Tag Archives: drawstring bags

Sep30

September roundup

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September roundup

Hello! September was a pretty good month, if you ignore the fact that there was another major fire south of us. Thankfully, with the cooler weather, it was far less devastating and didn’t burn down any homes.

It’s hard to capture the deep orange-ness of the sun when viewed through smoke.

I did get to enjoy a few more beach days before the chill set in.

The water was…..refreshing?!

Last time I showed you a pile of quilt squares. These were assembled and backed and quilted and the result is…

…a 6 ft square bed-sized quilt with a scrappy binding and machine quilting radiating out from two points on the quilt. It was quite the challenge to get all that bulk under the arm of my machine.

I have already given this to the intended recipient, a lady I’ve known for 25 years and who lost her home in the wildfire in August.

A super fun project I sewed this month was this sweater.

The fleece is printed to look like crocheted granny squares and I knew I had to have some as soon as I saw it.

I made sure to buy enough to make a matching beanie.

My friends and I had a sewing day, which was a belated birthday celebration for my 61st, and we made Japanese knot bags.

These were mine. As usual, the sewing wasn’t perfect but the cute fabric makes up for it!!

Earlier this year, I made a batch of drawstring bags as a commission. This month I made another batch of 25, lined this time, as a donation to Vegfest. Of course I decided that the fabric had to have a fruit or vegetable theme.

These went into the goody bags on the day. My friend said that next year we should jointly make 100 so that every bag gets one! We’ll see!

Vegfest was fun. It’s so nice to be surrounded by so many vendors selling stuff that I can eat or use without worrying that it has animal products inside. I had helped to round up donations ahead of the big day, and the day before we were filling gift baskets. On the day we had more donations to add, and I was busy with that in the morning, on the door in the afternoon, and helping to clean up at the end.

A finished project that I’m really excited about, that’s hot off the needles today, is my second Sporto sweater. It’s a free pattern on knitty.com and last year I made a grey version. Last February I cast on this green one.

I didn’t plan it ahead of time, which meant that while I was knitting it I was trying to decide how to incorporate the contrast colours. The yarn is Scheepjes Truly Scrumptious Aran, and the main colour is Spirulina Bites. The pink which I finally used on the sleeves is Acai Bowl. I also have some Honeycomb (a mustard yellow) but it didn’t end up in the sweater.

The reason it took eight months? It sat in its project bag for months while I figured out what to do. I started to add a pocket then ripped it out. I finished the body but it was too short so I ripped back, added more length, and did a split hem. And then someone in the Vegan Ravelry group suggested a Finish Your WIPs-along and that was the impetus I needed.

So happy it’s done!

So the vlogging is ongoing over at Stitches and Slapdashery.

This is the latest episode. I’m still learning. I had to get an SD card for my phone because videos take up a lot of memory. I want to record a crochet tutorial but I’ve been having the darndest time setting up the camera in such a way that you can’t see the tripod legs! And I’ve had my new mic run out of juice and had to re-record footage, and the beanie tutorial will be redone because of camera shake! I’ll get there!

I’m looking forward to an October full of creating, and enjoying wearing the warm layers which I have spent so much time making! Happy times.

Jun17

New stuff

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My sewing and cutting tables have had a face-lift. This is peel and stick vinyl wallpaper and I ordered it from Amazon. I’ve seen so many videos where they have a nice background and I decided I needed something like that when I’m photographing my FOs or making videos.

The process of applying it to the tables was more complicated than I realised, but luckily I have capable men around my house to help!

There’s been a lot of good eating around here lately. I bought the book Vegan Comfort Classics by Lauren Toyota. It’s dangerous! So many good recipes but so calorific. I didn’t get a photo of tonight’s dinner, but it was crispy crabless cakes with jalapeño aioli, which we had with oven fries. So good!

This is a baby blanket in progress. The yarn is gorgeous. It’s Järbo Cookie in the Candy colourway. A soft fuzzy acrylic with 600 metres in a 200 gram cake, it’s a joy to work with. Not knowing how big a blanket would be achievable with the one cake, I started a simple centre out granny and I’ll just keep going until it’s gone.

These drawstring bags have taken me a while. I was asked by a friend to sew 25 gift bags, for pay, and I actually cut out 28, so they are getting three bonus bags. They are unlined – I zigzagged the edges before sewing them together (that took ages as well as a whole lotta thread).

The ribbon that I found is a perfect match for the cotton prints. And they are done, and I can now move on to a new project.

As for the new vlog, Stitches and Slapdashery, it’s live and I’m happy that so many people have already viewed it. Hope you enjoy it!

Jan20

Happy Friday!

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It’s a gloriously sunny day today. The last couple of days of sunshine have been very welcome after the fog and cloud of the previous couple of weeks.

Work was quiet today and I got to leave early so I unexpectedly have a free afternoon.

So, how should I spend it? I guess I could add to the Elevation cardigan which has a sleeve and a bit left to do.

I think that each time I change to a new colour I have to get used to it and get over the thought, “Does this work or does it look terrible?!” So I don’t always want to crochet on it.

I could go for a walk in the sunshine. My logical brain is saying that’s what I SHOULD do.

I could go downstairs and play with fabric.

Or lift some weights.

Before I make a decision, I’ll show you what I made with the coffee-themed fabric from the stash.

Each bag has two coasters, a bag of coffee beans and a bar of chocolate inside. I had to fussy cut the fabric just right so didn’t bother looking up a tutorial. I’ve made a lot of bags like this before.

Looking forward to a fun weekend. We are going to a hockey game for the first time in years. And friends are coming for a potluck on Sunday. Hope your weekend is awesome!

Nov9

Snow, sew, and stash

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Winter has arrived!

We’ve had a fair amount of snow in the last few days and as usual it feels like it took everyone by surprise. The roads are icy and not everyone has their winter tires on yet!

I just had a couple of days off and made sure that one of those days was a Sewing Day which I totally embraced by wearing my Hello Kitty fleece onesie ALL DAY!

I sewed three zipper pouches and three drawstring bags (they don’t have strings yet) out of some really cool nylon or polyester fabric that my son brought home from work one day, ages ago. The fabric panels used to hang in a computer store and have some great colours in them.

I also made this Reader’s Wrap from a ribbed velour. It has two pockets and since taking this photo I have added a label embroidered using text on my sewing machine. It’s for my mum who is having a bit of a health crisis right now.

And the stash has been enhanced with the addition of some Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn in autumnal colours. A friend just had a holiday south of the border and she asked me if there was anything I’d like from Hobby Lobby or Joann’s and I suggested this yarn. I’ve heard it mentioned a lot online. It feels pretty nice and I can make something 70s inspired or some fall decor maybe.

My Wool Warehouse order is on its way which is very exciting. When it arrives I’ll be able to put together this year’s Advent collection for myself.

Oct11

Happy Thanksgiving

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Happy Thanksgiving

It’s Canadian Thanksgiving today and I am feeling thankful for many things.

Walking in the sunshine

Sewing with colourful fabrics

Eating good food

Family, friends, and you, dear readers.

It’s been a beautiful day, warm sun, cool air, leaves turning, squirrels gathering.

Dinner was fairly simple, just stuffed portobellos and roasted vegetables. The potatoes came from our garden and the purple cauliflower, carrots and Brussels sprouts came from the farmers market. We had apple crumble made with local Mac apples.

I’ve been sewing small drawstring bags with cottons from the stash. I need 24 small ones for my self-created yarn Advent calendar plus a larger one for the new knitting needle set which I’ll open on December 25th.

I had a production line going this afternoon but had to stop to cook dinner. Now that’s out of the way, I can get back to it.

My knitting and crochet WIPs haven’t changed much.

And I’m really enjoying this new tea from my favourite tea shop, with frothy soy milk and maple syrup.

I hope you all have a great week.

May6

Just an old bag lady

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Just an old bag lady

Well, we’ve had a lovely run of sunny weather…until today. This morning was grey and wet, with solid rain falling vertically for quite some time. I love it. Good for the garden! Now it’s dry, but windy. Weird!

So yeah, I’m definitely a bag lady this week. Four new bags made.

Ali of Little Drops of Wonderful, in partnership with Claudia of Crochet Luna, is running a Dodgy Bag Make-along #dodgybagmal2020 which is inspiring me to make even more bags! Here’s another of the project bags from Erica Arndt’s tutorial – I’ve made a lot of these now – and I used some of my dwindling peace sign fabric in conjunction with some solid cottons and denim. I used my new machine to embroider “handmade” on the front and I added a couple of pockets inside.

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This small crocheted bag was an “I need something to crochet while I walk” project. Yesterday I decided it was going to be a long walk, so I grabbed a bag and some yarn and a hook and set out. It’s two partial cakes of Caron Cupcakes, different colourways, held together and single crocheted with a 5.5mm hook. I made most of it while walking for well over an hour. When I got home, I decided to line it. Well, the first attempt to make a lining failed because I made it too narrow so that became a separate little bag.

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Then I cut some solid purple and used that to line the crocheted bag, extending the lining above the level of the crochet to make a drawstring casing.

Seeing my work in progress sitting on top of its denim project bag got me all excited about combining crochet and denim in one project. So today, after breakfast and noodling around on the computer, I went down to my sewing room and rummaged in my denim offcuts. I have lots of old jeans, most of which have now been cut up for bags, but I found a good-sized chunk which I cut and trimmed to make an asymmetrical project bag.

It’s basically the back pocket and top part of the leg, and one belt loop was attached at the top. I removed three more belt loops from what was left of the waistband and sewed them to the top of my new bag. Before sewing the side seams, I attached the crocheted mandala to the non-pocket side, anchoring the centre with a button. I discovered a new stitch on my sewing machine which looks like overlocking, so I used that for the side seams, and then I added part of the jeans seam as a drawstring, plus a large button.

To give you an idea of size, the bag is 13″ tall when lying flat, and the crochet mandala is 7.5″ across.

There has been some yarny progress on my only WIP, however I seem to have a repetitive strain injury at the base of my left thumb which makes knitting a little uncomfortable. However, here it is in all its scrappy glory.

Last time I measured it, it was about 18″ deep, and I’m probably aiming for 60″. Also, I think the measurement across (when the tube is laid flat, double thickness) is about 48″, though it’s hard to tell for sure. It’s 370 stitches around (and around, and around) but it’s great Netflix knitting. I had to do some minor repairs on the bottom edge the other day, as the vacuum cleaner sucked in a couple of tails and I realised afterwards that one row had been pulled really tight for a few inches either side and there was a live loop randomly hanging out. Oops!

We had an enjoyable dinner of homemade sushi, coconut rice and baked spicy tofu and once that has had a chance to digest Mr Fixit and I are going to do some yoga. Happy crafting!

 

 

 

Dec18

On a roll

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Since my last post, I have made four more bags. I managed to get daylight shots of all five, just before it got too dim outside.

I love sewing days! No outside commitments (except I will go to the gym tonight with Tai Chi Man to counteract my sedentariness). No need to do anything except throw my fleece onesie over my PJs, drink tea, eat a bit, and sew. I set up my laptop on the table behind me so that I could listen to YouTube videos while I played with fabric.

The process is getting quicker, once I’ve made the decision as to which fabrics to put together. First bag today took two hours, the last was more like an hour and a half.

These three use the same range of fabric, but are all different…

And this one uses some cat fabric which has been in the stash for a long time…

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I started out by boxing the bottom corners with a 2″ square, but I changed it to 1.5″ and find it looks better. I also now use 32″ of ribbon instead of 36″ as it’s plenty long enough and will make my ribbon go further.

I’d like to keep going with these. Now that I have the method memorised, I am getting more efficient.

And now I need to get back to my bread dough which is rising in readiness for hamburger buns. I have black beans cooking in the pressure cooker to make beanburgers for dinner. Ta ta for now.

 

Dec3

Snow, sewing and soup

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Today turned out to be a snow day. The flakes were flying horizontally and I was very grateful to have zero outside commitments so that I didn’t even have to change out of my PJs!

I spent most of the morning and afternoon in my sewing room, with just a couple of breaks to fetch lunch and hot drinks. I made another of these drawstring bags (tutorial from Erica Arndt on YouTube), using up more of the snowman fabric that I made the quilt with. This is a very easy bag to make and I could just go on and on making more and more! (And my new walking foot works beautifully!)

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I managed to get daylight photos of the bag around lunchtime, but the two projects I finished this afternoon were completed after dark, so indoor shots in artificial light only.

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Both this easy zippered pouch above and the drawstring bag below are from video tutorials by WhitneySews. (That’s my ironing board with the cute cup and mug print.) I added a turtle charm to the zipper.

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This bag coordinates with the zippered pouch, as I used the same spool fabric for the main part of this bag, and also lined the zippered pouch with it. The fabric on the outside of the zippered pouch is the lining of the drawstring bag. It’s a pretty big bag, though when I boxed the bottoms I took quite a chunk out, so it is probably a bit smaller than it could have been.

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Once again, the ribbons used for the drawstrings were from stash, ones that I bought when I was doing the farmers and crafters market about 5 years ago. The skinny teal and orange ribbons were a bit thin to use on their own, but as they both coordinated perfectly with the spool fabrics I used them together.

I’m hoping to convince Tai Chi Man to go out for a walk after we’ve eaten our root vegetable and lentil soup (good warming comfort food) and then if I have time I might just have to do more sewing.

So many tutorials, so little time!

Jun20

Hello dear readers

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My apologies for the long silence. What was that? Oh, you didn’t miss me at all. Well then!

I’m sure you realised that I was on holiday and that of course I was staying in a house with no internet, no wifi (oh, the horror!) and I had to snatch moments of internet time at other people’s houses or coffee shops where the speed was as slow as a snail with a broken leg.

I have to admit it’s good to get away from the dependence on ipads/ipods for a bit. We all had more sunshine and exercise than we get at home. We also had some good family and friends visiting time, back in the island of our birth.

For those who haven’t heard of Jersey (no, not New Jersey, the original Jersey) it’s a small island in the English Channel. One of the Channel Islands, close to France but part of the British Isles. There’s a whole lot of info about it on Wikipedia if you’re interested.

We stayed with my FIL, spent time (not enough) with my sister and mum, met up with some of Tai Chi Man’s numerous cousins, had dinner with an old friend of mine from way back when our children were small. It was great to have a mini reunion with two schoolfriends, one of whom I saw four years ago; the other I haven’t seen for over 35 years. I love my sister’s family – my niece and nephew have become delightful young adults, and she has two stepsons and a daughter-in-law now.

I actually swam in the sea – it was freezing!

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We walked a lot, sometimes twice a day, along cliff paths, narrow lanes and beachfronts. We were reminded of the joys and frustrations of living on a small island with too many cars, miles of winding roads (some of which are only the width of one car) and the constant issue of whether one will find a parking space.

I bought souvenir yarn…

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This from a small but well-stocked shop called Country Wools which I came across accidentally next door to a farm shop. They even had Stylecraft!

My sister had booked 12 of us for a tour to the Ecrehous, a reef that lies between Jersey and France. We showed up early on a drizzly Sunday morning, wondering whether it was a good idea, but even though the boat operators gave us the option of cancelling or postponing, we went ahead anyway. We were provided with waterproof jackets and lifejackets and took our seats in the rigid hull inflatable. It’s a good thing we all had handles to grip, because it was a white knuckle ride across the open sea to the reef, but in a good way! The drizzle stopped as soon as we left the harbour, and the sea was pretty calm, but there were still some interesting bumps to make some of us scream as if we were on a rollercoaster. That was fun!

The reef itself is, at high tide, made up of a few tiny islands – at low tide, a sandbar is exposed. There are some fishermen’s cottages built there which are rented out in the summer months. One of Tai Chi Man’s cousins actually honeymooned there. You have to take everything you need, including fresh water, and there is nothing to do except swim, sunbathe and watch birds. The day we went, it was a little chilly, but three of our group did go in the sea, and a couple of seals popped their heads out of the water really close to my nephew as he stood in the sea. Of course it happened when he didn’t have his GoPro to hand.

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This is my windblown tourist look!

We were on the reef for a couple of hours, and hadn’t taken any food with us as we had lunch planned for later at my sister’s house. Or so I thought. I sat on the pebbly beach and dug into my backpack for something and found two bars of chocolate. My brother-in-law is an avid photographer and you can’t move without being in danger of having it recorded for posterity, hence this shot. The boat ride back was more eventful as we were accompanied by dolphins, which really made the day special.

Our round trip to Jersey was over 14,000km, with three flights each way. It’s a long way to go for only two weeks but it was worth it to see everyone again. However it’s good to be home. There’s nothing like your own bed, your own kitchen. Sometimes I think the purpose of going away is to make you appreciate what you have at home.

Before I sign off, I had better show you my FOs. I have no current WIPs as I haven’t decided what to make next.

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More gift bags for jewellery, most of which were given away. And the finished Dragonfly scarf, which was left in Jersey with my sister. The colours are more blended in real life.

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That’s it for now. I have to work tomorrow so I should probably get to bed and dream about my next project!