Some in-progress works

I took a break the week before Christmas from purse sewing so I could focus on my kids' Christmas gifts.  Now that Christmas is over I went kind of crazy cutting out purses to sew!

 There are about 20 purses here and 15 wallets.  Enough sewing to last me...I don't even know.  Weeks!

 Unfortunately my work area needs a little cleaning.  This is my pile of scraps.  These are big enough that I may want to use them later, so I save them.  But my scrap tubs are getting pretty full, so I'm not looking forward to trying to stuff these into their respective bins.

 This is a big part of the reason I haven't done scrap organization yet.  This is underneath my table.  I went through my closet and took out everything that didn't fit, was too old, or that I plain didn't like anymore.  This left me with about four things left for winter!  Instead of trying to replace that warddrobe by buying new clothes, I am determined to upcycle some of these old clothes into new clothes for myself.  So this pile is sitting on top of some of scrap tubs and I'm trying to ignore it. 

 My cousin commissioned a purse for our aunt.  I picked a brown wool with embroidered flowers on it.  I did used my familiar woven design, though I altered the pattern to make the purse a little narrower and taller.  It also zippers up instead of using a magnet clasp; one of my goals for 2012 is to put zippers in all of my purses. 

 It still needs a purse strap, which I will do today.

Hope everyone has a wonderful New Years weekend!  We will be having a sleepover with the grandparents and on Monday I'll be starting the joy of inventory!

Behind the Bag: Harlequin diamonds clutch

I keep a notebook for jotting down random ideas for purses.  Anytime I feel the need for inspiration I'll browse my idea notebook.  I get ideas from various places.  Browsing supply shops on Etsy is a sure way to gain inspiration!  Clothing and home decor often give me little ideas.  I thought I would share the inspiration behind my newest bag.

This is the purse, and this is the inspiration:

See that mask? I saw that and thought, that would make a cool purse!

And aren't those costumes amazing?  They are made by the designer Horst Raack, who designed them for the Carnivale di Venezia.  He's won several different years.  I found a blog post about him while looking for faberge egg fabric. The fabric is discontinued, sadly, but I highly recommend you visit the blog and take a look at all the costumes this man has made!  It's rather lengthy, but even just looking at the pictures is fun.

Round-up of Christmas Sewing and Gifts

I had a whirlwind week sewing several gifts for my kids and nephews, so I thought I would share since I am very proud of these projects.

First of all I made my son and nephews some fabric garages with wooden cars that I bought from Etsy.

Next I made both my children a stuffed dragon from this pattern I bought on Etsy.

They both loved them! And so do I; they are probably the cutest thing I've ever sewn. :]

And finally, I made a dollhouse out of a bookshelf and some wooden dolls.  I'm hoping my kids get a lot of fun out if it.



I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!



New clutch design

My posts have been rather spotty lately!  I've been working hard on a lot of made-to-order purses.  But now the rush is over and I can concentrate on sewing some Christmas gifts and enjoying the rest of the holiday season with my family.

One thing that I've managed to do this month is create a new clutch pattern.  The pattern that I currently use is great, and I still will continue making clutches with it.  But for various reasons I wanted to come up with something new.  Something a little more interesting, something a little bigger, something that would work with both patterns and solids.  So I experimented a bit.  I am really happy with the final results.  I have made five purses now out of this pattern and have bought some lovely silks and velvets to make more.

You can see I've kind of got a peacock theme going on!  I am really excited about this pattern and I can tell I will have lots of fun with it.  I have plenty of designs from my other pattern in my head too that I'll be making after the holidays.  Plus, I need to make a bunch of wallets since my inventory has grown fairly small.  Lots to do in January!

Finished toddler quilt

Well, I finished my son's birthday quilt for his second birthday.  It turned out better than I thought it would!  He doesn't care about it, but that's okay, he's allowed to be a bit of a stinker. :]

 The marching turtles all are made of minky or fleece for some added texture.

 Usually I handsew the binding on the back but this time I didn't feel like it, so I machine-sewed.  Unfortunately, I did it fairly poorly!  I will probably take a seam ripper to it and redo it all.  Boo!  Should have done it right the first time!

 The quilting is all stitch-in-the-ditch or 1/8" from each seam. Fairly simple and easy.  This was the first quilt that I used spray adhesive instead of safety pins.  I will never go back!  Spray adhesive is totally the way to go.

And one shot of the birthday boy.  He loved his pizza and fruit, two of his favorite foods.

The importance of a prototype

I created two new designs recently.  One was a new diaper bag for myself, and the other one was a new style of framed clutch for my shop.  The diaper bag was my effort to create a bag that looks more like a purse but has spots for sippy cups still.  I wanted them to be more hidden away.  The idea that I came up with was good, but I didn't create a mockup before jumping in with the fabric.  I had a daytrip the following day and wanted to use my new bag, so I didn't take the time.  I really wish I had, because the bag could have been so much more awesome if I had gotten the kinks out!

As it is, I probably won't finish it.  There's a lot I like about it, like the wipeable fabric on the inside.  It has the perfect amount of pockets for me.  But it needs to be just a tad bigger.  And the overall style is just not quite what I want.  So I will have to work on that more.  For now, I have pulled out my very first diaper bag from the closet.  It's a smaller bag and works well now that I have only one kid in diapers and the other one is done pottytraining.

Here's the other bag design that I worked on.  This was my first prototype.  It's okay, but certain areas needed to be adjusted.

The second design was much closer to what I wanted. I did make a third prototype but it was pretty bad so I didn't finish it.  I used this second prototype to make a pattern for the final bag.

This is it! I'm really happy with how it turned out.  There are a couple of minor tweaks I will make to the pattern, but overall I really like it.  This is by far the most complicated framed purse pattern that I have come up with, except maybe this purse.

This quilt might be ugly

I enjoy making quilts.  I have made a handful in the last few years, most of them for children (because machine quilting anything over toddler sized would stink!).  This was the first one that I made that was larger than a wall hanging. 

It was for my daughter's second birthday.  For my nephew's birthday I made this:

This one was unique because the back was as fun as the front:

For my other nephew I made this. You can tell I have a think for squares and rectangles!

I've even made a t-shirt quilt for my brother:

And the largest quilt I've ever made was a king-sized one for our bed.

My son's second birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I decided to make him a little quilt.  I wanted it to be simple, so I decided on a variation of a nine-patch that I'd seen awhile back.  I found some cute turtle print that I wanted to be the main fabric, since he loves his turtle pillow pet.  Well, it has some strange greens in it.  And while trying to find coordinating fabric I picked out some polka dot fabrics that had blue and brown.  I bought a few different browns and blues and greens to add to the mix.  I thought the combination would look good together, but I'm really not feeling it:

This is not the completed quilt top, it's just the blocks laying on top of the green fabric, but this will be sort of how it looks when pieced together.  It's just kind of weird.  In fact, I am afraid that it's kind of ugly.

I also have some brown to be a border, and I took it out and laid the pieces on the brown.  I think I like it better?  But I'm not sure.  I'm sad that it's not really living up to my vision.  I don't really have the budget to get different fabric, so this will need to work . . . somehow! One part that I'm excited about will be a line of marching turtles across the bottom.  That might salvage it.

On a positive note, I also made some placemats tonight.  The ones I originally made were pretty beaten up, so I need some fresh ones.  These came together super easy: two layer of home dec fabric and two packages of skinny bias tape.

Dress for myself inspired by Pinterest

I made a dress for myself this week to wear at our family pictures this morning. I bought two lengths of fabric so I can make this dress in two colors. This is the first experimental one. My goal was to get out all the kinks on this dress so that the second one will be perfect. I am fairly happy with how this turned out.

Here is the shirt that I found on Pinterest that inspired this dress.

To come up with the pattern, I used a shirt and another dress of mine and traced them until I had a shape I was comfortable with. It ended up fitting pretty accurately and I just had to adjust one seam. The sleeves took more work, but I finally figured them out. It's very comfortable. The next dress will be made of a slightly stretchier fabric, so I might make it a little more fitted. This one is closely fitted but not tight at all, just how I like it. But I still feel like it makes me look lumpy.

The draping was the hardest part, since I don't have a dress form and just had to put it on myself and then pin it to figure it out. I think that for the next dress, I might skip out on the buttons. I will also try to cut out the front draping part on the bias if I have enough fabric for the next dress.

I like this shape on me. I normally go for A-line dresses and I think this is much more flattering.

My current studio

I glued ten purses last night into their frames. The last time I did a large amount of purses at once I ended up with a numb finger that didn't regain full feeling for over a week! So I tried to be extra careful to not injure myself. I still ended up with red fingers though, so I'm definitely taking a vacation from framed purses and concentrating on some shoulderbags and wallets.

Another view of the same purses. I'll be busy editing photos and listing new items all morning tomorrow!

And now that I've finished the fringe purses I can send off my next shipment to the shop that I consign with down in Florida. Most of these purses I will make duplicates of to stay in my Etsy shop.

And finally, I have a new iron! It's a massive, gravity feed iron. It has a water tank that is suspended above the iron. It's also really heavy, which is nice. You can see my old faithful iron on the left, which is actually a hand-me-down from my mother when I left for college 7 years ago. I think it's the iron my brother used to wax his snowboard! I am way past due for a nice new one. We actually haven't figured out how to suspend the tank yet, so I haven't tried out my new Sapporo yet. But I will this week.

My list of non-purse projects is growing again. I got a shipment of clearance fabric this week that only cost me $25 for 10 yards of fabric! That fabric will be turned into two sheets for my kids' beds, and two dresses for me. We have family pictures on Saturday, so I have to get one of the dresses done before the. I'm making up the pattern myself inspired by I shirt I saw on Pinterest, so I'm hoping it turns out well. There is great capacity for disaster! Once the dress is done, I need to make new placemats, the two sheets, and a birthday quilt for my soon-to-be 2 year old. And then three Christmas gifts for the little boys in the family! I will be busy!

Professor Umbridge cape and a custom order

My friend asked me to make her a Professor Umbridge cape for Halloween. I used Simplicity pattern 6073 and I altered it slightly so that it doesn't open in the front, like the original one. I also used some fancy furry yarn as a trim. My friend chose the fabric, and it was quite furry, but fun.

My friend is much taller than me and has narrower shoulders, so this looked better on her. Here I am waving my pretend wand. :]

I sold this purse last week but she wanted the flower to incorporate the colors of her wedding, which were purple (plum), black, and white. So I put together this flower with some satin and lace. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.