Wednesday 16 March 2016

New Sewing Space

I moved my sewing room down in the basement last year.  It's so much cooler in Summer and I can be as loud as I want whenever I want as the soundproofing is great.  







Vegan Yoga Mat Bag

Was planning on making and selling these for Etsy.  This is my prototype.  Didn't really enjoy making it so won't bother going ahead with that plan :).  





Vegan Shopping Bags

I've made a crap load of shopping bags over the years but these are my favourite.  They are super heavy duty as the outer fabric is a thick corduroy.  They're fully lined and the straps are reinforced with 3 rows of stitching making them super tough.  

Oh yeah, also advertised the whole vegan thing as they are used for grocery shopping.  Get tired of answering questions when people see us buying bananas by the boxful, etc.  The vegan labels explain it all. 







Spiderman Dress

Nothing much to say about this.  Not huge on it as found it a pain in the butt to make for some reason.  I love making baby clothes but this reversible tunic just didn't excite me.  Won't be making it again.  This was the first time I've used trim to finish the edges which is great when doing anything reversible.  





Sports Shorts

Daughter loves these shorts I made for her.  Just copied her old shorts which were falling apart.  This was my first attempt at using bias tape (make my own) around outside instead of trying to hem.  Was like a whole new world was opened up for me and now I'm keen on using that method on lots of other knit items.  I've used it on woven items before, like the Spiderman baby dress I made.  

These look really adorable on her, made another pair with black trim.  She wears them both.  





Daughter's sports tank tops

Here's my notes as I'm copying daughter's top for a pattern.  Those spaghetti straps were all wound together in weird ways.  Took forever to figure it out.  





 Here is the completed top on the right.  Unfortunately my straps turned out kinda fat as the fabric was thicker than the original top.  Daughter doesn't like it so off it went to charity.


 Here's another top I made (on the right) copying her original top on the left.  This one turned out really cute.



Mom's Tulip Top

The purple sweater is my Mom's old sweater that she's had forever and it's kinda falling apart.  So I took it home and copied it.  Not thrilled with my choice of decal colour but it's still cute on her.  

The story behind the tulip is that she used to make me dresses with tulips on them and stand me in front of her tulip garden for pictures.  She's unfortunately forgotten that now but made her smile when I told her the story.  



 Wasn't long enough so added a panel.
 Here's me trying it on.  You couldn't pay me to leave the house wearing this but it looks really cute on my Mom.

Walker Bags

My Mom's in a care home and I used to make walker bags for her before she went into her wheelchair.  Made around 30 of these for the residents.  Fun to see them toddling around with the little bags I made for them. 

This is a great stash buster idea and really appreciated by anyone using a walker.  







Coffee Cozies

Made these coffee cozies, and the little fabric box they're sitting in, for the local animal shelter.  Hope they sell as would be happy to make more.  

Made a ton of these for Movember, painted moustaches on them.  Think they raised around $300 for Testicular Cancer.  


Baby Jeans

A friend of my son had a baby.  They're huge Seattle Seahawks fans (I don't even know what sport that is (haha)) so I made these jeans for them.  



Blackjack Bag

My Mom has dementia and is living in a care home.  She's almost 94 years old!  She can't do much these days unfortunately but can still be sort of guided along with familiar old games.  I made this bag for her and filled it with tons of old buttons (see earlier blog about those) and a deck of cards.  Put the label on so other visitors know what it's for in case they want to play with her.

She doesn't get many visitors these days as can't really carry on a conversation anymore.  Was the social life of the party before so is sad, but I'm just glad she still knows us :).  






Vegan Purse for daughter

Yes, we're vegan and don't mind advertising it once in awhile.  I made this bag specially for her to take to work.  She was working at GNC and they banned backpacks to prevent staff from stealing.  Yet you could carry a huge bag ??? go figure.  Anyway, she asked if I'd made a large bag for her to wear cross body that would hold all her school books so she could study at work during her breaks.  

I used 2 of those free zippers in this bag and made the strap extra wide.  I find that adding more top stitching down the strap helps to reinforce it.  Doing that to all my straps now.    

The strap is shorter than usual as she said it's easier to carry all that weight when it's up closer to her torso.  Hey, I just follow orders :).  

 Daughter on the treadmill in the background :).