Sachel

From old jeans to bag

I have been stockpiling Hugh's old jeans for a little while now. They went though a few different craft ideas but recently I decided that a new bag was in order.

It consists of two pairs of jeans that Hugh had worn out.  The pattern had to be very patchwork inspired since the biggest piece of fabic was still too small to make a bag out of.

I drew my pattern on a piece of muslin.

 Cut them out and then recut the pieces adding extra for seam allowances.  Then I sewed the pieces together and topstitched the seams to make the top and back of the bag.

I cut out the rest of the sides and bottom of the bag and sewed it all together.  I am quite happy with how the patchwork pattern worked out. I have never quilted before and I imagine it has many similar concepts.  The fabrics did make me a little crazy as they liked to change shape after I measured and cut them. Still my rotary cutter and my cutting mat were my best friends for this project.

I lined the bad with this really cute fabric I picked up quite a while ago and had been sitting in my stash waiting for the right project.






And Voila!  New bag.







I took it out for a spin today to the Salmonberry Market.  It is a group of people who get together to sell their handmade items down in front of the courthouse.

There was not a whole lot of people selling as it was pretty cold.  But it was not raining and in Prince Rupert we always consider that as a win.



Today my friend was selling her handmade cards and brooches.  She is a very talented artist and I was super lucky to get first pick of her cute items on her table.

I am hoping that one day I can come up with something nice to sell at the market too,  Maybe bags?  I need to experiment a bit more with fabrics and patterns first I think.






Lastly I when I went outside today I got a big surprise!  My poppies have finally begun to bloom.  I grew them from seeds last year and I was very worried that the winter would be very harsh and kill them off.  Lucky for me that was not the case and they have been flourishing these last couple months.

Isn't she pretty?

Look another potential bloom to the left.

60s style dress

So I have been working on this dress pretty much since I got the fabric in Terrace a few weeks ago.  It has not been my fastest project because it has been stellar busy at work with the end of personal tax season here.  Originally my plan was to have it done in time for the Bif Naked concert I attended on April 27th.  Not a chance.  Then I thought I could have it done in time for the end of tax season party three days later.  Two days worth of overtime trumped that plan too.  So it has been sadly sitting on Maniko waiting to be hemmed and ironed.

This dress started out really well.  the Burda pattern was generally a dream to trace and cut out.  For once most of my hems lined up and my neck edges all matched up.  This has never happened to me before with a McCalls or Butterick pattern so in the beginning I was pretty happy with the pattern.

As always I had a few issued putting this lovely together.  I cut out all my pieces and was diligently sewing them all together when I realized that I had bought an invisible zipper rather than a regular one.  Argh.

pre sleeves and pressing

 I blame other other lovely Burda pattern I bought the same day for distracting me as it did require an invisible zipper. So I figured a zipper is a zipper and I installed the invisible zipper instead.  That seemed to work out fine until I realized that my fabric had stretched a little in the insertion and now I had some unfortunate wrinkles in the fabric on the back on the dress. oh nooos.  After a bit of fussing with the fabric and the lining I was able to get rid of the majority of the wrinkles but it is still not as perfect as I would like.

I did have another problem right at the end.  No matter how I manipulated the sleeve I could not get it to fit into the armhole.  It was so frustrating.  I even rechecked my pieces and they were exactly the right size.  It was very strange.  As a result there are some annoying puckers in the sleeves which I am not happy with but I did not have any extra fabric to re-cut them.  Next time I make this dress I will be sure to mock out the sleeves and make sure they fit the arm holes.

One of the special things about this dress is that it is fully lined.  I used this to my advantage by sewing the lining first so I could check the fit and the placement of the darts. This worked out pretty well in the body of the dress.  Go figure that the sleeves would not be lined and this is where I had my major fitting problem.  next time I sew a dress with sleeves I am going to do the sleeves as well even if they are not needed for the lining of the dress. 

I want to try this dress again but I plan to shorten the waist a bit so the pockets sit a bit higher but otherwise the pattern fit pretty well.  Really I need to work on getting the pattern to work up without fabric stretching.  I will also line it with real cotton as the polycotton broadcloth would not iron nicely and tended to shrink if it is ironed at a higher temperature.  So annoying.

and pockets!

Check out the cool belt I got from the Salvation Army last Saturday.  Finding plain skinny belts here can be a bit difficult so I was very happy to find this one.

Random Rupert

One thing to think about when buying a house is what possible things could happen in the property around you.  Sometimes horrible neighbours move in next door, sometimes a giant ugly house is built in the neighbourhood and sometimes something big ugly and shiny is built in front of your property which obscures your previously lovely view of the ocean.

These people once had a lovely view of the ocean here in Prince Rupert.

Now they look at these:

Shiny goodness *insert sarcasm here*.

They are two pellet silos which have been recently put up on the CN Railway property here in Prince Rupert.  They are really ugly.

The extra sad thing about this is that the railway has had a lot more traffic with the expansion of the port, Ridley Island and the pellet silos.  This means that these people not only have had their view obscured, they also have to listen to the constant noise of the railway.  We took these pictures on Sunday and the entire time there was the noise of trains moving, coupling and decoupling.   It would drive me nuts I think if I had to live there.  I wonder how much their property values have dropped with the railway becoming so much more active.  And I highly doubt the city will reduce their property assessments because of it as the city really wants every tax dollar they can get.

Sucks.