A pretty addition to my wardrobe

I made a garment bag for my wool skirts!

I suffer from quite a plague of moths in my room and have been able to decimate their population by using the diamond traps with the glue strips.  In my experience lavender and cedar wood do not help.  The traps cut down on the male moths but can't catch the female ones.

I made this bag out of polycotton, a cut up bed sheet if I remember correctly, that I wanted to use for toile material.  So far the moths had not gone for polycotton so I hope that this will continue.

I measured the fabric by laying the wool skirts on their hangers on top of the fabric. I found that I didn't have quite enough width of the pink polycotton fabric so I had to use strips of this lovely patterned quilting cotton.  I am really happy that this gives the whole project a great look.

Plus: I've again made a feature out of a bug - that pleases me very much!

I could sew the invisible zip to the cotton strips first which made handling the whole thing easier.  I overcast the raw edges after sewing this together.  Luckily it was really easy to turn inside out through the zip opening.

I left the sewing threads long and pulled these ends onto the right side with the help of a hand sewing needle.  You get great sharp corner with very little effort when you just pull on those threads to pop out the corners.  No poking or pushing required!

I re-inforced the central seam above the zip and then only poked a little bit of it open so that the hanger fits through.  I am fairly certain that no cheeky moth can crawl through.

To make the garment bag that little bit safer I also included a piece of anti-moth paper - though I am not at all sure that these work.  Still, I had some left so why not.

That's two wool skirts that are at least zipped into a bag that moths would have to eat through. I hope they don't.

I made a bag

This is tote-ally unexpected (sorry) but I just made a bag!

I had no intention of getting busy on this, it was a sudden impulse and there we are. A great use of a few hours this afternoon.

I want it to carry crafts stuff around with me, so ideally it should have lots of compartments and side pockets (this one hasn't) but I have so much fabric to use up, making this very plain and simple tote is such progress.

I don't know how I am going to use up all of the fabric and wool that I've accummulated. Not in the next ten years plus, or so, I should think.

So I've got plenty more bag projects in me, next time I can add a little side pocket, or compartments or something.  Perhaps reinforce the handles (I forgot. Oh well) and I could use slightly more sturdy fabric. It's just a big floppy.  Everything contributes a bit to learning something.  So worth it.

But all in all I am really pleased with this one.

The fabric lends itself so well to a bag that firmly says: "I'm all about crafts, please carry me!" - so I reckon it was a given.  I still have some of the fabric left to use for patchwork and quilting as intended. And appliqué: some of those little shapes and motifs would be very cute.

I will highly likely hand-sew a running stitch along the outer shell, just a good quarter inch away from the seam with the lining that shows up at the top.

I made this bag up with a pattern off the top of my head. Having had to wait for a hospital appointment earlier in the year I had the chance to look at the tote bag of a really lovely lady who was sitting next to me, and who I got chatting to (I also really liked her style in clothes: individual and cheerful. She was great!).  She didn't mind me picking up her bag and having a good look at it.  I don't think I've ever had a nicer time waiting for an appointment.

I hadn't seen this construction technique before where you insert the handles lower down than the top edge and basically use the lining fabric (or a third fabric) for the top strip.

I was able to assemble the whole thing (with handles sandwiched in between) as one big roll.  The last seam I closed was the bottom seam of the lining and even there I used my machine for the most part: just pulling the edges together until it squashed up the rest of the bag - then I stopped. That left about three inches or so that I sewed shut by hand once I turned the bag inside out through that remaining hole.

Really enjoyed making this.  I like the result and hope to use it lots.

Some sewing

I just realised that I have a photo of a sewing project that I didn't just attempt but completed.  It's not a garment but something very useful nevertheless:

The inside of my handbag.  This is a pretty cheap bag from one of those luggage stores lining the high street.  I even got a little off because I haggled.  I didn't do that very gracefully but I wouldn't have bought it for the full price.  Which turns out to be a really good thing because the coarse, plasticky fabric that connected the inner lining to the outer shell of the bag just literally disintegrated.

It started to rip in one area and after a very short while these two pieces had developed such big holes that I kept throwing stuff in between lining and shell instead of inside the actual compartment.  It looked horrible too.

I felt very lucky when I discovered that the lining was still attached to the zipper when I took the coarse ripped stuff out - otherwise this would have been much more of a mending job than it was.  There was also a strip of plastic attached to the top of the lining all the way round and this had disintegrated as well: it had ripped and shredded, - bits of it had come off and created quite a mess in my bag.  I got to the stage where I didn't even want to touch the bag anymore, it just felt horrible.

The rest of the bag did not yet show any wear or tear (even though some more of that coarse fabric clads an outer compartment or two) and the outer shell is actually nice and sturdy.  So I removed all the ripped bits and pulled that shredded plastic off too.  The inner lining topped by the zip then lifted clean out.

I sewed two straight strips of my pretty flower sprig fabric (a cheap half meter from an Indian fabric shop in Shepherds Bush) onto the lining, just straight through both layers of lining fabric and the zip material.  You can just about see the two stitching lines in the photo if you look closely. I don't think it looks too bad.

While I had the whole thing out I figured I might as well add an improvement: I made and attached an inner compartment!  This is what you can see in the photo: the inner bit in the same flower sprig fabric is just a pocket that I sewed into the lining, near the top.  It could do with a fastening because this pocket hangs quite far down but other than that it's fine.

I hand-stitched the new flower strips to the grey binding strip that runs all round the top - I had cut the coarse fabric off very close to the inner stitching line.  I could push the new flower fabric underneath the grey tape and just whip-stitch it into place, you can't see those stitches in this photo because the grey edge is tilted inwards.  I could have used grey thread if I'd thought about it but the black thread doesn't show too badly.

I am so pleased with this mending job!  It is a task that needed doing, it is an item I use every day, I achieved it by sewing! (I have such a mental block about sewing that this seems almost the best bit about it!) and I completed it to my satisfaction.  It just feels like an all-round good thing.

It makes me very glad every time I set eyes on my bag.  Seeing that pretty flower fabric makes me think quite often: "I made that!"

Quilted Things: blue & purple container

I just realised that I never blogged about my second quilting project (not counting the pot-holders) from last year.

Here it is:

A view of the inside:

And the whole thing laid flat (I inserted a zipper across the diagonal in the bottom layer):

Here are a few views of the assembly process:

I since discovered that I am not using the correct techniques because I am basically self-taught.  I had tried to find classes before I started but didn't find any in or easily reachable from central London, or they took place at the wrong time of day.  There were some really nice ones I found: a whole weekend thing with accommodation which sounds really wonderful, however, way beyond my financial means.

I then tried my favourite method of learning something: self teaching from books.  I found a good book which does cover basics - but unfortunately at several points I just didn't follow the explanations.  I was left bewildered and confused!  And I like to think of myself as someone who does pick things up easily.  But quilting is very much something that you learn easily when someone shows you, but it is not at all easy to describe.  Even diagrams or photos don't necessarily help.

I also kept going onto the Internet (sites like about.quilting.com) and did find quite a bit of information that I could follow - like chain-piecing, or how to do the inside pattern.  The one thing I didn't think to try YouTube!  Would have been too easy I suppose.  That's the place I finally learnt how to attach the binding that goes round the edge, something I hadn't figured out yet with this project (but I have since!).

I don't think that it mattered too much with this project that I didn't have a clue what I was doing.  I think my idea for putting a zip into the bottom (to lie the whole thing flat when not in use) is, not to put too fine a point on it, rather fabulous.  Imminently practical anyway...

The idea was to make a container you can put into the boot of your car: any of those loose items that keep rolling about in there (you know: loaf of bread, a couple of water bottles, bunch of bananas, that sort of thing: the stuff you end up putting down separately because you've run out of space in your grocery bags or collapsible boot boxes) - you can just chuck them into that, fold the top over a bit, and Bob's your uncle!

It was a present (Christmas last year) and my Mum was delighted.  I have the sneaking suspicion that she likes everything I make for her, but I also feel that she was really taken with this...

So much so that she declared it was much too nice for putting into her car!  She would, at times, use it unzippered, as a quilt, in the house too.  That's fine, I'm very pleased that she is finding more uses for this than intended, but it was meant to live in the car!

I guess the best thing to do would be for me to make her a proper quilt, wouldn't it?  Sounds like a really good idea... {update to follow}

Oval quilted container

This is my first bigger quilting project: an open container to chuck all those pesky clothes hangers into that you do need but don’t know what to do with when not used. It annoyed me no end to have them about the place: they always get tangled up and make the place look untidy.

So something big enough to keep them in, and best of all: keep them out of sight!, that would be a very nice item to have. In contrast to an old travel bag that I used for the same purpose on occasion, a purpose built container could even look pretty!

So I got stuck in on the project, making it up as I went along! Best way, really. (And lots of fun!)

I found a block pattern that is also known as ‘Broken Branch’ but I don’t like that name at all. I’m sure I found a variation of this named something like ‘Tree of Life’ but I just can’t find the web site for reference. Typical.
I made four largish panels using these blocks and sewed two of them together for the front and back respectively. I really liked using plain fabrics to bring out the beautiful colour combination in the one patterned fabric I used. I wanted to use more than one pattern but couldn’t find one in my stash that wouldn’t have distracted from this one.

Two panels each side with two of the main blocks.

Here are some detail views:

I made chevron pieces for the narrower sides, and then couldn’t help myself: I had to make a border to attach to the bottom all round, and also another one for the inside. The inside border was inspired by borders called ‘Seminole’ on the Quilter Community website - http://thequiltercommunity.com/
 

  

It wasn’t until it was time to sew it all together that it finally dawned on me that I made this container much bigger than planned. There isn’t just space for two stacks of clothes hangers side by side, but for a whole baby elephant! That was not quite what I had in mind (don’t things usually come out a lot smaller than expected?) but I like it a lot. I have space to store other things too! Woo-hoo.

Here it is in all its glory, with ends folded inwards: