In the Making: The Men's Shirt & Tie Bag

Now where did I put those pi...oh yes, in my cakehole

We are in love with our Fortune-Teller Bag, it's super simple to make and bags of fun to wear.  You can run one up in 3 minutes flat. Nearly.  Well, maybe half an hour, but that's how quick and simple it is if you do our scarf tutorial, residing for now over at Mrs Thrifty's, where we proudly guest-blogged.  However, that's strictly for friends or for meself, but transferring the design to our product range means a little more quality control.  So here is one, a custom make for my good friend, who saw mine and ordered her own.  She stole her husband's shirt and sneaked it down the Post Office.  She could have stuck some of his ties in too - so the handles are old ties, but for now, we used some lovely old vintage lining fabric so the handles slide smoothly inside the bag casings.

When the shirt arrived I got my grubby, shoddy benailed mitts (aren't they a disgrace, my nails?  My four-year-old painted those on for me 3 weeks ago.  I'm just waiting for them to grow off because I've run out of nail varnish remover).

Um, as I was saying, I got my shoddy benailed mitts all over the shirt and cut it to smithereens before reconstructing it into a bag. 
Naked.  No, I'm kidding, I just happen to have a strapless top thingy on, but I admit it does look a little dodgy.  Unless we want to start up a naked sewing club?  Hm?

Hang on...pins, needles, rotary blades....I'm thinking casualty, embarrassing potential for ending up on the medics' facebook page entitled OMG You'll Never Guess What Injury Came Into Casualty Today

I'm thinking maybe we stick with clothes.  Let's leave naturism to beach volleyball.

Anyhoo, here it is; from shirt to bag.  It's where all shirts dream of ending up....

Grabbing buttons...

Cutting off cuffs...

Lopping off collars...

Cutting out the big shapes....

Sewing 'em together...

Adding lining pieces...

Piecing the structure...

Is it a cuff, or is it a pocket?

Stitching it all up...

Giving it legs - got to have your brand in there

Not wasting the breast pocket!

Putting buttons back on...it looks like tiny knitting!

Give it a little security with a button-up tab...

Re-using the buttons and button placket for a little detail...

Rouche up the handles....

And voila - one Men's Shirt Bag.

Coming soon to the website!  So if there's one of yer man's shirts you've had your eye on, stick a balaclava over your head and sneak into his wardrobe to half-inch it, nabbing a couple of ties while you're at it, and bob's yer uncle, a truly unique Men's Shirt Fortune-Teller Bag.

These will be available as a product to buy on the website very soon, but you know you can just get in touch with us anyway, right?
Here, at Facebook...
Here, at Twitter...
Here at the website...
and Here on the Blog!

Celebrating Stitchery

Teddy's going the right way for a smacked bottom, Donkey. Sorry, it's not often you'll find me quoting Shrek.

One of by very very very FAR the nicest things about being me, apart from the fact that I can make an excellent and surprisingly loud woodblock sound with my mouth, wiggle my eyebrows separately, and whistle like a strutting sailor at a magnificent 100 decibels, is when the postman knocks on my door and gives me lovely parcels full of the work of OriginalStitchers.

We are very excited to be stocking some of our delicious kids bits and bobs in a new shop opening in Princes Risborough - Gorgeous Giggles; and so we set to and sent orders off to, in strict alphabetical order - Bev, Jennie and Katie, three of our first stitchers.

I love our designs, if I do say so myself, but I have discovered I love them even more when they are made by our stitchers. The fabrics they've all chosen are just so fab, and I hate to say it, more exciting than the fabrics I have here, so the products they made are super cool and gorgeous.  And as more and more of the parcels tumble in, and we unwrap the beautifully stitched makes, the colours all pile up and remind us of one of the central tenets of OriginalStitch - a riot of colour, pattern, shape and stitching!

Click on the slideshow for a very silly look at them - aren't they smashing?  I can't bear to see them go to their loving new owners' hands without capturing them in all their gaudy glory first - so here they are, very much enjoying a photoshoot in this delicious sunshine we're having today.  As you can see, I was ably assisted by Brown Teddy, who apologises for the state of this rapidly unravelling, increasingly thread-bare nose.  As he pointed out to me, it's like the teddy equivalent of bogeys hanging down from his schnozzer.  Teddies are a little on the gross side aren't they? I would never use the word bogeys in a blog post.

Thanks Bev, Jennie and Katie - you've done us very, very proud, and I'm sure Helen from Gorgeous Giggles will be delighted to have these in her shop x

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In the Bag

Oh hello! Where have you all been? Honestly, I've done, like, a million blog posts this summer and just, like, quite simply, no-one's been to visit! Where have you been, hm? I've made 4 bags, 3 placemat sets, a coffee-jug cosy, 2 tea-cosies, 5 quilts, a cot-quilt, 34 napkin rings, 87 pencil rolls and 129 double-sided interwoven photo-frames and written 14,670 words in total to accompany them.
Ahem.
Ok, that's porky pies.
It's not just me though, is it, now. I have noticed in my blog perusing that there is many a lingering post gathering dust, and beginning to look a little frayed round the edges.
In my case it is the presence of the 2 and 4 year old and this god-forsaken malingering workshy hideous annual thing they call The Summer Holidays. I'm sorry to be a curmudgeon but I'm sick of it.

I'm cheered by the new washing machine. The old one broke just after we had come back from our holiday, which was quite excellent timing. The new one has a massive drum, a load of eco features, and is a very quiet young lady. Gorgeous she is.
Do you think I need to get out more?

I'm not cheered by the routine-breakout tantrum behaviour being exhibited by the smallest of the daughters multiple times a day. Her soul has been replaced by that of a fiend, whose aim is to have an almighty explosion over such significant issues as a) a pair of socks b) a pair of scissors and c) a drink of orange juice, as was the case yesterday. This morning so far - pants, cereals, and popcorn, or pippy pop pops as she seems to call them, which was the only point in the day so far when my Sense Of Humour Failure temporarily lifted, only to be swiftly dropped back on again when the pippy pop pops tantrum erupted and showered us all with its full fiery glory.

I am equally gloomy about the extreme lack of sewing time I have on my hands.
I am, in short, feeling just a little worn at the knees.

I am brightened however, by the knowledge that the one thing I have got round to making, in probably 8 sessions over a period of 2 weeks (it really is a sewing drought isn't it?) - an Anna Maria Horner pattern shoulder bag for 'Er Nextdoors - has been noticed whilst out and about. She was stopped twice on her shopping trip with enquiries about her bag. One lady practically had her nose in it, so eager was she to see it. 'Er Nextdoors said she was asking her all these questions about the fabric (which was Amy Butler and Kaffe Fassett, from some fat quarter bundles I bought, although 'Er Nextdoor wasn't acquainted with these facts) and she was just going red and saying "Er...um...I um...don't know I'm afraid...my neighbour made it for my birthday..."
Well, horrid holidays or not, that is very cheering isn't it?
Maybe I should run a few up in my spare time and sell them at a fayre, or really, get a Folksy or Etsy store sorted. The bag is from one of my favourite books, Seams to me, by Anna Maria Horner. Her patterns are very easy to follow - they must be because I have now made 4 things from her book. The bag took me probably 6 hours in total, but as with all things makey, whether you're talking wallpapering walls or planting trees or baking a cake (mmm, cake. Sorry, I'm now on post-holiday where-did-that-half-stone-come-from de-fatification) at least 2 hours of that must have been preparation - fabric selection and planning, pattern tracing and cutting, fabric cutting and pressing....
My favourite bit of the bag is the plaited fabric straps and the bits of ripped froo-froo on the corners. They serve no purpose whatsoever except to look scrappy and pretty and there's no harm in that. My favourite bit of smugness about making the bag is that I willy-nilly ignored all instructions to cut fabrics on the grain, because I am always using up scraps, and trying to make patterns squeeze themselves cleverly on to pieces of fabric, grain or no grain. Or trying to make stripes go in the right direction like those ones there, can you see? Consequently, quite a few of the fabric pieces are cut on the bias, which is the kind of things sewing teachers used to dock marks for and frown. All that grain, knap, weave, weft, warp business - ha ha, in your face.
And talking of in your face, the big daughter is now getting in the small one's, on the matter of a scooter, as far as I can make out. That, and a massive load of washing which requires drying begs me leave of my computer.
Who knows when I will see you next?!
Adieu!

Ratbags

Once, the Husb, during a part of his childhood spent in Mexico, got stuck in a bathroom for 6 hours. There he perched atop the loo in terror, unable to reach and unlock the door, while a huge black rat lurked and prowled, presumably trying to figure out how to eat him. This memory, and I think in general the memory of whopping great enormous Mexican rats, has rendered him, how shall we say, somewhat unkeen on the creatures in question.
He was therefore not amused when I tried casually to break it to him that we had rats. I very nearly ended up with divorce papers on my doorstep, because it is of course, all my fault. You see, I have a compost heap. Two in fact; the Dalek kind (for those of you across the pond who are not familiar with the Dr Who television programme, this is those big black plastic ones - they look like the evil protagonists called Daleks who are the enemy of a time-travelling, um, time-lord type person, who whizzes round the universe, I think, in an old English police-box or... oh really, don't worry, it's not important). The Husb has never liked my compostification of things, especially peelings and eggshells and stuff, and shuddered visibly every time he saw me marching out there to compostify my old bits of potato. "We'll get rats!" he would shriek irrationally. Of course I pooh-poohed him and raised my eyes to the heavens, marching purposefully out there, compost bound, with my old bits of cauliflower.
However, as I stood at my kitchen window a month ago, who should I see but a jolly brown rat, milling casually around our fallen apples, scooting around under the shed, lurking suspiciously by the compost bins, and popping off to other gardens, dragging his apples with him. And then his pal too. Or most probably his good lady wife. Very attractive nice lady rat she was, and no doubt really pregnant with a litter of like, a million babies.
Ahem.
To cut a long story short, I dealt with the problem (lovely ratty multi-storey town-house dwelling in my compost bin = council rat man = what a lovely fellow = ah, yes, they're in yer compost bin = poison 'em = dead rats = possible daughter poisoning = better come clean to the Husb who is playing out in the garden...)
The husb was not amused. It was, he claimed all down to the two eggshells he had seen me put in the compost bin last August, which had apparently attracted and sustained an entire family of rats throughout the long, cold winter. I retorted that it was in fact the apples we had negligently failed to clean up for 6 months and which were giving the rats A Food Source. I had no idea. I honestly thought rats liked things like burgers. Not apples; I mean that's a bit wholesome isn't it? They did look quite wholesome actually; I think they were probably quite rustic, as rats go.
Anyway, the rats are no more, and the disposing of the compost and the dead rats brought about our garden makeover, a project hitherto only vaguely on the horizon, and precipitated by our ratty removal antics.
Which brings me at last to my point, which is - where on earth have I been?
What a lapse in blogging. I mean, how can I hope for a nice bunch of comments and new Followers (of whom I have a couple - hello you!) if I neglect my blog? Tsk.
Garden planning is where. Never mind drawing up plans for nice sewing projects, I've been printing out graph paper and drawing gazebos and leafing through 89 gardening books and 14 gardening magazines and comparing paving slabs and fences and borders and shrubs and and prancing about out there with tape measures, and liaising and negotiating and purchasing and price-checking and oh my goodness. And as you know from my pencil-roll boasts, I do like a bit of planning.
So that, and a 4th birthday party in less than 2 weeks (expect more desperate posts on that matter in the coming days) means my Makeys have been on the scant side.
Except for my tour de force that is - the lovely quilted bag o'pens at the top there - for 4 year old Isobel. It's got a little colouring book in it, and 12 pens, and I painstakingly designed the pattern myself whilst the Husb and his best pal painted the outside of the house and the daughters ran total riot around me upstairs.
And I am thinking - it's about time I started putting some of these things out there isn't it? So, to make up for my lazy blogging, I am gearing up for a nice series of How-To tutorials, one of which will be the quilted bag o'pens. Get yer needles poised ladies, collect up some pretty fabric, and prepare to become obsessed with Making Gifts for Kids, which will be the first series.
But I'll warn you now, I haven't tried any soft toy patterns yet.
But I could do.
I could start with a nice friendly giant rat...

Gender Mender

I have been trawling the internet like some prowling fabric nut for toy-making ideas; my sister's assertion that you need to get cracking early if you're going to make all presents is coming at me hard and fast.  I sat there yesterday while the daughters did colouring-in (aw, don't they sound nice?  In reality they were a pair of agents from the dark forces for most of the day), transferring dates into a book of birthdays, and panicking.  Each birthday invitation that arrives now is a race against time, but I am meeting the challenge head on.

Make a dog from a sock?

Make a rocket from fimo?

Do something snazzy and piratey with magnets?

March and April are full to the brim with birthdays, and I have my first boys' birthdays coming up.  Now, those who know me will know that I rail against sexism in toys - I am constantly astonished by the toy industry's persistent gender stereotyping - just check out a toy catalogue - and especially since I have no sons to create a natural balance of toys, I choose toys with calculated precision to try and achieve that balance between boys' and girls' toys.  They have a kitchen, and also a toolkit, a trainset and lorries and lego and also dolls and dolly beds.  I snort in derision at most things fairy, princess or pink based (although the daughters like those things as much as anything else of course) and feel affronted that my daughters might be excluded from things pirate, castle or tractor based.

So you'd think I'd happily be sewing nice pink bags for the boys, or creating a little princess sock puppet for them, or manhandling giant foam tractor shapes for the girls, complete with rake-wielding farmhands and a giant carrot barrow.

But no.

I'm in a state of nervous tension over what boys will like.

So far the girls have all received either beanbag bags or homemade crayons in bags, and the truth is, the boys would like those things too; but somehow I'm all paranoid that they won't, because the darn system's got to me hasn't it.  It goes like this: right, I'll do a bag and the chunky crayons for Boy 1.  Voice in head - ooh no, boys don't like colouring in.  Boys don't like bags.  And hey presto, the doubt has set it.  Now, the two little boys I know best are actually very keen on colouring in, very good at sitting and doing crafty things, with good concentration spans and so far, no penchant for needing to stand on the table beating their chests and spitting at people.  In fact, when I cast the net further and think of most of the boys I know, they're all rather well behaved, and if I go even further and think about the little girls I know, there are plenty who would quite like to leap from a tree and stuff my chunky crayons in an electricity socket rather than do colouring in.  But there I am, biting my lip with worry about giving crayons to boys, whereas I didn't question it at all with the girls.  I'm disgusted with myself.

So then, who's up for an anti-gender-stereotyping-in-toy-manufacturing demo in Trafalgar Square on Saturday?

I'll knit some placards.  See you at the train station.  Don't wear pink.

Tie died

Ok, guess what this was?!

The bemused husband was requested to dig me out some old ties that he doesn't wear, or that he's thrown custard down or something (which reminds me of a quote from Isla when aged three - "When I'm a lady, I'll eat ratatouille. When I'm a baby like Hetty, I'll like ratatouille. With custard." Okay then....sometimes I have whole conversations with the daughters which make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Another more recent one, from Hetty, aged two and a third began - "What do you want to be when you grow up, Hetty?" and Hetty, after a little think, replied "I'm going to eat tiny little sausages. I'm not a dirty lady." Er, right then. Right you are.)

This little project is a sit-in-the-evening one, quite quick, and rather pleasing - it's from Cythia Treen and Karen Phillipi's Last Minute Fabric Gifts, as is the white flower sitting with the bag.
Who'd have thought it, eh? A little bag made from an old tie. My plan to conquer the birthday world with homemade gifts is setting off nicely, if somewhat falteringly. There was a large amount of oh-bugger-I've-sewn-the-damn-thing-to-itself mutterings whilst I sat there. Now, as you can imagine the bag is rather silken. Nice for lipsticks, or maybe even an ipod thingy. Hands up who wants one of those for their birthday because that's gone in the To Give Someone For Their Birthday box, sadly sans ipod thingy, although I'm sure I could dig out a revolting old lipstick from somewhere. Anyone?

Bean sewing

Well. My first child's present is finished - my friend's daughter 1 year old Evie is to be the proud recipient of a bag o' beanbags, so she can learn how to walk about with them on her head, and lob them across the room and fight over them with her sister; all very important things a 1-year old must master. I am rather pleased with the bag. Not so much with the beanbags. Answers on a postcard please to win an old cotton reel, those who can spot the oops-right-sides-facing gaffe, my valiant attempts to zig-zaggedly conceal and transform not quite having worked...
Now then. I don't know how I made the bag. I started off with 4 squares of fabric - 2 red and 2 stripey, and had in mind some vague idea of the bag being all neat and lined with the stripey; so I layered them all up and sewed and then turned it inside out and then did something else and turned it back again and before I knew it I somehow had a very neat bag with the seams all completely hidden away, somehow, I don't quite, how did I, what? I shall have to ask The Oracle, my mother Shelagh, who is the Knower of All Things Craft. She'll say - oh for goodness sake, it's a Hidden Double-Sided Uppercut Gahooty Lining, that's all, and I'll be like - eh? And she'll say, right, if you want your lining and you want your seams hidden you line up your pieces so...and then when they're sewn they'll be like this....see? And I'll say, no, I don't see and she'll say oh for goodness sake. And we'll be wrestling with bits of fabric and I'll be going, no, still don't see. You're going to have to show me with stitches in and everything coz I cannot for the life of me see how that flat things turns itself into a bag. No spatial awareness see, Mum.
What is becoming clear with my crafting is that I bumble through each project with my tongue sticking out earnestly and somehow end up somewhere - the results are often quite good, but if I want to perfect them I should be improving through practice. So I shall jolly well have to work out how that bag did that to itself, and then at what point I should (have) done the ribbony bit, and where on earth in God's name I would put those nice EVIE letters to start with if I wanted them to end up in the right place on the outside of the bag - I mean, blimey, this requires more maths and geometry and stuff, and I've only just got over coming seriously a-cropper with that quilt maths. Still, if I want to be able to 'run up' a beanbag (as opposed to a beanpole which would be a whole different thing) then I need to have my methods honed.
And once I have consulted Said Oracle, I will do some lovely instructions and stick 'em up here, ok? We can all become seamly bag ladies.