Another scrap project

I've been on medication for my neck issues for 3 weeks and it has turned me into a zombie. I can sleep. Maybe too much. I have lots of dreams. In my dreams, I'm often performing some housework that involves craning my neck. I'm so glad to wrench myself awake each day because it's exhausting doing housework even in your dreams. I'm still nervous about running so I haven't tried. Anyway, the weather is bad. It keeps on raining. So that's my excuse. Meanwhile, I have a huge appetite. I keep eating or thinking about eating. I'm afraid to weigh myself. Maybe I'll destroy the weighing scale...

I made something. It's a Double Zipper Pouch. I'm only excited that I used scraps.

Edit: Sale is over
If it excites you, I have a sale in my Etsy shop. It's the last sale for 2019. 20% off all bag patterns. Ends 4th Dec. Also, if you purchase my Double Zipper Pouch/Crossbody Bag Pattern, you'll get for free my Get Up & Go Go Sling Bag Pattern.

I'm gonna search the fridge for something to eat. See ya.

My Handmade Wardrobe - Hit And Miss

Although I've been sewing seriously since 2007, I haven't made many garments. I hope this doesn't shock you but I prefer to buy factory made clothes. Why? You must be screaming. The simple reason is it's a lot cheaper.

I live in Singapore and it's hot as hell. I wear cotton knit t-shirts 99.9% of the time and I wear them with a pair of dri-fit shorts or sometimes a skirt. Knit fabric is ridiculously expensive in Singapore so it's hard to justify making my own t-shirts. As for shorts I keep getting hubs' hand-me-downs so...

Having said that, I still consider making more garments simply to amuse myself and most importantly, use my fabric.

I have only made a total of 10 wearable items, mostly in 2018. Out of these, I considered 5 a complete fail so I never wore them. Not even once.

This pair of pants (blogged here) did not agree with me mainly because of the fit. It was too roomy and made me look fatter and for me, that's the most important criteria. Clothes that make me look fatter are out. I considered altering it but it's something I'm putting on a list but will probably never be motivated enough to do.

This lengthened Sailor Top (blogged here) I absolutely could not wear because of my family's reaction to it. Anyway, I can't wear it now even if I want to because guess what? My shoulder has broadened. Well, either that or I've gotten waaay fatter.

Shirt No. 1 with buttons (blogged here) never got worn simply because I didn't think it was good enough to wear out. As for wearing it at home, it just didn't make sense because I prefer to wear t-shirts.

The racerback adventure tank (blogged here) turned out not too bad but I made it 2 sizes too small. My daughter wore it to school once and decided it didn't suit her.

You must be wondering why I consider the One Hour Top (blogged here) a fail. Honestly, I don't know either. It doesn't look too bad but when I wore it, I felt I had to keep fussing with the sleeves. That annoyed me and that is why I only wore it once. Hubs kinda likes it and has asked me more than once, what happened to the polka dot thing? I told him I've lost it.

I consider these 5 successful.

The Acacia panty (blogged here) is such a perfect fit that I never wore it for fear of ruining it. I never made another pair though because I don't have a suitable fabric.

The Sailor Top (blogged here) I think I've worn out about 5 times. Then I forgot about it and one day I found it again and I tried to wear it but as we've previously agreed, my shoulders have broadened  (not fattened) and it's no longer comfortable. I'm a bit sad and one day maybe I'll make another one in a larger size. Dem those broad shoulders of mine!

Shirt No. 1 (blogged here) surprised me because I didn't think I would wear it that often. I usually wear it to the supermarket and I pair it with my dri-fit shorts. The shirt is a bit short though so I have to remember not to raise my arms unnecessarily.

I consider this skirt (blogged here) a success not because I wear it often. I haven't actually. What I love about this skirt is that it is a perfect fit and I use it as a bluprint of my lower body.

The Cleo Skirt (blogged here) was a surprise hit. When I made it, I thought I would wear it a few times at most but I've worn it so many times that some thread came loose and I had to sew some reinforcements. My daughter loves it and has requested for one. I think what makes this skirt work is the fabric choice and the 2 pockets. My daughter has already bought fabric for her Cleo skirt and hopefully I'll get off my fat ass and sew it.

Overall I'm pretty happy with my 50% pass rate. You can't be happy with every item you made. I'm going to start making wearable again (because I have a ton of fabric to get rid of) and let's see my success rate for the next 10 pieces.

Have you ever hated a fabric so much?

Dear friends,

I want to ask you a question. Have you ever hated a piece of fabric so much you lie in bed, night after night thinking up ways to kill it? Like wait till it's asleep and use a pillow to slowly snuff the life out of it? Have you hated the way the fabric smells and looks, the wrinkles on the face cloth, the smug looks it gives you, practically everything about the fabric irritates you. And of course how the fabric keeps forgetting to put the dirty dishes in the sink. I mean, just FOUR more steps and you reach the sink. Umm, where was I? Yes, the fabric I hate so much...

A long time ago, I was very into linen cotton fabric. I would buy them mostly for embroidery which I incorporate in my pouches which I used to sell at craft markets. One day I was at Chinatown looking for a solid colour linen cotton but I couldn't find any. Most times I would walk away but on that regretful day, I allowed myself to be talked into buying this butt ugly fabric. What was I thinking? Witchcraft must have been involved! Yes, it had the nice colour of linen which I love but look what's splattered all over it. Duck shit! Bits and pieces and chunks and chunks of duck shit. Try as I did, I couldn't use the fabric for a pouch or a bag. I did use small pieces of it for godknowswhat but anyway I had around 3/4 yard of it left and it sat on my sewing table for years. Every year I kept telling myself I must get rid of it once and for all. I have to use it somehow. But nothing. At the beginning of this year I washed it and it stayed hung in the laundry room for a few months. Finally 2 weeks ago, I washed the fabric because I decided the best way to kill the fabric was to use other fabric to hide it. So yes, I was going to make a quilt out of it.

I wanted the quilt to be portrait style so I needed to cut the fabric because some of it had been cut out and the shape was irregular. So the bottom was made up of 2 pieces joined together. But the important thing is I used every bit of the fabric.

I chose to use a simple cat applique (this one) because I wanted to use a needle turn applique technique instead of my usual raw stitch technique. I didn't sit down to plan this quilt as I was lazy. Instead I decided to make it as I go. I started with the big blue cat on top. Next I added the two cats at the bottom. I thought the cats looked too serious so I added the two floating cats on top and finally the tails drove me nuts so I added the blue cat in the middle to balance it out. I was quite pleased with the final arrangement of the applique and wouldn't change anything if I had to do it all over again. I eyeballed everything so it's not 100% proportionate. It's okay. I'm not one bit bothered by it. Well, I said I used needle turn applique technique but in reality I used my fingers to turn under. I don't know how people use their needles to do the turning. For me I feel so clumsy. My fingers manage to do a good job. For the really tight corners or angles, I use tweezers.

I think it's obvious I belong to the show-your-stitches camp. It only took me 3 afternoons to complete the applique. I did it while watching k-drama. The only painful part about the applique is I used my new fabric stash which I bought this year. I have so much fabric but I couldn't find anything else that I felt would be able to overwhelm the background fabric. My plan was to go colourful.

I had all these bits and pieces of fabric left after the applique was cut out so I wanted to use them up as borders. I had to pull in a few pieces of other scraps to make up the border. I notice that I tend to use a lot of blues in my quilts.

I found some batting in the storeroom and joined up some of my mother's batik to make up the back. Because the size of the quilt was larger than what I was used to handling I decided to spray bast the layers together. What a chore. There was a lot of squatting and kneeling because I had to do it on the floor. And it was smelly. I wore a mask but I got a headache afterwards.

After all that, I had to quilt the layers together. Guess what? I decided to do it by hand. I used a Sashiko thread and Sashiko needle. Still it didn't go quite as quickly. I wanted the thread to blend in more but the only colour I had that was close enough to linen was this copper colour.

Finally, the binding. My first choice was indigo. But that would mean having to go out to buy it and that would defeat the purpose of this whole exercise which is to use the fabric I already own. Finally I decided the next most pleasing choice would be this bright orange. I had found it in the storeroom, about 1 yard's worth. When I first started sewing bags around 2007, I wasn't as knowledgeable about fabric and I would buy these cheap poly-cotton fabric to practice my sewing. Well, this fabric is what's left from that "era".

The finished quilt is 28" across and 29.5" tall. It's not nearly as large as I imagined but the size was dictated by the fabric I hated. Now that the quilt is complete, I no longer see the background fabric. Instead I see the lovely cats. I think I did a really good job of "killing" the fabric. The one thing I would change is the back. I wished I had used a playful cats or even dogs fabric print but I had to stick to my principles!

I showed the quilt to my kids and both of them said SO CUTE! What do you think?

Bird On A Branch Quilt

Hello,

I'm still in the use-up-fabric-scrap business. This is my latest finish. It's called Bird On A Branch. I couldn't think of a better name. This tiny quilt took a long time to complete. It also taught me a good lesson.

First of all, I wonder if anyone could tell from the quilt, which piece of fabric started the whole thing going? I'll tell you. It's the piece of calico the sun was appliqued on. I've been clearing my storeroom and found this piece of calico that had yellowed not in a good antique-y way. Most people with common sense would throw it into the garbage bin. But I'm not most people. I decided to save the fabric. One day, I happened to be at Spotlight and I saw that a fabric paint was on sale. I mean 3 bucks! So I bought a bottle (it's only 45ml), went home and set to work some magic on the yellowed calico. Um, it turned out, it takes a lot of paint to actually see any colour on the fabric. On top of 2 pieces of calico, I also had a piece of white-now-yellowed cotton canvas I wanted to rescue. I managed to cover 1 piece of calico and 1 piece of canvas cotton with blue paint. There was a small amount of paint left and most people with common sense would throw it away. But I'm not most people. I decided to use it to paint the last piece of calico. Unfortunately, the amount of paint was too little so I added more water. When I was done, the calico looked neither blue nor anything.

So I practically spent time and money working on a fabric that I should have thrown away in the first place. I had no choice but to use it somehow because I had increased the value of the fabric. I dug into my new fabric stash and found some lovely fabric that I felt could work patched together with the fugly calico. I looked in my applique box and found a ready to go bird on a branch applique. Is it just me? I have lots of ready to go applique lying around. They are my applique UFOs.

I felt the patchwork needed some running lines. Oops. I may have gone slightly overboard. At this point I felt rather discouraged because I was starting to hate this project. And so much work had already gone into it!

I pushed on and kept adding elements until I decided enough was enough. Yup, the sun and 2 giant leaves were a wink at Janet Bolton. I had to use couching stitch to sew the sun's rays as the running lines were too overwhelming and I needed to use a very thick yarn meant for knitting. I left the bird and branch a bit simple because the entire applique had fusible web and I didn't fancy sewing through the layers.

Originally the sun was left plain but I felt it needed some embroidery (blanket stitch) to give it texture because looking at the whole quilt I see texture throughout.

If you're wondering why I left out the borders, it's because I totally forgot about it. I was so preoccupied with rescuing the calico that the possibility of adding borders only popped into my head much later. By then, I thought the quilt had so much going, a border wasn't necessary. I finished off the quilt with a double binding using this tute as reference.

In case you're wondering where you've seen the binding fabric, it's from this bag pattern. Which means I've used up nearly all the fabric for the bag pattern. Only a small piece of scrap is left. Nowadays I get ridiculously happy when I (almost) use up any fabric.

For the backing, I used some of the batik scraps my mother had given me. The weave of the batik is very tight, so quite unpleasant to sew through. And lastly, I included a pocket to hang the quilt. It's a very small quilt, 11" by 12". Am I incapable of handling larger quilts?

After all the time and effort I had poured into this quilt, I'm happy to say I'm growing fonder and fonder of it every day. Thank goodness otherwise I'll be pretty mad at myself. Next time, I won't try to save everything. I'm giving myself permission to throw some stuff away.

A Rescue

So, this started out as my usual embroidery on linen cotton slated for a drawstring pouch. (like these) (In case you're interested - chain stitch for the petals, colonial knots for the center and stem stitch for the stems.) But I made the error of using fusible interfacing on the fabric. Based on my experience, fusible interfacing and hand embroidery don't go together. Why then did I fuse interfacing to the fabric forgodssake? Well, I have some newly bought supremely lightweight fusible interfacing, light as feather and I thought surely, surely these will work. I was wrong. The end result? A million puckers around the embroidery. I steamed and unsteamed (?) the fabric but everything I did made the puckers worse. It was ugly. What to do? I didn't want to throw it in the storeroom because that would increase my UFO stash and since I've put in so much work on the embroidery, it would be such a waste to throw it away. And I never throw away anything embroidered, that's my rule.

I couldn't think of any other solution but to make it into a small art quilt. Since the puckers were the problems, why not make the puckers part of the solution?

The first thing I did was to sew running stitches across the linen cotton. I used some cheese cloth as interlining. Once the running stitches were in, the puckers no longer stood out. Next I put in the borders. I'm really pleased with my border because I was going for beige-ish tones and most of my scrap stash is colourful. I have 50 shades of yellow-green, green-yellow but beige? After much digging, I managed to assemble a very pleasing (in my eyes) scrap combo.

As a nod to Janet Bolton, my applique hero, I've included a sun that rose from the ground, gravity defying trees and I finished the quilt using the method taught in her books which is an easy going method. Fold the top to hide raw edges. Fold background to hide raw edges. Put top on background and sew together. Of course the stitches will be visible on both sides. Brilliant!

I used a Lizbeth size 20 multi coloured thread to sew the top fabric to the background. I love the different colours so much that when this thread runs out I'll cry because I bought it really cheap and I didn't think to buy more than one ball. This thread is meant for tatting so it has a nice texture. If you run your fingers over the stitches, you can feel the rough texture of the thread which is really nice.

I have some regrets about the leaves. The one with thick sashiko open fly stitch - I thought the stitches were too thick and maybe I should have picked a different colour like gold or gold yellow. But I couldn't be arsed to cut out the stitches.

Can you spot what I put here?

I used a loosey-goosey method of cutting my applique. I draw a shape on freezer paper, cut it out but not necessarily following the drawing and fuse it to fabric. then I hide the raw edges of the fabric using the freezer paper as a guide. Sometimes the freezer paper falls off but I just keep going.

For the backing, I used batik remnants my mom had given me. I have no idea where she gets her fabric but it's clearly someone else's scraps because the cut is all weird. I have 2 colourway and I hope to use them as background fabric. I added a casing to the background so I can hang the quilt. (as if)

Overall I'm pleased with the result. It looks clean and minimal. (to me) Originally I was going to add a flower pot. So glad I didn't. Less is always more with me. I didn't use up much scraps as the size of the quilt is only 11.75" all round. What do you think of my rescue effort?

More Scrap Projects

Dear friends,

As you know, I'm on a use up my fabric scraps mission and I'm happy to show you more finished projects.

This embroidered drawstring pouch was finished a few months ago but I couldn't find the perfect drawstring for it despite a few visits to Chinatown. Finally I used a multi coloured cord in my stash which I admit is quite a good match.

The lining for the pouch is the same as the casing - a Amy Butler fabric. I still have tiny bits of this fabric print here and there in my "sewing room". Remember Amy Butler? I wonder what she's doing now... Anyways, the exterior linen cotton fabric is from a remnant I bought years ago for my craft market. Slowly but surely I'm using it up.

Yup. Another embroidered drawstring pouch from the same never ending linen cotton. In case you're wondering why my drawstring pouches come in different shapes and sizes, it's because I cut the best shape possible from the fabric remnant.

For the embroidery, I used Colonial knots, stem stitch and open fly stitch. I'm not very adventurous when it comes to embroidery and tend to stick to what I know. Ah, but check out the drawstring! I used a bias binding thingy to make it. I'm slowly losing my dislike of making my own bias binding.

I asked my girl what she thinks of the drawstring pouches and she said: GRANDMOTHERLY. Not something insulting like "so 80's" or "so 70's" or "so 60's". GRANDMOTHERLY.

Relax. I've decided to let her live.

Oh, with this pouch, I've finally used up the floral fabric print. I won it in a giveaway many years ago and hoarded it for the longest time.

Do you remember back in May I made a tiny, tiny drawstring pouch - first one on the left? (here) I made two more because I felt I hadn't suffered enough. By the way, in case you're wondering and I know some of you are - the pouches has lining and no raw edges. For the middle one, I embroidered a little sunflower using lazy daisies, colonial knots and stem stitch.

My daughter asked me to give her one of the tiny drawstring pouches. Should I let her have one?  What do you think? (Don't forget she called my bigger drawstring pouches GRANDMOTHERLY)