Sewing Quick Tip - Pattern Paper

After weeks (months?) of teaching myself to sew I'd like to share a couple of things I find really useful. Many books, online articles and blogs talk about techniques, styles, patters and wonderful fabrics. Most times I'm missing the "small things" though. It is much less talked about practical things around sewing. I hope to manage to write a more or less regular post about small practical things that are related to sewing.

As a beginner you probably use pre-made patters but at a certain time you want to make pattern on your own. To my great surprise this was MUCH easier than I expected it to be. To make your patter you need paper. Sewing shops supply you with whatever you need. But when you are sewing on a budget and you are not sure if the result will come out well you might hesitate you spend a lot of money just to throw it away later in disappointment. I read replacing professional sewing paper with wrapping paper or packaging paper. Of course, it is a lot more affordable but chances are you still need to spend money for it. Wouldn't it be great to spend very little (or even nothing) and do something good and recycle? YESSSSSSS!

How?!

I found the answer literally at my doorstep. My parents run a print shop which also does large format printing. The paper supplies my dad orders come wrapped in huge sheets of paper. This paper has no other purpose than to be wrapped around the actual printing paper. As soon as the printing paper is unwrapped the large format wrapping paper loses its purpose and is most likely to be thrown away. What a waste!
The wrapping paper really has a large format and is very strong and durable. Once you cut out your pattern you can keep it and reuse it many times without any damages to the paper.

So go to your local print shop (especially the ones which do large format printing) and ask them if you may recycle their packaging paper. I don't know how it works in other countries but in Germany you got to pay for anything you throw away. The more you throw away the more you pay. So you actually help them. The ideal case would be that they might look at you a little confused but then don't charge you anything and ask you to come again soon. Still, I believe it's ok if they charge you a little as you gain from it. If they don't charge you anything bring some cookies next time. From experience I can say this is appreciated very much. 

Happy pattern making! 

Musings About Closures

Making bags involves almost always involves a certain issue: closures. Personally, I really don't like bags which do not have any kind of closure. I might be a little paranoid but to feel secure I need something to close my bag (no matter how big or small the bag is).

I believe the most effective closure against pickpockets is a zipper. Many of the bags and purses I bought to far have zippers. I like them for being secure but I really hate to fiddle around with them. Usually my bags are indecently stuffed and the zipper gets stuck. I still hesitate a little to include zippers into my bags when I make them. Apparently it is not really about the confidence to sew them in, it's rather that I don't like the look of the zipper on my bags.
Therefore I usually use magnetic snaps. They are strong and easy to open and close. They are hardly visible inside of the bag and completely invisible for the outside. Magnetic snaps are easier to use than "normal" snaps. They are especially great if the bag does not need to be pickpocket proof. The magnetism of the snaps can be seen critical though. A couple of weeks I had a custom order of one the Happy Bags and customer had great doubts about the magnetic snaps as she feared it might affect her debit cards. So far I didn't have any issues with any of my debits cards, neither has anyone of my customer reported me any problems. As long as the debit cards are not wiped over the magnetic snap without protection there shouldn't be a problem. It got me thinking though. The solution in this particular case was to add a flap and attach the magnetic snap to the outside of the bag.

During the weekend I experienced with a new kind of closure. It took me three attempts to be kind of happy with it. The overall idea is to use ribbon and "holes" as a closure. What I really like about this idea is that it is not just a closure but also a very decorative element. Instead of inserting a zipper to my Sweetheart Clutch Bags I added three holes and ribbon to the top of it. I tried to sew in the holes with a technique I use for the handle of the happy bag. Huge failure! Seriously, HUGE. The handle is square and difficult to sew. The holes were meant to be circles and impossible to sew. I didn't take a photo of the result as it did not look neat at all. From the beginning on I thought that grommets would be great for the holes. It seemed to be impossible to find large grommets though. Late at night and shortly before I was about to go to sleep I came across a home decor website. Jeez, it was too easy! Grommets for curtains are perfect. No special tools, no metal to corrode. Just cutting a hole and clipping in the grommets! Of course my first trip on the next morning was to a local fabric store. I bought 12 of them (and apparently paid a rip-off price). I prepared a Sweetheart Clutch and in the end cut holes into it and inserted the grommets. 

So far, so good (or not). I like the look of the grommets but I don't like the shape of the bag. It doesn't look neat enough. I figured out that it should have pleats. A different shape overall. So unclipped the grommets to reuse them on another prototype (no need to waste six grommets!). I made another model of the same pattern, but with pleats and a stripe of fabric on top of it. The stripe turned out pretty difficult (at least the way I did it, I'm sure there is an easier way). Because of the pleats the top of the bag is smaller and I only needed two grommets on each side.

Yes, yes it's as neatly and nicely done as I want it to be. I hope I'll find some time again soon to improve it. This is one of the prototypes I'm keeping for myself to test wear it. 

As a new kind of closure this technique will be used my me more often. It would look so cute on Happy Bags, wouldn't it? 

Is there any kind of closures you prefer? Zippers or magnetic snaps? Or something completely different? 

The Sweetheart Clutch Bag

I've been downsizing a bit during the last days. Actually, I'm a friend of rather big bags as I always need lots of space for my stuff. Lately I started to make a little more "ladylike" purses. Some weeks ago I needed something rather sensible for a birthday party. I decided to go for a small clutch bag. And as I had a dark blue dress for the party I decided to for the dark blue fabric for the clutch bag as well. For quite some time I also wanted to used some old lace fabric I have in my stash. For this project it was ideal. Antique white lace over dark blue fabric. LOVE! The sewing turned out to be a big challenging. I've never worked with lace before. I carefully stitched the lace to the blue fabric. Only on the edges though. I took some time but it helped a lot during the actual sewing of the clutch bag. I lined it with some really soft pink cotton. Moreover, it was my first time sewing a zipper! I was so surprised how well it went:

A couple of days ago I had went through my stash again. I found a small amount of vintage fabric. I'm not sure what it is. My mum thinks it is polyester. It's definitely not cotton. It is very smooth. Almost like silk but not as delicate as silk. I love the flower pattern so much. It's so cute and I knew it would make a sweet little clutch bag. Again, I was so surprised how well the sewing went I love the outcome. This one I lined with smooth brown fabric.

I named them "Sweetheart Clutch Bag" as I can't think of a name more suitable than this. I might put the flower clutch bag into the shop. The lace one is so dear to me. I have to keep it for myself.

Inspiration + Result

Inspiration:

(Photos taken during our family vacation in Denmark 2010)

Result:

New Bag On The Blog

I'm very happy to announce that I came up with a new bag. It is not an alteration of any of my other bags. This new baby actually makes sense. Before I'm going to properly introduce it, let me tell you the story behind it.

Inspiration can be a real sucker. It never comes when it is badly needed, but will strike you out of nothing. In this case "nothing" is my sister Birgit who showed me an old bag which she found at our grandma's place. She asked me if I could make her a bag like that. The bag she showed me (I'm sorry, currently I don't have a photo of it) is a medium size purse with a twist: the bottom is folded to the top and attached with an rough zipper. When zipper is unzipped the bag is twice its normal size. Does my writing make sense? Probably not yet. Be patient :)
The second part of inspiration comes from my friend Jules. I can't say how many times I went grocery shopping with her and she forgot to bring a bag to carry her stuff home. Thus she bought one of those horrible plastic bags (yes, in Germany you gotta pay for your plastic bags). I hate those bags. It's just such a waste of resources and they are difficult to recycle. At home I try to reuse them, but usually they just take up so much space and in the end I never really use them. So I try to avoid them. On the other hand, often I forgot to take a reusable bag with me.

Wouldn't it be great to have a purse that turns in the large bag when it is needed? It really struck me when Birgit showed me this old bag. But instantly I saw the problem: the zipper. It's big, rough, difficult to use and even more difficult to sew in. Especially because it is not an all-purpose zipper (the only kind of zipper which I can kind of work with so far). So I started to consider alternatives. First I thought of snaps (also magnetic snaps) but I don't like to look of them when they are not closed. It wouldn't look pretty at all. Then I considered ordinary buttons. Using ordinary buttons would have meant to put button holes into the bag as well. I really didn't like the idea to have holes in my bag. Further digging into my box of "stuff" was necessary. Finally I found my little box of covered buttons. When I had those in my hand I remembered something about hair elastic being great with covered buttons. Coincidentally I still had a pack of unused ones at hand.

Two days ago I made the first prototype of it. I really liked the idea of it, but I also found a lot of things not working out as wished. Well, I passed it on to Birgit. She usually takes the stuff I make and tries them out and gives feedback. I'm sorry for the photos. As this is "only" the prototype I wasn't too careful, but I hope you already get the idea.

The first photo shows the bag folded in half. This way it can be used as a purse. Of course it is fully lined and with a smaller pocket inside. Three elastics and covered buttons hold the bottom to the top.

The second photo shows the bag unbuttoned and in it's full size. This way it can be used to carry a lot of things. A laptop fits in without problems. 

Yesterday I made another one. This time I improved some features. The handles are sewn-in more nicely and I made the bag a bit larger to make sure A$ sized documents fit in without squeezing. In the middle of the bag I added another decorative line with more elastics. This way the bag can be adjusted in three different sizes. How great is this?!


This is the bag fully buttoned. You can click on the photos to see them in full size. It is great as a purse and even A4 sized documents fit in very well and neatly. Of course, this bag is also fully lined with soft cotton and has a small pocket to keep it tidy.

This photo shows the bag being buttoned in the middle. I like it this way best as I really like rather big purses. The broad straps keep it comfortably on your shoulders. 

Here you can see the bag in its fully size. It is about 60cm (23.62") long and about 38cm (14.96") wide.

At the bottom of the bag the three buttons are sewn on. They are as useful as they are decorative! 

I think this first one is not too bad. In future I will adjust some minor details. This first bag will be listed in our Etsy Store soon. As I'm not fully satisfied with it I will list as "sample piece" for a lower price.  

Do you think this kind of a bag is useful? I'm happy about any feedback and/or questions about it! 

What Did I Sew This Weekend?

Rainy weekend. Perfect weather to sew. On saturday I didn't really know what to sew (a bag seemed too much effort) so I went through my blogroll for inspirations or maybe a tutorial. I stopped at Craft Passion and found a tutorial for this really cute plush dog. It appealed to me because pretty much all I needed to make it were fabric scraps. As I can't throw away anything my bag of fabric scraps is huge. So I sat down and cut out the pattern and fabric and tried to make the cute plush dog. I'm not to happy with the result. It is not neatly done as I'm still having troubles sewing precisely on tiny things. Nevertheless, it is cute and I'm fond of it. 

On sunday I wanted to give it a second chance. This time I enlarged the pattern to 240%. It went a lot better, but still not as neatly as I'd like to have it. And again, I love this doggie too. Now both of them are sitting on my desk and looking at me. 

Maybe I should have sewn them by hand. I had some difficulties sewing nice curves with the sewing machine. But did I mention it? I love them!

What Is Wrong With Me?!

Yesterday I drove to parents' place to stay there for a couple of days. Packing was interesting. It took about one hour: 15 minutes to pack my clothes, 20 minutes to pack to stuff my dog needs (food and such) and almost 30 minutes to pack fabric, wool and knitting/crocheting needles! What is wrong with me???

Oh, by the way: two days ago I finished a fabric notebook cover for Birgit's Moleskine notebook. It's not done nicely since I had troubles with the sewing machine to sew the layers of fabric. I like it anyways.

The Sock Travels London and Kathrin Sews Dewdrop Handbags

I'm actually back from London. The volcano decided not release more ash until I was back home. Pity. I wouldn't have minded some more days in London.

Anyways, we (my mum, my little cousin, the sock and me) had a great time. Rain only hit us on our last day so most of the time we actually had dry, but hurting feet. The sock's feet (?) were fine though. It only lost one eye. Oh, I didn't really say what "the sock" is all about!

Actually, it is pretty simple:

I borrowed a travel backpack from a friend. The night before we left I started to pack and went through all pockets of the backpack. In one tiny pocket I found a single sock. I showed it to Birgit and she suggested I should take the sock with me (since the sock was in the backpack we assumed it wanted to travel to London, too). Birgit handed me two plastic eyes and I attached them to the sock and we also added a little hat (a respirator). So this is what it looked like (I know, bad photo quality):

I took the time to make a "home" for the sock: a little paper bag. No big effort. I just printed "Sock Gone Wild" on a little paper bag:

I did my very best to take as many photos as possible with the sock. At times I felt a little weird standing in a crowd posing with the sock on my hand. The sock got around a lot: 

 

Unfortunately it lost one eye. I believe the eye got lost at Heathrow airport when I searched my handbag for my ID card. 

Even though I was sad to leave London, I looked forward to start sewing again. Since my sewing machine is still waiting to be fixed, Birgit gave me her old GDR sewing machine (which is just as good as a new one). As pointed out in the previous post, I altered the pattern of the reversible bag. Now it is about twice as big and with longer straps. This is the result: 

My next sewing project was real fun. I came across http://www.keykaloupatterns.com/ and instantly fell in love with the Dewdrop Handbags. I made two bags. The first one looks kinda out of shape. I'm more happy with the second one. Still, the seams are not sewn tidily. I'm still working on that. Anyways, I do love them and will make more of them!

Lovely Sewing Project And Pure Irony

Sewing - one of the crafts I badly want to learn. When I was a child, my mum let me try out stuff on her sewing machine and I actually made little cushions and bedcovers for my dollhouse. Unfortunately, my skills never went beyond dollhouse cushions. I think, my problem is the fact that I like to do things, but I hate to learn how to do them. I'd love to sew, but I hate to learn it step-by-step. Years after my dollhouse cushions' projects I decided it is time to start a new attempt. Also, I felt sorry for my sewing machine, which was covered in a decent layer of dusk. Yes, I actually own a sewing machine! My grandma gave it to me some years ago. She felt, she doesn't need it anymore and the machine was way too good to be thrown away. So, here I am: aspiring seamstress with no experience, but with a proper "Pfaff" sewing machine. 


For my first "bigger" project I came across a pattern of a reversible bag. The shape of the bag reminded me of one of my favorite handbags, which got pretty worn out during the years. Moreover, the pattern and instruction seemed to be doable by a beginner like me. At times I stayed at my parents' house. Perfect. In contrast to my place, my parents' house has a big kitchen with a really big kitchen table, big sunny windows, proper scissors and my mum keeps vintage fabric. 


I arranged everything I need on our big kitchen table and got busy. While cutting the fabrics, I realized the nice shape of the fabric scraps. They seemed to be perfect for little pockets. Personally, I love pockets in my handbags. I'm a rather messy person and littler pockets help me to stay organized. Also, I did not want the bag to be reversible so I chose a rather unspectacular fabric for the inside. The pockets had to be a bit more spectacular though. I wanted the edge of the pockets to be elastic. So I consulted the manual of the sewing machine and actually found a short instruction how to sew in an elastic band. To my great surprise, it was really simple and worked! I attached two small pockets outside the bag and one pocket inside. To finish the bag, I followed the instruction and it worked out great. My bag actually does look like a bag! Okay, there are some tiny things, which a proper seamstress would detect immediately, but hey, I made a bag!!

Encouraged by this first success, I decided to make another one, but bigger. I enlarged the pattern and altered the length of the straps. Last friday I bought some really nice fabric and snap fasteners. On saturday I eagerly started to cut the fabric and began to prepare the pockets. I didn't come really far. After half of the pockets something happened to my sewing machine and it refused to work. Whatever happened, I couldn't fix it on my own. I send my sewing machine to be repaired by a professional. It shouldn't take too long. On thursday I'll be off to London for a couple of days. I hope, it'll be fixed by the time I'm back. Until then i'll be grieving. It's pure irony that the machine breaks at the time I'm motivated to sew.

The Easter Post II

To finish my personal Easter roundup, I'd like to say a few words about the gift I made for my sister. In fact, the gift actually has a story.

It started on New Year's Eve 2009. We are not into New Year's Eve parties at all and decided to stay at home. From a I borrowed all ten seasons of Friends on DVD. We started with the first season on New Year's Eve and kept watching (last night we watched the last episode of season eight). In one episode in season seven, Monica bakes christmas candy. For baking she wears a pink apron. Apparently, Birgit fell in love with the pink apron. The scene was included into the intro of season seven so whenever Birgit saw the intro she started moaning about the pretty apron. I took a screen shot of the apron as it is shown in into of season seven:

I did some online research to find out whether someone else already noticed this apron and maybe knows where to get it. Of course, I wasn't successful. It came to my mind that it could not be too hard to sew an apron myself. I looked online for a suitable pattern and got lucky on Etsy. Jona Giammalva offered the almost perfect pattern. I gave it a try. I did everything I could to get Birgit out of the apartment for a weekend to have enough time and space to make the apron. I got some pink vintage fabric from my mum, but with now proper table to cut the fabric and a horrible pair of scissors this turned out to be rather challenging. Making the bias tape turned out to be an even greater challenge. Did I mention that I have no real experience in sewing and tried to do this on my own? The bias tape was meant to be rather slim and the fabric proofed to be pretty stiff. I'm also not too great in ironing. I think my little Ikea ironing board is only meant to be used to iron sleeves. I don't have any larger ironing board. So I set on my cold floor with the tiny board and the stiff fabric and tried to produce a halfway acceptable bias tape. After about three or four hours I gave up. I called my mom, stuffed all the pieces of the apron in a big bag and announced to come over as soon as possible to have her help me. The slim bias tape really freaked me out. Actually I did not even want a slim bias tape. Remember, I said "almost" perfect pattern?
When I came home and showed the pieces and pattern to my mom I decided that the bias tape has to become wider. Actually, I just wanted my mom to give me a little help and show me how to do it. Plans were changed though. We got a phone call and suddenly we expected nine more persons for our Easter brunch. I kinda panicked because I wanted everyone to have one of my knitted egg cozies and so far I had only finished four of them. So my mom took over the sewing of the apron while I sat there to knit some more egg cozies (in the end I only had seven of them).
In the end, Birgit's gift is handmade. Not really by me though. I am a little upset about that, but I'm determined to try it again some other time. Nevertheless, I believe she really likes her new apron. She can actually wear both sides. Ok, it does not really look like Monica's apron, but it is pretty close:

Actually, the reverse side looks more like the original apron, but I can't really find a photo of it. 

I think now I really rounded up my Easter Holidays. 

Oh so later Easter post

Jeez, is it really a whole week since Easter? According to my calendar it is. So it really is time to round up our Easter activities.

For Easter sunday our family invited some friends and relatives. In the end we expected about 13 persons for brunch. With this in mind I started to knit egg cozies. Inspired by fresh spring colors, I knitted seven pompom head egg cozies. They came out really great on white eggs. I couldn't resist to draw little faces on the eggs. Here is the result:

With seven eggs not being enough for 13 persons, Birgit dyed some more eggs by hand:

On saturday before Easter sunday we spent pretty much the entire day with cooking, baking and crafting for the brunch. Luckily our mom has a big kitchen with a looooooong table to work on:

Not Martha had this really great post on chocolate Easter surprise eggs. Birgit gave them a try. Had some troubles the top of the eggs without causing too much damage. After some "eager discussing" among Birgit, our mom and me (since everybody believed to know how to do it best) all eggs were opened, cleaned, sterilized and dyed. With lots of patience the inside of the eggs were coated with dark chocolate. Somehow something went wrong with coating all eggs with white chocolate so only a couple of them got a layer of white chocolate. The eggs on Not Martha were filled with small bits of candy. Ours were not. Cracking these eggs reminded us on fortune cookies. So I sat down and googled a bit and in the end found enough quotes to put in our eggs. Instead of chocolate Easter surprise eggs we had chocolate Easter fortune eggs! Before they could be enjoyed, they had to be put together again. And here the trouble really started. The top of the eggs did not really match the bottom of the eggs anymore. On most of the shells small bits cracked off. I think it was our mom who suggested to prepare a little bit of icing to glue together both parts of the eggs. Still it was quite difficult and Birgit got pretty frustrated. 

When I saw the half-finished results I suggested to make a virtue out of the little mess. None of our guests knew what the eggs are supposed to look like. So I handed Birgit sprinkles to attach to the icing and thus "decorate" the eggs.

In the end they did not look bad at all! Everybody enjoyed them and we had a lot of fun reading the quotes to each other. 

The sprinkles you see on the eggs were meant for my cupcakes in the first place. And there we are: the cupcakes! Ever since I traveled to New York City last year and had those really great cupcakes from around the corner of our hotel I wanted to try to make some myself. An Easter brunch seemed to be to the perfect occasion. I found the blog HowToEatACupcake some time ago and looked forward to try out one of the recipes. I decided to go for the Vanilla Cupcakes with Mint by Amy Sedaris. Except that I did not want any mint. For the frosting I decided to use the Vanilla Buttercream frosting of Karen's cookies cakes & more. I divided the frosting into three batches and added green, pink and blue food coloring. That was fun. I love colorful food. 

I finished them with some sprinkles and it took me all my strength not to sample them immediately. When I finally got to try them on Sunday morning I knew these recipes would go into my personal recipe collection. I mean, THEY ROCK! In fact, they taste as great as they look:

Apparently I cannot upload more photos to this post so I gotta stop here. I'll try to write an additional (late) Easter post since I definitely want to talk about Birgit's Easter gift!