Hiiiii bloggg! This is another sewing project, a cupcake apron for my roommate Ruchi. This is the perfect gift because:

1. She is totally into cupcakes they are her favorite thing.


2. She recently picked up the hobby of baking and aprons are a staple of baking.


3. It’s handmade, which is a requirement for my gift-giving.

I got the fabric, ribbon, and pattern from jcarolinecreative, which has such an extensive selection (yay!) but I drove myself insane trying to find the perfect fabric as Ruchi would have loved so many. Woven fabric is so cheap compared to yarn and I definitely respond more to textiles. Plus sewing is fast and with each thing I make I get better and better. I’ve sort of plateaued with knitting; I started doing things my own way rather than learning the proper techniques and that has inhibited my learning.

There are some technical aspects about the apron which aren’t perfect and they betray that the item is handmade, but that gives it charm. I finally learned to sew in a straight line (that little flipper thing that “locks” the fabric in place when you flip it down? It totally needs to be down!) and I’m proud of that and I cut the pattern out on my own using Kraft Paper, which I have a ton of that I didn’t know how to ditch…until now. NOW I CAN MAKE PATTERNS.

I also made piping, which was kind of a pain in the ass in the way that I know that with enough practice I will master it. The ribbon detail on the pocket is an afterthought and is therefore not neat. I had to take that part from the neckstraps (like a graft) and I added a snap enclosure for it because it could no longer be tied around the neck or fit over the head if I had sewn the edges to make like a closed neck. The apron is tied around the back.

Pants vs no pants.

Sloppy details, but an attempt yet.

Hellooo. I made another box bag. This one for my friend Brian’s girlfriend. I got some heavier needles for my machine and was able to get this one looking mostly like the example I followed, nevermind some quirky slantiness. I intend to give this to her when I gift Brian with his handknit size 13 socks which are probably too small (complete, but waiting for a trip through the wash) for his birthday.

This item is “interfaced” with canvas, lined with old pajama pants from Old Navy, and the
exterior fabric is from Reprodepot, who, by the way, LINKED ME THANKS.

Goatse-ing the bag. Plaid inside!

I have a backlog of completed and near-completed items to be introduced but my camera is a total diva. It has some sort of congenital defect and it’s entiteld to free repair but the problem is intermittent so I’ve been waiting for it to screw up so that I can do something specific to it so that Canon can confirm the problem, but of course it only screws up when I really need it to work and it hasn’t screwed up since I learned what I need to do for Canon. I baked over 40 heart shaped butter cookies for Valentines Day and gave two to each of my friends telling them to eat one and share the other with someone they love and it’s as if it never happened.

I also started school again and do some minor knitting during classes and the like but that’s pretty much it. I’m having a great semester so far and I’ve met some amazing people. I gave up sculpture because of my sudden but not unexplained distaste for that microcosm of The Art Department and so many opportunities have opened up to me as a result. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on beyond the realm of what this blog is typically about and I look forward to introducing it all once my camera stops being all Beyonce.

I consider myself pretty candid about things I make. However, for my first major sewing project in years I think I’d rather pretend that my first time came out totally awesome and hide all the ways I felt challenged or may have screwed up, which, for the purposes of this entry, are all theoretical. I think that when it comes to first times, it’s perfectly okay to not try to be perfect, but that’s the only time it’s okay. Expect more indiscretion the next time I make this bag, which will probably be once a week until I work my way up to Amy Butler’s Weekender Bag, which has been in my future since I saw it on craftoholic.

I haven’t been able to do a single thing until I made this bag. I go back to school Monday and owe a boy with size 13 feet a pair of socks and I only have one toe. I did this bag all in one night (as in, all night) and there are some definite “lol”s about it. I used all recovered materials which made it easy to not be precious, but then there were some aesthetic compromises I would not ordinarily have made. Canvas was the “interfacing” and clean parts of soiled pajamas made up the lining on the inside. I paint, therefore I soil clothes and happen to have well over 100 square feet of canvas ready. The outer lining was made up of fabric scraps from some fabric I had bought from reprodepot once. I intended to make a mixed-media project from it but I guess it never materialized. :) I bought the zipper months ago in Boston and I have no idea why. My mom’s house is still kind of new to me and I can’t find anything (also, she hides things) so I used the straightening iron I use for my hair to iron out the fabric. That part was awesome.

I used my late Great Aunt Dorothy’s sewing machine. IT IS ACTUALLY VINTAGE. IT IS FROM THE 1960S. IT REMEMBERS A DIFFERENT TYPE OF BRING OUR TROOPS HOME. I don’t know anything else about this mystery machine. My mom supplied me with a Singer manual from 1968 but the machine doesn’t say Singer on it anywhere and the model number taxonomy doesn’t match the Singer convention. I thought it might be a Pfaff because of the way the knobs are styled, plus the old Pfaffs went crazy with the knobs and this has three. I hate that I’m a total genius and yet even with magic Google I cannot identify this machine. It sucked when trying to figure out the freakin Rube Goldberg device that is threading the needle and I’m still not sure why sometimes I get a zig-zag stitch when all I want is not that. There were a lot of knick knacks that my mom gave me along with the sewing machine and so to get near the zipper I used some foot that was just slimmer than the default but I don’t know if it was a zipper foot per se. There’s so much I need to learn about this machine it’s amazing(ly ill-timed with the start of a new semester).

I had to handstitch a lot at the end because the fabric was too thick and I didn’t know to handle it, plus I was cranky. I think handstitching is invaluable anyway, and would not mind improving my hand at stitching. I want to make these bags for everybody and put goodies in them and give them as gifts. Actually, when I was done sewing this one, I thought about putting my sewing notions in it but that reminded me of this joke that either belongs to George Carlin or Rusty Ward about buying a garbage can and carrying it home in a bag, then putting the garbage bag inside the can.