H...hand...sewing...?

I am not good at hand sewing.

I used to take this as a point of pride.  I used to say things like "I hate making clothes with buttons!  Because I hate sewing the buttons on!  Because I hate hand sewing!"  But, then, I got a machine that made a better four-part button hole, and I realized that what I hated was not "the hand sewing of the buttons" as much as it was "the unavoidable confrontation of crap buttonholes." Then I got a buttonholer and I figured out that one of the random presser feet I had was to hold buttons while using the machine to zig-zag 'em in place, and I forgot about my "I don't exactly hate hand sewing after all" epiphany.

So, what this basically means is that, while I might not detest the idea of hand sewing now, I still don't usually think "Oh, I should hand sew that instead of using the machine"...and it means that my hand stitching is not...um...good.

But!

I didn't hesitate to volunteer to hand sew a few little felt thingies for the kiddo's teacher Valentine card.  I'd never made any little hand sewn felt thingies before (...um...obviously...), but I did have this book

which technically does have patterns, but I feel like they're more...suggestions...than the rigorous templates most patterns are.

Scarecrow Chic Shirt. Sorta.

You know those projects that seem like a good idea until after you've started and then you decide that no actually that wasn't a good idea after all?  Of course you do.  Those projects are part of hobbies in general.

Most rational sewing people will put the project aside in a UFO pile and move on to happier craftiness.  Me, though?  I'll hang the offending item in plain view and glare at it, refusing to start any other projects (wellllllll, any other human-size projects, 'cause doll clothes are a different realm) until it's finished.

Soooo, yeah

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.

My Stash to Bust

I took some quick pictures of the condition of my cloth stash storage, which I keep intentionally (kinda) small.

In the closet is a bookcase...well, actually, it's an abandoned retail display case, so it's sturdy enough to hold the cloth on its commercial-grade shelves.

And...yeah, it's pretty packed.  (Above is the bin of scraps, next to the  suitcase full of lace and trim and bias tape.)  This shelf is for pieces that are a yard and larger (with a pair of rolls of fabric leaning beside it.)

Smaller lengths of cloth go into the dresser

Almost everything in here was acquired with doll clothes in mind, top two drawers for broadcloth, bottom drawer for knits, other drawer for random whatever else.  The top two drawers used to be much fuller, until I decided the density was annoying and started pulling out coordinated sets of prints, some of which got combined with pieces from the shelves to form this pile

There are eight different groups of cloth here, most of which may be enough to use for blanket tops?  I'll find out eventually...

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...

Pastel Dots & Neutral Bats

Spring and Fall, Together

A quick fix

I am not good at applying iron-on decals.  I know this.  The last one I tried to apply re-affirmed this, and the shirt was stuffed into the edge of the cloth stash until I could figure out what to do about the remains of the badly-applied decal.  Today, I made myself figure out what to do about it, and ended up covering it up, like so:

Why, yes, I do remember the late 1980s.

I dunno if the kiddo will ever want to wear this, but at least it's in a state where it can be worn again, and a Thing was cleared out of the cloth stash area, which is  good.

And then I started working on a shirt for me, mixing these prints

Print Mixing: If you sew 'em together, they go together.  I should be able to finish it tonight or tomorrow.  (That doesn't mean I will finish it tonight or tomorrow, of course.)