Bag Lady

I am a newbie bag sewer. While I doubt they will ever make up the majority of my sewing, I am discovering how fun they can be.

You don't have to worry if they will fit a person, and the ones I have made so far are not very big. So except for all the fusing-of-the-interfacing and cutting-of-all-the-parts, a basic bag doesn't take up too much time.

(Obviously the bigger, more complicated ones do take rather a lot of time and skill, but I'm not referring to those as yet.)

Here are a few I've made this week.

Pink Clutch

Fabric: Glam Garden by Josephine Kimberling. Still working on the scraps and yardage from my original order of this line from Hawthorne Threads.

Pattern: Simplicity 2305 by Cynthia Rowley. I haven't gotten around to making the dress or skirt from this one, so I figured I'd at least take a crack at the clutch. It seemed really simple. It was. It's basically a square that you fold in half. I am a little disappointed in the lack of, well, structure in the finished product, but perhaps that was my fault. I used a medium weight fusible woven interfacing, but I am starting to realize that I may need to stock up on hair canvas if I am going to seriously make bags. This purse delivered a lot of cute for not much effort, but it is definitely only suitable for casual, occasional use.

Recognize the applique? A recent purchase from Maisonette, which I pictured in this post. I am ashamed to say that I was in a hurry and...um...hotgluediton. *hanging my head in shame* And so I'm calling this bag a craft. I wasn't going to waste valuable time hand sewing something I will only use from time to time.

The inside of the clutch is basically just a zippered pocket on the lower half of a folded square. I initially wanted a jeans zipper for this, but alas, I had none long enough. I opted for this hot pink jacket zipper instead. I think I actually like it better.

I used the lining fabric from the interior of the pocket, as well.

For the second bag, I made a birthday gift for one of DD's friends. We had gotten some cool activity-y things from the craft store, so I wanted something functional that we could gift them in. I'm picturing her using this to tote library books and fun-stuff-to-do when she goes boring places with adults.

Child's Activity Satchel

Fabric: Flower Power by Jennifer Paginelli. Lining is purple Fairy Frost from Michael Miller fabrics. I had originally gotten the Flower Power fabric for aprons, but it was the only thing that suited this project. I was lucky enough to be able to get the bag out of it with enough leftover for a cafe apron.

Pattern: Simplicity 3662. I've had this pattern for years, initially intending to use the basic jumper pattern included in it. Never got around to that, and while thumbing through looking for bag patterns, I was thrilled to find that this old forgotten pattern had exactly what I needed. Win for pattern hoarding!

As DD's friend is on the tall side, I made the handles longer than called for. Actually, I believe it wanted you to use 1" webbing as the straps, but I:

1. Cut strips 3 1/2" wide and 30"-ish long

2. Backed them with fusible interfacing

3. Folded each strip in half, right sides together

4. Stitched a 1/4" seam allowance

5. Turned, pressed, & top stitched.

Voila, straps. I've made so many apron ties that I think I may have made these in my sleep. Once you make stitch & turn tubes a bunch, it quickly becomes old hat.

I decided to double top stitch the pockets and upper edge. I thought it just looked more profesh. Oh, and cheeeeeck out my fabric matching?! I never bother with OCD stuff like pattern matching. Happily this was pretty easy to do on a pocket, so I took the extra 5 minutes. Glad I did.

The button is not functional, but I thought the bag needed "something", so I added it.

I added a quick little ribbon tag before I put the lining in. I keep a little stash of inexpensive printed ribbon, and it's perfect for stuff like this.

I decided to quadruple top stitch the straps, and I totally love how they came out. Very sturdy.

I have an excellent clear foot that I use for evenly spaced topstitching like this. It has 1/8" increment marks on it all the way up to 5/8", and is such a huge help at getting my seam allowances and top stitching accurate. I highly recommend you check out all the nifty feet that either came with your machine or are available from your dealer. As I sew on a Viking, I usually have to buy any specialty feet. But the ones I've thrown down for have been sooooo worth it.

More to come later; I have a few Modkid Maya's that I've sewn, shop updates, etc.!

Spring Flowers

Have I mentioned that my favorite items to sew are easy knit garments? I couldn't tailor anything to save my life--although I do want to learn!--so I just churn out this stuff I can phone in. Before I starting sewing with them so much, I mistakenly thought that knits are scary or hard, but they aren't; they're just different. Once you learn the techniques you need to use, they are are so much easier and quicker than anything else. As I am a stay at home mom who is pressed for sewing time, knits suit my lifestyle and schedule very well.

Here are a few knit items I managed to sew up in between this or that in the last week. All are from patterns I have used before, so that made them go even quicker and use up less brain power. Not to mention I am so tired and foggy these days that I can't even bring myself to read and/or figure out anything new. Lazy sewing at its best!

Floral Tank and Color Blocked Yoga Pants

Pattern(s): Ottobre Woman 2/2007 #1 tank top and heavily modified Kwik Sew 3155 yoga pants (based on a pair of well-fitting yoga pants I already had).

Fabric: Floral and solid cotton lycra from Fabric.com, cotton lycra french terry from JOS co-op. The french terry didn't have quite enough lycra in it to function well as a yoga waistband, so I used the purple cotton lycra instead. I actually like to wear it up over my belly for the insta-spanx effect, but it does look cuter down. Unfortunately I have to massively suck in my ripped up stomach muscles (thanks, kids!) to make that look work though, so most of the time I opt for comfort.



Gotta have the back view, right?? What's the point of yoga pants if they don't flatter your rear? Okay, okay, my pants should probably not be this tight, but for some reason I gained a few extra lbs. over the Winter, so my clothes are a little sluttier than usual these days. :p

Instead of doing a binding on the tank top, I just added 3/8" to the neckline and armholes, pressed it under, and top stitched with my coverstitch machine. I love how it turned out and it was actually easier than dealing with a bunch of long, fiddly binding strips. I recently purchased a clear foot for my coverstitch, so I was able to get my hems nice and even without all the cursing and swearing that my old opaque foot demanded.


Floral Sundress

Pattern: Simplicity 3882. This pattern is at least 3 years old, and was one of the first knit projects I ever sewed. When I first bought it, I remember thinking, "gee, this pattern goes a little far into 80s territory." Silly me.

Since this was my third time making this pattern, I finally cut the humongous 5/8" seam allowances down to 1/4" on my pattern tracings. I hate huge seam allowances on knits. Also, now that I have a serger, I don't do casings anymore. I serge and topstitch all my elastic on, just like you would on a swimsuit. I cut the elastic pieces a few inches shorter than indicated to account for the extra stretching out.

Fabric: Floral cotton lycra from Fabric.com.

That lace you see at the top is not part of the dress, it's part of a $2 Old Navy cami I'm wearing underneath. This dress doesn't have enough bra coverage unless you have a demi-cup, and I pretty much only have t-shirt bras. Ideally I should just sew some old bra cups in, but I'm too lazy. So right now now I just have a mess of 3 different colored straps going on. Whatevs.



That's all for now. I still have charcoal gray in all my machines from the yoga pants, so I think my next project will be a light Summer hoodie for DS out of the scraps. Until then!

S'more Schtuff

Okay, here's the long-awaited stash game post. Because I sewed *sooo* much (<----- imagine sarcasm). And then I ordered, uh, *cough* some fabric. 'N' stuff. Y'know. UTTER FAILURE. Big fat 'F' & whatnot. Whatever, next time, eh? Here's what I did accomplish:

An old pattern, some older fabric. This one is McCall's 5431 in one of Tina Givens' older lines. Love, love these pretty flowers, and I love working with quilting cotton because it behaves. I wish the skirt sat higher up on my waist and was shorter, but I already had the on-seam pockets sewed on before I realized this--oh well. It will have to stay this way.



A yoga waist skirt in some of my very carefully hoarded Heather Ross Far, Far Away fabric. It is double-gauze, which is interesting to work with, because well, it's doubled fabric. Not my fave, but the end result is opaque and comfortable. I think I will be very grateful for this skirt come Summer. Oh, and no pattern--remember this dress? I cut off the top and made it a skirt. To accommodate the bust darts, I stuck them in the back, around my bum. Hey, no way I was going to waste this fabric!!



Yoga pants out of a heavily modified Kwik Sew pattern. I have an ancient pair of Forever 21 yoga pants that are scandalously low-rise and pre-children, but they do still fit my legs and butt well. So, I just laid them on my Kwik Sew pattern and morphed the two together. Now, that sounds terribly slap-dash, but I assure that I am very anal when I do this type of thing, because if I'm sloppy about it I will come up with something very wonky and ill-fitting. I used some buttery soft cotton/poly/nylon blend french terry from Fabric.com for this, and they feel awesome. I seriously need to make 5 more pairs because I am wearing them to death. The polka dots you see under my tank top (from an old Ottobre Woman pattern) are the cotton lycra waistband. I am wearing the waistband up to cover my child-mangled belly pooch, thereby making a nice smooth line under my tank top. Thank God for Lycra! (No, SERIOUSLY. Thank Him.)



Leeeeegggginngsssss!! Heck yeah, I love me some leggings. Deal with it. ;) Right now I am enamored with the amazing Kwik Sew 3770. It is so well-drafted and easy to sew. Okay, to be honest the tuxedo stripe ones were a leetle tricky. I learned the hard way that I needed to pin, pin, pin my stripe seams before serging or much non-straight-striped-ness would ensue. Nevertheless, we're not talking poly chiffon here. Mostly these were super quick and easy to sew. The ruched ones are out of shiny nylon lycra swimwear fabric, and the tuxedo ones are rayon lycra jersey with poly/rayon/lycra velvet. Both pairs are super comfortable and silky on my legs--LOVE!



K, this one is one of the beautiful patterns that Cynthia Rowley is doing for Simplicity. I used a rather non-stretchy Plum Pudding jersey that I got in my huge co-op order from a couple months ago. I would have said it was cotton, but after sewing and pressing it, I believe it must have at least some polyester in it. Nevertheless it is light and comfortable, and this pattern was so simple. I like simple. I get interrupted too much in my sewing to sew lots of complicated jackets, blah, blah. So sue me, this is my favorite kind of project: an easy knit dress.



Lastly for this post, some Valentine's Day stuff for me and DD. Because I am a rank nerd and I like to theme dress for holidays. It's FUN and makes me happy. I made a simple cotton jersey t-shirt dress for DD, with an appliqued heart from Chez Ami jersey on the front. Since V-day she has probably already worn this, like, 15x. I originally copied this pattern idea from a rtw dress she had, and now I've made it up so many times in different fabrics/patterns that I think I could make it in my sleep. Not to mention no matter what fabric I use, I know she'll WEAR it. That's priceless to me!


For me I made up Kwik Sew 3740 in some sort of poly lycra blend jersey. Honestly, I'm not sure what's in it. But it is comfortable and warm, and this pattern was another no-brainer one. It's just a t-shirt with a two-piece cowl collar. The collar is just genius, because not only is it rounded instead of a huge rectangle like most collar patterns, it has a separate, larger outer collar and a smaller, inner collar. The upside of all that is that the cowl hangs perfectly all the time with no fiddling. And this is why Kwik Sew patterns are so awesome--never mind the off-putting 1980s illustrations, they come out great and fit well.


That's all for now!

2 Shifts

I finally finished these up this weekend. For more detail, just click on the pics and you can see them full size:

What: Sophisticate Dress pattern from Anna Maria Horner
Fabric: Amy Butler Lotus "Lacework" in Sage from co-op
Thoughts: I love it. No complaints. Pattern was super easy to put together, and I think it looks flattering on. I added the optional belt, which I think makes a huge difference in the fit.



What: Simplicity 3507
Fabric: Anna Maria Horner Good Folks "Small Gathering" in Plum from co-op. 100% Irish linen from Fabric.com.
Thoughts: Hmm. I should have stay stitched the neckline because it gapes a little bit. Linen is a tricky little sucker for sewing curves. The shift has an upside-down triangle shape, which is kind of interesting. I've decided that I look fine in boxy shifts, but in this case I really do think it could benefit from a belt. I think a wide, woven one would look nice. Unfortunately I don't own any belts. Maybe next time I'm at the mall I'll take a look at H&M.



See what I mean about the inverted triangle? Interesting. (My adjectives astound me today!)

What else? I'm also working on a couple of Jalie Sweetheart neck tops/dresses for me and DD out of Mad Sky hearts and a cute owl print from Mis-Tee-Vious. I am all done except for the coverstitching, for which I need to pull out my brand new Janome CP1000. I am a little scared, because I have yet to use this machine, despite having it for, like 3 weeks already. I know it will be fine, it's just an unknown. Anyway, I hope to get to that today.

Still haven't gotten pics of the Snow White & gnome costume fabrics. Maybe later today as well.