interfacing wasn't heavy enough, so I made another one interfaced with fleece (the polka dot one). Hmmm...the fleece gives it a nice quilty feel, but it doesn't give the cube much shape. I do however love how the polka dots look with the red. I'll have to make some more with this fabric combo. Lucky I have a whole duvet of this stuff! I think I finally got the interfacing right with the blue cube. YAY! On to the next step!

My Weekender Bag

I made another Weekender Bag! This one is number three, after the first and the second. I'm sure this will be the last one for a while. It is a lot of work! This one's for me because I want one for myself, too. And I'll get to use it when I go back to Akron next week!

I had wanted to put some pockets on the inside, but at this point I just want to be done with it. All I have left to do is to sew in the lining, which by the way is some hot pink denim that was 50% off at Joann's. The main fabric is fromAnna Maria Horner's Drawing Room collection. I love it! It's one of my favorites. I couldn't afford to make the whole bag with Drawing Room fabric. According to the pattern, it requires four yards of fabric! Twelve feet of fabric to make one bag, plus five yards of interfacing and stabilizer. I actually had quite a bit of fabric left over because I'm extra thrifty when I cut out the pieces. I'd been looking for a cheaper home decor weight fabric at Joann's, but they didn't have anything that looked good with my fabric. Luckily I found this pink denim that was even cheaper and looks pretty good I think. Nice, eh?





This is what it looks like on the inside. Sewing through all the layers of fabric is the most difficult. I only broke two needles this time, not bad.

Orange you glad for a new post?

Boy, it's been a long time since I've posted anything. Well, I've have had nothing to post. That's the reason. This past weekend I did try making my first clutch. I even put a label in it! I just wanted to see how it would look, as this one is not worthy enough to be offered for sale. Normally I'd put the label on the outside of the pocket, but I had already finished sewing the pocket before I remembered to sew the label on. It didn't turn out exactly as I had imagined, but kind of close. The polka dots are from a duvet I found at the thrift shop. I've also seen the same duvet actually used as a duvet in a house we looked at. But I think it works jolly well as a purse.

I also managed to make a handbag last week for a friend's birthday. I shipped it a week ago to japan, so I'm going to go ahead and post it and assume she's not going to read my blog. I just put the wallet in for scale, but they look good together, eh? The wallet was actually one of my practice wallets, so I didn't mail that.

Hmmm, this orange lining is becoming a theme of mine. Thanks to Becky for donating some orange bed linens for my fabric stash!

A Little Bit of Purse

I made a purse, kind of. It's a sample piece to test out my pattern. There's no lining or pockets yet. I just made it to make sure the shape was right. Seems a tiny bit small, but I think it works. It actually holds a lot for its size. I'd also like to put some purse feet on it when I make them for real. If you notice, the handles connect to the body differently on each side of the purse. I'm not sure which way I like better.

Incidentally I'm out of this Kleo fabric. So you won't be seeing it for a while.

Amy Butler Sophia Bag

Another Amy Butler bag to report. I'm nearly done. I just have to hand sew the interior lining. Hand sewing is a pain, but it's something I can do while watching tv. The inside of the bag is red (thrift store bed sheet) with four pockets. I had to use a navy zipper, because that's pretty much all they had at the store. The longer the zipper, the less colours seem to be available.

Here's a look at it outside with the lovely power lines. The dots turned out a bit crooked, which makes the bag look like it's leaning, but I still like it. I made the underside of the handles red, which I think was a good decision. I love this bag. I love the shape of it. It's quite large, too.



This was pretty similar to the Weekender Bag to make. It took me a little less time to make because it's smaller. But it's still very time-consuming. No wonder handmade handbags are so expensive, because they take so flippin' long to make. I don't know how many hours I put in to this, but I'm definitely learning.

New Year Projects

Chinese New Year is coming up soon. It will soon be the Year of the Ox (Cow), so I wanted to make some cow crafts. Since I missed the boat on christmas gifts, I wanted to send out some chinese new year gifts. I'd been wanting to try making some shopping bags, and I thought some cow print bags would be some fun gifts to make. They turned out to be pretty simple to make.


Top view...I used a Target plastic bag as my template. They hold the same as regular plastic bags, but much more stylishly.

I added a snap to my latest version, so you can roll it up if you want. The polka dots fabric is another thrift shop find. It's from a duvet.

I made a small zippered pouch for Kate in japan. I'm going to hope she receives her package before she reads this post.

Weekender Bag #2

Happy Birthday Carrie! I made another Amy Butler bag for my friend Carrie in Arizona for her birthday. It's the same pattern as the bag I made for Becky, but with different fabric, also from IKEA. This was the fabric I bought last month after dropping my mom off at the airport early in the morning and the waiting four hours for IKEA to open. See My Silly Sunday post. The interior fabric is standard home decor fabric from the fabric store.


The bag has a removable false bottom piece that sits inside the bag to give it more support. The pattern instructions say to use quilter's template plastic, but I found these halloween placemates in clearance for $.60. They were the perfect length and thickness. And they cost a quarter of the price for the template plastic. For the previous bag, I had used one of those flexible chopping boards. I'm a bargain shopper.

Neue Tasche 2

I also made another bag. The one I'm using now is far too large, and I can never find anything in it. I had this Alexander Henry fabric that I wanted to use, but hadn't decided on what to make with it. This is the same pattern as the one I made for Joanna, Burda 8235. I had to add another layer of interfacing to make the bag a bit sturdier. For Joanna's bag I had used home dec fabric which is much stronger. I was too lazy to add interfacing for the strap, so the strap feels flimsy compared to the rest of the bag. Oh well. The lining and strap are navy blue, don't really match, but I didn't want to buy additional fabric. So I used this navy blue bed sheet that I had in my stash.

Weekender Bag

First off, let me just say...YAY FOR BARACK OBAMA!!!! I had class until 9pm, so I had to settle for web updates. I heard the end of Barack Obama's speech on the way home. What an exciting time for this country! It will be nice to have a president I can respect and admire again. Yay!!! Okay, back to the blog. Becky just got her birthday gift from me, so now I can post it. It's Amy Butler's Weekender Bag! I'd been pining for the pattern for several months before I broke down and purchased it from etsy. This bag was a challenge because so much of sewing is new to me. But I enjoyed making it, and I'll be making more. I really want one for myself!

The toughest part was the cording. I broke about eight needles trying to sew through all the layers. No joke. The other challenge was deciding on fabric. I couldn't afford the fabric I really wanted. Amy Butler fabric runs about $15 a yard, which is fine for a wallet. But this bag uses rougly 3-4 yards of fabric. Plus two yards of interfacing. so I went with IKEA fabric, which turned out well, I think. It's a very large bag and holds a lot of stuff.

This is from the Amy Butler site. check it out, there's lots of good stuff. And she's in ohio!

Neue Tasche

This is my latest piece of craft. I made a bag for Joanna's birthday. I used Burda 8235 pattern. It was pretty easy as far as patterns go. Eventually I'd like to try to design my own bag, but since I'm just a beginner I'm starting with patterns to get an idea of how bags are constructed. The black fabric with the bird is from IKEA and I absolutely love it! The green paisley is a home dec fabric I had in my stash. I'll be making another for myself, too!