Bag number 2

 So I thought up another bag design this week to finish up the leftover denim  I had from last week's bag.

I was hoping to get this neat 2/3 hexagon pattern on the front of the bag with 5 triangles sewn together.

In the end though it did not quite work out the way I wanted.  I pieced the front panels together three times trying to get the points to match up, but I finally had to concede defeat, it was really not going to work with the jean fabric.  It was just too thick to sew over at the joining point in the middle.

This idea needs some more work.

So I still wanted to finish the bag despite the difficulties I had with the design so I added a button from my stash to cover up the less than awesome points of the triangles.

This bag let me experiment with making my own strap which was also a trial.  Pulling jean fabric though a thin tube with interfaced cotton was really difficult and time consuming.  It turned out pretty good in the end though.  Amazing what an iron will do for you. :)

I don't think I have even used my iron so much as when making these bags.  Everything needs to be ironed to keep the seams flat so they are crisp and easy to sew through with the sewing machine.

I have realized that I really need to make myself some pressing tools such as a tailor's ham so I can iron corners and small tubes without creating even more creases.

I used some of the quilting cotton I bought a while ago off a website.  It came from one of the only internet fabric shops I have been able to find that sells dress fabric that is based in Canada.  There are a few quilting shops, but all their fabric is super expensive and not really the fabric types and weights I want.

I am really enjoying being able to use some of the cottons I have been hording in my fabric stash.  I bought this cotton imagining a really cool geometric 60s dress but when I got the fabric I realized that in large amounts this fabric is a bit hypnotic and really should not be used in greater quantities.

Lucky for me it was perfect for my geometric bag.

After sewing on the button, I added a small snap to keep the bag closed and it was finished.

Timewise this bag took about a day from pattern creation to finishing up with the sewing on of the snap and button. I think it totaled about 8 hours of work. 

If I had not fiddled with the annoying triangles it probably would have been done in half the time which gives me hope if I ever want to make another.

Sadly this marks the end of my denim stash so i am really hoping our local thrift store has a good sale on Tuesday so i can buy some cheap pants so I can continue to make these bags.

I also have my eye on some absolutely beautiful East Indian clothing that was for sale at the thrift store.  They are in gorgeous colours and the embroidery and bead work need to be put on skirts or something.  Can't wait until Tuesday!

Random Rupert

When it stops raining in Prince Rupert everyone gets out of the house.  Hugh and I went for a walk down by the pond and on the way we went by this cute MG.  Prince Rupert has quite a collection of neat cars which always seem to come out of hiding in spring.

This is another of my favorite vehicles that has been parked in front of our apartment building for while.  Check out the all metal bumper!  I can totally see myself driving this truck pulling a horse trailer.  It does have a little bit of rust but for a old vehicle in Prince Rupert it is in pretty good shape.

Sachel

From old jeans to bag

I have been stockpiling Hugh's old jeans for a little while now. They went though a few different craft ideas but recently I decided that a new bag was in order.

It consists of two pairs of jeans that Hugh had worn out.  The pattern had to be very patchwork inspired since the biggest piece of fabic was still too small to make a bag out of.

I drew my pattern on a piece of muslin.

 Cut them out and then recut the pieces adding extra for seam allowances.  Then I sewed the pieces together and topstitched the seams to make the top and back of the bag.

I cut out the rest of the sides and bottom of the bag and sewed it all together.  I am quite happy with how the patchwork pattern worked out. I have never quilted before and I imagine it has many similar concepts.  The fabrics did make me a little crazy as they liked to change shape after I measured and cut them. Still my rotary cutter and my cutting mat were my best friends for this project.

I lined the bad with this really cute fabric I picked up quite a while ago and had been sitting in my stash waiting for the right project.






And Voila!  New bag.







I took it out for a spin today to the Salmonberry Market.  It is a group of people who get together to sell their handmade items down in front of the courthouse.

There was not a whole lot of people selling as it was pretty cold.  But it was not raining and in Prince Rupert we always consider that as a win.



Today my friend was selling her handmade cards and brooches.  She is a very talented artist and I was super lucky to get first pick of her cute items on her table.

I am hoping that one day I can come up with something nice to sell at the market too,  Maybe bags?  I need to experiment a bit more with fabrics and patterns first I think.






Lastly I when I went outside today I got a big surprise!  My poppies have finally begun to bloom.  I grew them from seeds last year and I was very worried that the winter would be very harsh and kill them off.  Lucky for me that was not the case and they have been flourishing these last couple months.

Isn't she pretty?

Look another potential bloom to the left.

60s style dress

So I have been working on this dress pretty much since I got the fabric in Terrace a few weeks ago.  It has not been my fastest project because it has been stellar busy at work with the end of personal tax season here.  Originally my plan was to have it done in time for the Bif Naked concert I attended on April 27th.  Not a chance.  Then I thought I could have it done in time for the end of tax season party three days later.  Two days worth of overtime trumped that plan too.  So it has been sadly sitting on Maniko waiting to be hemmed and ironed.

This dress started out really well.  the Burda pattern was generally a dream to trace and cut out.  For once most of my hems lined up and my neck edges all matched up.  This has never happened to me before with a McCalls or Butterick pattern so in the beginning I was pretty happy with the pattern.

As always I had a few issued putting this lovely together.  I cut out all my pieces and was diligently sewing them all together when I realized that I had bought an invisible zipper rather than a regular one.  Argh.

pre sleeves and pressing

 I blame other other lovely Burda pattern I bought the same day for distracting me as it did require an invisible zipper. So I figured a zipper is a zipper and I installed the invisible zipper instead.  That seemed to work out fine until I realized that my fabric had stretched a little in the insertion and now I had some unfortunate wrinkles in the fabric on the back on the dress. oh nooos.  After a bit of fussing with the fabric and the lining I was able to get rid of the majority of the wrinkles but it is still not as perfect as I would like.

I did have another problem right at the end.  No matter how I manipulated the sleeve I could not get it to fit into the armhole.  It was so frustrating.  I even rechecked my pieces and they were exactly the right size.  It was very strange.  As a result there are some annoying puckers in the sleeves which I am not happy with but I did not have any extra fabric to re-cut them.  Next time I make this dress I will be sure to mock out the sleeves and make sure they fit the arm holes.

One of the special things about this dress is that it is fully lined.  I used this to my advantage by sewing the lining first so I could check the fit and the placement of the darts. This worked out pretty well in the body of the dress.  Go figure that the sleeves would not be lined and this is where I had my major fitting problem.  next time I sew a dress with sleeves I am going to do the sleeves as well even if they are not needed for the lining of the dress. 

I want to try this dress again but I plan to shorten the waist a bit so the pockets sit a bit higher but otherwise the pattern fit pretty well.  Really I need to work on getting the pattern to work up without fabric stretching.  I will also line it with real cotton as the polycotton broadcloth would not iron nicely and tended to shrink if it is ironed at a higher temperature.  So annoying.

and pockets!

Check out the cool belt I got from the Salvation Army last Saturday.  Finding plain skinny belts here can be a bit difficult so I was very happy to find this one.

Random Rupert

One thing to think about when buying a house is what possible things could happen in the property around you.  Sometimes horrible neighbours move in next door, sometimes a giant ugly house is built in the neighbourhood and sometimes something big ugly and shiny is built in front of your property which obscures your previously lovely view of the ocean.

These people once had a lovely view of the ocean here in Prince Rupert.

Now they look at these:

Shiny goodness *insert sarcasm here*.

They are two pellet silos which have been recently put up on the CN Railway property here in Prince Rupert.  They are really ugly.

The extra sad thing about this is that the railway has had a lot more traffic with the expansion of the port, Ridley Island and the pellet silos.  This means that these people not only have had their view obscured, they also have to listen to the constant noise of the railway.  We took these pictures on Sunday and the entire time there was the noise of trains moving, coupling and decoupling.   It would drive me nuts I think if I had to live there.  I wonder how much their property values have dropped with the railway becoming so much more active.  And I highly doubt the city will reduce their property assessments because of it as the city really wants every tax dollar they can get.

Sucks.

Fabric Porn

Oh look what the nice postal boy brought for me today.  It is my winnings from the Girl Charlee giveaway! I believe there is at least 19 yards of yummy knit fabric in these pictures.

The white fabric with black birds is really lightweight.  Not sure what I am going to do with that.  The deep burgundy is also super lovely and a lot heavier than the others.  The red fabric to the right is actually a bit deeper and less orange red than the picture suggests and is going to become a dress.  Not sure about the rest yet. 

I think my favorite is the blue grey one with the yellow birds on it.  It is very pretty and the colour matches the blue/teal fabric really well. I also got 6 yards of black cotton jersey for more black dresses. 

I made this Cynthia Rowley dress with straight long sleeves a couple years ago and I wear it about once a week still.  It is great for both wearing alone with a cool belt and using it under other dresses I have for warmth or to add extra length to a dress which is not as work appropriate otherwise.  Unfortunately the black is no longer as black as it used to be.  I am looking forward to making up another one.  Also, the dress only took a few hours to make which is really awesome!

On the weekend I was super lucky and some friends took me to Terrace to go to Fabricland! 
I was super happy as I have been craving some new fabric and a chance to get some real Burda patterns.  There are some many cute ones I want.

I settled on this sweet 60's dress with sleeves and pockets.  I am really looking for clothing items with pockets as at work they are a godsend. 

I bought some really cute pink cotton for this pattern.  I am thinking cute summer dress!.  I can definitely see this pattern in heavier fabrics as well like linen and even a suiting of some kind.  It really looks like something I could make a few times.  I am always excited to find a pattern I can use more than once.  Patterns are so expensive now.  I have the lining for this cut out already as I want to check the sizing before cutting into my good fabric.  I hope to get it together this weekend.  Maybe I can wear it to the end of tax season party!


In general I find that I like the 1940's clothing/
style the most but I tend to look better in stuff that is more 1960's I think.  I also like 60's clothing as it tends to be more versatile and does not stand out quite as much like you are wearing some sort of costume when you wear it in your everyday life.  There is also a cool cleanness about the styles that I like too and you can really play with fabrics and colour as a result of this simplicity.  And pockets.  I really do love pockets.

I won something!

Wow, so much for my goal of at least one post a month.

Really I have not been feeling super creative lately and as a result have not done a whole lot of sewing.  I have been assembling some materials for a bunch of future projects.

One thing I am super excited about is I recently found out a won a contest!  Girl Charlee recently had a draw for some gift cards and I won first place which was a $100.00 gift card.  I am super excited as I have been eyeing their fabric for a while now but the shipping costs have been holding me back.   Now I can get a nice sampling of their fabrics for free!

I have been especially interested in these three prints.  I am thinking of some type of shirt for the birds, leggings for the owls and maybe a dress of some sort for the retro wallpaper. (You can click on the pictures of you want to go to the listing for these fabrics.)

Unfortunately I do not yet own a serger so I still have to use the zigzag stitch on my sewing machine but it did an okay job on my last knit dress I sewed.

I also picked up some bar towels this weekend which I sewed into some cute tea towels.  I got the idea from this website and I thought they would be really fun to make.

Are these not cool?

I am pretty chuffed with how well they turned out.  And the star at the top is my first foray into applique work.  Go zigzag stitch again.  I think I may even have the tension thing finally worked out on the sewing machine.
 

I have been checking out the thrift stores again and I have a bunch of vintage buttons which I want to use so these babies will hang off the oven instead of always being all bunched up and messy looking.

Random Rupert

Recently we were invited for an afternoon out of Rupert by some friends of ours.  We went to Port Edward, Rainbow Lake and drove all the way out to the Skeena river.

The bottom photo is at a rest stop about 10 minutes out of Prince Rupert which has a nice walking trail.  I loved the look of the water in the muskeg.  Apparently this is the stuff that gives horses foot rot and as a result no one keeps horses here.

I also thought the white moss that grew on the trees was pretty neat too. 

On a random side note, who decided it was a good idea to lock the public washrooms on a major highway during winter is pretty dumb.  The rest stop we stopped at before turning around back to Prince Rupert has their drop in the hole toilet locked down for the winter.  People who i am assuming, just could not wait had instead been going to the washroom around the side of the building instead.  That is really nasty.  People need rest stops no matter what time of year it is. Locking them seems kind of stupid.

Colour Blocking

 Recently I have been getting both money conscious and antsy about my wardrobe.  I have tons of shirts and stuff that I don't wear anymore either because I have worn them out completely (I don't like to shop so I wear things I like until they die) or they just don't work with my wardrobe or myself anymore.

Some of the items which have been sitting in my drawers were old long sleeve shirts I bought at Uniclo back when I was in Japan.  I lived in these shirts as I could wear them for extra warmth under my work uniform back when I was teaching preschool in Japan.  They were my go to item.  Now they are all a little washed out and not nice enough looking to pass off as office wear for work. 

Inspiration from Magazine

So after reading an article in the Winter 2012 Altered Couture about how to alter stretch tops I thought, "Sure, why not.  I can so do that!"

Colour blocking is not something I gravitate to naturally. Something about these huge blocks of colour are rather intimidating.  I also don't want to look like I just stepped out of a Lulu Lemon store.  Still I figured if it did not work I would only be out a few shirts which I never wore anymore.  So I pulled out two of the Uniclo shirts, navy blue and a strange red colour.

I also had one ruined black shirt from the Gap.  Proof that I need a bib or something. All those white spots are grease stains or something which I got all down the front of the shirt.  Not a pretty sight.  So I marked them with the chalk so I would be sure to cut them all out during the course of the alteration.

So with much trepidation and a very solid ruler I began to make some measurements. This is usually where I get scared and run away, but I soldiered on.  This is what I came up with in the end.  

Obviously it is not finished.  I am still playing with the placement of the red shirt.  It was initially going to be even longer but when I tried it on the shirt was skin tight to my behind.  Way too risque for me so it is back to the original idea of a tunic top.

I have since decided that the red is too long at the bottom.  I think I will shorten it up to the same distance from the black hem to about 3 inches so it matched the red square in the middle front.

I am a little concerned that it is looking a lot like a cardigan over a shirt though so that may need some work as well. At least this is a project I can just throw stuff at and see what happens.  It is kind of fun and I think I need to do stuff like that more.  Less pattern focused and a little more random artiness.

Random Rupert

over Christmas it got quite cold here.  The pond near our place froze and the is was really thick in places.  It also created some really neat patterns.

it looks like a virus or something

The ice was almost 3 inches thick.

I really liked looking at the shapes in the ice. It was all so pretty.

Plans, plans, plans

I haven't done a lot of sewing recently.  The last month has been taken over by work mostly.  Now most of the fuss is finished with and I can get back to my regular hobbies.

I went to the thrift store today and found the nicest suit jacket.  It is a men's jacket in a dark tourquoise color and the best part is it is 100% silk. For $3.00!  Sweet. I want to fashion it into a ladies jacket. I have been thinking about refashioning thrift store garments for a while now and since the blouse turned out so nicely I have a bit more confidence.

Slowly I have been picking out the stitches on this rather hideous red dress from the 80's.  I bought it because I really loved the colour of the fabric.  It is a pretty cherry red which I am always in favor of.  Although it does not have a care label anymore I believe it is made of some sort of wool/acrylic mix.  It is a little on the itchy side.

But look at all that fabric.  There area few pin holes so I am going to have to be careful how I cut my pattern pieces from it to avoid these spots.  I am also going to have to line it otherwise the itchiness might make me crazy.  The dress looks very well loved.  The zipper and the elastic around the waist have both been replaced over the years.  I cant imagine wearing it as is though.

The plan is to turn the dress into something like this picture from the Modcloth website

I plan to make it a bit longer but I like the styling.  I am just a bit concerned about the lack of sleeves.  Most of my dresses are sleeveless and I have found the Prince Rupert gets pretty cold.  It is never really sun dress weather here so sleeveless is a little impractical.  I always end up covering up my cute dresses with cardigans to keep warm.
I also have plans to make a dress with long sleeves.  I don't think I have owned a dress with long sleeves since I was in elementary school.

I am tempted into making it into something more like this.  I like the darts used and I am hoping I can get it to fit like in the picture.  Sometimes the pictures on these old patterns are very inaccurate as to what the garment actually makes up into.  Many times I have looked at a reissued pattern and the drawing makes it look like something out of a movie, but once the garment is made up the average person (or the live model wearing the garment) it looks really crappy. (Pattern companies also seem to use some of the most ugly fabric to make up their patterns.  I mean, light pink satin?  Are you kidding? ).

Anyway, here is hoping that something good comes from all this.

Random Rupert

Did I mention it is snowing here? It has been snowing off and on for the last couple days and I think we have about 1 1/2 inches or so.  It is very pretty.  The snow has been up on the mountain for a while but it is only recently that it has gotten cold enough to come down to us.  I did not get a nice picture of the snow here, but here are a couple of the snow up on the mountains.

This is the mountain which is right in the middle of the island which Prince Rupert is on (Kaien Island).

I like the last of the sunrise in this one. I have no idea what mountain that is.