carrotflowers

Want to make: craft apron

A craft apron is a sweet idea. As in sah- weeet! Not as in nicey-nice. Anyway, when I went to buy my sewing machine - or rather, when I went to look at some and ended up buying one, the very nice owner was wearing one of these. Here is a tutorial for a nice looking one. On my to do list!

Want to make: toddler pants

I just found this tutorial on making pants for kids. Added to my to do list!

zippered pocket in a bag

Just read this tutorial on making a zippered pocket. I look forward to trying it soon!

I love this handbag!

And I don’t even use bags. But I saw this gorgeous bag on a blog, and am now sitting down to see if I can copy it. The blogger has an etsy shop and makes a lot of really lovely bags. Her blog is nice too; should add it to the roll…

So I am going to start with a smaller version. Very excited!

In other news work on my JJ blouse is proceeding apace. No disastrous mistakes thus far; hope it fits well enough.

craftster Best Of 2007

A cool list of fun craftster community projects! The tree/bird corset is so beautiful!

In progress: JJ blouse from burdastyle.com

Well, I had to read the first step several times over a couple of days before I seemed to comprehend it. Then I still got it wrong (slightly.) It wasn’t too hard to amend my mistake. I also followed one sewer’s advice and did a fake French seam based on her how to. Thus sewing that one seam took me ten minutes. Progress is slow but I’m actually proud of me for trying to take my time for once. In Amy Karol’s Bend the Rules Sewing, she has a little section called “What Kind of Crafter Are You?” and I identified my category right away: the impatient crafter. Hell, it’s part of what I love about sewing - the gratification is so quick. So when I read Claire B Shaeffer’s Couture Sewing, and she talks on and on about all the hand sewing they do, and all of the basting by hand like 5 times before sewing a seam, I was like “kill me!” But then on my very next project (the Kayaki blouse I think) I basted a few steps before machine sewing & I think it helped. That book really helped me understand easing so much better as well.

Made: Kayaki Home Couture pattern #3

Ah, I sewed for the first time in 3 or 4 nights. I’ve been low on energy and distracted by playing mafia over at the SGU games forum. I finally finished my “practice” skirt, which turned out well enough to wear. There were some bumps in the road, and I definitely have a number of notes to type up for reference when I make my “real” version with the lovely apple corduroy. It will be interesting to compare the “practice” with the real as the fabric on the practice is heavier and thicker, and becomes the skirt style well. Whereas my apple corduroy is actually a pretty lightweight cord, and will give the skirt more drape and less form I think. I’m sure I’ll still love it though, the cord is sooo soft.

Actually, since I started this blog, I’ve made a couple more headbands, a purse from a free Ottobre pattern, a bag for my mom, and a Kayaki top or 2. I’ve got a lot to write up, it’s daunting enough that I’ve been stalling.

free hobo bag tute

Someone on one of my fabric co-ops posted this link to this sweet bag tutorial. I haven’t done a zippered inner pocket yet so I am excited. I don’t love the rings, so we’ll see if I make it exactly. My mom would probably like it.

Also dig on the fabric in the example, is it not super frakkin awesome and hottt? My God, I love it so. You can buy it here and visit the designer, Jessica Jones, at her blog. I am adding the online fabric store that sells the collection (exclusively, sadly for me) to my links so I remember. Hopefully someone gives me a gift certificate to the place so I may one day have some of this to die for awesome droolworthy fabric.

cute lunchbags!

Aren’t these lunchbags super cute and stylish? Yum! Got to add this to my to do list; My little guy could use one for daycare.

no blogging these days

See, this always happens. I get hung up on dumb details like the entry formatting, which theme I should use, should I roll my own etc etc. Then the backlog of things I intended to write about gets too overwhelming. Ick. I did choose to switch to hosted Wordpress rather than WP.com because I couldn’t edit the css without paying. But now I’m like, why stop at editing the CSS, I should just customize my own theme. Yeah, you’re going to be looking at this grey default for awhile…