Danish Style Pot Holders

Just finished these lovelies this weekend. These are pot holders, with triple layer cotton quilting and a leather tab to hang it by making it easy to store in your kitchen. Get it here.

A Productive Week

This past week I did a little home improvement and I made myself two skirts. The chair is a vintage mid-century modern Danish dining chair upholstered with ikea fabric. The skirt is a pattern from a Japanese craft book slightly altered in Nani Iro pretty polka dot cerulean blue. The second skirt is from a Built By Wendy pattern from her Sew U book in Heather Ross' super cute Strawberry print from her Briar Rose Collection that I purchased at Purl Soho. And the cute little non shelves are from Urban Outfitters.

Vintage Sewing: What I'm Wearing

I've started to freshen up my Spring/Summer wardrobe and as much as I like shopping as the next gal, I really love sewing. Making one-offs that no one else has, is extra fun so with that in mind I started purchasing vintage 1960's mod sewing patterns. Later, following up with a trip to my local craft store, Brooklyn General Store where I bought some super cute fabrics,starting with this mini deco fans print from Shelburne Falls in powder blue. I have two more to make, a pretty yellow with white dot, and a lovely spring green with teenie flowers. Stay tuned...

Dress: Vintage Sewing Pattern Simplicity 8189 in Shelburne Falls, Deco Fans powder blue.
Shoes: Golden Ponies in mint
Socks: Target
Eyeglasses: Vintage
Hair: Fringe Salon, NYC

Tissue Case-à la Americaine

I love all the lovely tissue cases in the Japanese craft books and other crafty friends' blogs, but unfortunately these pretty cases aren't made for the bulkier and top opening American tissue packs. Fall arrived and my allergies went hay wire (no pun intended). I started carrying my little packs of tissues and the packs always start to fall apart at the last two tissues so I said enough! I drafted a little pattern to make my own pretty cases and now my tissues have a lovely hidey home of their own. The how-to will be in my next zine which I mentioned in my last post. The zine will be mostly simple sewing projects.

Little Japanese linen apron

My old apron that my parents gave to me a long time ago has seen better days so I whipped up this new friend. I was inspired by all the cute aprons the main character in Rent-a-Cat wears while doing her home chores. I wanted a nice big pocket and I wanted to be able to fold down the top panel if I didn't feel like wearing it. I use beautiful Japanese linen from Kokka fabrics, in brown. The ties are cotton webbing and then I saved this lovely trim from my first trip to Japan and I thought it would work perfectly on this pretty friend. I added random loosely cut circles, because i wanted to add a soft whimsical unevenness to the whole piece. I might add this pattern to a new zine I have in the works ;)
OH I just received word on my new paper swap partner! Hello new friend! Magdalena!

Rain Cover For Your Bike Seat

Many New Yorkers do not have the luxury of indoor bike storage so along with thieves you have to worry about the weather ruining your bike. An easy solve for the rain is a plastic bike seat cover made from a plastic bag. Most people just tie a bag over their seats, I find two problems with this it's ugly and then bulky to shove in your bag when not in use. I also realized I have a few plastic bags that I hate to part with because they hold sweet memories of my trips to Japan, Sweden or other lovely place. With all this is mind I created a bike seat cover out of one of my beloved bags. It super easy to make but you'll need a sewing machine and some intermediate sewing skills.
You'll need:
*Plastic bag bigger than your bike seat when laying flat.
*Tracing paper
*Scrap of paper 8.5 x 11 or A4 or bigger.
*pencil
*scissors
*sewing machine
*thread
*1/4" elastic about a yard, you'll have left over.

1. Take your regular scrap of paper and go over to your bike and trace the seat.
2. Take your tracing and make a clean trace on tracing paper and add 1.5"-1.75" from the edge of your bike seat line, this will be the edge that will go over the sides of the seat.
3. Cut your tracing.
4. Take your pretty plastic bag, I used my Loft bag, and figure out the placement of the graphic on your bag how it will look on the seat. Then place the tracing on top and either trace with permanent magic marker or place a couple of weights on it and cut tracing. Use weights instead of pins because it will leave holes.
5. Measure the circumference of the edge of your tracing and cut a piece of elastic 1.5" shorter than measurement.
6. Now comes the tricky part because you can't pin the elastic to the plastic. Using a zig-zag stitch, take your cut plastic bag and you are going to sew the elastic to the very edge of the plastic all around. You most stretch the elastic the entire time you sew it while it's passing through the feeds, but try and not pull the sewn bits from the back. This will create a shower cap effect around the edge.
Voila you have a bike seat cover!

Tiny Haus

Thursday was a bit of a nerve wrecking day, so I needed to make a little something to ground myself. I have a lot of little bits of scrap fabric and trims that I save for tiny projects and this was such a project. I made a tiny house brooch pin that can go with me anywhere. I was thinking of making these for my Etsy store what do you think? Also I had a bit of luck at Target the same day. I say luck because when you live in a very urban area and all 8 million people living in your city shop here you generally can't find what you are looking for. I found some washi tape! Target made their own brand of paper tapes. I bought two three packs, the blue/purple one and the red/pink one. There is also a turq/green one. The only thing I don't like about them is that they have a plastic core, which is very wasteful. I like the Japanese tapes best because it's all paper based. I didn't realize it until I opened the packages. I will recycle the centers when I finish the tapes. Also, they have the cutest magnet dots! Again, they have them in the same colorways as the tapes to match. I got the pink/red pack.

A Mini Pom Cover for My Kindle

My sister gave me her old Kindle which I'm super happy to have so it can be recycled with me. I have a so many books on it too, like the new Murakami, 1Q84. My sister was also kind enough to give me a very nice cover specifically made for the Kindle, but it adds like 2 lbs to the Kindle. Enter my lovely sewing machine. I picked out two cute fabrics, some batting and mini poms and whipped up this simple light weight cover.

Usagi Por Moi Bag

Last week I designed and made this little cross shoulder bag. I love all woodland creature real and mythical, so I decided that I would love a jackalope on a little zippered bag. I hand sketched the drawing on the bag then machine embroidered it, definitely not my finest sketch but I like it looks like a ball point sketch. The shell is cotton canvas. I used a vintage crochet doily from the stash I bought on Ebay a few weeks back for the applique. Also, lovely vintage beads from Tinsel Trading, a vintage yellow metal zipper from my vintage notions stash. Sweet mini dot bumblebee lining which I bought in Tokyo. And the shoulder strap is a beautiful piece of leather I've been saving. This bag tutorial will be in my next craft zine.

Summer Quilt

Right before my migraines kicked in a couple of weeks ago I started this summer quilt with Nani Iro fabric. I had a whole bolt of it from when I was selling fabric so I started to think what I should make. Along came a lovely post on the Purlbee, a source of great inspiration,a lap duvet. I never heard of a lap duvet, turns out its lap quilt. I changed the measurements to suit my needs, I wanted something to cover my whole self when sleeping but not take up to much room put away. The pattern also calls for machine tacks every seven inches but I decided it would be prettier to tack by hand with a simple embroidery knot. I used a dark pink and a light aqua to match the watercolor flowers on the Nani Iro print. The quilt itself pre-embroidery knots took maybe an hour or less, the knots took a few hours. If you are pressed for time go the sewing machine tack route.

Free Trim Card PDF

Hi folks. Second post today, doesn't happen often, but I got side-tracked from my pillow making schedule by the mess in one of my trim drawers. I have a A LOT of trims and notions, and my trim drawers are lets say a little hard to open. With that mess in mind I stopped my pillow plans and designed a trim card to wrap all my pretty things on. I figured a lot of my crafty friends out there in blog space might have the same problem so I'm offering a free pdf here and I will keep a link on the left column of my blog. Just print on 8.5x11 card stock, cut-out, and VOILA you have neat little pretty things all lined up in your drawers! *Please remember all free things I share are copyrighted to me so this is for your home use only not for resale(someone was naughty recently and tried using one of my pics without my permission we came to an understanding but things could have gotten ugly). Copyrighting your work is so easy now, you can do online for a small fee, I highly recommend doing it.

Granny Pillow

If you saw yesterday's post I recently acquired a bunch of vintage doilies from Turkey so I set out to make myself a mini pillow for my sewing chair (said chair not pictured because the studio is in an upheaval at the moment). With my Dottie Angel book in hand for inspiration and conjured this little friend for my back in no time. I love Tif's inspirational quotes so I borrowed one to add to my sewing pillow. This pillow now sits in my creative chair in my very messy studio. Thanks Tif for your inspiration. The pic doesn't do it justice, the pom poms are super fun bright colors, it's rainy day and I'm not set up for a good pic, but you get the idea.

Dry Goods-Brooklyn Zakka Shop

This Wednesday I finally got to pop into new shop in my neighborhood Dry Goods, a lovely zakka shop on Atlantic avenue. The store mainly focuses on heritage products, mostly American but they also important stuff from Europe and Japan. Dry Goods, has lovely things like Jadite, MT tapes (pretty much almost all of them), vintage and new stationery, plus they carry new brands that take pride in their products like Merchant and Mills, a wonderful sewing notions vendor from England. I walked away with a few things from their shop, a roll of cotton gingham placemats from Spain called Drap, they tear off like paper towels. I little packet of lovely vintage airmail envelopes,and a vintage wax paper fromage bag from France.

















getting there:
Dry Goods
362 Atlantic Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Train-take the A,C,or G to Hoyt Schermerhorn
Website: http://www.drygoodsny.com/