Bag: Angela

Meet Angela.

She's sleek. She's sophisticated. She kicks ass and takes names. She's all business. Not a lot of fun in this one.

Or is there?

Hello! What's this! why, an incredibly funky lining from this wild IKEA SARALISA fabric. It's crazy cool stuff, and the local IKEA finally had it in stock. I think I need to pick up another metre or two before it's gone, I find it really compelling and want to make a dozen different things out of it.

The always handy interior key loop - I don't know how I lived without these, although to be honest mine usually have a baby toy attached to them.

And a small zippered pocket for change, a wallet, assorted treasure, whatever you need, really.

Angela was custom made in exchange for some graphic design work, the results of which you can see in my shiny new blog title and logo! Now I have my very own custom purple lizard, who I adore and plan to slap all over everything.

Hat project '09

What do you call a bunch of hats? A plethora? A herd? A gaggle?

These are the smallest two. The pink one was a valuable lesson in the importance of stay-stitching - note how the brim is totally wonky compared to the nice smooth brim of the other hat? I forgot to stay-stitch the inner edge of the brim on the pink one before I attached it to the crown. Amazing how something that seems like a pointless step turns out to make such a huge difference!

The baby doesn't seem to mind the wonky brim!

Gratuitous cute baby modeling shot:

I need to put hook & loop on the ends of the ties, but I'm probably going to wait to do that until I have one more hat made, then I'll do all the H&L at once. I hate sewing hook tape in particular, so I'm procrastinating that step.

And now for something completely different...

For over a year, I've been asking, 'What's the deal with the community garden?'. Finally, last week I got the contact information, plonked down $25, and now this is my patch of dirt:

Staked, tilled, and ready for planting! I put in a row of lettuce and spinach this morning; the plan is to plant three rows altogether over the next three weeks, to ensure a continuous harvest before the weather gets too hot for greens.

Everything else has to wait for the frost danger to pass. Tentative plan is lots of tomatoes, a zucchini plant, one pepper plant for the husband (I loathe peppers), lots of basil, maybe some carrots, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

the garden also includes a community herb garden:


Can't wait to see it fully grown - there's a variety of stuff already growing, like thyme and oregano.

Fresh tomato and basil salad! I can hardly wait!

I swore I'd never make another one...

...but I totally lied.

It was a lot easier this time! I mixed up the textures a bit, so there's some plain cotton, some flannel, and some fabulously soft minkee.


Sewing the interior seams was much easier this time, despite having used smaller squares. Hopefully the recipients enjoy it - I gave it to friends expecting twins. Which means I probably should have made two!

Diaper covers

OK, for most people, these probably aren't that thrilling. But trust me, they are cool. Cloth diaper covers with gussets. Single layer PUL, bound with fold over elastic and fasten with snaps. The off-white looking one is actually yellow, my camera washed out the colour a bit.

Tomorrow they head off for their new home. Hopefully they will do their job admirably and, dare I say it, a touch stylishly.

Baby hat, take #2; bonus bag!

Bucket hat style. Same pattern, same size...yet this one is TOO BIG. WTF? Also I forgot to change my thread when I started topstitching, so the brim looks kind of wonky.


I will move on to attempt #3. This one will probably fit her NEXT summer! And I'm thinking I might need a chin strap to have any hope of keeping a hat on her head. So attempt #3 I will draft a pattern based on her head size and add a chin strap and hopefully, hopefully, 3rd time will be the charm.

Then I can get on DD1's request for a Dora hat. To match her Dora purse she got from the Easter Bunny, with the explanation that 'Easter' asked mummy to make the purse. Yeah, that's it.

Baby hat, take #1

Baby needs hats. Mommy needs a simple project that comes together fast, because right now I'm in the midst of a half a dozen neverending projects and it's getting annoying to not have anything DONE.


This is a McCall's pattern. Meh. Not overly pleased with the final result - it needs to be pressed so the liner isn't all weird, but I don't think I like it, overall. Also I mucked up attaching the liner and wasn't really feeling up to picking out the stitching and doing it over again. I think I'm going to draft my own pattern for a sunhat in a slightly different style.

Edit: I have unfairly maligned McCall's - it's a Butterick pattern. Still not overly fond of it, though!

Happy Easter! Sudden Sock Bunny

So, Saturday night. Looking at the Easter basket, and it's missing something.

An hour later, after raiding the drawer of socks I was planning to turn into Babyleg knock-offs, Sock Bunny was born!


I wish I'd thought of it sooner, I'd have gotten some more interesting socks. Ah well, next year!

DD1 was quite pleased with him (her? it's not yet named...)

Sadness. Now happiness!

So I took both of my sewing machines in for service on Saturday. My main machine, a Janome, is under warranty and the straight stitch has lately been sewing not-quite-entirely straight. Like it's doing a really tiny zig-zag instead of a straight stitch. So they're looking at that.

My back up machine, a Kenmore my mom bought for me (mumble) years ago, got screwed up last fall when I tried to force it to sew through too many layers and the tension went completely wonky. So they'll fix that and probably clean and tune it, since it's never been serviced. And hopefully on Thursday or Saturday I can go retrieve my machines and get sewing again! For now, I am sad, because I want to sew, and I cannot.

The upside of having no machine in the house, however, is that I'm getting lots of my least favourite thing done - cutting and prepping fabric. Since I have no choice but to cut and prep, I'm finding I don't mind doing it quite so much! The baby is ready to go up a size in diapers, so I got a bunch of larges cut out and snaps applied. Tonight I'm going to cut out fabric for two bags, I think, and start applying interfacing.

The best part is, once I have my machines back, I'll be able to sit down and just sew, sew, sew, since I'll have so many things ready to go!

Edit: Janome is ready! Got the call this morning, off to pick her up tomorrow. Fast service, since I dropped her off Saturday and it's only Tuesday. Kenmore won't be ready for a week, but that's OK, I'll have one machine back!

Diaper bag: Camilla

Oooooh, Camilla is pretty. THRILLED with this one, so sophisticated! Fabric is decorator fabric from Fabricland. I'm still not 100% thrilled with the closure on this pattern; I have one more alteration I'd like to try, but I think I'll probably just leave it off unless someone specifically requests it. It looks great when the bag is sitting down, but it looks kind of weird when you are actually carrying it. I have another one of these bags cut out and interfaced and ready to sew (in a chocolate brown/green combo), and I think I'm going to make the outer pocket about 2 inches shorter and probably add a matching one on the other side, since I love external pockets. I'll stick a key loop inside one of the external pockets too.

The really nice thing about this bag is it somehow holds more stuff than you think it should looking at it from the outside!