A Finish

It seems quite a while since I had any finished items to show. But look!

Not one:

Not two:

But four!

Cushions for the caravan finished today.

They have zips in the back, covered by a flap:

That meant I could use zips of various colours that I had on hand, rather than having to buy new ones. I used the instructions on Chris's blog here. You can find her pdf file if you scroll down her page, to the section on the right-hand side called "Patterns". I tapered the corners, as shown on this site: How to Taper Corners, which makes the cushion corners plumper.

Some time in the future those bench seat cushions will be on the list for new covers. And the curtains could do with updating. But for now I am just happy to have got them done (even though it is 8 days since the birthday they were for.)

Apron

A couple of days ago I had to jump up in the middle of a meal and throw the top I was wearing into the washing machine, as I had just splashed some tomato-based sauce on it. Fortunately it did not stain, but it did push me to finally make myself an apron.

I've admired the Japanese style cross-back aprons on various internet sites, and downloaded 3 free patterns over the years. It was time to actually try one out! I decided to use Tessuti's pattern as it has an A0 copy-shop file included, so I wouldn't have to assemble lots of smaller sheets of paper. I got the large scale print done at Officeworks for $4.35 - worth it to avoid sticking together the 25 pages of the print-at-home file, I thought.

Picture from Tessuti's site

One potential issue with the pattern is the sizing - "One size". I am probably outside the size range they had in mind when drafting the pattern - taller and wider. So rather than use anything too precious, I found a couple of remnant pieces in my fabric stash that I could use for a trial version. I made the pattern exactly to the instructions, and it looks pretty good on a coat hanger:

Front

Back

However, on me it is a different story. The apron is obliviously too small. No photos, you will have to take my word for it! The cross-over, which on Tessuti's sample and on a coat-hanger is towards the waist, is between my shoulder-blades. There is no rear coverage - which perhaps doesn't matter for practical reasons, but it is not a good look.

On this close-up you can maybe see how I had to use a different fabric for the straps. I didn't have enough of either for the whole apron:

The top edge is too close to my face, which adds to the impression that I am wearing an apron a few sizes too small. I could fix that by cutting longer straps. I think they will need to be quite a bit longer, as the "armhole" section, which looks like it is at waist level or below on the Tessuti models, is well above my waist. The apron length in the Tessuti photos appears to be at least knee-length, but on me it is mid thigh - only just below finger-tip length.

So, I can wear this apron, and it should offer some protection for my clothes. But it does not have the look I wanted.

Adjustments required:

Add length to straps.

Add length to apron - above the waist, and at the hem.

Add width to apron - centre front, and also under the arm (slash and spread pattern).

Don't add the pocket until the apron is made, so it can be put where most useful.

T-Shirts

Some time in May 2019 (yes, nearly 2 years ago) I cut out a couple of t-shirts. Yesterday I finally started sewing them, and now I have two new garments. 

They have bound necklines:

Twin needle hems:

Here's the first one:

This one is from a quite drapey stretchy fabric. It is the same fabric as a t-shirt I made in November 2014, which I still wear regularly. I bought 3 metres @ $4 per metre from a shop in Brunswick, which makes it $6 per t-shirt. Not bad considering I must have worn the first one about 100 times already.

And the other:

Holding its shape better on a hanger because it is a firmer, pure cotton, knit. I don't seem to have kept a record of when I bought it or what I paid for it, but it came from Spotlight probably not long before I cut out these two tops. 

Hooray for getting them made! Now I can work on that green thing they are hanging in front of, which is the beginnings of Alex Anderson's Birdhouse quilt.

Ready to Wear

If the weather happens to warm up, I have a new summer dress:

I don't remember when I started sewing this dress. Sometime since 2015 when we moved here, I cut out this dress and sewed some of it together. I used a machine I bought in Dec 2018 for the decorative top-stitching (which isn't really visible in the photos), but I don't know if I used that machine for all of it.

It doesn't really matter, I guess. The point is that now it is finished!

It is a better fit on me than on the dressmakers dummy. Her curves are not in the same place as mine.

Now we just need some summer dress weather:

 Not in the next 6 days, it seems.

 

February WOOFA

After the success of completing my January WOOFA challenge (Working On Or Finishing A...UFO), I am going to be a bit more ambitious for February. I have four items I want to work on this month. Am I mad?

Quilt: next up in my pile of unfinished quilts is the X-Plus top I assembled last April. 

I have made a back for it, and have the batting. So I need to baste it and get quilting.

 

Sewing: This dress, which I mentioned yesterday when doing some necessary un-picking, needs its side seams, hem, and sleeves. (I think I know where the sleeves are.) 

And now that I have unpicked the mistake, there is nothing to stop me moving forward with it. (Spoiler alert: I actually put the zip in and sewed up the side seams this afternoon.)

In May 2019 I cut out two t-shirts. Here they are, still in the zip-lock bag I put them in after the cutting out:

I know it doesn't take long to sew up t-shirts, so this month I will get them finished.

So, four unfinished items which I will work on this month. I hope to actually finish at least three of them.

Greenery

Because I finished January's project early, I gave myself permission to start another one, and work on it for the rest of the month. So after two days, here is the background for what will become Alex Anderson's Birdhouse quilt:

Alex is running classes in various applique methods on YouTube for this quilt. Hers looks like this (although I think this is a progress shot, rather than her final layout):

I'm making mine portrait orientation, so I can hang it in my hallway once it is finished.

Today also involved some unpicking:

This is a project that has been hanging around in my sewing room for I'm not sure quite how long. It is a try-out of a summer dress pattern, that I was making in some inexpensive fabric. I made a mistake in putting in the pockets, and stopped. The issue was that the invisible zip in the side of the dress had to extend past the top of the side-seam pocket. I didn't know how to fix it so did nothing. However, I recently found an amazing Russian YouTube video on how to do this. (If you are interested: it's here.)

I'm not sure there is enough seam allowance for me to do the Russian technique. I might just remove that pocket altogether. But either way, I needed to unpick the very securely sewn on pocket bags. It took me about an hour, but it is now done and the dress can proceed.

 

This afternoon we visited a new (at least to us) nursery that our next-door neighbours told us about. 

It has a great selection of indoor plants, as well as interesting native plants, a coffee/snack van and lovely gardens to enjoy.

It is called Birdsong Nursery, and is apparently in Smythesdale, although Google maps says it is in Scarsdale. Apparently it has been open for a year, but as it is not on a main road we never would have found it on our own.
 

 

Easter Already

 This came home with the shopping today:

Easter buns. I guess that means Christmas is well and truly over! But look at the date on that package:

They definitely won't last until Easter if they should be eaten before the end of this year. Of course, if people didn't buy Easter buns in December, the supermarkets wouldn't sell them, so I can't really complain.

When I showed the potholders I made last week I mentioned that I had cut more strips than I needed. Today I made myself a potholder with the extras, adding in some colours to match our kitchen:

That's probably the last project I will complete this year. It has been a year of not achieving much at all.

Last Minute Sewing

 Some time ago I came by this tool set:

I believe it was originally a give-away with an English patchwork magazine, but without the magazine I didn't know exactly how it was meant to work. In searching for clues online, I found this page: 

Log cabin hexi potholders

which doesn't use the tool, but helped me work out what you are meant to do with it.

These potholders went together quickly. I had cut strips for another round (Round 5 on the tool), but that would have made the potholders too big, I think. 

For the insides I went looking for Insul-Bright insulated batting as recommended on the link above, but could only get Insul-Fleece. I don't know if it is much the same or quite different. When I got it home and out of the packaging, I discovered that because it is a polyester product, they recommend using cotton batting on either side of it when making potholders. At that rate I think I could have skipped the Insul-Fleece and just used the two layers of cotton! Anyway, these potholders have cotton batting, then Insul-Fleece, then cotton batting inside, so they should offer plenty of protection from heat.

Bag Finish

I've been working on this bag since Monday, and today I finished it:

Open:

The insides of the pockets:

I really like the finished product, but making this bag was quite a challenging experience. Read on if you are interested, skip the rest of this otherwise!

A friend recently made the "Sew Together Bag", which is not what this is, but which inspired me to make this. There is also the "Bionic Gear Bag", which is not quite what this is. There are other similar bags, such as the German "Zippy Bag", the "Quilters Organizer Bag", a Russian version I don't know the name of because I can't read Russian, and probably more I haven't found.

As I looked at the various options I came across the "Sew Like a Puppet" website. The owner of that website was involved in a legal action against the designer of the Bionic Gear Bag. She has written a book about it, "Sewing Wars", which I haven't read so can't comment on. The blog section of her website is a little over the top, but she has several patterns for sale, including one called "Bionic Gear Bag for Puppets". It was only $5 so I decided to give it a try. (That turned out to be US dollars, unfortunately, even though I believe the seller is in Australia.)

I have made a few bags before, mostly from patterns designed by Nicole Mallalieu of "You Sew Girl". Nikki's patterns are well-written and well designed. Her instructions include photos and diagrams, and are logically set out and easy to follow. She always gets people of varying levels of skill to test her patterns, which is where things like missing steps or unclear instructions get picked up and fixed before publication. This pattern has none of those qualities.

The actual pattern was confusing. Here's a sample of my confusion:

"2 INCHES" printed in a random place on the pattern piece, with my tape measure showing that none of these lines are 2" apart, so I have no idea what that measurement refers to. There's a missing dotted line that I have added in, and an extra one I have scribbled out.

There are no diagrams in the instructions, which is a shame because some steps really need more than just words. There are some photos on the last page, but they are not labelled and have no explanation so are not really a lot of help.

The cutting instructions didn't seem to work with the sizes of the sections on the pattern piece.

Almost every piece listed actually needed to be a different size than given, although for a couple of those it was because I wanted to change the distance between two of the pockets. One major part of the bag is not listed, so some guess-work was involved.  You can see some of my scribbles as I tried to work it out, but I have notes written all over this page.

A couple of times I questioned whether this is even meant to be a real pattern, and if I had fallen for some sort of joke in buying it. I was tempted to abandon this pattern and buy a different one, but then I came across the Inch-Art site, where Nina has written a tutorial with lots of photos for the original bionic gear bag. With her photos plus my own pattern-drafting skills and bag-making experience, I persevered.

The first section involves making all the internal zip pockets. Here I will say that the method in the pattern I bought seems a better way to do it. The pockets are formed one by one:

So in this photo the first two zip pockets are complete, and I am working on the third one. I used longer zips than necessary because a) this is all from stash, and b) it is actually easier to use longer zips and cut them down later. I discovered with my first zip that the Janome zipper foot is no good for this type of work, so I ripped that one out, then sewed all the zips with my trusty Elna Lotus. I should have known, because Nikki of "You Sew Girl" wrote about this problem 7 years ago.

Next the side pieces. One:

 Then two:

At this point I read in the instructions that the very front and back pieces should be 3" longer than the side pieces. Mine weren't! (In fact the back wasn't even long enough to reach to top of the sides.) I should have read right through the instructions before making my calculations about how big these pieces needed to be. As it turns out 3" is more than you need, but I had to add some to the front and the back before completing the side seams:

You can see the seam across the back, below the height of the side piece, and the one at the front just in front of the triangle shape. Fortunately I had made the quilted outer section much longer than the pattern specified, or I would have been re-making that.

The sides got their binding, then it was time for the long zip that holds the whole thing together.

This is where a diagram would be helpful. The written instructions for lining up the bag, the zip and the binding were not good enough. I couldn't see how the instructions would give me the correct result, because the layers seemed to be in the wrong order. But then I may have been misinterpreting them; a clear diagram would clear up the confusion. The Inch_Art tutorial's written layering order also confused me, and she used a navy zip and binding so the details were lost in her photos. I played around with the pieces, and read both sets of instructions, and couldn't see how it would work. Fortunately there is a video series by Birdcage and Thread for the "Sew Together Bag", and the 7th video shows how to do this zip. They cleverly basted the zip in place then dealt with the binding later. That was a much better process!

After I'd basted the zip to the bag, I stitched the binding to the whole length of the zip with my Elna Lotus:

Because I wanted to be sure I was sewing straight, I unconventionally sewed with the zip facing down so I could see the lines woven into the tape. That's the back of the zip facing up. When I got to the bag and couldn't see the zipper tape, it didn't matter as I could just follow the line of basting stitches.

I didn't photograph the next step, but after pressing the binding back, I used Vliesofix T6 tape to fuse the binding to the back of the zipper and the bag, before stitching it in place from the front. (You can cut 6mm wide strips of regular Vliesofix/Bondaweb/WonderUnder if you don't have the tape.) That's another trick I learnt from Nikki, and it really helps keep everything under control so you can get a neat finish:

On top of the bag I hand-stitched the binding to lie flat against the bag, rather than stick up as it has a tendency to do with this type of bag:

The final step is to attach a tab to each end of the zip, and stitch it to the base of the bag. The measurements for this tab given in the actual instructions are different to the measurements in the cutting list. I used a combination of the instructions version and my own common sense to get a neat tab. I hand-stitched it to the bag, realising too late that it would have been much more sensible to make these tabs earlier in the process, and stitch them into place with the side binding. They could have sat there ready for me to attach the zip/handle to them as the last step. Next time!

Here's the tab, hand-stitched to the bag, machined to the zip:

And that's it!

As I said earlier, I love the bag. But I couldn't recommend this pattern unless you have experience making both bags and patterns, and are prepared to do a lot of thinking for yourself.

GPS Beanbag No-No

Warning: Do not do this!  It is not legal in this state. The GPS has to be attached to the car.

My new GPS has a window mount, but the windscreen on my car is a long way forward - too far to reach from the driver's seat. So today I made a little beanbag for it to sit on:

Side view so you can actually see it:

I filled it with crushed walnut shells, so it has a bit of weight to keep it in place. To test it out we went for a drive this afternoon. The beanbag held the GPS at a good angle and didn't slide off the dashboard, so I think it is a success. And the dogs enjoyed our trip to the Ballarat Botanic Gardens:

Deja Vu

No, this is not the same tunic as yesterday:

This is my second finish for the year. Tunic made with the rest of yesterday's fabric. This one is a little shorter, and has narrow cuffs on the sleeves instead of ruffles. Two new items in the wardrobe, 4 metres of fabric out of the sewing room.

Tunic Top

My first finish of the year:

 StyleArc "Culliver" tunic.

Using up some fabric I bought in India, which means I have owned it for more than 10 years. The fabric was sold as a set for making a salwar kameez. The cream fabric is for the top (kameez), and the dark green for the trousers (salwar). There is also a matching dark green dupatta (scarf or shawl) which is a much lighter fabric. I could have made the whole top out of just the cream fabric, but I wanted some contrast. There is enough fabric left to make another version in the opposite colours, with a bit of creative fabric joining.

Light and Dark

Crinum lily flowering:

Honeysuckle opens to be light yellow inside:

And the dark? Sewing black shadecloth:

which is hard to see even with the flash. And it is not easy to sew because it is scratchy and doesn't behave nicely.