Hungrypanda Makes Stuff

Pictures from recent sewing classes. I have to get better about remembering to take pictures!

He was so happy about his new PJs!

A student’s tote bag from Tote-A-licious

Well, the third trimester of this pregnancy has hit me much harder than the first two,  I did miserable at the thing a day challenge this year.   But here’s a good effort for the last day.  I even made a tutorial for this.

Book Purse/Clutch

A purse for the librarian in you.  (Update:  If any of you makes a book purse, please send me a pic!  I would love to post it.)

1.  Find an old hard covered book with an interesting cover.

2.  Use a X-acto knife and cut out all the pages of the book.  You
should now have just the book cover. I know, I know, this part is PAINFUL…  But you can maybe make some pretty book art from it.

3.  Cut a piece of fabric the same size as the book cover, fold the
edges in 1/2 inch and iron.  Uhhh…. I forgot to take a picture at this step, so here are some cherry blossoms from Tokyo instead.

4.  If you are making a clutch, you can skip this step and go onto step 5.  If you want a purse, this is the time to dig out your purse handles.  You can buy purse handles in a lot of places nowadays.  Just google it.  These handles I have here, they each have a little slot for attaching it to a purse.  Your purse handles could be totally different, so you have to get creative by yourself here. But the basic idea is to use some of your fabric to create straps for attaching your handles to the inside of the book.

Sew the strips with the right sides facing each other, turn them inside out, fit them through the handles and sew the straps together.

5.  Glue the fabric straps to the book (Of course, you don’t do this for the clutch).  And also glue the piece from step 4 onto the book.   I use E6000, which is like the mother of all craft glues for this.  Be warned though, it also smells like the mother of all craft glues.

6.  Now set that aside to let it dry and we are going to make the insides of the purse.  Get out a large piece of paper, or just tape two together like I have done half-assedly here.  Trace the cover of your book on a large piece of paper, making sure to MARK both ends of the spine of the book on your paper.

7.Measure the width of one side of the book, and draw a line that is that same length about 75 degrees from where you marked the beginning of the spine.  This angle controls how wide your purse will open.    The smaller the angle the wider your purse will open.

8.  Now you are going to duplicate the line to the other side by cutting out the line and the fold the paper over width-wise.

9.  Now do the same lengthwise, so you reproduce the triangle on the other side also.

10.  Cut two pieces of this out of the fabric for the lining of the purse.

11.  Take one of the pieces of the fabric, with the right sides of the fabric facing each other, sew the edges of the triangles to the edges of the square.

12. Repeat with the other piece of fabric.  Turn one of them inside out, you should now have something that looks like this picture.

13.  Put the right side out piece inside the wrong side out piece, and sew around the top edge.  You need leave a hole big enough for you to put hand though.

14.  Put your hand through the hole you left, and turn the whole thing inside out.  Stitch down the hole.  You should now have something that looks like this.  (I also topstitched around the top edge for a cleaner finish)

15.  Sew velcor onto either side of the purse.

16.  The end is near, can you feel it?  Glue the insides to the book frame you created earlier.  Hopefully, the glue will be dry already from the earlier step (if not, you should really wait for it to dry, this is advice coming from the world’s most impatient person, so trust it!)

17.  Done!!

18.  Variations: Some people find that the velcro doesn’t do a great job of keeping the purse closed.  I think it depends on the thickness of the spine of the book, but you could always make a clasp closure of some kind and glue it at the same time as the handles.  You can also obvious decorate the surface of the book if it’s too plain for you.

A simple child’s toy that I learned to make in Japan.  It’s basically 16 strips of paper (I used a metallic pearlescent paper here, anyone know what it’s called??), stuck to some circular stickers (I just cut them out of avery stickers), and then the whole thing poked through with a bamboo skewer.  There’s a bead glued on the top of  the skewer and another one about 4 inches down to prevent the paper from flying off.   When you twirl the whole thing back and forth, it makes the pretty pattern you see here.

This didn’t turn out very well.  But the MAN was sweet and wears it with pride.

Jumper from my sewing for toddler’s class

Both Bob and Fred are made from Apoxie, and then painted.  Modeled after Calvin & Hobbes snowmen.

Fred!

Bob!

Given that it’s so close to v-day, I thought I would post a craft idea that worked out particularly well for me.

Neither I nor the MAN are really the frilly hearts type, but we are both big romantics.  So, for last v-day, I wrote up 100 memories I had of our relationship, rolled them each up and packed them into this match box.  I tried to write about not just the really big memories, like the day we got married, but more the little things, that makes our relationship special to me,  which we might not think about a lot, like the time he got his arm stuck down the gopher hole because he misread the pirate treasure map I made him
We had a really great time unwrapping and reading a memory each night before bed.

Okay, that’s all.  Hope that wasn’t too sappy for you all.