Saturday, January 7, 2017
Woke up to -9º outside. It’s hard to believe that in just a couple short months it’ll be hiking season again.
Today I’m taking an “off” day from my eating program…that’s not to say I’ll go hog-wild, but I got cleaned up and drove into town to Rocking Horse Bakery and enjoyed a breakfast bagel and an iced soy mocha (even in a deep freeze I still love my coffee iced).
Sitting down in the back of the bakery contemplating what I want to do with my Saturday. Since Tiago’s on the wet side till tomorrow, I can do pretty much what I like (he’d say I do anyways). ;-). Mom’s invited me to spend the afternoon with her while my dad has to go take pictures of a high school basketball game in Brewster.
Should I study college algebra and statistics and probability, sew, knit, doodle, binge watch the new season of Man in the High Tower? So many choices.
This brings me back to one of the main reasons for keeping a blog; all my life I’ve been disjointed in beginning and finishing projects. I’ve always had a tendency to be a dreamer, but not a doer, and, as a result, I’ve spent a good part of my life waiting for things to happen instead of creating those things. Again, this isn’t a soliloquy about a life wasted – I’ve had a great life so far, better than most and I’m happy with where I’m at, but I think I may be going through a typical mid-life crisis, so, consider this as a type of therapy to exorcise my demons. 😉
I spent all day working on a sewing project. I wanted to make a makeup tote for my mother and started by drafting a pattern. I wanted the tote to be wider at the bottom and taper at the top. I also wanted a liner and a zipper.
I originally designed this pattern to use one piece of folded fabric. There would only be two seams on either side to shape the tote. I found that after cutting out a mock-up, the pattern skewed the finished product; it was necessary to cut the bottom corners at an angle so the vertical center sewn seam would be at a 90º angle to the bottom horizontal seam.
This pattern has a 1/2″ seam allowance. Once I made up the pattern I used a piece of scrap canvas to make a prototype.
I was fairly happy with the prototype, but realized that since this design only used one piece of fabric, anything with a pattern would be right-side up on one side and wrong-side down on the opposite side. To get around this I decided to use a geometric piece of fabric for the bottom third and use two cut-out panels for the fronts and sides.
This pattern stumped me a bit on how to properly attach a zipper and a liner, but after some playing around I was able to assemble this piece.
There’s a lot of issues with this first attempt at a tote, but overall, I’m happy with it and hope my mother enjoys it.
I’m going to move on to making a toiletry tote for Tiago and myself.
It’s time to take a break and binge on some Man in the High Castle.