small bags for not-so-smalls

Before I went on holiday at the beginning of October, I had a look at my list of "travel items to make".  Yes, I have a list for that.  I have lists for everything, who doesn't love a good list?  One item was bags for used undies.  I like to keep them separate in my case and as I always take enough undies for a month (you never know what will happen!  OK, I haven't been forced to change my pants mid-day since I was a child, but you never know!) I needed a bag, or two.

I made  simple drawstring bags and I made them reversible.  Clean undies when the patterned side is out, dirty undies when the undie-themed fabric is out.

I used the blue and purple fabric as the casing for the purple bag and vice versa.  I found some glitzy cord to thread through, though I'm not sure how that will bear up in the wash, I probably need to take it out.

They are about 12" square, so plenty of room for one of my mammoth-sized bras along with the smalls (or not-so-smalls in my case).

And as you've never seen a draw string bag before, I thought I'd better take photos of them closed so you can see what they'd look like!

Do you have a bag for your dirty smalls/not-so-smalls/down-right-huges or is it just me?

A little bag and a giveaway

Good morning ladies.  Back to work after a long weekend.  I had Friday off to watch Mr CA jump out of a plane.  Luckily, some bloke strapped himself to him and wore a parachute or I could have been off work today spending his life insurance ;0)

When I showed you the completed alphabet chart, I mentioned I'd tried to make a drawstring bag for the letters and failed.  Well I tried again and succeeded!

Just a simple drawstring bag, made from the same fabric as the backing of the chart and with a pink spotty lining.

My god-daughter's birthday was last Saturday and so I took it over.  It was a huge hit and she played with it straight away!  I'd call that a success.

As for the giveaway part, does anyone want these magazines?  All are duplicates that I have:

Beads & Beyond August 2012 (been meaning to give this away for... well, a year!)

Beads & Beyond August 2013

Cross Stitcher January 2013

If you want one/all of them, please just let me know which one in the comments.  And make sure I have a way of contacting you, so if you're a no-reply blogger, or if no-one has ever emailed you a reply to a comment you've left on their blog, please leave your email address too.

back pack

Good morning ladies, how was your weekend?  Today's post is about something I made a weekend ago, I had quite a few subjects for posts and knew that I'd have less time to make stuff in July, so held some things back.  I prefer just having one subject per post rather than mixing things up.  Is that boring?

Whilst feeling slightly panicky about the length of my WIP list, I decided to start making some bits for my holiday next month.  I used to have the best back pack ever.  It was very simple, a draw string bag with the drawstring doubling as the handles.  I bought it in a shop in Poland when I lived in Warsaw and so it said "Troll" on it.  That was the name of the shop, as far as I know, it's not a Polish word.  There were some shops with amusing names and one with a very rude name.  I won't repeat it here.  

Anyway, aforementioned bag accompanied me everywhere.  To the school to teach, to friend's houses and out clubbing containing smuggled bottles of vodka!  Yes, I was young once.  A long time ago.  This perfect bag was stolen in Barcelona during my second out of three muggings.  I mourned it for a long time.

I searched for years for a bag like that, but never found one I liked.  It was only a few weeks ago that I realised I could make one.  I thought it would be perfect for a beach holiday.  Just to be clear, my beach holiday will involve NO lying on the beach.  Apart from the fact it's to Devon, which is in England, which does NOT do beach weather, I have to wear factor 30+ sun cream and I still burn.  I've never had a tan in my life and I'm often mistaken for a milk bottle.  An accidental 10 minutes in the sun last week lead people to look at me in horror and ask what was wrong with my arms due to the odd purpley/red mottled effect the sun gives them.  The holiday will involve walks on the beach though, either whilst Mr CA and Junior CA are body boarding, or in the evenings, and a "normal" handbag is annoying.

Eagle eyed readers will notice it matches my Weekender Bag.  I am such a classy lady.  The lining is this lovely print that I bought from Abakhan at the NEC and I originally planned to make the bag in it, until I remembered my Coats & Clarke surplus.  It's home decor weight so it's more hard wearing, and I added some medium interfacing too.

I made the pattern up as I went along.  The handles are formed by threading some rope (from B&Q after a fruitless visit to Hobbycraft intending to buy their thickest piping cord.  Piping cord just doesn't come that thick.  This is 8mm rope) through tabs sewn into the side seams.  I didn't want to risk sewing the rope directly into the seams as it's very chunky.

I added 2 zip pockets, one in each size of the lining, one for my phone and the other for my huge variety of migraine/headache pills anything else small that I don't want to risk losing.

This style of bag is perfect if you are a tourist somewhere.  Not only does it free up your hands, it would be very hard for someone to slip a hand into your bag as it's tight at the top.  Opening the bag involves taking it off and pulling the top open, meaning the handles are too short for you to wear - there's no way anyone could attempt to open it to steal something.

I love it.  I'm going to show it to my mum to see if she wants one too, if she does would anyone be interested in a tutorial or is it just too basic for that?

laundry bag and travel jewellery organiser

I'm going to Turkey next week.  Nope, I'm not off on a jolly, it's work.  I know everyone thinks that travelling with work is a massive bonus, but it actually involves daytimes in a factory, working, evenings in a hotel room, working, so not so glamorous!

I was supposed to attend the East Midlands Modern Quilt Guild meetup last weekend to work on a Weekender bag.  I didn't go.  I'd ordered some interfacing from Jaycotts and it hadn't arrived, it hadn't even shipped.  You can be sure I won't be using that shop again.

Aside from the Weekender (which I actually want as carry-on luggage to hold my laptop, book, crochet, etc etc), there were a few other things I need, so I got to work.

Bag for dirty undies.  Just a very simple drawstring bag with ribbon closure that I can sling in the washing machine with the aforementioned dirty undies.

I've had this washing line fabric for ages, no idea where I got it from though I think it's Japanese.  I lined it with a green print.  I have no idea where that came from either!

Next up I wanted to make a jewellery roll.  I have about a million patterns bookmarked, and there is one in pretty much every sewing book I own, but they ALL focus on rings and (bleurghhh) earrings.  I only wear my engagement and wedding ring, and wear them all the time so don't need somewhere to store them, and I certainly don't put bits of metal through...

... sorry, had to go and puke.  I won't finish that sentence, my stomach can't take it.  In the end I bastardised a pattern from 100 Pretty Little Projects.

I used some Daisy Cottage and half followed the pattern, half did it my way.  The pattern called for binding, but I couldn't be bothered, so did the stitch-right-sides-together-and-turn method.  Hmmm, doesn't work so well with zips.  I unpicked, fine, I'll bind.  Reading the instructions again, it's not actually binding, so I was back to winging it!

Hmmm.  Doesn't close.  Seam ripper, where are you?

I'm still binding this, it's been a nightmare, I'll show you when it's finally done!

corners!

So, last Weekend I had a list of sewing to do as long as my arm.  There were the chair cushions for mum, the new cool bag I desperately need for a lunch box, the big pile of WIPs I have, preparation for the upcoming blog hop...  So what did I make? 

 

A picnic bag.  Yes.  With napkins.  I know, I know, it's October, I live in the coldest, windiest, rainiest country on earth (or so it feels) and there's no prospect of a picnic any time soon.  I don't know how to explain it!

 

I'd gone up to my craft room and spotted these dumped on the sofa.  I felt like cleaning up, but instead of tackling the piles of fabric, patterns strewed all over the room, mountain of boxes in the corner... I decided I needed to tidy up these poor picnic plates and cutlery.

 

I had the perfect fabric in my stash, some food print fabric I'd bought from Fabric Land ages ago with no plan in mind.  Add in some IKEA solid red and Bob's your uncle.

I made a very simple drawstring bag with boxed bottom.  It's not for the food, we have a large cool bag for that (not the smelly one I take to work, a family-sized one), it's just for the plate and cutler.

And for the napkins.  Because I decided we needed napkins too.  Hmmm.  I used the pattern in Stitch by Stitch: Learning to Sew, One Project at a Time.  It shows you how to do the perfect mitred corner.

Unfortunately, I didn't really understand the instructions the first two times.  The bottom corner in the picture above shows my messy corner.  Then I got it, you really had to push the corners out.

Ta-dah!  I'm really quite proud of them.  Useless though they will be for the next 9 months.

So now I have two perfect napkins and one bag.  And two not-perfect napkins waiting to be unpicked...  It may take a while as I may have the urge to sew a lifesized giraffe, or a TV-cover or something first...

BUT, at least the corner of my sofa that held the plates and cutlery is now tidy.  Yay, a victory! ?!?!

bag in a bag...

Morning ladies!  Wow, what a busy week I'm having.  My Tunisian colleagues were over here yesterday for all day meetings, I was trying to make notes whilst all 3 of them talked at once in French and my English colleagues were talking in English, all expecting me to translate!  I tell you, I couldn't be a translator for a living.  By 5.30 I was exhausted and had a headache, but had to stay for a couple more hours to get my work done.

Today I'm bringing you a project from Saturday.  I finished making the bag for bag week which I'll show you when I get half-decent pictures and I wanted to make something else.  Now, I don't know about you but I carry a LOT of crap around with me.  Certain items are always in my bag - purse, umbrella, diary, notebook, pens, Polos... but I also have a lot of other little stuff.  As it's small and my bag is the size of a small caravan, it gets lost at the bottom so I keep it in a drawstring bag. 

This is the crap I mean:

Mini hair brush, nail files, plasters, Rescue Remedy, eczema cream (usually two, I appear to have lost one), lip balm, spray moisturiser, tissues, sweetners, tooth picks (no longer necessary since the evil dentist removed my tooth with great pain) and a whole host of tablets to deal with my headaches, cluster headache, tension headaches and migraines.

And this is what they used to be housed in.  This drawstring bag held the treasured Radley evening bag my husband bought for me when he was still my boyfriend, as a surprise no less!  Unfortunately, recently it's started coming apart (the drawstring bag, not the actual handbag) and has lost its strings.  Instead of repairing it, I decided to make a replacement, after all, I don't really like pink!

I DO like red!  Especially when it's with blue.  I won this fabric recently and love it to distraction.  I wanted to make something for me with it, so I did!

It's a very simple lined drawstring bag, made without a pattern as it's too easy to need one.  I lined it with the stripey fabric from the same line and added in some pale blue cord for ties.

Yum!  It makes me smile whenever I open my bag and see it!  (I know, I'm a bit odd like that).

Friday Night Sew In and Cathy's Christmas Countdown

I had Friday afternoon off work and I spent it sewing.  I'd been busy all week cutting and preparing:

First up I made a patchwork bag to keep the counting bean bags I made in the week in.  I used the same fabrics that I'd used for the bean bags and lined it in pink.  It wasn't such a success this time and was pinched where I'd sewed it, but you can't see it when it's drawn in.  Here's one side:

And here's the other:

I then made this patchwork cushion using some Moda Layer Cakes I'd been hoarding.  I love the colours.  My points don't match up perfectly, but hey, it's handmade!

And here's the envelope closure back.  This is some Tania Wheeldon fabric I bought specially.

I then made a couple of tea towels to match the coasters I'd made for my brother.  I pieced a strip and sewed it to the tea towel.  I have no idea why we have that photo 3 times but I'm not allowed to delete it!  Don't you just love blogger sometimes?

So, that's the results of my Friday Night Sew In.  I'll be joining in again next Friday (another afternoon off work, yay!).

So, my monthly results for Cathy's Christmas Countdown.  I already posted on the first of December - see this post where I got to 11 gifts, so to round it up:

12. Knitted teddy

13. Counting bean bags in a draw string bag

14. Patchwork cushion

15. Set of two tea towels.

Yay!  I managed 15 again!  Now I have just 2 weeks to finish all my presents off.... Aaargh!!

Snow glorious snow, but not in this post

In a previous post I showed you how to mess up a simple coaster, well this week I've gone one step further and messed up a notebook cover.  So, here's how to turn this:

Into this:

Looking a little "loose" and "crinkley"... It's a present for my dad (and I forgot to turn it the right way up!) who has just been made Chairman of the local branch of CAMRA after years of organising the Beer Festival.  Coupled with his footie team's colours, it is him all over!  Except he's not loose or crinkly...

I covered a little box with the fabric and put a little cushion inside to hide the mess in the bottom, this is to hold the drawing pins I covered for him.

It didn't turn out so well as the fabric glue has made it kind of dirty.

I finally got round to doing something with the Forever Friends bear I stitched, I made it into a drawstring bag.  It didn't go as well as last time as it has a bit of an unintended pleat in the back.  I didn't photograph it for you as I was already feeling pretty rubbish about my lack of sewing skills by this point!

I spent a couple of hours stitching up this Spitfire design for my father-in-law's birthday card.  The design came from one of the 15 old cross stitch magazines I picked up for £3 in a charity shop.  He was in the RAF as was his father who was a Paratrouper during WWII so I thought this would be appropriate.

I also finally did something with the Angel Friends stitchery that I completed a month or so ago.  I made it into a cushion.  This cushion has a zip in the top!  My first ever zip!  It was really easy...  unless I've done it wrong, I don't know what my major fear of zips was.  There is however a mistake in this cushion - the zip is at the top!!

Finally this weekend I got started on some knitting:

I've still got some more pieces to go.  Can you tell what it is?  This was my first attempt at moss stitch and that also was pretty easy, though I did mess up one bit of the pink part...  I got confused with the stitches and decreasing.

I've been feeling a bit down about my lack of sewing ability this weekend.  The notebook was a disaster and I'm sure it should have been a lot easier, then everything else seemed to go wrong too.  Maybe I should give up and go back to making cards.