Mac Pillows!

"the lil mac guy pillow is cute as hell," says my brother, of his new pillows he got for his birthday, in reference to the 'finder' icon. I got the idea when my friend J sent me a link to this website: www.throwboy.com. The pillows are all fleece, polyester stuffing. Smallish, but not tiny. They were quick and easy to make, kind of fun too! I just used a tight zig-zag stitch to applique the colors on top of each other.

Skirt

I made myself a green skirt. I've been sitting on this fabric for a while, deciding what to do with it. A couple days ago I pulled it out of the basket to look at it again and decided, after looking in the mirror, that it was a little too busy and bright and intense to make a good shirt, but would work well lower down, as a skirt. I sifted through my stock of patterns and found a good one that's relatively simple, seams on the sides, seam in back, facing at the top, hem on the bottom, zipper on the side, and went to work. All in all it was only 6 pieces to cut out, so cutting (my least favorite part) went really quickly, as did all the seams. The trickiest part was the zipper, but mostly because I didn't happen to have one on hand, and had to trek all the way out to Joanns to get one. And because I was coming from a different direction than usual to get to Joanns, I got myself and my roommate a little bit lost on the way. But it all worked out eventually and early afternoon today I finished my skirt! Sorry the pictures are a little dark and fuzzy, it's hard to take pictures of myself.

Boxers!

My lucky boyfriend got some homemade undies recently. 2 are in the brown pattern (lower in the picture), which I have TONS of, this is the fabric that backed the quilt that I made for my brother for Christmas that I talked about in my last post. Also, one in the Chicago Bulls pattern (upper in the picture). They're alright, they get the job done, the only thing that I didn't do (got lazy) was modify the pattern to create a front flap/opening. So, except that they are a little short, they are kinda like shorts. The only patterns that my mom and I could find that included the flap were either not in stock, or only for special order. And I'm not willing to special order underwear patterns. Also, getting rid of the flap made churning these out E-Z. Just a quick project to keep me busy over my long winter break, that is about to end. ):

Lobster Blanket

I made this way back when my sewing machine wasn't working because I was dying for lack of things to make.. It's really easy, just two pieces of fleece flat against each other, then with fringe cut and knotted together.

On the upside, the only thing that was wrong with my sewing machine was that I hadn't oiled it in 3 years... So that's solved, and now I have a little bit of oil in my sewing desk for use as needed.

On the downside, I made a quilt for my brother for Christmas, but didn't manage to get any photos of it before I had given it to him and gone back to Chicago. So I just have to talk about it. On the whole, I tried to use cooler, darker colors, like browns and blues, to keep it from looking to girly, or too much like something he wouldn't want to use. The design on the topside was simple, rows of boxes, with long columns running the width of the quilt between them. I still don't know much formally about quilting, everything tends to be as-I-think-it-up, so I probably won't get to more complicated designs for a while. On the inside I just used a layer of fleece. And on the backside I used this very art-deco fabric that I inherited A LOT of (more of that later, you'll probably see it in the next post).

Afghan

I finished another afghan! This one is purple, with white/multicolor stripes evenly spaced throughout. Stripes are about an inch wide, and contrast with the purple color. This afghan is big- it fits over my twin-sized bed, and could probably be used on a bed if desired. Also, it's very warm. The yarn is acrylic, so it really holds in heat, and the interlocking stitches of the crochet help to build up a thick layer of yarn. ($45)

Turtle Hood

Justine and I were going through her mom's old pattern stock (Mrs. Urbikas used to be the same size as I am! It's great!), and we came across this one for a dress with a really long, loose turtle neck. Justine let me take it home, and I made this shirt as a practice piece with the pattern to see how it works out.

I just bought a plain shirt at the Unique Thrift Store over on Elston, just north of Addison (love it, if you like thrifting, look for a Unique), as well as a big robe in a complementary sea green. The edges aren't finished, which is a little annoying and awkward looking, but again, just wanted to sketch this out. I also added a little length to the bottom.


In bad news though, my little Singer is a little ill, so I sent it home with my mom to have my grandpa look at and fix. This means, I won't be able to machine sew anything until at least Thanksgiving, which is rough.

Sorry for the poor photo lighting, it's tough when you're taking them of yourself!

TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY!

This is a cargo pocket I added to a pair of my friend Mark's jeans.. He said that his phone doesn't fit very well in the pockets that are given to him by most jeans, but that he has some shorts with cargo pockets that work very well for the phone. Unfortunately, cargo pants themselves don't really fit him right, so he needed the pocket to be added on.

On the top opening of the pocket I covered the denim with some leftover fabric from his pillowcases, simply because I don't think my little sewing machine could handle sewing through the five layers of denim that would have been created where the two pockets meet. I added two decorative stripes across the pocket to match those on the original pockets. Before I give these pants back to him, I still want to sew around the edge of the pocket one more time to enclose the raw edges- similar to the double seam around most factory-manufactured pockets.