One fabric to rule them all

Hi people,

I think my vision is improving because yesterday morning, I woke up after sleeping for 12 hours (yes, very impressive) and saw how filthy the bathroom was. This bathroom is shared by the kids and hubs but do they clean it? With my almost fully restored eyesight, I simply could not bear the sight of the crap. So I washed it. How did I end up being the only one in my home who cares about cleanliness? To be fair, my son does his share of housework. He helps out a lot, sometimes he takes the initiative and sometimes I have to persuade him to. The other 2 members of the family tie for last place for the amount of housework done.

My right eye no longer feels like there's a golf ball in it. It's more like a pea now. IT'S GOOD. It's progress. All the headaches are gone. I no longer feel pain. It's more like I'm recovering from being punched in the eye. IT'S GOOD. It's progress. The eye cream still stings. Three times a day I act like a baby when I have to put it in my eyes. I close my eyes and wait it out. It's like 5 to 10 minutes. Hubs has started calling me blind woman. "Where's the blind woman?" "Blind woman, come here!" "I have something for you, blind woman."

Yes, I want to punch him in the face too.

This week I kinda felt like I was learning to walk. I hadn't sewed for VivoCity craft market for quite a while and suddenly I didn't know what to. So I wasted a few days playing around with some fabric but I couldn't feel motivated to make anything. Then I decided to start with clutches but it turned out I have run out of magnetic snaps so that became a UFO. Finally I looked at my circus animals fabric and decided I would only sew with that fabric. Yes, my own little challenge.

In any case, I had gotten a little excited working on something. Last December, on the last day at VivoCity, I was probably feeling very high, I asked hubs to write down some notes in his phone. Later he read the notes to me and I couldn't make head or tail. It seems, in my high brilliant state, I wanted to make a zip pouch with the raw on the outside.

Raw on the outside? That completely made no sense. So I did not pursue it. Anyway, yesterday, I decided to make a zip pouch with the raw on the outside.

Wait. Did you think I would really leave exposed seams on my pouches? I used french seams to sew the edges together. It's sort of a french seams except in french seams you would press the seams to one side but I left mine jutting out. For the bottom, I used bias binding to enclose the raw. I find it unthinkable to handsew the bias binding so I used zigzag stitches instead.

This zip pouch is a lot of work. And it looks a little weird to me. But hubs and my girl love it!

I don't know why I felt I had to push myself so hard but the next thing I made with the fabric was something miniature. This was a tough one. It's a coin pouch in case you haven't already figured it out. I had to use tweezers to sew the bottom. It was so so small I almost screamed as I sewed. I said a lot of bad words. But just look at it. It's so darn cute.

The next one was a no brainer. Two rectangular pieces of fabric = a zip pouch. I made this the traditional way. No tricks, no nothing. But I added a bias binding trim. Which hubs HATES. He said the trim I added spoilt the whole thing. My girl wasn't too crazy about it too.

I had been thinking of increasing my stock of Get Up And Go Go sling bags and was so glad I had enough fabric. I think this fabric print looks really fantastic on this sling bag.

With this cut of fabric, I could easily make anything but I took the easy way out and made a drawstring pouch. This was the 3rd item I made today and was starting to feel my energy sapping.

Last block of fabric. It was getting late and close to dinner time. I asked myself if it was possible to make a very big zip pouch and get away with it. I told myself to go ahead. Halfway, I knew it wouldn't work and had to add handles. Handles are hard to make. So I was really hungry while making this hand carry zip pouch. My advice is never to sew while hungry. I kept seeing food while I sewed.

Although I asked Bear nicely to model the zip bag for me, he stubbornly remained in the shadows.

I used up most of the fabric. I succeeded! What's left are unusable and will be kept for fabric buttons. Now I'm going to eat ice-cream. See you soooooonish.

Linked to these partays:
Sew Many Ways
Blue Bird Sews

YOG and 2 Bags

Hello!

The Youth Olympic Games(YOG) has started and yes, Singapore is hosting it. It's from 14 to 26 August. I'll bet most of you guys have not even heard of Youth Olympic Games. I caught a bit of the opening ceremony on TV but I'm not the kind of person who enjoys ceremonies. My girl was riveted to the screen but she was more into giving a commentary of the ceremony. I almost went crazy listening to her. Friday was rather more exciting as the Olympic torch went past where I live. Me hubs tracked the torch relay thru' the internet and when it came to where we lived, we went to watch it.

The guy in red is carrying the Olympic flame.

Me hubs and I tried to chase the flame but we gave up after 100m because he was wearing a long sleeved shirt while I had no make-up on. Okay, it was just very hot. Still, that short 100m chase brought a little excitement to our boring lives.

I'm now officially out of my Michael Miller's Chinese kids fabric because I managed to make another bag out of the last rectangular fabric remnant. Remember my money bag? I made another one.

I'm a little shocked it took me 1 whole day to make this little bag. My way of making the money bag is just too hard. I should seriously consider using bias binding to conceal the raw edges.

You can't tell from the image but the cheery red I used for the handle? I chose to use the "wrong" side as the right side. The "right" side is a little too shiny for my taste.

Inside out.

This is a change purse I made last week. I have a friend, Periwinkle Su who hand stitches everything! Absolutely no sewing machine. I've often wondered how different a handsewn pouch would turn out. So for this change purse, I hand sewed the lining. I thought about hand sewing the entire pouch but I worried the zipper would just come loose easily. Anyway, handsewing the lining doesn't result in a better zip pouch so I'm sticking to my sewing machines. I've listed this pouch at Etsy. Check it out if you're into linen cotton pseudo cross-stitch fabric.

Just wondering. Does anyone watch Project Runway USA 8? I'm a big, big fan. I watch PR Canada and Australia too. Have to say without Heidi and Tim Gunn, it just isn't the same.  But Canada's Iman saying "I'm sori you just don't measure up!" is hilarious.

Today I watched episode 3 of PR USA 8 and I'm starting to be able to tell the faces apart to the point where I'm beginning to have favourites and faces I hate. Oh, I love Valerie because she is so cute! I'm on the fence with Gretchen but I know the editors are gonna make me hate her. What I don't like is how they keep the really horrible designers over better ones just because they make good TV. If you cry easily, they will keep you. If you are a drama queen, they will keep you. If you don't say much, it's Auf Wiedersehen. Oddly, every season, there's bound to be a contestant whose designs look like they learnt sewing from someone very old. So all their outfits turn out looking suitable for the age group 70 to 100.  Think Casanova. It's still too early to tell, but I'm thinking the weird lonely one, Mondo will make it to the final. Plus surely enough good TV has been squeezed out of Casanova. It's hard to look at him because he has very unattractive facial hair.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Two Bugs And A Flower

I am on a crusade to turn all my usable fabric remnants into bags and pouches. In my latest quest, I was bitten by the bugs.

I had two narrow strips of linen-cotton print and it really bothered me so I pieced them with raw linen to make this zippy purse. I have yards and yards of raw linen because you can never have too much raw linen. The thing with raw linen is it makes you want to sew some embroidery on it and so I sewed a ladybird in stem stitch. I know a ladybird has the dots in black but i wanted red dots. The red dots are sewn in satin stitch. If you want a good tip on how to sew satin stitch, go to Melly & me. I was just looking at the image above and realised I haven't read Dan Brown's Angels & Demons which Mandy had lent me a while ago. I hope she won't ask for it back yet as I'll be needing it as a prop.

I'm not too fond of satin stitches mainly because when I was 12, I was chosen to do embroidery in school. The last time I did any embroidery was when I was 7. In between I had to do Art. Unfortunately, the teacher in charge of embroidery was my Chinese Language teacher, Mrs Lim. If you remember, I'm not fluent in Mandarin and oh boy. Mrs Lim was not the most patient teacher and on top of that, my results in my Chinese language was putting her in a bad light. All that bad blood resulted in a really unpleasant experience for us. First of all, she gave me a most hideous green linen to work with. Then she drew little shapes on 4 corners of the linen. Without even showing me how, she expected me to magically create beautiful stitches. I didn't. Then I misunderstood her. I thought she wanted satin stitches. What she really wanted was long and short stitches and the stitches had to reflect shadows. I think it's a form of Chinese embroidery. She was crazy to think I could do it on my own. After months of scolding and unpicking and redoing, she finally gave up and accepted my satin stitches. At the end of the school year, she returned it to me to bring home. She did not magically transform it into a bag or anything. She said I could use it as a table cloth. In my home?

When I was 14, I had to do a art project in school but we could pick anything we wanted. I chose embroidery. I was the only one. My Art teacher, Ms Ong who incidentally had an unhealthy obsession with me thought I was gonna do a huge quilt project. To be honest, I chose embroidery because my brilliant plan was to hand in the hideous table cloth I did when I was 12. I was 14. What did you think? I had absolutely no interest in sewing or art projects. So the whole year when everyone else was busy with their chosen project during art period, I read story books. Ms Ong was free and easy with me because she thought my quilt was too large to lug to school. Anyway, the months flew by and finally I had to hand in my project. I seached for the hideous green linen table cloth and to my horror discovered that someone in my home had used it as a rag and it was stained all over with dark soy sauce! I didn't think I could get away with handing it in. The next day I told Ms Ong I forgot to bring my project. So she gave me 1 last chance. That night, I found a square fabric and I sewed thru' the night. I sewed an exact duplicate of my hideous green linen table cloth. I handed in my project to Ms Ong and she was a little shocked it was just a table cloth. Still, she gave me an 'A'.

Still on bugs, this time I did a roach. Me hubs wanted to know who's gonna buy something with roaches on it. The roach is done in backstitch with some satin stitches. I used sashiko thread.

To offset the blue and white, I made the lining cheery.

Originally my plan was to sew a bug on the flower but sanity overruled.

I think pink twill goes well with indigo.

Noodlehead has a few zippy pouch tutes. If you're a beginner, you might want to check them out. Try Lil Cutie Pouches first as it's the most basic and explore the others later.

17 projects completed.
983 more to go.
Btw, it bothered me hubs that I didn't try to count the number of bags I've made since I started sewing bags. So I might just have to do it and that will completely change my project count. Gotta please the man.