sewing Archives - Page 31 of 42

Some things just don’t work

I had a great idea last fall. I envisioned a multi-level yarn holder, like milk crates on their sides but with a half-height front hanging out at an angle. One could include up to four bins, because dowels are four feet long and each bin is a foot-cube, and they could be rearranged (well, except one would have to be the top permanently). It was golden! I sketched it out in my little graph paper notebook and gathered all the cotton remnants I had that are too heavy for my usual uses. I made four bins almost completely – the top edge of that front lip needed to be finished – and threaded them onto the dowels. I stood it up in my sewing room and BOW BOW. It sort of twisted and fell over.

Well, I was too busy then to get back to it, so yesterday I dove in again. I sewed up the remaining edges and then sewed dowels along the bottom outer edges of the top bin. I thought a nice square of rigidity would fix the problem. Well, it sort of did. Not quite. So I delved into my shockingly large stash of “cardboard from inside calendars” and had enough to put a 12″x12″ piece in the bottom of each bin. So, okay. Not perfect, but okay.

However, then I tried to fill it. My original plan had four hooks and eyes holding the bins together, one near each corner, and I had faked it with a safety pin in each corner. Not enough. I put things in and the second bin fall off the first one. Okay. Try again. I repinned the corners and added two pins in the center-front and center-back edges. Refill!

BOW BOWWWWWWWWW. I chose this picture out of the ones I took because it gave the best sense of how much this puppy is leaning. I could perhaps sew the bins together, navigating my lovely dowels, but I am through with this thing. I’m not sure it is ever going to look anything but saggy and wrinkly. Oh well! Not every project succeeds.

Bathmat

My boyfriend’s bathroom is quite small, so there is no avoiding getting the main floor area wet when you shower. He needed a bath mat, or maybe I did, since I was the one objecting to wet socks. His shower curtain is striped with bright orange, green, red, and yellow, so I thought I’d make him a terrycloth bath mat with those colors.

My stash contained mostly neutral terrycloth, except for a striped hand towel I had hoped to turn into a baby bib, but which had discoloration in the middle I hadn’t been able to remove. Perfect: I just cut strips off the edge and threw out the center. A trip to Jo-Ann didn’t turn up any terrycloth remnants, so I went to a thrift store and got a white cotton towel that I cut into fourths and dyed with my on-hand RIT.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any yellow or red; I was hoping the lighter orange would be more yellow, but no. Oh well. I didn’t end up using the fuchsia/wine piece since it was so far from the colors in his shower curtain. I pieced the rest together into a thick double-sided bath mat. The colors faded a bit when I washed the mat (I washed the individual pieces before making the mat, and then washed the mat about three times to make sure it won’t run in his laundry), and you can see that I didn’t bother with the “stir constantly” instruction on the RIT bottle, but I like that the colors aren’t completely uniform. I wasn’t sure how well I would like this while I was putting it together, but partially because post-sew washing puffed things up a bit and partially because it just looks better after taking a step back and contemplating it, I quite like it.

Containers

I’m pretty much obsessed with making containers for all the electronic gadgets that come into my life. My cell phone doesn’t have one, but essentially everything else does.

My little USB modem got a case out of leftover fabric from some capris I made years ago, and a (purely decorative) button out of my grandmother’s button box. It’s a simple pouch with a snap-closed flap. I like how it makes me think of a mushroom.

My previous camera had a pouch with a flap that came up a narrow side and over the top, and a pocket between the flap and the main pouch that would hold two spare AA batteries. The fabric was purchased as a remnant. Unfortunately it was AWOL when I went to take the photos for this entry.

My current camera has a pouch with no flap – there is an elastic loop that keeps everything together. I used ribbon to hide the cut edge so I wouldn’t have to turn it under; this fabric was from the Sew-Op and I wanted to use the barely-large-enough piece I had.

My laptop has the same laptop sleeve that my previous laptop had. The fabric was clearance upholstery fabric and the ribbon was from my stash. It’s starting to show a lot of wear, though – my embroidery around the edges of the ribbon is coming out in places. I have pulled out the appropriate floss and will hopefully make some repairs in the near future.