Yes! I finally finished something. After all this time, I’ve managed to do something creative again. Whoopy!
I made a needle-case for my friend on Friday (hot pink, dark blue, lime green, yellow thread and a grey ribbon), which I forgot/neglected to take a picture of (since I was finishing it on the train ride there). However, I did ask her if she could make a picture of it, so I’ll possibly upload that somewhere in the future.
And today, a glorious free day (which I will have for the rest of the week: go holiday!) I finally finished clearing up my sewing room/my parents storage room. I had decided I wanted to sort the books in the bookcase, which turned out to be an enormous, hideously huge task. But I have finished it and created: 3 more empty shelves! Hip hip Hooray!
And consequently decided to finish my mice bag. So I finally attached the straps and the buttons, and added some button elastic for easy closing (and a nice different color pop). And it is finished! Mice mice mice, the text reads “Als de kat van huis is dansen de muizen op tafel”, loosely translated as: when the cat is away the mice will play.
I hope this free week will let me start (and finish) some other projects, like:
The black & purple dress (only hemming and attaching shoulder bands).
Redoing the red pants (complete ehm, upper area needs redoing).
Starting a 3/4 circle skirt with pockets.
Repairing the bolero thing (stitching 5 cm)
Gathering the black & white houndstooth shirt (only 10 cm gathering)
As you can see… I am quite lazy and tend to postpone even the smallest of tasks. But now I have the illusive free time to play in. I’ll see what I’ll actually get done, but I hope to do at least the above mentioned things. So hopefully I have more to share.
I have been making a little progress on my mouse bag, it’s now bag-shaped (yay!).
You might be able to see that the zipper does not reach from one end to the other, but from the right to bit over halfway to the left. This is because a) I couldn’t find a long enough zipper, b) was too lazy to go to town and get one and c) thought it was quite handy. You might think, why.. why Luus would you think that that would be handy?? Well the answer to that question is that there’s a little pouch for my mobile phone to the left. And no zipper equals easy access. And room for a snap. So ok, maybe it’s not super handy but I like it. In the meantime I have also worked on the strap, I did some embroidery. Cheese, a bee (don’t ask me why), a Dutch proverb and another mouse. The proverb literally translates as when the cat is away from home, the mice dance on the table. However, there is an English proverb that means approximately the same: when the cat’s away the mice will play. I figured since there were mice on the bag, the proverb would be a nice touch.
It’s still not done, since it needs to close and the strap needs to be attached. I’ve thought of a way to attach the strap, by attaching one end and making the other end movable with buttons. I’m not sure if that will work though, but this is what it would possibly look like.
I’m wondering if I need to add another bit of fabric to the bottom of the flap (possibly the red, or the yellow (not the orange since the strap is also orange even if the pictures don’t show it very well). Which would mean the buttons would go about 3 cm further down. The left side would be where the strap can be adjusted by buttoning the strap further down or up. So I hope I’ll finish it next week since school starts next week. I’m a tad scared for that. But at least I can impress them with my monster bag (link).
While I was on the subject of bags the previous post. I remembered just now that I have another bag in the process of making. The other day I found a vintage pattern for a sampler in the vintage embroidery patterns Flickr (link). I really like the mouse, the cat, not so much. I had some strips of fabric leftover from previous projects and decided to make them into a bag. I embroidered the mouse on the widest strip I could find, later I plan to attach all the strips together and make them into a bag. But I haven’t gotten that far yet. As of right now they are just strips with a little mouse on one of them. Here’s the mouse:
Left is the mouse, right is the mouse with a reference length (about 3-4 cm I’d say). I personally thinks it’s really cute and awesome. Now just have to finish the bag. I hope I’ll do that soon.
Today I was supposed to go to the birthday party of a friend of mine. However a few weeks ago I found out that I had a study day today as well. This was only a once a year day and I’ve been struggling a bit with the course matter so it seemed like a better plan to go there. However, I felt a little guilty for not being able to come because he had announced it literally months before. So I decided to make a gift. A special gift. A (mostly)hand-crafted gift.
The plan was as follows. Since I know him from Larp (live action role play) which is, how is it easily and shortly explained?!, a type of role playing. You write a character for yourself that you play in a setting that game masters have written, usually fantasy/medieval like. So you basically, from the moment they announce ‘time in’ to the moment they announce ‘time out’, you play someone else and improvise. It sounds very silly and complicated (especially when I tell you that we fight with swords with a carbon core, foam around it and latex on the outside) but it’s really a lot of fun and you can easily enjoy yourself by trying to make period(like) pieces to wear.
So I figured, what do all people in medieval times need? A pouch to put their stuff in. So I made a pouch. I still had some fabric lying around that I’d used for a dress (it’s not done yet, after 3 years), which was brown and suitable. So I picked that. Now because of the little guilt trip I was having I figured I did not want to just make a plain pouch, so I decided to do some embroidery on it. The first thing that came into my mind was leaves. So I found a picture of leaves and copied those.
I have the worst method of embroidering ever, since I use tracing paper to copy the shape and then pin it on the fabric and sewed directly through and over it, later I rip it of and use a pin to remove little bits. That last bit can be severely frustrating if you have several lines crossing each other. But well it worked.
So after many long hours embroidering leaves onto a rectangular and a round bit of fabric that I’d strengthened with interfacing, I decided I had enough leaves. I cut identical pieces to the embroidered ones and sewed them together (lazy me used sewing machine), and the embroidered ones to. Then I attached the lining to the embroidered bit right sides together while leaving 3 cm or so unsewn so I could turn it right side out. I sew a little loop to the top (inside the open bit which I’d left at the back seam) to hang on a belt and added 8 little loops to the top to be able to close it. Then I hand stitched the lining to the embroidery around the bottom and around the top. Many, many hours after the initial idea had been hatched, three lost needles and many pricks from the things too, it was finished. So I mailed it yesterday and received an email today that he’d received it and liked it. So I’m happy now.
Do you want to see some pictures? If not don’t scroll down.
By the way, excuse the picture backgrounds, I finished it at the office because the four loops I had on just weren’t enough so I added four more at the intern ship I’m doing. And since it had to be mailed that day I had to take picture for evidence there.
From the back all the way round, and the lining.
And here how it looks closed up and ready for use!
Final View
Conclusions: finishing something on time, before the deadline is very, very gratifying. Making something useful is also very gratifying and learning a new stitch can make one’s embroidery look much nicer. I think I might try this again someday people. Although I’d probably clip the seam allowances more next time. I will hopefully do something fun tomorrow.
So I haven’t been very active in the creative field. However the past Sunday was spent clearing up my sewing room. It was a complete mess to begin with so something really needed to be done. And it’s even Spring so I’m allowed to call this post Spring cleaning. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that I think!
I now have my fabrics neatly organised in boxes on their sides so they look little closets, I put all my notions in a cabinet and found out that I had way more than I though. I finally figured out that the box of buttons I thought I’d lost was just in the bottom of a bigger box in the corner. I even organised all my patterns in a big catalogue binder thing and now they are not all over the place and all the pieces are kept together. I found some (read; a lot) of projects that I did not remember I had in the works, like a jacket and a long dress, a frog dress that only needs to be hemmed and much more. I really should finish those projects someday.
I’m actually really proud of me because I’m not much of a neatfreak, I’m very bad at clearing up. I think I just like to have all my stuff surrounding me.
However the organising has helped me already because I needed some pins and could find them instantly and I figured I was going to make a friend a birthday present. I knew which fabric I wanted to use and I only had to search a little to find it! I’m making a sort of pouch with falling ‘fall’-leaves embroidered on in fall colours (red, orange, yellow, brown, some greens) and I’m really liking it. Too bad I accidentally spilled some lemonade on it and now it’s in the sink, where I’m hoping it will come out. So I’ll take some pictures once it is finished.
I hope this weekend will bring me closure for some projects. Enjoy yourselves!
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