iPad Carry Bag

Before CSICon last month, I decided to make a bag sized just for my iPad, iPhone, new camera, and one or two other essentials. Something with an extra-long strap so I could wear it cross-body and low on my hip.

I had a big chunk of this very cool, but very stiff, diamond-plate embossed vinyl. I'd been trying to figure out something to do with it for a couple of years. Originally, I was hoping to make a corset with it -- how cool would that be! -- but it's just too stiff. It's a good weight for a light-duty bag, though.

I also had a couple of yards of this quilted burgundy knit which I'd intended to use for a nice fall skirt, which hasn't yet happened. Well then it's fair game! I figured it would be satisfactorily padded, particularly since the iPad never comes out of its leather case.

I decided the best design would be an envelope style with a bottom gusset to accommodate the iPad thickness. The leather patch on the front is embroidered with a nice juicy D and a heart, for me. :) I left the top of the patch open so I could slip some business cards etc. therein.

I also made a gusseted strip out of 2" elastic, made to measure for my iPhone and camera. (Camera not shown in place, for obvious reason.)

After careful measurements, the strap (plain 1" poly webbing, with diamond stud trim added) was sewn to the rear exterior, then the leather detail was added over top.

The interior and exterior were adhered together and then folded over at the bottom, then back up for the gusset. Then the outer edge was finished all the way around with purchased double-fold bias tape.

That's pretty much it! Simple design with a few added details. I carried it through the week, just right for my electro-accessories, and a couple extras.

CSICon/New Orleans 2011

CSICon/New Orleans 2011, a set on Flickr.

Just got home yesterday from close to a week in New Orleans, which included a big skeptics conference AND Halloween (and a costume party and a swamp tour...). It's like all the parts of my personality were fully engaged -- best vacation ever!

I spent the last few hours culling 600+ photos down to 200+ so y'all can get the highlights. If you're wondering, yes I did make my "costume" and yes I did do the facepaint myself. Even better than wearing a mask!

Wedding Fascinator

A friend of mine got married this weekend, which is always a good time to do some fancifyin'.

Another friend of ours did the design for the invites and overall "theme," so I got an idea. I asked her for the Adobe Illustrator files for the sweet Z design with the little birds (both the bride and groom have Z last names, and no they didn't meet in homeroom) and ran it through the embroidery machine with an eye toward making a hat. See, the idea of doing my hair for a wedding gives me the cold sweats, but making a hat? Fun.

The invites featured a subtle black-on-black leopard design, and leopard was an accent throughout the wedding, so even though I was wearing black/blue tiger print, I wanted that leopard represented. So the first thing I did was stitch the leopard spots in black on a very dark blue felt, to make it more texture than pattern. Then the gold Z (one of the wedding colors) and a satin-stitch heart to finish the shape off. I did this on a good felt, hooped without stabilizer. If I were going to do any more detailed embroidery, I'd have used stabilizer. But for essentially nothing but solid shapes? Naked!

With the stitching done, I could carefully trim the shape just outside of the thread. Felt doesn't ravel, of course, and by keeping the edge thread color very close to the felt color, the edge looks clean.

Then it's time for decorating!

I have a long history of working on various projects on Project Runway night. So I got my little glass head (which usually holds my motorcycle helmet) and cheap red wig (don't pretend you don't have one) and freeformed it. I started with the blue and gold dangles to go right in front of my ear. Then the blue tulle I have a couple of yards of, with no idea why. Folded it on the long edge, ran a basting stitch along the fold, and hand-sewed the ruffle along the edge that would be away from my face. At that point, I knew I wanted feathers, but it was anyone's guess how that would turn out.

I found the bright blue feather set and the long black singles at my local Joann. Even though I already had a selection of feathers -- man, is there anything I don't already have too much of? -- I didn't seem to have quite the ones I wanted. Typical, huh? The blue and black looked perfect though. And I already had the yellow. So I sat with my small scissors and glue gun and trimmed and curled and glued until I had something I liked. Then I attached it to a thin hair band, rather than stitching a comb or something to it.

I wanted the hat to have something to look at from every angle, so I wanted there to be some height in the feathers, plus some length for the back to give the people in the rear pews something to look at. I guess that went well as I was complimented by a late-arriving friend on my "spider legs." Maybe complimented is too strong a word.

The bride herself didn't get to see the piece until late in the reception of course, since she kinda had her mind on other things. When she finally did, though, she loved it. So it was absolutely worth it. Another friend said "I've never seen a themed wedding hat! You should have one for every event. For every day of the week!" How sweet would that be?

When I was getting ready to leave, I joked, "Well I guess I can just go home and throw this away now... Not like I'm gonna wear it again!" A couple of the women at my table were aghast. "No! You should give it to her!" Oh yes of course I'm going to give it to her!

Embroidered Mitred-Corner Placemats

All right, let's see how this works... Trying a new blogging app. The Blogger web interface is a little incompatible with iOS.
[EDIT: Didn't work well at all. Formatting this post was a MESS. Does anyone have a good iOS blogging app recommendation?]

A couple of weeks ago, I went to California to visit friends and see their new home in Santa Barbara. After spending a very pleasant long weekend there, I knew just what I wanted to make for them as a thank you/housewarming present before I was even on the plane home.

There are a few steps involved in converting a piece of art into a PES file for use with my embroidery machine. I'm just going to walk through the steps I personally used on this project. There are a few different methods. I work with Photoshop and Illustrator professionally on a regular basis, so it makes the most sense for me to start with creating my design in Illustrator. That's my first image here. (B-K represents their last names.)

After I've got something I like there, I start pasting elements from Ill into Wilcom Designer. And that's when the tweaking begins. The often very...very extensive tweaking. In the second image, you can see the splines for all of the objects. It's important not only to get the shapes right, but they need to be appropriate for stitching, which has a much lower resolution than you'd see on screen. Very fine details are difficult to reproduce and may need to be adjusted or discarded entirely. Next, choose stitch types (mostly either satin or tatami) and density, and order. You want to minimize jumps, because you're just going to have to go back and trim them all out anyway. This design software has a lot of advanced features -- much more advanced than I am! -- including what's called "branching," which essentially combines certain stitch objects for efficiency. The blue image is the 3D preview of the finished design.


Next come the stitching tests. It's going to be pretty rare that something stitches out satisfactorily the first time, so be prepared with some extra fabric. The fabric I chose for the placemat tops was a deep olive green ripstop of a sort, with a grid sewn into it. This appealed to the precision-craziness within me. I chose two different threads, unsure which color I'd prefer. I have a love of combining orange and green, but I also found this pretty, soft, minty pastel thread that I needed to give a try. One of my final stitch out tests was a color comparison. I went with the green.



With the design conversion finalized, I cut the tops and embroidered the design in place on each one. I decided the finished placemats were going to be 12"x16" with a .5" border on each side. That means the tops were cut at 11"x15" (plus seam allowances) and the backs -- a pretty quilting flannel in springy greens -- were cut at 13"x17" (plus seam allowances). The extra size on the back piece wraps around the front to make the border. I'm going to show you how that happens.

First, mark the centers of all four edges of both pieces. Starting on the edge of your choosing, with right sides together, match the center and the raw edges of just that one side and pin.

When you sew that edge, start at the seam allowance distance from each edge. In my case, .25" matched up with the grid, so I was .25" from each edge of the dark green top. Then when you get to the other side, once again stop at the seam allowance.

Then move to an adjoining side and do the same thing -- match the centers and the raw edge. It's going to leave extra at the corner, which it's supposed to. When you're lining up the edges, just be careful to smooth the backing out so you don't wind up stitching through that extra corner piece. Start where the stitching on the other side left off, and stitch down to -.25" (seam allowance) of that edge.



Do this on all four edges, making sure to leave a gap on one side to turn the piece through. Now, when it's all done, it's going to look like a mess until you turn it around. See? A mess. That's okay, trust me.

You're going to mitre the corners now. This is the only "tricky" part and it's not really tricky.

Lay the piece flat with the top piece facing upward, and bring the right hand edge down to the bottom edge, folding the lower right corner cleanly in half. This creates the sandwiched material in the lower right corner. It's a little awkward to explain, but it makes sense when you do it yourself. If everything fits together well, the corner should smooth out nicely.

With the stitched seam to your left, use a ruler to mark a straight line from the end of the seam stitching to the folded edge of the backing, at a right angle to the folded edge. when you stitch this line, you should be going through two layers of the placemat backing ONLY. If everything lines up correctly, it should meet the stitching perfectly on the other side as well.

If things don't line up quite right, you'll be able to tell when you unfold the piece. If the corner looks hitched like this photo, the corner won't mitre correctly. So snip any extra stitches so that the top piece lies flat.

Do that four times, all the way 'round, and that's it, your corners be mitred. Go ahead and trim the extra fabric from the corners

Now you turn the piece around through the gap you left on one edge, and smooth everything out again. I use the blunter end of a chopstick to turn the corners. Be careful because if you stress the fabric too much, you may wind up popping the seam. Because I'm using flannel, the corners don't have to be super crisp, because...flannel just doesn't behave that way. Smooth and adjust, smooth and adjust... You should feel the edges and the corners resolving themselves to the limits of the stitching. And now you press. When you get to the edge with the gap in it, make sure you fold the opening to look even with the rest of the sewn seam.












Then top stitch on the border side. Makes everything tighter and closes up that turning gap.

That's it! I made a total of six, mostly over a weekend. Stitching the embroidery took the longest time, so I did that bit by bit during the week. I also washed all the fabrics first so that they'll be usable/washable placemats.