Sewing and embroidery

Before all this driving nonsense, I spent a lot of time at my sewing machine with fabric to recycle. After this driving nonsense, I would like to do that some more, and here is some of the reason why:


This set was for a Spring swap I did with my knitting group. The blue floral used to be an IKEA pillowcase and the lining was a man's dress shirt with worn cuffs. Please note my oh-so-clever use of the shirt's pocket (because I am so pleased myself) for small knitting notions, and the white panel insert down the back, to stretch the pillowcase a bit farther:


The big bag is long enough to accommodate 14" knitting needles and the messenger strap means you can sling it across your body and knit outside, while walking or just standing around. The little one is technically for smaller projects but really it was an excuse to try embroidery. In the end, I had to get Melissa's help to figure out how to do it.

Her solution:

Write the words I wanted and then darken them with ink

Tape that paper onto a window

Tape the white fabric over the paper

Trace the letters in pencil

Embroider over the pencil


The embroidery part took all of an afternoon and because it was the first time I'd tried anything more complicated than blanket stitch edging it required an awful lot of ripping out and starting over, but still. It looks like my writing! and that was kind of cool.

I'm not sure I'd do the embroidery part again in a hurry but I did love making the little bag - so much, I made another for another friend to go with the knitting case I made her before:


It's basically two bags stitched together with right sides together and topstitched shut across the top with the edges folded in, and two channels stitched about an inch down from the top on either side of the outside one with a cord strung through it. I don't know if you can see it here but I did a boxy bottom by stitching across the bottom corners of each of the little bags, which isn't necessary to make it work well.

Gah, this is reminding me how much I miss sewing! Maybe if I am very lucky I will pass my driving test the first time and have maybe a whole week to spend with my old Singer before things get wild again. I can dream, can't I?