Monkey Tee

This is the day I would normally post a garment picture.  I am not sure that this really qualifies as a "garment" but I am away at a sewing retreat and am missing my little guys back at home so, in a moment of wistfulness, I decided to post this picture of my brown-eyed boy.

This applique monkey design comes from Sew Many Designs who has "sew many" cute things, including a lot of designs for boys.  When I was making this shirt I decided to stitch it onto a background panel instead of the actual t-shirt so it could be removed and stitched to another larger shirt should I want to.  This worked well and also eliminated all of the fiddly parts about embroidering onto knits.  Give it a try.

Today and tomorrow I am living in luxury (alone!) at the George Washington Hotel in Winchester, VA where almost 40 of my favorite sewing friends have gathered for a winter retreat, sponsored by the Northern Virginia Chapter of the American Sewing Guild.  Before my children were born I was a regular attendee of these retreats, though back then I was sleeping on a bunk bed and eating cafeteria food at a 4H Camp.  This year the powers that be decided to move the retreat to somewhere a bit more upscale (that wouldn't have been hard) and picked this lovely, renovated hotel in downtown Winchester.  I am basking in the (deafening) silence of my stately room and will soon go join others in the Ballroom to sew to my heart's content.  I've brought with me a number of UFO's (unfinished objects) as well as a new dress to work on.  If I had had the presence of mind to pack my camera card reader I could have uploaded a new garment hot off the press.  But you will just have to wait until next week for that.

Bag of the Week 42

Wash and Wear

Today’s post is actually last week’s bag.  I wrote about this project here, about the frustrations I was having.  Sigh.  I was so enjoying making this bag until I hit a snag.  It is now finished but so are some of the grand plans I had for this bag, too.

I fell in love with this little travel lingerie bag the first time I saw it in Stitch magazine (Spring 2010).  It is designed as a flat pouch with zippers at either end, divided in the middle to form two separate areas, one for clean items and one for dirty.  I used the template provided on the Stitch website and followed the author’s instructions for appliquéing the garments onto the light aqua linen I picked for the body of the bag.  The fabrics and laces are fused onto the bag before they are stitched down.  The instructions call for hand stitching with a running stitch but I used a small zigzag (1.5 mm x 1.5 mm) and monofilament thread.  The clothesline is pearl cotton couched on with more of the monofilament.  I chose to machine embroider the words instead of hand stitching them.  I found a great floss-stitched font at Jolson’s Designs (for a mere $3 – quite a bargain).  I even stitched a little monogram on the purple shirt.

I really enjoyed the project to this point.  When it came time to put the bag together I ran into trouble.  There is nothing wrong with the written instructions; I just couldn’t make my chosen supplies come together.  First, the linen I was using is fairly bulky.  I tried an old trick of using a longer zipper than necessary, planning to cut off the extra.  The bulk of the zipper coil added to the linen made it impossible to get a cleanly turned corner.  I also realized I was going to have trouble hand sewing in the lining and making it fit correctly with the awkwardly turned corner.  I unstitched the entire thing and started over.

After much trial and error what finally worked for me was to sew the lining pieces together into a tube and the outer fabric into another.  I placed the lining inside the outer sleeve, serged the raw edges together and treated it as one.  I sewed in about 1.5” on each end of the top opening and set a smaller zipper into the remaining opening.  The zipper is stretched out flat and is merely topstitched into place.  The zipper tape hides the serged fabric edges.

I thought perhaps I could sell bags like this in my (coming soon) Etsy store.  I imagined they might make great gifts for bridal attendants.  But I will have to come up with a much more streamlined design for the bag if that is going to work, as the amount of time I spent just constructing this bag makes it impractical as a commercial item.  This was a good lesson that dreams need to be tested out in reality to make sure they will work.

I'm sharing this post today with the folks over at Today's Creative Blog on their Get Your Craft On feature.  Check them out.

Bag of the Week 7

Chubby Little Snowman Pail

Chubby Little Snowman had a carrot nose,

Along came Mr. Bunny and what do you suppose?

Hungry little bunny, looking for his lunch

Ate the snowman's carrot nose, nibble, nibble, CRUNCH!

 (as sung by my three-year-old)

Those of us here on the East Coast have had more than our share of snow this year.  And here comes another bucketful of snowy goodness guaranteed to warm your heart even when there are icicles all around.  Farmyard Creations has designed a fabric pail adorned with a snowman, complete with snaps for eyes, an appliquéd carrot nose and buttons down his front.  You begin by layering the outer pail fabric with batting and then fusing on the various pieces of the snowman.  Each piece is machine appliqued with a blanket stitch.  The mouth is hand embroidered, snaps form the eyes and the cheeks are blushed with powder blusher.  This outer layer is then stitched into the pail form and lined.  The quilted handle is secured to the pail with more buttons.

These pails make a wonderful container for homemade goodies at the holidays or for packaging other gifts.  They also make a nice container for holding holiday cards.  There are other designs in this same line by Farmyard Creations including a Santa, angel, bunny and bear.  The patterns appear to be out of print but they are frequently available on Ebay.  From what I can tell, the designer behind Farmyard Creations, Karla Eisenach, has now formed a new company with her daughters called Sweetwater which designs and markets quilting fabric, patterns and scrapbooking supplies.  They have a really wonderful blog which showcases many of their beautiful creations.