The Pedro Bag

My craft group, the super-awesome and lovely Crafty Foxes, regularly do craft swaps. Pretty much every six weeks, a random topic is chosen, everyone who’s keen signs up, and the magic hat of number (a.k.a. random.org) draws out who’s making for who. Then we have six weeks to make something for the person who’s name we’ve been given, in the theme of the swap. So much fun!

The latest swap has just ended. The theme was ‘Favourite Movies’. We each listed our three favourite movies, and had to make something for our mystery swap partner using one (or more) of their three favourite movies. My swap partner was Ria – she’s new to the Crafty Foxes, and I’d never met her before, which added to the fun! Her three fave movies were Beetlejuice, Scott Palmer vs The World, and Napolean Dynamite. My first thought was to make Scott Palmer inspired magnets. But that just wasn’t coming together as I’d planned it out in my head (don’t you hate it when that happens, and a vision just refuses to let itself become reality?!). I toyed briefly with the idea of doing something inspired by Beetlejuice’s black-and-white striped outfit, but since I’d never met Ria I had no idea of her style, and there was just too much potential for that not to work out so well. So I gave in and went with what was probably more-or-less inevitable – the ‘Vote For Pedro’ slogan from Napolean Dynamite. Predictable, no? But still so fun.

First, I took a white shirt of Steve’s that he didn’t want any more.

(The red ‘P’ was just put there for the photo, by the way.)

Next, I took some red felt and cut out the words. I had contemplated screen printing them on, but rough applique just appealed to me more, for some reason.

Add them together, with some blue-and-white gingham for a shoulder strap and some red satin type stuff (left over from making bridesmaids dresses for my lovely friend Susan’s wedding earlier this year), a bit of Velcro to fasten it with, and you’ve got yourself a bag!

And yes, I know the lettering is a bit rough-looking. That was planned – I wanted to see how it would look if I just stitched down the centre of each letter. I quite like it, actually – it’s got that whole arts-and-crafts vibe about it. (Admittedly it does look better in real life than it does in the photo, I think.)

I found it kind of amusing that it’s all red, white and blue, since that the current Sew Weekly theme for this week.

Speaking of which, I finished my creation for the latest Sew Weekly challenge tonight. Yay! I’m pretty happy with it – I think it’s going to be a wardrobe favourite. But you’ll have to wait until Sunday to see it – Steve and I have a standing date on Sunday afternoon’s to get photos of my latest Sew Weekly creations, and there is no chance I can convince him to take photos before then.

World-travelling lace and notions

Over on the Sew Weekly Sewing Circle, we got a bit of a sewing-related swap happening. A group of us put our names down and elected to send an envelope of lace and other notions to one of the other circle members, drawn at random from the list. So much fun! There were girls on the list from all over the world – New Zealand (me, of course!), Australia, the United States, Italy, England, Scotland. It was great to see such an international group coming together with our love of sewing and vintage things, and sharing them with each other! (And if there’s anyone reading my blog who isn’t interested in that sort of thing, this is where you can tune out. But then, why on earth would you be reading my blog if you weren’t interested in sewing and lovely vintage clothing, fabrics, patterns and trims?!?)

I was super-excited when I got home today and found a little package addressed to me, all the way from the lovely Meg from Meg the Grand, in Chicago. Yippie! And I was even more excited when I opened it, and found this super-brilliant stash of loveliness!

Isn’t it gorgeous?!

Meg was kind enough to send me the following:
– a length (around 2 metres) of stunning silk graduating from bright to dark blue
– 6 vintage buttons her Grandmother gave her (thanks, Meg’s Grandmother! ) (you can’t tell in the photo unfortunately, but they’re kind of zig-zagged shaped around the top, which is a rather awesome retro style in my opinion!)
– some buttercup yellow vintage double-fold bias tape (also from Meg’s Grandmother)
– some single-fold blue bias tape (I do love me some bias tape!)
– beige seam binding (which is something I’ve been meaning to try using – clearly you read my mind, Meg!)
– flexi-lace seam binding (which I’m going to have to do some visible seam binding with, coz it’s so pretty)
– vintage white ric-rac with sparkley gold zig-zags on it (so so awesome!)
– 4 yards of very cute white ribbon with little multi-coloured tulips on it (which also look like the PacMan ghosts if you hold it upside down – I can’t decide which way up is best, in fact! Maybe I can make it stretch to two garments and have some each way….)
– and a very lovely card she wrote me!

As you can see with all the exclamation marks, I’m somewhat excited by this stash of goodies. It was such a great thing to come home to today as well, since I ended up working 12 hours today (yes, on a Friday! Argh!) and had that horrible feeling of knowing you’ve left so much urgent work still to be done when you leave. Gah. So, thanks Meg, you’ve brightened my day lots! Now I have to think about where I’m going to use these goodies! Yay!

Ultra-cute fabric wallet

For those who don’t know, I’m a member of a craft group called Crafty Foxes. (Coz we’re foxy and we’re crafty, geddit? Ha.) Anyways, one of the things we do to encourage us to branch out and try other crafty things, is to have craft swaps. Every six weeks (or thereabouts) we draw a new theme, everyone who’s interested in taking part registers for it, and then names are drawn out at random to decide who’s making for who. Everyone knows who’s they’re making something for, but no one knows who’s making something for them. Fun! And, of course, it has to be within the theme, just to add a bit more of a challenge to it all.

The last craft swap theme was the $5 challenge. We each had to make something for someone else without spending more than $5, and without using materials from our craft supplies stash. (Except for obvious things that it would be silly to buy again, such as thread and knitting needles.)

I had the lovely Christina for my swap partner, and decided to try out one of the many super awesome tutorials I’ve been finding online. I went to a massive garage sale, and found some pretty brown floral fabric, and some brown cotton drill, which conveniently went quite well together. Then I went hunting through the long (looooong) list of tutorials I’ve booked marked as ones I want to try making.

As soon as I saw this tutorial, the decision was made. Cute, practical, and would work well with the two fabrics I had. (And, of course, I thought Christina might like it.) Perfect!

So, here’s the tutorial I used: http://verypurpleperson.com/2009/10/wallet-tutorial.html

And here’s the results!

Fabric wallet - open

Fabric wallet - closed

Crafty Foxes ‘reconstructed tshirt’ swap

So for those who don’t know, I am a member of the Crafty Foxes, a super-fantastic group of gals who meet every couple of weeks to eat, drink, hang out, and work on whatever random crafty type stuff we’re doing at the time.

We also have craft swaps every couple of months, with a  different theme each time.  Two months ago, we started our latest swap – reconstructed tshirts.  Everyone who was taking part gave an old tshirt of theirs to another swap participant, who then had to turn said tshirt into something else over the course of the two months.  Then tonight, we had our end-of-swap meeting, where we all hung out at Katipo Cafe (gotta love those red walls!) and handed back the tshirts, in their new forms.

For the swap, I got given a tshirt from the lovely Teresa.  Pale grey marle, with a pegasus print on the front.  Teresa told me that she loved the print, but not the colour.  So, I decided to turn her tshirt into….  a different tshirt.  Yes indeed.  I found some great black-and-white-striped tshirt fabric (coz Teresa is all about gothic 1950′s style), which I used for the front and back of a new tshirt.  I then cut the pegasus print out of the front of her old tshirt, and added it to the front of the new tshirt.  I made the sleeves out of the back of her old tshirt, and after that sadly there wasn’t enough fabric left over for me to turn into anything else overly interesting….

My other swap partner (the one who was making something for me) was the also-lovely Natalie K.  I handed her one of my old breast cancer awareness tshirts, which though I loved, was too short.  Black thing, with big pink cartoon daisys on it.  Tonight she gave it back to me in it’s new form – a pair of sleeves!  Which are ultra-cute.  They’re long (halfway up my bicep) and have thumb holes, and each has a daisy on it whose cartoon face sits on the back of your hand.  So cute!  I loves them lots. 

Here are some pics of the creations I made and received….