A cat for Cat

Remember the Pay It Forward 2011 craft challenge? Turns out I got a bit behind in making things for people. Oops! :-/

But I figure, better late than never, so this month I’m going to get the rest of my little gifts for people done and sent away, as a bit of a post-Christmas surprise.

First up, I made a little softie cat and some chocolate truffles for my friend Cat. (Coz Cat likes cats.)

The cat softie was made from the book ‘Softies’ – lots of cute ideas in there. I made him (her?) from some scraps (softies are great for scrap busting, by the way) of leopard-print faux fur fabric that I think came from the hem of my friend Hilaire’s coat. It was a bit horrid to turn through as the fabric was quite stiff and thick, but worth it I reckon. After all, everyone needs a faux fur leopard print cat, no?

More fun and games with pattern pouches

Remember that pattern pouch pocket I made last week? I decided to give it to a fellow sewist.

Which meant I still needed one for my own patterns. More than one, actually, as often have a couple of patterns on the go at once.

And since I was making two for myself, and I had enough fabric, I thought I’d make one for another sewing buddy too.

And then an extra one, just for the heck of it.

Yep, I made four new pattern pouches this Tuesday.

Scrap busting weekly mission = accomplished.

I’ve decided I’m going to give the fourth pattern pocket away as a giveaway on here. Just as soon as I decide what else to put with it. Maybe I’ll figure all that out later this weekend…..

Pattern pouch pocket

Here’s a little something I whipped up for scrap busting Tuesday this Friday. (Wrong day, but the intent was still there!)

Often (pretty much always) when I’m sewing something up, I end up with the pattern envelope and most (or all) of the pattern pieces in one part of the room, and the instructions over near my sewing machine. Since I usually use vintage patterns, I don’t like to put the instructions away every single day, for fear of damaging the envelope. And sometimes I like to keep some pattern pieces out too, either to refer to the markings or to cut interfacing or lining a bit later on.

So, this little pouch is to keep all those bits and pieces together in one protected-from-the-cats place. It even fits a few patterns in it, in case I want to take any away on holiday (coz you know, some of us sewing geeks do that sometimes, right?).

It was incredibly quick and easy to whip up – perfect for scrap busting! (And yes, the kowhai blossoms are the right way round on the other side – this is just one big rectangle, so no seams at top or bottom to get in the way of neat pattern storage.) If I ever give patterns for gifts to people, I’m thinking I’ll whip up one of these for them as well as it’ll double as cute wrapping paper.

SBT – red and paisley Peter Pan collar

Another Tuesday, another scrap busting Tuesday (SBT) project!

This week, I decided to make a gift for a friend and try out something I’ve been wanting to try making for a while – a reversible Peter Pan collar. Fun!

I found this cute pattern over on BurdaStyle a while back, and it’s been sitting there, waiting to be made up. Today was the day! Hunting through my scrap pile, I thought it would be fun to make the collar reversible, with some of the red left from my pink and red dress and the paisley cotton that was the original (and rapidly detached!) sleeves from my Betsey Johnson shirt. I do like making things from the scraps of old projects – it kinda feels like tying everything together nicely, in a way. Quite satisfying.

Anyway, this little collar came together quickly and easily and was lots of fun to make.

It feels a bit too big for around my neck though – next time I think I’ll take it the pattern in by about 1cm down the centre fold (I cut on the fold rather than as the two separate pieces that the pattern called for – why use a seam if you don’t have to?) and see if it sits better. I think it’s cute though – I may have to make one for myself next Tuesday…..

Scrap Bustin’ Tuesday – Blossom Bunny

Scrap Busting Tuesday. And this week, I had No Idea what I was going to make. No ideas, nothing, nada. I had a vague thought that I could do something for the craft book challenge. Or maybe make something for someone else on my Pay It Forward list. But nothing was really inspiring me. I spent about 45 mins browsing websites, looking for inspiration and not finding anything that was really jumping out at me and wanting to be made. Time was running out – only an hour until bedtime, and I hadn’t even started! Eek!

Then my eyes turned to my bookcase, and my copy of ‘softies’, with all it’s cute little creatures to make. Next thing I knew, I had the rotary cutter and mat out and was making up a Blossom Bunny for Steve.

(For some reason, I’ve gotten into the habit of occasionally making a Blossom Bunny for Steve. The first one was probably 3 years ago now. He liked it a lot and took it to work for on his desk. So a couple of months later, I made him another one to go with it. Which sadly fell out of his bag and got lost – hopefully someone somewhere picked it up and adopted it. I like to think that may have happened, anyway. So a while after that, I made him a third Bunny, to replace the one he’d lost. It also went to his workplace, to keep the other one company. Then for some reason, I made him a giant Bunny for his 30th birthday, out of fur fabric. Clearly, some sort of tradition has developed, where I randomly make him a Bunny for no particular reason about once a year.)

This Bunny was made out of scraps of some of my recent sewing projects. The bottom section of it’s body was made from some of the fabric from my Sleepy Secretary blouse. The middle section was from my Willow dress. The head is from a top that I cut out for the Birds challenge and still haven’t sewn up (oops!). And the ears are from my Leaves and Hats dress. It’s a Sew Weekly Creations Bunny!

(Steve was playing around with the blue filter on his new camera, so here’s a blue-tinted-Bunny for you:)

Scrap Busting Tuesday – fabric pattern box

Yay! Today was the second of my new Scrap Busting Tuesdays plan!

Since I’ve been playing around with storing my vintage patterns, I followed on with that theme and made a fabric pattern box using some of my pile of scraps.

I’m reasonably happy with this, since I just invented it as I went along. However, I did make one key mistake – I didn’t use a heavy enough interfacing. Argh! As a result, it’s no where near as stiff as it should be, so I’ve stiffened the edges as much as I could by stitching down them again, kinda like pin-tucks. Which helped a lot, and it holds patterns fine, but it doesn’t look quite how I imagined it would. Next time I’m near a place that sells interfacing, I’m going to pick up some (much) stiffer interfacing and try again and see what happens. (After all, I have lots of patterns, therefore I’m going to need lots of pattern boxes. One per decade from the 40′s through to present, I think…..)

Scrap Busting Tuesdays!

Since the Mending Pile Monday plan has been working so well for me (several items have made their way out of my mending/alterations/UFO pile and into my wardrobe! Yay! Some took years to get there, but I’m finally making some progress!), I thought I’d give myself another challenge. Turns out I like challenges.

I have a bad habit. It’s called Keeping Scraps. You know, those bits of fabric that are just big enough they may come in useful some day. Like if I ever did a quilt. Or wanted to make an applique on a garment. Or something like that. It’s a terrible habit, resulting in lots of piles/bags/boxes of little scraps hoarded all over the place. And I suspect it’s a habit that many stitchers have, too (do you?!?).

I’ve been doing this for years. Sometimes I use the scraps. I always intend to, when I add them to my scrap collection. I always have plans for little projects to use them on. But then I always get distracted by the big garment-sewing projects. Oops. And so the pile grows…..

Hence my new challenge. I’m calling it Scrap Busting Tuesdays. The idea being, every Tuesday I’ll make something using some of the scraps. If I’m a good girl and keep it up, after about 20 years or so, I may have used most of them. (Or maybe not, since I tend to add a few to the pile each week. Hmmmm.)

I’ve got a few containers of scraps. I figured I’d pick one to start with and work my way through at least half of it before hauling another container out and trying to condense them into one. The one I choose to begin with was this lovely vintage suitcase that used to belong to my Great Aunt.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I could close this suitcase. Then the contents sort of exploded on me and I can’t shut it any more. Which somewhat destroys the appearance of my stack of vintage suitcases. So clearly, it’s the first container to tackle.

As you can see, it’s kinda jam-packed. Don’t be too alarmed though – it’s just a little suitcase. There’s my tea mug next to it, so you can get an idea of the size.

I decided for my first scrap-busting project, I’d do something I’ve been meaning to do for ages and make a mug rug. So I went hunting for a tutorial, and came across this lovely and simple one.

I had a colour theme in mind of browns and creams, so I hunted through my scrap suitcase, found some remnants of a cream cotton and a brown-and-cream loose-weave blend, and a white polar fleece scrap (which I used as batting, so it can all go through the wash easily) and made this:

It may be simple, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. In fact, I may try my hand at another, slightly more complicated one next week……