Sewing fiend, hair & more

I’ve been a sewing fiend lately! I made another hipster/hip pouch, his time with a zipper. First time I ever did a zipper, only problem was I used a zig zag stitch instead of a straight, so it looks a little messy. That was Saturday I think.

I made a Buttercup purse (from Made by Rae) yesterday. Only complaint is that it’s smaller than I like for my bags. Love that it’s only a fat quarter of fabric though! I may try to retrace with an extra inch on all sides & just let it be a bigger bag and use more fabric.

I think I may start working on Alex’s vest shortly. I can cut the pattern pieces anyway, even if I don’t sew them for a while yet. Probably not this week though, I’m working a long day today, a short one tomorrow, and don’t know about the next few, other than we’re heading to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert Friday night. Hooray!

The curly girl hair has worked out ok so far. I ended up buying all new product, but the curls have been decent. My hair feels healthier. I think I still need to work on a better haircut & curl creams/gels to get the curls I really want.

Sewing Machine WORKS!!

I’m thrilled y’all. I have my very own sewing machine! As I mentioned yesterday, when Alex’s Grandpa passed away, they cleaned the house. Grandma had passed away a few years prior and Grandpa had, understandably, not gotten rid of all Grandma’s stuff. When we were there after Grandpa’s funeral, I noticed her sewing machine downstairs. I asked my father-in-law if I might have the machine if no one was offended. They were exactly the opposite and were thrilled someone in the family had interest in using it.

So it, along with the furniture, got stored at my father-in-law’s and we just made it down at the end of February to get it. It was seated in a table that we have no room for in our apartment, so we unscrewed it and took just the machine. It sat at my mom’s for a week or so because we thought we could do the tune-up ourselves without the manual. We instead, chose to keep our sanity and take it to the local sewing machine repair shop. They’re lovely people there. The owner/repairman has been ill, so it took him a while to get it up and running for me. Not much in the way of repairs though, yay. I brought it home, where it sat another week because I couldn’t remember if I had any thread and didn’t remember that I had anything to test it with.

Thursday morning I didn’t have to be at work until the afternoon, so when I remembered I had two rather large Sunkist shirts (courtesy of our local Pepsi company), I knew what I was going to test it on.

 

XL. Two. I wear a Small or a Medium. HALP

I’ve been hanging onto these shirts for a year with the intent, I don’t know how/why I forgot about them. I used this t-shirt mod before, back in probably… oh… 2009 or so. I still wear that shirt, but it never did quite as well as I’d hoped. I’m thrilled with this one though. It fits so much better.

I wore it to work. I love the logo & colours.

I did rip the side seam taking it off. Gotta restitch it.

I’m always amazed at how much fabric I cut off shirts. The only thing I’d do differently on this, were I to do it again (Oh, AND I WILL) is to remember to cut the hips a little wider (my shirts all ride up, all the time. Thanks hips!) and to maybe make the gathers a little more regular. Or maybe not. Oh, and zigzag stitch it up instead of straight stitch so I hopefully won’t have a repeat of it.

The site I snagged the tutorial from is Oh My Stars, which is closing down in about a month, so go quickly and save any tutorials you want. The short version is: 1. Cut off sleeves. 2. Resize sides/hips. 3. Cut new sleeves out of the fabric you just cut off the sides. 4. Sew new sleeves on. 5. Take band from old sleeves, splice together and sew to make the new neckband. Very easy, just takes some trial runs to get it figured out just right.

Garb

Mom & I sewed Alex a shirt! Hooray!
McCall’s M4862

Faire Garb

iPod Star!

I fell in absolute love the moment I saw it.
I did not care it was for a Nano, I did not care that all my past sewing projects have turned out less than ideal.
I had to have it.

Photos mainly.
I finished a lot of stuff at home. Forgot to take pictures. Finished up 2/3 of Meghan’s Christmas gift. Finished the Little Monster. Finished Alex’s DS Monsterbag. Finished Kara’s (ridiculously easy, no idea why it ever took so long, haha) renaissance faire skirt.

Plans to get pictures of the skirt in action next weekend on her.

Next Post

OOO! Yay! Progress overnight on Ravelry! I am now 1428th in line.
Haha.
I finished the second knitted part of Meghan’s Christmas present. Now I just have to finish one with the crochet hook and then finish them both at home. I am going to be taking so many half-finished projects home to finish it’s not going to be funny: Alex’s DS monsterbag, Meghan’s Christmas pressie x3, Kara’s skirt’s already there, Regan’s monsterbag’s already there. Uugh. I am a horrible crafter, lol. Well, to be fair, Mom’s supposed to have finished Regan’s monsterbag ages ago, Kara’s skirt got mostly finished just before the move, and the others have been knit here, where I don’t have the rest of my supplies. So… yeah.
I moved on to working on the Knit Coffee Sleeve I mentioned in yesterday’s post. Plain yellow cotton. I’ve decided that horseshoe cable is probably even easier than a normal cable. It’s a 10 row pattern repeat with only one row of needing to use a cable needle. Very easy. I’ve got the pattern written on an index card, one row per line, and I’m using a paperclip down the edge to keep track. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t randomly fall off, lol.

I need US 6s. I think that’s one of the few sizes I don’t have. In DPN and normal. And I need some others as well, but 6 is the one that normally pops up. And a US 7 circular. Hmm. Christmas maybe I’m gonna see if someone will get me the Knitpicks Options basic set. A bit pricey, but since my favorite needles are by a company that no longer exists (which really sucks since I broke the cable on one of my circs the other day *cries*) and I’m using the Options for my Seraphim Shawl and like them pretty well, it’s probably a good long-run investment.

Jabbering now. Off to class go I

And out of the darkness, there was light. It was… a camera flash.

Oh, wow. Massive pictures again I suppose.
April to June? You guys need to remind me to update more! Lol.

Let’s see… crafts…
Well, Kara’s Renn Faire skirt got a bit stalled. If it’s raining tonight I’ll see if Mom will help me with the last part of the cutting. Then it’ll just be sewing, which isn’t too bad.
Um, the lining for Tyler’s dice bag is cut finally, again, just need help sewing it together.
I finished knitting the green Isabeau purse (I like the size, I don’t like the look as well though). Need to put lining in that and put the buttons on.
Have finished a majority of Christmas presents. Remind me post-X-mas and I’ll post pictures of it all, I’m rather proud of Alex’s… I think? Lol.
I also finished Lura’s Batman Purse. It was a comission loosely detailed on deviantART. Working out payment/price/shipping stuff on that. Whee.
Ok, ok, pictures: