Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Time Off...

The last few weeks I've been BUSY trying to get ahead on schoolwork, so it's been quiet over here. The reason? My husband is back! He was stationed overseas for the past 8 months, but now he's on leave and we're just busy spending time together. :) We have a vacation coming up next week - should be fun!

He'll be around for about a month - so until then, there may not be any updates. But check back later on.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

My Purse

This is the purse I mentioned. I used the Fiona bag pattern from Jenna Lou's Etsy shop, and it was very easy to use. She sells completed bags, too. :)


I made this last fall, and was really wanting something plaid. The upper part is a green/blue/cream plaid, and the rest of the bag is a brown corduroy. I lined it with a blue/tealish fabric and made myself some wonky little pockets for my cell phone, iPod, and lip gloss. I also made a little loop for my keys (which I keep on a caribiner), because I loathe digging for them.

I keep seeing this, the Buttercup bag, all over the (blog) world. It'll be one of my next projects, as soon as I decide what to make it with.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Tote Bag

I've been meaning to post this since last week, but when I went to upload the pictures, my camera decided its battery was dead. So I took the battery out, charged it, and forgot. Today, I decided to finally get those pictures onto my computer, but when I tried to connect the camera, nothing happened.... Lo and behold, I had forgotten to put the battery back in. :) Oops.

This bag itself had quite a lengthy, yet unexciting story as well. A while back I made myself a small purse, and my best friend asked if I would make her a bag - not a purse, but a bigger bag she could use for school. Sometime before Christmas, we met at Joann's to pick out fabric, and she bought a pattern, too. Then we headed back to my house to teach her how to sew. We had quite a bit of trouble with the bobbins and threading the machine and other things that I really do know how to do, but for some reason everything kept going wrong. We made it about halfway through before the thread got weird again, and she needed to get home. I set it aside and meant to get together with her again to finish it, but things kept coming up and it never happened. About two weeks ago, I pulled the bag out and decided to just finish it myself. And I did just that.

So, this may be anticlimactic by this point, but I present: our tote bag


The bag was pretty big - there are two 2-liter soda bottles inside of it holding it up, and I could have fit one more inside. The pattern was for an unlined bag, but we decided to line it since the fabric she picked for the outside wasn't great on the wrong side and a lining is just more fun. It's basically a big rectangle hemmed and sewn up the long sides. Then the bottom corners were boxed, which was really confusing in the pattern directions. I had seen a website before, and I looked back it when I was trying to figure this out and it made much more sense. Now, however, I can't seem to find the website... This one is pretty good, though. I've seen others cut a square out of the corners and then sew it up, but that seems more complicated to me. It was very easy once I figured it out!

Update: The pattern is The Green Pepper Market Tote, found here