Sewing: Fancy Zippered Bag

I have a dainty red pouch, about3" by 3.5", that I use when I travel for my jewelry. Since it's small, it fits nicely in my purse, so that when the airline loses my luggage, I won't freak out about a few things. Also, it zips closed and keeps my things inside instead of scattering earrings everywhere. Very handy.

Hooray for red and yellow!

The problem lies in today's fashion for larger, chunky necklaces and stuff. They don't fit in the pouch very well, and get very tangled in themselves, and my earrings may as well be part of the necklaces they've impaled during the flight.

I need a larger pouch!

There are a ton of sewing tutorials on making bags, with or without linings, zippers on the top or top or face, drawstrings, even tetrahedrals. However, this tutorial has a lovely way of making a zippered pouch with a detached inner lining. I just like the idea that no pesky seams will show inside or out, plus my stuff won't get tangled or lost in the fraying bits. But merely following those instructions would just be too easy.

The general construction of my new pouch is basically the same as that tutorial. However, I changed the shape of the bag to look like my old one, added some piping and a button closure, and two extra pockets on the inside. That's right, I have a three-pocket bag to keep my earrings from the necklaces! AND, it's shiny!

Red and yellow, meet teal and green!

Tutorial in a separate post...

Sewing: red fleece, part 2

Here's what happens when I get an idea in my head:

I'd seen a picture of a lobster-ifide infant in a kettle, and thought it was hilarious. Go on, judge me. There's a surprising number of lobster costumes online (go on, search for it.. you'll be surprised!), and decided that I couldn't justify the price, and I wanted a project anyway. I realized that the costume was basically a bag with sleeves and a hood. McCall's 5963 served as a great basic pattern. I changed the shape of the bunting to add the lobster tail, and made tubes of fabric for the little legs and antennae, and attached claws on the folded hand-parts, and attached the chest piece with velcro. A little topstitching for ridges on the exoskeleton.

Hmm, that sounds like a lot. Actually, it wasn't as hard as I thought. Fleece is pretty forgiving, doesn't need edge-finishing, and the whole costume was not form-fitting, so measurements didn't have to be that particular.

The biggest problem is that the lovely lined (i.e. double-layered) fleece is really, really warm. If we lived in the upper-Midwest where I grew up, I'd be okay taking him around the neighborhood in the big soup kettle. But we don't. So I have to unzip my little crustacean for the evening. He's okay with that.

Gardening: tomatoes!

Summer is awesome!

that.is.all.

Gardening: The artificially-enhanced growing muscle

After last year's bounty, I must admit that my expectations for this year were pretty low (it's so much easier to exceed low expectations).

However, something unexpected occurred: the advent of a solarium / greenhouse. What's the difference between a solarium and a greenhouse? According to dictionary.com, a greenhouse is therapeutic for plants, and a solarium is therapeutic for people. So when I sit out there with my tomato plants and read a book, I guess it's a greenium or a solariouse. Take your pick.

Wait. Was that "tomato plants"?

Yes, yes, there are

Two of the five plants are only six feet tall. "Only" because I had to chop off the tops because they were pressed against the ceiling and/or they were collapsing under their own weight. They are all staked, but the stakes' 4.5 feet aren't providing a lot of support for the tops of the plants. You know, the tops, where a lot of the tomatoes grow:

This particular string of cherry tomatoes has 23 budding fruits, which will make a lovely orange salad for me later (unless I eat them one by one as they ripen, which is a distinct possibility). Still working out how to determine when the green zebra tomates are ripe... hmm...

Sewing (sorta): domesticity

Yes, it's been far too long for the two people who actually read this. I know you've been dying for updates. Ha ha.

Since January (the last entry here), there's been a lot going on in TheRealLife. Here's part of what I managed to sew since then:

Now, you might say, "Gee, those look like lovely curtains from Pier 1. Did you get a new job??" And I'll say, "Noooooo, look closely!" And you'll squint and say, "But I don't see a difference!" I'll pay you the money later.

And the reality is, they werer purchased from said retailer... but I hemmed them! I also lined them with blackout fabric for this east-facing window. This had the unintended effect of giving the curtains a nice heft that the original polyester didn't possess.

I also blacked-out a few other windows and sewed some squares to cover other windows, but they're not as exciting-looking. There's one set of windows that's being covered by fabric and bulldog binder clips. Hey, don't knock the working jerry-rigged solution!

Sewing: B&W&P dress finished!

Here it is!

Okay, it's actually been done for a couple of months. And then it got cold, and I'm pretty much a wimp when it comes to voluntarily being chilled merely for pictures. So, you'll have to be satisfied with a non-human-modeling of the dress.

It turned out pretty cute. Perhaps it's a little high-school-dance-ish, but maybe I can get away with that look for a few more years (or not, and I'll look like the crazy middle-aged lady who thinks she's way younger than she looks). Other than the now-realized-somewhat-obnoxious-print, it's a good experience in doing weird little seams, as well as the seam bindings. I probably should have done a more invisible hem, but I wanted it done and didn't see an easy way to hem it securely.

Maybe at some point, I'll get brave enough to try a grown-up pattern, like Simplicity or Vogue...

Baking: Thanksgiving

We do Thanksgiving... big. This entails inviting everyone who doesn't have their own friends/family thing to go to. This year was only 16 people, so smaller than other years (and larger than others), but we'll still take it. Besides the normal turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, greens, and so on, my bragging rights really come after dinner. Here's part of the reason I haven't been sewing:

The pear-pomegranate pie in front is mine. The next is a friend's pumpkin cheesecake, a bowl of fresh persimmons, another friend's pumpkin whoopie pies, and my (boring but requisite and tasty) pumpkin pie. Besides the amazing tastiness of the pear pie (it went away quickly!), a lot of people commented on the lattice top. I've never had a problem with doing a lattice (although parts of me want to do fancy braiding things with skinnier strings of dough... wonder if kumihimo is a possibility). I always wonder how people do the dough leaf-cut-out things, because mine never look like leaves, even if I follow a pattern.

You'd think that the plethora of orange food would have brought out our inner Oompa Loompas... fortunately no.

Baking: More End of Summer

Even though the La Nina off the coast is determining otherwise, there was one last outing to the u-pick blueberry farm for jam ingredients. (Yeah, sometimes it's just hard to let go.) End of season berries still make good stuff:

The color of the contents of the jars are actually more like that of the top jar. If you look at them in the light (or with camera flash), they appear strangely pinky, like the bottom jars. Eh.

Now having made three kinds of preserved fruit goodness, here's the weird thing: I don't eat that much jam. What to do...

Baking: End of Summer

Blueberry tartlet a la mode with nectarine syrup.

Sewing, Tutorial: onestringbags

On my introductory blog entries, I mentioned onestringbags, which I found via instructables. These are the best things for avoiding the plastic produce bags at the grocery store and farmer's markets, and super easy to make. I love them. However, here are a few things I've learned by using these things:

Pros: No more plastic bags! Run under faucet to clean Lightweight (doesn't add much to fruit-per-pound totals) Inexpensive People ask where you got them and you get to brag

Cons: Does not work well for berries or very soft fruits Still have to remember them, along with the canvas bags

Eh. Not much you can do about that last one. Anyway.

I realize now that I do them a little differently from the instructable, so here's a tutorial on making my version of onestringbags. The biggest difference is that I fold all of the edges over, just so that there's more layers of tulle and the seams have more to hold onto. I apologize in advance for the poor pictures, but it's hard to photograph pesky delicate light green tulle.

Materials:

• length of tulle (get the stuff that's in the sale bin, probably in some wacky color, but your vegetables won't mind)
• length of string or cording
• thread (time to use the weird scraps!)
• sewing machine

Step 1: Cut the tulle into the size you want. (To keep it slightly more simple, I have a fold on one side edge. This piece is about 20"x36", so the final bag will be about 19"x18"-ish.) Lay the tulle flat. Find the top edge (where the drawstring will be... see mine?), and fold the sides in, about 1/2". Pin a little.

Step 2: Fold the top edge down, over the drawstring. I think the drawstring works better if you give it some space, so I make this fold about 1" to 1.5". Pin the drawstring to the fold, just so it's outta the way when you start sewing.

Step 3: Sew the drawstring in, giving it some space (I give it about an inch). Make sure to tie knots in the ends of the threads. Good knots.

Step 4: Put the side edges together. Pin the sides together, keeping that 1/2" fold on each outside face (it's sooo much easier to sew through four layers of tulle than just two). The edges might be a little messy and it may not lie quite flat, but it won't matter when you stuff the bag full of apples.

Step 5: See the layers? Good.

Step 6: Fold up the bottom. No need to keep the sides separate anymore, and it doesn't hurt to have something more than just twisted threads holding your plums inside. Pin it all!

Step 7: Sew the edges. Tie knots in the threads!

Step 8: Overhand knot to tie the drawstring. Now, go to the farmer's market and get stuff (ooh, I think peaches are in season...)

Preserving Someone Else's Harvest

Here's the first round of pretties: strawberry-raspberry preserves and apricot jam.

As mentioned before, I live for the summer farmer's markets. There's two stands in particular that we always visit first, before running through the rest of the booths. One booth is a berry farm (current produce is blackberries, blueberries, and end-of-season raspberries), and the other is a great family farm that's known for its cherries, apples, peppers and squash, but they also have some stone fruit, eggplant, melons...

The problem with going to the farmer's markets before breakfast is that I get a lot of fruit. Far more than I can eat, even in my mid-summer fruit bonanza. I'm not sure why it's sooooo cool to buy an entire flat of raspberries, but it is. It just is. Maybe it's because you actually know what to do with several pounds of delicate summer goodness. Or you have a household of teenage boys (do they eat fruit, or just eat in general?)

I've wanted to try canning for a while, but I don't think of it as something you get into casually. You need the jars and the timei to make the stuff and the giant boiling water pots and... well, then you also need someone to eat the stuff. My mom never canned, but I remember Grandma's red wine jelly every winter. The grocery store down the street was closing, so the jars were 25% off... opportunity knocked!

Sewing: The rehearsal dress

Last summer, I got married. For the rehearsal dinner, I tried to find a nice red sundress, or a dress with red in it, partly because I like red and look good in red, but mostly because my fiance was Chinese, and it would be good to have a good-luck-red dress. There were no red dresses to be found, because last summer was the Year of Salmon Pinkness. I have a strong dislike (hate is such a powerful word) for pink, so this would not do. The obvious solution: despite not having a successful dress in the past, make my own dress! Of course!

The first challenge, find a fabric. Like I said, last year was the Year of Salmon, and there were no red fabrics to be found (other than silk, obnoxiously bright brocades, or sparkly prom-dress sateens). I found this nice red-and-white-flower-on-black print. Okay, yes, it's cotton quilting stuff, and I know you're not supposed to use it for clothing, but it was the first sorta-red thing I found and didn't hate.

This could work. I hoped it was red enough. There was certainly more red in it than any other pattern I'd seen. Maybe I could add a trim? No, it'd never match. I'll just do that fabric, and hope it's red enough. And not too black.

After taking far too long to make the fool thing (New Look #6885, view A), it turned out pretty cute!

Hooray!

Just before the rehearsal dinner, this was approximately my stream of thought: Is it red enough?! too black? my future mother-in-law will think I'm bringing death to the family with the white flowers and/or the black! My own mom will think I'm depressing! Am I channelling my inner-high-school-girl? It's too short! It's too tight, but not fitted enough! The stitches are far too wimpy and will break while I'm sucking in my tummy riiiiiip! and I'll be embarrassed and have to cancel the wedding and never see my lovely fiance again and and and...

So I wore a store-bought dress.

I did wear this little thing a few weeks later, and was actually complimented on it. Score!

Baking: Wedding cake results!

Question: When you take the cakes and raspberry-ganache from the last post and assemble them, then keep in mind the patterns from the friend's wedding invitations (see above picture), what do you get?

Answer:

Um, yes

And here's a shot at the wedding, with the professional baker's cupcakes, and the bride's hand-painted topper: