laptop bag

My HB got himself a new tiny laptop for traveling, and he asked me to sew a case for it.  This is what I came up with:



He chose the fabric, a rather odd print that had large panels of differnet patterns, sold only by the whole yard (understandably, as it is a 1-yd repeat).  It's a mid-weight cotton canvas.

( a couple more photos )

I lined it in plain black cotton and interfaced it with Peltex, a really heavy bag stiffener.  I constructed it just like this crazy patchwork bag I made last year.  I pieced the outside, then sewed the interfacing to the canvas 7/8" from the edge.  I trimmed the interfacing to 1/4"  from the stitching and stitched the lining to the canvas, right sides together, just outside the newly cut edge of the interfacing.  Turned, pressed, and stitched the opening closed.  I folded the bag up and used a machine overcasting stitch to whip the dges together.  Added velcro and it was done! 

earrings

I made these bead earrings for my sister a couple weeks ago. I really like making simple beaded earrings, but I almost never remember to take photos of them.



Maybe because it's so hard to get a good photo. But it's mostly for my reference anyway. Three were basically variations on a theme since I used the same 3 types of beads in all of them, and the mother-of-pearl coins were the odd ones, but the grey matches the little seed pearls in the others.

Whenever I ask my sister what she wants for a birthday or holiday, her default answer is earrings.  I have made her so many earrings by now that I really need to start documenting them so I do not repeat myself too much in future pairs.

trouser book

Now that I've posted about a couple presents I made, I'll post about a present I recieved.

By far my favorite thing was David Page Coffin's new book, Making Trousers. I've been a fan of his book Shirtmaking for a long time, and Coffin is simply one of my sewing heroes.

The trouser book has the same clear, well-defined approach to fine sewing techniques that Shirtmaking has, plus a dvd with videos on how to do some of the steps. I haven't checked out the dvd yet, but the book itself has already given me a bunch of new ideas.  I've only recently started wearing pants again (as opposed to skirts) and I've only recently started thinking about getting seriously into making pants for my HB (probably one reason he gave me this book!).

Pants are hard to sew (for me anyway).  Not as hard as jackets, but harder than shirts, and definitely harder than skirts. Having some good books around makes it so much easier; this is one that does.

You can get an idea of some of the content of the book from the blog DPC on Making Trousers.