craftlog

I’m trying to catch up on my sadly lagging blocks for one quilt.

This one is for i heart linen, and the task was to make a house using a stack of lovely fabrics that she picked out.  I paged through an awesome book on A-frames at a bookstore a while back and knew that was it.  I loved my Fisher Price A-frame dollhouse when I was little, so it seemed like her kiddo might like it too.

I totally winged the construction, starting from a pencil sketch.  There was a dicey moment at the end when I decided to add the yellow polka dot corners and cut one of the pieces mirror image of how it should’ve been.  Luckily I hadn’t trimmed it yet and had barely enough clearance to sew it on upside down.  The decoration on the door is a cutout from some eyelet fabric.  And can I just point out how nice and square my little 9-patch lawn turned out?  Yeah, that little confidence boost didn’t last.

This one is for Sew Click Create, and did not turn out quite so well.  For one thing, I ended up with nowhere near enough fabric, I think because I have a loooooot of fabric tied up in seam allowances.  Hopefully Chara can add some white sashing to bring it to size for her quilt.  Also, you may have noticed that I used the unpopular “zombie geese” pattern, in which you don’t read the directions on how to match the triangles for a flying geese pattern and end up chopping all their heads off when you sew the strips together.  Ah well, at least the colors are pretty.

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We got a new cardboard scratcher for the cats, and it came with a packet of catnip.  I always forget how crazy they go for it.  Since I already had the machine out, I sewed up some little catnip packets for them to play with.  Originally I just made one, but then they started fighting over it (or rather, the giant cat was being a big bully), so I made another one.  The dense wool+double-zigzagged seams are secure enough that no catnip has escaped yet, and so far they’re holding up to the biting.

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Amazing, I actually sewed something.  When we moved to our new apartment, we finally got rid of our old Ikea couch that we’d been dragging back and forth across the country since I was in grad school.  The new apartment is small, so we gave the couch to some friends and got a new smaller couch* (also Ikea) that we’ve been calling the pocket couch.  It’s dark gray and even folds out into a twin bed, which is very useful since we no longer have an extra bedroom for when people visit.  The new apartment place also let us choose a color to paint an accent wall, and we chose mustard.  Clearly this calls for new throw pillows.

I’ve been wanting to redecorate the living room in gray and mustard for a while now, inspired by a bag that I bought from Zaum a few years ago (sorry, can’t find a picture atm).  Anyway, the bag is lined with this awesome geometric print from Ikea, and I was lucky to find a yard of it on clearance.  The backing is the mustard deco weight that it’s laying on in the photo, which I got at the Joann’s that I can now walk to.   It’s just a simple envelope pillowcase, but it’s the first time I’ve used piping (which is an olive color).  I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  Of course I ran out of piping before I finished the second pillow, which is super annoying.  At least everything is cut out and ready to go for the second one once I make a Joann’s run this week.

*One bad thing about the couch is that it contains a bad fire-proofing chemical that is probably what gave our older cat Beckett hyperthyroid disease. :(  We were hoping to find a new couch that wouldn’t be poisonous, but we caved and went for the cheaper cuter one instead.  Yes, I feel guilty.

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While packing up all the spices, I realized I never posted the spice rack I made.  Apparently this is where the ironing board used to live.  What to do with such a weird narrow cabinet?  Spice rack!  While wandering around Home Depot, we found tiles that were exactly the right dimension to fit as shelves and the idea was hatched.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to put perfectly even supports in the little closet, and wobbly shelves would’ve driven me crazy, so I used screw eyes.  You twist them each independently to make everything level.  It worked like a charm!

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Vintage Japanese owl switchplate my sister got me for Christmas.  The yellow rings around the eyes glow in the dark!

And here’s a big carved owl sculpture in some random house’s front yard.

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Took these photos last week on my last walk to work from my old house.  It’s on the 20th Ave bridge across Ravenna Park, if any locals are interested.  It’s like a giant doily!  I like how you can see the green registration marks, a little clue as to how they must’ve created it.

I also saw some knitted graffiti on a bench in the U District the other day, but it was disappointingly poorly executed, so I didn’t take a picture.  Still cool though.

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Got in some sewing last week before I had to pack up the craft room.  Goodbye craft room, I’ll miss you  ;_;

For some reason, I hate every bag I have right now.  Something is Not Quite Right about the strap on the sling bag I made a while back, so I stopped using it.  I’ve been carting around a promotional backpack from a pipette supplier from lab, which is just ridiculous.  I tried sewing a bag a month or so ago, and it was such a giant disaster I threw the whole mess away and didn’t even post it to craftlog.  After that, I thought I’d just buy one, but I couldn’t find anything that was ~perfect~ on Etsy.  Plus, there’s so much dreck there to wade through in the bags category that even if such a bag existed, I might not be able to find it.

Specs were: long diagonal-over-the-shoulder strap, pockets for my bus pass and phone, and not too big.  The second attempt at sewing it fared somewhat better, though it’s still too homemade looking for my tastes.  It’s a made-up pattern.

The denim (which is a much darker blue in person) I found at a thrift store, the buckle is vintage (from Make Me, looks like they have the same style in green right now).  It’s lined–including inside the pockets–with vintage fabric my sister found for me.  (Previously seen in the charming handbag, which I gave to my mother.)

You can see some of the pockets here.  Besides the flap zip, here’s another giant patch pocket that covers the entire back.  They are good for giving it some of the boxy structure I was going for.  I probably should’ve used some interfacing to make it a little less floppy, but it’s passable.  Now I’m on the lookout for cool pins or patches or something to liven up the flap.

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Remember the blik sticker headboard I posted a while back?  Yeah, I won’t be doing that again.  We’re moving yet again, so it’s got to go.  Besides being annoying to put up, turns out they’re annoying to take down too:  1.  it’s taking frakking forever because the design is made up of hundreds of little stickers and 2. it took some paint with it in a few places.  Not good!  The whole point of using it was because it was supposed to be renter friendly.

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Loving the aesthetic of this crazy music video from Department of Eagles and Marcel Dzama.

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vacation + avalanche of work = 1000 unread posts on Bloglines

Yeah.  That’s too much.  Also, the avalanche of work shows no signs of abating for, oh, probably forever.  So today I went through them and deleted practically everything.  I only kept a feed if I really really liked something in the last few posts.  Of course I am dumb and moved over to Bloglines beta without noticing that they are no longer compatible with automatically exporting my reading list over here, so you can’t tell I did anything.  (I do like their new system for marking posts “read” as you actually read them, though.)  I also might change my mind in a month and want all my subscriptions back, so this way I’ll just leave them here as a backup. :P

wedding quilt for my sister + 4 months behind on One Quilt = crafter’s block

Besides the accessories in the last post, which were literally pulled together in an hour the night before my flight, I haven’t been doing much crafting.  Partly due to the aforementioned workload, but also because I feel like I need to work on one of my overdue projects if I do anything.  Solution to this is to do some little TV-watching project to get me back into it.  I’m thinking a little piece of crochet jewelry from a new Japanese craft book I picked up.

Oh, and I’m back on the Getting Things Done bandwagon after falling off last year around this time.  Hopefully that’ll bring down the anxiety a notch.  I’m approaching inbox zero!

Ugh, this post is a downer.  Here, have a picture of my morbidly obese cat with a potato chip bag stuck on his head.

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