Bridal Order

I got an order last week for six navy blue satin ruffle clutches.  I just finished them last night!

I love how these turned out and I hope the bride does too.

Yoki the dragon pattern review and changes

For Christmas I made my kids two dragons from the Yoki the Dragon pattern I bought from Etsy. 

 They turned out really well.  My daughter especially loves hers.  My sister asked me to make one for her son's birthday, so I set out to make another one.  However, I decided to make a few changes.  There were some things that bothered me about the original pattern.  Mostly, there is so much hand-sewing!  I don't enjoy hand-sewing, and I don't feel like it's as secure as machine sewing.  The head especially was hard to get on securely.  I'm positive that my kids are going to end up pulling them off.  So this second time around, I set out to do as much machine sewing as possible. 

 I was able to eliminate all the hand-sewing except the nostrils and sewing the hole up at the end. 

 I machine sewed on the wings and arms and ears.  I should have had the ears point up instead of down, but oh well.  In order to machine sew on the head, I had to adjust the pattern.  Basically I just figured out where I wanted the neck to be in relation to the head, and cut the head pattern there.  Then I taped that piece to the other end, overlapping a bit to account for the seam.  This worked out perfectly, though you can see he's looking upward a bit, so I probably should have moved the neck forward on the head a bit more. 

 Because the neck is where it's turned in the original pattern, I left the back open, and hand-sewed that up at the end.  I also made a change to the belly lines.  In the original, you're supposed to use embroidery thread to make the lines.  I only did this for my son's because both my husband and I really disliked how it looked.  And sure enough, several of them have popped off since Christmas time.  So for this one, I stitched the belly lines on in a lighter thread.  Oh, and I interfaced all the satin pieces.  My son's had some popped seams because satin ravels at the edges really easily.  This one for my nephew should be as secure as the minky one for my daughter.  Oh and one more change--the original pattern calls for felt spikes.  For my kids' I used tulle and for my nephew's I used some velvety scraps.  I like them much better than felt because they are softer.

Still cute, right?  And hopefully much more secure and long-lasting.

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.