I heart Paris passport cover

Someone's going travelling and it's not me. Nope, I'm not a traveller. What with headaches, altitude sickness, migraine, it's hard enough to stay alive being stationed in one place.

This passport cover is for my friend, Mandy of Mandy Pan Millinery who is going places soon. Lucky girl.

 
I have no plans to leave Singapore in the near future.

This is my passport. It has long expired. The last time I travelled, my girl was still in kindy. She's 14 this year.

I went through my archives and discovered I haven't made many passport covers in the past.

This was the first one I made many years ago.

This was the second one, made in the same style.

These 2 were made out of interesting print so no embroidery was needed.

 Do you use a passport cover for your passport? For me, I don't. I prefer the raw passport. I don't even use a plastic cover. Somehow it feels more real.

Handmade For Profit

If you have sold anything you've made I'm pretty sure you're hooked for life. It's such a great feeling. After you have made 1 sale, you'll start asking yourself, How do I sell more?

Selling is a difficult thing. Making stuff for sale - that's easy. Making something that sells is very hard. There's no magic formula and even when something sells, there's no guarantee it'll continue to sell.

That's why I was really happy when my friend, Mandy passed me this book Handmade For Profit. I'm still at Chapter One. I've discovered that I'm really ignorant when it comes to selling for profit. Mandy must have learnt from this book because she's very successful at what she does. Anyhoo, I'm going to study this book and see if I could benefit from it.

These are 2 fabric passport covers I made today. I'm personally very happy with the choice of fabric. The black and white fabric was illustrated by Junichi Nakahara, a well-known Japanese artist. The second fabric is a French theme cross-stitchish print from Live Life Collection. Both fabric are printed by Yuwa.

I've listed both passport covers at zibbet, artfire and etsy. Please have a look.

Fabric Passport Cover For Jennifer

Remember my OWOH giveaway? The winner was Jennifer and this is what I sent her. She liked purple and she's an angel. I used my usual running stitches to "decorate" the fabric. I don't think I'll ever get tired of running stitches!

 I sent her a piece of fabric too but I forgot to photograph it!

It started with scraps of fabric.

Front

Front - Inside

Back

Back - Inside

Ready for the world!

I made another bag! I'm just spitting them out now. This time I wanted to make a baby version of my pleated bags. I guess I didn't spend any thinking on whether a baby version would sell. I'm a little worried.

The band is linen-cotton. I applied iron-on-interface to the band even tho' I'm anti-iron-on-interface. Linen-cotton doesn't stand well on its own. It's so limpy. The dark green is twill. I bought a batch of twill from a fabric shop which supplies to tailors. So everything in the shop is man-man. I'm very attracted to manly fabric! I like this green a lot. It has some hint of yellow in it. Twill is a fabulous fabric to work with. It's so obedient and the right thickness for certain style of bags. I like shopping in this man-man shop because the couple running it is really nice and they give discount if I buy a little more. But what a show you have to put on to get a good discount. Back and forth and so on. The discount stays when you go back so you don't have to put on an oscar worthy act again.

This is the inside. The green is brownish green. I'm poor at describing colours. I like this other green too but can you just imagine describing this colour to a sales person? So I have a sample book where I tape the colours I like when I go fabric shopping. The fabric is duck. Duck is a stubborn fabric. It frays a lot too. It's easy enough to sew on but it crinkles easily. Duck is also heavy so you can't use too much of it on a bag. Check out the handles. Know what's in between the fabric? Twill tape. That's how I get the handles so sturdy. If I can get twill tape in different width other than the 1" here, I'll put it in all my handles.

April MAAD countdown. 9 out of 15 bags completed. 6 more bags to make in 6 days! You know the worse part? I'm "saving" the harder to construct bags for the last. This is a condition known as "putting it off".

Fearlessly sewing on,
Jane P out.

Patchwork Passport Sleeve For Viv

I love it when Viv asks me to custom make something for her. The last time I made a bag for her, I had such a great time. Her reqirements are usually very functional. Like I need this for this purpose. That's it. The rest is up to me. Because she is from a creative line, I know she can accept it if I make something that is aesthetically out of the norm.

This time she needed a passport sleeve. I wanted to do patchwork but not the conventional way. I'm not really into symmetrical patchwork.  I also wanted to embroider with my running stitches, what else? It was fun making this sleeve. No plans - just let my imagination go where it wanted to.

It's hard to see where it's patched!

Front

Front - inside

Back

Back - inside

I hope she likes it!