Watermelon Tea Cozies

These are watermelon tea cozies.

These are two watermelon tea cozies.

Watermelon tea cozies are good for keeping your tea warm, because we all know that you use a teapot when you make tea.

I use tea cozies when I make tea. They keep tea warm for hours. I like drinking tea for hours.

I also like watermelons. They go good with rollkuchen.

What do you like to eat watermelon with?

Denim/Jeans Apron

The denim apron.

When making yourself a denim apron, there are several styles to choose from. I chose to construct this one out of long rectangles/a pair of jeans because I like a smooth look. The jeans' waistband was used in the back, so only people my size can this particular apron. I assume that the apron being fitted prevents people from stealing it but that's just an assumption and I'm not actually that worried about it.

Tree Theme Blanket

This here is a tree themed blanket. I sewed this for my cousin when she didn't bring blankets to college.

Basically it's a tree with a little bird in it. There are some grammar shapes on the bottom as a TESOL joke. Because TESOL people (and TEFL people too) are cool.

For this blanket, I adapted the basic square to create more of a round shape and I used some old tan pants to create the tree trunk. I made this in about a week, but I should have put the time in to buy some light blue fabric. Since there is such an awkward colour contrast, it is hard to tell what the blanket is supposed to look like.

Teenage Hairpins

One of the things I find hard to style is my hair. It is straight and doesn't hold shape, so I have given up and usually put it into a ponytail. It also becomes a horribly knotty mess once it is a certain length long. Is there a solution for this? I don't know. I wasn't paying attention when the kids my age were learning that sort of stuff. I also don't know how to properly use hairpins, for the same reason. But I do know that I can make fun hair pins. I kind of wish I were back in highschool or junior high so that I could wear them. Here are some examples of stuff I've made.

The one on the left says 'saranghae' in Hangul (Korean)  which means 'I love you'. The one in the middle is meant to make it look like there is a zipper in your head. I can't wear either of these to work. The giraffes on the left were made of foam bits. I ended up giving them to my cousin who is of age to wear them. Lucky her.

Rainbow Blanket #1

I enjoy sewing. Or rather, I enjoy the product of the sewing process, the process of creating, and the texture and colour of fabric.

For those who are interested, the following is my sewing background.

I started sewing as a wee child, making Barbie clothes. Then at age 12 I upgraded to gym bags, top-hat toques, and boxers (the ever popular first home-economics project). In high school I further upgraded to sewing lingerie, shirts, and a suit jacket. Those were all my teacher's fault. It was because of that teacher, the teacher who made us put shoulder pads in suits, that I learned how to sew blankets. And since I am frugal, the first thing I resorted to when my friends started to get married was my quilting skills.
I learned quickly that queen size blankets are annoying to make as well as time consuming. I then learned that all that fancy line work just makes the project longer. It was here (see picture), at my 12th blanket that I found out I could connect the front and the back using a regular sewing machine. That's pretty much where I am at now as far as skill, but I finished over 26 blankets thus far, with baby blankets counting as 0.5 blanket.
It is pretty rewarding when people use the blankets I made in their living rooms and then tell me like my blankets and use them to nap all the time. It is also rewarding to have people appreciate them just because they like me as a person. People don't tell each other they appreciate each other enough, and the roundabout compliment is one of the ways they do that. 

As far as how this blanket was made, I made six inch squares and sewed strips between them to form the core. Then I just added long strips to make it larger.

Pillows in "Brown"

These are a pillow set I made about a while back. They're reversible for a variety of looks. The most flattering part of these was when my relatives thought they were store bought. Yay.

The Sports Blanket: Part 1

This hockey rink is part of an ultra manly sports themed blanket that I worked on. It took really long because I made it king sized, which is a really annoying size to make.

For this one, I sewed the lines onto a large piece of fabric. It turned out that the process of cutting long strips, ironing them flat and then sewing them onto large pieces of fabric is a long and arduous task. Next time I will sew small strips of fabric together in order to create a large piece of fabric.

Swing Dance Skirt in Blue

A big part of my life right now is swing dance. Therefore, I like to attempt to make attractive skirts for the purpose of swing dancing. Since swing dancing includes lots of movement (pants/skirts slowly edging down) I made this one highwaisted. Using a pink ribbon at the top, I completed the waist band.

 However, since I have a paunch, I used ultra new high-techy techniques to make it so that a high skirt wouldn't give me stomach aches. Aka. I cut out the stomach part.

Baby Blankets

This year a new event happened in my life. My friends and family started to have babies! Or rather, I started to sew them baby blankets. I have hordes of small bits of fabric at home and I really enjoy buying more fabric (as long as it's cheap), so sewing often  helps me to be frugal while giving people a useful present.

For these two blankets, no one knew the sex of the babies at or before the baby shower. And, while babies don't care what colour they get, parents do. That's probably why more parents now are having baby showers after their babies are born.

These two blankets were made prior to knowing the sex of the baby. I was going for an androgenous look for both.

For the pink/blue/purple one, I tried to balance the blue with the purple and pink. If it was for a girl, she wouldn't be shafted with something pure pink, and if it was a boy, then it was half blue. I really liked the colour combination of these particular colours.

For the red denim one, I was trying to match it with the blanket I had given the couple the year prior. Red and blue are both attractive colours and suitable for all sexes, so it worked out well. What I was really going for here was a blanket that taught children textures. Each red square had a different level of softness, smoothness, or slipperyness. Then if the parents wanted to, they could teach their children textures.

I think both of these were a success. They were both attractive and small-child sized. Since both children turned out to be boys, I don't think the purple one will get much wear, but it will look good nonetheless and might get played with. Pockets can be intriguing things for children.

Denim Skirt: Part 1

At one point I decided that a denim skirt with suspenders would be a fun swing/eclectic look, so I tried it out. I started with a pair of jeans, slit the seams, and put in triangles. Then I put in more triangles. I tried the pinned version on to make sure that it would allow all necessary swing dance movement (ie. Charleston Stars), and then I sewed the new seams.

I then tried on the semi-complete skirt to see where the fixed-size suspenders would go and sewed on the important parts. As you can see, the skirt still needs some work like hemming, attaching the front of the suspenders, and flattening that little annoying piece on the back, but I think it's done enough that it looks like how it will look like completed.

The top that is accompanying it is the "sleeveless suit jacket" I made in summer for Ai-kon. I used my best collared shirt (two front pleats) to create a basic pattern and went from there. The green top orginally accompanied a silky geometric skirt.

Red Bag

This recent project was a simple bag, intended to carry overnight clothes in. It was made of nylon-like fabric, with an inside pocket just opposite of the outside pocket. Essentially, I made it from a large rectangle and tried to sew bottom corners into it by doing this strange triangular thingy and then I used one seam to connect two pockets to the main body.  Connecting handles and sewing nice edges also were done to complete it.

It's not very glamorous, but it should be functional. Cell phones and iPods can go in the outside pocket while more personal affects can go in the inside one, and there should be space for at least one outfit.

Re-using Upper Under Garments

"What is this?" you ask. This, my friends, is a "bra extender". What is it used for? It is used for turning strapped bras into strapless bras.

The idea is that if you have no strapless bras but need one, you can fold the strapped bra straps down and use this attachment to make your bra wrap around your torso twice. Wrapping your bra around you twice should make it more supportive and stable, while concealing your straps. At least that's the idea. The "bra extender" should also work to lower your back strap for lower-backed dresses and such.

This is a handy dandy way to recycle ratty old bras. You can keep the hooking system and attach it to a longish piece of fabric. Because there are several different hook types (widths apart) and numbers (1,2, or 3), it is a good idea to make several different ones.

Crochetted Mittens

Once upon a time I crochetted. These mittens, which are obviously photoshopped, were made during a trip in 2008.

These mittens have many stripes because I used my leftover yarn balls for these. I included L and R on the mittens because the 'pattern' I used made up was the same for both hands. Therefore I included a letter to tell me which is which. I think the letters made them more cute. 

P.S. If you know how to crochet in circles, you know about everything you need to know in order to crochet mittens.

Embroidering Letters

It's almost springtime and that means lots of things - babies and weddings, aka. sewing projects. One way to make your sewing projects fun is to use loud and colourful fabrics that match nicely. Or, you could do what I do - individualize blankets. A good way to individualize blankets is to embroider letters onto them. Here is a picture of myself doing just such a thing.

If you don't have a print-out letters and/or pictures can become mishapen or randomly sized, so sewing through a picture of your favoured letters or picture is a good idea. I always do the outline first, then I rip the paper off. If you decide an outline is good enough (because you don't have the time or patience to fill the rest in), then at least you have the outline done and  it will look pretty.

For filling an outline in, I do small stiches up and down first, filling in the whole area. Then I do side to side stiches, filling in the whole area. I think up and down stiches look the nicest, so I like to end with them, covering all the other threads and areas that got missed in the previous two layers. Since this is a lot of thread, use a timble and save your thumb. Also, do something else while you sew, like listen to music. Doing embroidery can be a very dull activity.