Last crafty post of the year
I made the last bag of 2008 tonight. Also, my mother opened her birthday present early—the penultimate bag of 2008, as it turns out—so I thought I’d go ahead and post pictures of them.
Mom’s bag is rather big, made of very similar fabric as the brown one I made for my sister-in-law. As stiff and heavy as that twill is, though, a bag this big needs some structure. I didn’t interface it, though, so it’s a little floppy.
Mom's bag, flat
It's really big.
But it has pockets! On both sides!
Yes, there is a zippered pocket in the bag. It was not as . . . neat as I hoped it would be. But you can’t really tell on the finished product, so.
The last bag of 2008 is, as Mr. Angst puts it, a little flashy. I thought this striped fabric was pretty, but it was too heavy for a lining, so it was going to be the outside of SOMETHING. Maybe it would have made a better pillow? Anyway, I got to play with some things, like pleats, a yoke, and a magnetic snap. Fun! I am pretty sure I will NEVER wear this bag, so this one may go in the pile with the other stripey bag—not quite well-done enough to attempt to sell, but too nice to just toss.
Flashy!
When will I ever wear this?
It has a very sad pocket.
I also made peanut butter bonbons tonight (some people will call them buckeyes, though mine are totally covered in chocolate), and they are yummy. Mr. Angst does not care for them, to which I say, good! More for me!
And with that, I am off to beautify myself for New Year’s Eve. Happy New Year, all!
crafty success update
Nephew’s hat was too small. 😦 Kid has a big head! Luckily, my mother-in-law has a sewing machine, so we stopped by a fabric store down the road, picked up a remnant of fleece pretty much the same color as the original hat, and I made a new one. And then I made two hats for the Angst-in-laws. Fleece, though, is hard to work with—both adult hats are sort of loose and floppy looking. (Frankly, so is the kid one, but he’ll grow into it in about two weeks, given that he’s 6 months old.)
holiday travel blues
Bad weather is never a good thing, but it’s even worse when it coincides with the holidays. Mr. Angst and I are anxiously watching the radar in advance of our drive to the Angst-in-laws’; I have friends currently stuck in a variety of airports, wondering if they’ll be spending Christmas alone instead of with their families.
The best indication of how badly our air system needs a major overhaul is this: in Chicago, 500 flights have been cancelled out of O’Hare, and those flights still running are delayed by hours. But at Midway? No delays, no cancellations. That says its not Chicago’s weather that’s causing the problems; it’s the weather elsewhere. That says the problem isn’t weather at all, but the way flights are routed. Specifically, when the weather in places where flights must go through Chicago is bad, those flights get delayed, then the flights out of Chicago get delayed because there are no airplanes in Chicago, and then flights in other hubs get delayed. It’s a chain reaction. If, instead, one could fly from one coast to the other—or from secondary market directly to secondary market—without having to go through the intermediate step of changing planes in Chicago, things might be different. Hub-and-spoke air travel, in other words, sucks.
To all my friends currently stuck, I’m sending all the good karma I have your way, so that you can spend the holiday with your families. But if you can’t make it home, make the best of it where you are, and get home when you can. Christmas Day may be December 25, but the Christmas season is much longer ((It lasts till Epiphany, actually—twelve whole days!)). And Christmas can be whenever and whereever you are with your family, friends, or loved ones. So have Christmas when you can.
pictures, at long last
I promised pictures!
Here, first, is the froggie. There’s nothing posed with them to indicate size, but the body (sans legs) is about 5 inches long.
Froggie!
More froggie!
Even more froggie!
Second, this is the bag with the lining that I LOVE.
Cute bag with excellent lining
See how cute that lining is?
Channel-stitched strap
Here is the adorable hat I made for my nephew.
Fleece hat
I don't have a hat mold, so I posed this on our cocktail shaker
Finally, this is a bag I made this evening. I’m not sure who is getting this; I had some scrap fabric I wanted to play with, and this seemed fun and cute. I sort of made up this pattern all on my own, and I originally intended it to have a button clasp, among other things. I got a little wigged out, though, when I discovered I had not measured things properly and thought I might have completely screwed things up. I managed to pull it off, though. Yay!
Small, pleated bag
This one has a fancy outside and a basic inside
I guess I should find other things to pose my crafts with other than alcohol? This is to show the scale.
more with the making of things
As much as I complain about my Saturdays being taken up with stuff, I would rather be busy than sitting on the couch trying to figure out what TV to watch. To wit, today I got up, went to yoga, made lunch (migas! yum!), dashed out to Target (in the snow, no less), and spent about 4 hours at the sewing machine. While at the sewing machine I made a bag for my sister-in-law, and I love love love the lining, so much so that I might have to buy more of it (sadly, it only appears to be available in combinations of red, white, and black). I also made one of my nephews an adorable little fleece hat (with homemade pompom), and another of my nephews a scarf. Oh, and I finished the second froggie. I have a few more gifts to make, but since I’m getting so much better at the sewing thing, I don’t think they’ll take very long.
What will I occupy my time with when Christmas is over and I don’t have any more gifts to make? I think garments are out of reach for now, and Mr. Angst doesn’t really share my love of decorative pillows. I may have to open an etsy shop.
squee!
I am pulling within shooting distance of being done with Christmas gift-making. I finished the first of the nephew-bound stuffed animals—a cute little froggie, of which I will post pictures sometime. In order to finish it, I had to take a quick after-work trip to the craft store, though, and left with twelve other items I did not necessarily need. Two of them were in the check-out aisle. Oops.
Anyway, I’m getting there, slowly but surely. And mostly, I’m enjoying it. I’ve never been one much for making gifts—I’ve never been very crafty. But apparently, I’m decent at this, and that makes the process so much more fun. Next year, I may actually try to make the majority of my gifts, rather than just a handful.
success!
I made a bag today. I’m pretty proud of it. Despite a few mishaps (like the lining not lining up with the outer bag at the corners, and completely missing the lining while doing my topstitch), it turned out pretty nicely. Of course, it’s also about 65% of the size I thought it would be, from the pictures that accompanied the pattern. But it’s OK—the bag is still super cute, just a little . . . less useful than I thought it would be, given it’s smallness.
The point, however, is not that the bag is small, or even that it’s useful or not useful. The point is that I MADE A BAG. And it looks like it’s supposed to, unlike the two very ugly skirts I attempted last month. I think I’m doing bags and pillows only from now on.
painstaking
The only problem with hemming your own pants is how damn painstaking it is. I have a machine that will do a blind hem stitch, but it’s damn hard to do that on a heavy pant, like a denim trouser. Frankly, it’s hard to do on a pant hem generally, nevermind the fabric, just because the opening is so narrow. So I’m sitting in front of the TV, watching Life, and whipstitching the hem of a new pair of denim trousers.
Maybe I should invest in some better hand-sewing needles. And a thimble. Because I get the feeling I’ll be doing more of this.
a different kind of success
Last month, I bought a cute, short-sleeved cardigan on sale. It didn’t fit all that well—like a lot of ready-to-wear clothes, it was too baggy in the waist for my body, adding 10 pounds to my frame. But it was $10, so I bought it anyway, thinking it might be OK as a layering piece. But I could not figure out how to make it work, so it sat in the bag, in the closet, tags still attached.
Last weekend, my in-laws were visiting, and my mother-in-law brought me her old sewing machine. I decided to take up sewing recently, but I haven’t done much except make a pillow in a class. And I did that without the benefit of my own machine.
So there I was, staring at this new-to-me sewing machine—with all of its stitches and fancy features—wondering what to do as a first project. Everyone said, make something simple, like an apron! Or a tote bag! But I don’t wear the aprons I have, so making an apron seemed pointless, and I have several tote bags that are perfectly serviceable. I know, I know—the point of making stuff isn’t necessarily because you need it. But I really want the sewing machine to be useful, enabling me to make things that I would otherwise buy.
Now, the obvious point of this post is that I used the sewing machine to take in the cardigan. I’m just going to get that out of the way right now—the setup here is just too apparent. This post, therefore, is not about, I don’t know, what I did with it, or even how I took the cardigan in. This post is about the bigger implications of that.
Folks, I altered my own clothing. I have, for years, spent large amounts of money having my clothes taken in, up, out, or otherwise made different from how they were originally made. But today, I managed to accomplish that task on my own. And it actually looks good! Sure, given that the garment is a cardigan—in other words, a sweater—it may ravel, though I did overlock the edges, hoping to stave that off for as long as possible. But hey, it was $10 off the rack, the alterations took me all of about 45 minutes, and now I have a new top. If it lasts all of 10 wearings, it was probably worth it.
Flush with this success, tomorrow, after choir, I plan to go to the local fabric shop (which, handily, has a location five blocks south of my apartment) and do some browsing. I think I’d like to make a skirt! And then maybe some stuffed animals for my nephews.
divine angst 