Rainbow Foil Camouflage Bucket Bag

Of all the fabric I ordered from FabricMart in January, the most 100% impulsive choice was a black synthetic knit with a foiled design, bearing multi-color splotches on silver foil, and the foil laid down in camouflage blobs.  And, since it was $1/yard (and I was ordering other things--specifically, more of the apple print--so shipping costs would be distributed), I got silly and ordered ten yards of it.  Yes, as a knit, it's 60" wide.  The quantity of this fabric is mildly overwhelming.

Also, after taking the time to figure out what to do with all of the apple print--for which I had at least the one plan, when I ordered it each time--I did not want to spend a lot of time trying to use up all of this fabric at once.  It would be fine in the stash until inspiration hit.  But.  I still wanted to make at least one thing from it before putting it away.

And, while I honestly probably will make a jacket from a bit of it, eventually, like I did with some of the other foiled knits from the same manufacturer (here and here), I didn't want to do that now.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, my mind settled on making a bucket bag.  I'm not sure if I've ever even owned a bucket bag before, let alone made one.  I definitely don't have a pattern for one, but, after looking at bucket bags for sale, and at blogs showing how to make them, I felt confident enough to start cutting a bunch of rectangles and a few circles and start sewing things together.

 

 I think it turned out OK.

Itai!

 I've wanted to try making an ita bag for a while.  When I finished the patchwork jacket, I decided that my next project would be that bag.

I made a stack of the materials I had that seemed suitable--clear vinyl purpose bought from Joann, some glitter vinyl and several pieces of free-table cloth from the craft thrift store, leftover scraps of the glowworm green lining, bag zippers from Wawak, webbing and hardware salvaged from some baby thing from the kiddo's extreme youth, a stack of thrifted embroidery stabilizer, and a whole lot of Wonder Under and fusible webbing

I knew I didn't want to do a style with a heart-shaped window (I'm not a heart-shape person), and decided to rein myself in and not do anything complicated.  The only odd thing was that the glitter vinyl sheets had been used a bit, so I had to figure out how to work around that.

I absolutely made up every part of this as I went along.

Hostess Gift #2

 This was made to hold several other gifts, actually...

Screen Bags

 So, over the summer, we repaired some screen windows and I grabbed the window screen mesh leftovers and stashed them away for potential future projects.

After the dubious outcome of the purse project in the previous post, I decided it would be a good time to make some simple zip bags with that mesh

but of course my ideas got away from me and I also made a small tote bag in a style I'd never made before (at least, I don't think I've made a bag with straps like this before)

Cheapskate or Pinterest Inspired?

Eh, well, I'll tell you that I try to avoid Pinterest, and you probably figured out I was a cheapskate three or four "thrift store grab bags" ago, but I hope this could be mistaken for some Overachieving CraftMom project.

Basically, it's time to start getting ready for Back To School supply runs.  I knew we had several things on the list for fourth grade already (we're set on 70 page wide ruled notebooks for the foreseeable future), and I thought of how many crayons and markers and colored pencils we had...especially those that were brought home, barely used, at the end of last school year.

And, yes, really, this isn't a case of being a cheapskate, because none of these items cost much.  It's far more a case of "look, if we already have them, why do we need to buy them over again, 'cause that just seems wasteful."  I just couldn't think of a pithy way to set that against Pinterest in the title.  (And there's also the fact that I started making a shirt for the kiddo using Burda 9419 and hadn't stitched much of it together before I realized I really wanted a button band, so today's sewing may have been spurred by procrastinating on that design alteration.  Again...not pithy.)

I have an excess of zippers, including a lot of vintage models with metal teeth, and I had a bit of somewhat heavy clear vinyl that was salvaged from the cover of a sample book of interior decorating fabric, and I had a bobbin still loaded with "jeans gold" from that enh skirt I made somewhat recently (which I'm wearing today.  It's not as bad as I thought it was.)

I was not, however, enthused about cutting that vinyl.  Using scissors was out, unless I wanted to draw lines on the vinyl first.  Using a rotary cutter didn't appeal, because I know I'm not exactly skilled at using those.

Then I remembered this thing

which is made for cutting paper and poster board and just things in general that are significantly thinner than the vinyl I wanted to use.  Still, it scored the vinyl in a lovely straight line that then allowed the vinyl to be gently pulled apart along that score.

And then I completely obscured most of those lovely straight edges with some decorative zigzagging

They are lovely and straight, though.

I sewed this one first, forgetting to swap the regular needle for the vinyl needle.  When sewing the zipper, it seemed like absolutely no problem.  When sewing vinyl to vinyl...yeah.  I definitely swapped the needle after.

The narrow zigzag around the edges is slightly for decoration and mostly to try to keeps the ends of the zipper tapes from fraying.  I probably won't see these things again until the upcoming school year ends, so that's when I'll find out if it worked.

I could have used 'normal' cloth for these, but I thought "being able to see what's in the bag" would be appreciated.

And they do kinda look cool.

The crayon bag is constructed differently from the others.  The last large bit of the vinyl had the interior decorating fabric collection name printed on it.  Since the kiddo likes green, I decided to turn the letters to the inside (they're somewhat visible from the back, but, in real life, not as much as they are in the upper photo) and let the green background bar become a graphic element, and I wanted only to fold it over instead of cut through it.  I also didn't have any zippers the right length to go along the side of what was left, and I did not want to shorten a metal zipper, so I trimmed just a bit to make it work with a 4" zipper on the short end.

Since these are sewn in a way that feels inside-out, it was no problem to set the zipper into the ends of a folded piece of vinyl.  Then the sides were flattened and sewn.  Taadaaa!  Crafty or frugal?

...well...both, of course.

Roblagx

The kiddo has accumulated a lot of Roblox action figures.  He's also losing interest in Roblox, so those figures had been accumulating a lot of dust.  In retrospect, we could have found a nice box for all of them, but precedent had been set by the Terraria bag, so a Roblox bag was decreed.

The main difference is that I actually like Terraria, so put a modicum of effort into that project.  This one, though...pfft, just get it done.  Don't measure anything.  Don't double check the angle of the iconic square O logo.  Get it all wrong, whatever, just get it done.

And I did!

As mentioned, I tilted the square O in the wrong direction, but it's still recognizably Roblox.  We might even be able to call this the non-copyright-infringing homage version.

As with the Terraria bag, there's a big zippered pocket on the back, using the same "Mom got a good deal on a good deal of zippers in 1980" yellow zippers.

The lining on this bag isn't as exciting as the lining used in the Terraria bag.  The choices of fabric for the outside and the lining were both made from the big pile of cloth beside my desk that came from thrifted fabric grab bags.  (I have a weakness, OK?)  I have a vague plan to use up a lot of that cloth in random projects like this, especially in stuff for the kiddo.  (I just ordered some thread to that end.  Sometimes you do indeed have to spend money to be able to use the stuff you got for a great price, right?)

I took extra time to make sure the lining cloth was as out of the way as possible when I topstitched around the zippers.  I have a history of fighting with lining that likes to jump into zipper pulls.

The cloth for the square/tilting-the-wrong-way O came from my doll cloth stash.  Yes, it's the wrong color.  Yes, it's a bit large and the corners were lost in the seam allowance.  Yes, there's a bit of raw edge threads peeking out of the inner corners.

I'm still really happy with how the actual appliqué process went, especially considering there's no stabilizer of any kinds (and hooboy do I not lack for stabilizer, thanks to a different thrift store sewing supply grab bag find.)    I get a perverse satisfaction from zigzagging--tiny zigzagging--within in the bounds of my straight stitch foot.  Having a pretty good thread match helps.

Inside is a single simple pocket, intended to hold the package background cards and fold-out catalog leaflets.

Everything fit inside the bag with ease.  Now to see what fills in that empty shelf space over his computer...

It's Easy Being...Red

I volunteered to chaperone the kiddo's field trip to a science center, fun!

But.

Everyone had to wear a red shirt, or "as close to that as possible."  I delved into my closet, pretty sure I didn't have anything red, but was surprised that I didn't even have dark pink.  Huh.  So!  A trip to the thrift store on 99¢ day and I was able to find a short sleeve button up woven shirt that I turned into...

Squares

I wanted to make a quick patchwork zip pouch as a gift for someone, and, for some reason, my brain insisted on making same-size squares for the patchwork--I usually just square up whatever size cloth scraps I have and start piecing things randomly, so this was an unusual thing for my brain to wanna do.

So I made it and I wasn't entirely happy with it and I forgot to take any pictures of it and I decided to make another, smaller, Halloweenier zip bag, and that's this one.

Nope, no pattern to it, but it is 35 different Halloween prints--most of which were from the scrap box--on the patchwork side, so that's nice.  And the ghosts on the other side are printed with glow-in-the-dark ink, so that's even nicer.  Lined with a synthetic plaid, because Halloween is for all the time.  or something like that.

Brown Bag

When confronting the fact that my fabric stash was straining the spaces designated to store it (spaces which are intentionally much smaller than they used to be), I had fun a month or so ago shuffling through the dresser (home of roughly quarter yard cuts, mostly bought for doll clothes) and matching various prints by coordinating color schemes, which I then put in a pile with no solid ideas of what to make from the new sets of fabrics.

(Was that sentence convoluted enough?)

Saturday morning, I decided to challenge myself to using one of the smaller sets, which I knew wouldn't make anything big enough to turn into a skirt or blanket.  With no real goal in mind, I started patching it together, in a very loose approximation of a Log Cabin pattern, only with random colors and widths.  Sure, why not.

I didn't measure anything at any point in this project, so I have no idea how large it was before I ran out of strips long enough to sew to the next edge.  It looked like it might be big enough to cut a vest front from, though, maybe...?  But...as there was an abundance of browns and oranges in the prints, I knew I'd never wear a vest made from it.  And when it come to the question of Randomly Making Random Things for Random Other People, the answer is always Bag!

It would be too large to make a comfortable bag if I used the pieced, um, piece for just the front, so I played around with folding it in half for a while before I had the idea to fold the corners on the diagonal, which was the key to figuring out, finally, exactly (well, more or less exactly) what I wanted to do with this project...