Buckle Book

Here’s another pair of presents I made for Rosa and General Zod at Christmas (they’re only four months apart in age so I can get away with getting them the same thing for a while). It’s a good little distraction to take along with you in the car or at the doctor’s office or wherever you have to sit in one place for a while.

You will need some fabric for the inside of your little book and some for the outside. I used a quilted red cotton (from the Pie’s caddy) as the interior and a thick denim for the cover. I originally planned to use velcro to keep the book closed, which is why it’s in this shot, but I ended up going in a different direction.

You will also need assorted notions for sticking inside the book: zippers, ribbon, beads, buckles, snaps, and I even picked up a jewelry chain I thought might be of interest. Some of this stuff I picked up at the dollar store and other bits I scavenged from my mother’s sewing room.

I strung some plastic pony beads onto some narrow ribbon.

I realized after I planned everything out that I had red zippers on a red background, which wasn’t particularly appealing, so I grabbed a contrasting cotton to slide in underneath.

So this is everything laid out as I want it in my “book” (which is more like a scroll, if we’re being honest).

Now it’s just a matter of pinning.

And sewing it all into place. Make sure you sew it on securely – toddlers can destroy pretty much anything.

Time to put a backing on it. This is a general idea of how it will roll up.

There was more pinning, and more sewing. I even mitred the corners, which I learned how to do a few Christmases back.

Then I added on a wide grosgrain ribbon that would tie it shut and was also long enough that you can tie it around a chair back or car seat so it doesn’t go anywhere.

Here’s the ribbon loop.

The finished interior’s got zippy zippers.

And slide-y beads.

And slinky chains and clicky buckles.

And snappy snaps.

And all wrapped up!

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Custom Carrying Caddy

This was another birthday present for the Pie.  When he goes off to play Street Fighter, he brings what is known as a “setup,” which includes an XBox, the game, his fightstick and a display monitor.  He can put pretty much everything in one backpack, but carrying the monitor to and fro is more difficult, especially when negotiating doors and long hallways and preventing it from getting damaged while sliding around in the trunk of the car.  So he has often wished aloud that he had some kind of specialized carrier that would make humping the monitor to and fro less of a pain in the patoot.

The idea percolated in my head for a few months, and then, about a week before his birthday, I figured it out.  I managed to make this, from concept art to completion, in about three hours, on a horribly humid and rainy Sunday afternoon.  I’m not sure if this particular DIY is practical for you, but maybe you have something awkward you need to carry around on occasion and if so I hope this inspires you to make something that is perfect for the purpose!

First, obviously, I measured the crap out of everything.  I studied the front and back of the monitor, figuring out where the base stuck out of the back and how wide it was when it did so.  To make this custom caddy stable, it made more sense for the caddy itself to enclose only the screen, and have the base stick out the bottom.  This means that you can put the whole thing down on a surface without it overbalancing and tipping over.

I picked up this absolutely awesome Spider-Man fabric at Wal-Mart.  I couldn’t resist.

And if I turned it sideways, it was the perfect size for a custom caddy.

This quilted stuff I grabbed at Fabricland, as well as some red velcro and some red strapping.

In order to ensure the continuing accuracy of my measurements, I had to cut the stuff in the basement where the sewing machine was, and then carry it upstairs two storeys and hold it against the monitor in question. I would have brought the monitor down but it would have been harder to explain if the Pie had come home early.  This shot shows the fold-over flap at the top.

Now I needed to figure out the hole for the base and stem.

Measure, check, measure, check again, and then finally cut.  Fortunately I bought enough of the quilted stuff to have a do-over if I messed it up, but I didn’t want to waste it.

The slit in the back of the caddy with the hole for the base.

Here it is with the foldover flap pinned down for measuring purposes.

Now to attach it to the outside fabric.

I pinned it in place as straight as I could, and mitred the corners to avoid fraying.

In order to have the Spider-Man fabric wrap properly around the quilting along the slit, I widened it slightly to give me a little wiggle room.

Not much wiggle room, but some.

The pinned slit.

This gives you an idea of how it’s going to look from the back, with the top flap folded down.

And the flap open.

Then I sewed it all down.

It’s not perfect in the hole but it’s the best I could do at the time.

Now for all the bits to hold it together.

Each strap is a metre long, and I pinned them far enough down on the caddy so they would support the weight of the monitor while not putting too much strain on the fabric.  They’re also at a comfortable spot for the straps to go over your shoulder, with the monitor balanced against your hip.

Sewn in place with reinforced stitches.  You can see here how the foldover flap keeps the two sides split by the slit together.

In order to keep the foldover flap in place I needed the velcro.  One fuzzy strip across the flap and a hook strip on either side of the slit.

Sewing velcro on a machine is not easy.

It was hot work, in fact, but the humidity outside didn’t make anything easier.

But I did it!

So basically here’s how it works.

You open it up and align the slit with the base of the monitor, tucking the strap over the monitor (not shown in this shot, sorry).

Slide the slit along the base of the monitor (sideways works best).

Twist the carrier so the solid side is in front, covering the screen.

Lift the caddy by the straps …

… and fold the flap over to hold the two back ends together.

So you can easily carry it and just as easily set it down.

Here’s me trying to take a selfie while holding the thing on my shoulder.

Fat Quarter Napkins

Happy Birthday Rusty!

[In case you ever marvelled at my magic efficiency, please note that I started this particular project on Labour Day Weekend and didn’t finish it until the 12th of December.  If that makes you feel better.]

I love fabric.  I am the worst sew-er in the world, but I seem to adopted a love of pretty cloth from my mother.  It’s both a blessing and a curse.  To assuage my inability to live without fabric and to compensate for the utter lack of storage space I have for it, I buy fat quarters.  These are squares of quilting fabric (usually cotton).

So a metric fat quarter is 50cm square, or 20″ x 20″.  But an American fat quarter (and alas, most of these are), is based on another archaic system and so the pieces are either 18″ x 22″ or 18″ x 21″.  And it’s all approximate anyway.  I’m not really sure of the logic there.  Something to do with yards and standard widths and blah blah blah.

You can also get colour-coordinated fat quarters (usually in packages of four or five).  The nice thing about these is they all go together, so you can hand someone a set of napkins, but they’re all different enough that people can tell theirs apart when they want to re-use them.

A handy home-made napkin ring will also help to differentiate.  The Pie made all of these himself by bending spoons with a set of pliers.  We then sprayed them with a metallic copper paint.

You can also use fabric remnants as well.  You can pick them up for a dollar or two in a fabric store, or use the scraps from another project of yours.

Speaking of fabric remnants, I picked this one up at Jo-Ann last year and didn’t unwrap it until now.  I chose it because turquoise and teal are my favourite colours, and I thought the design on this was pretty.

Then I unwrapped it.  WOW.  Talk about a hidden gem!  This will NOT be going into a napkin.  I gotta think on what to do with this one.  Suggestions are welcome.  Just barely not enough to make a skirt, if that gives you an idea of the size.

Anyway, back to the napkins.  First thing you need to do is wash and dry your fabric.

Don’t be alarmed — they will fray.  Oh mercy did these ones ever fray.

And then this one has a slash in it.  I will have to come up with an artful patch of some kind.

Then you have to iron them.  I hate ironing.

Then comes the actual napkin-making.  It involves hemming and sewing in straight lines and nice edges and stuff and MORE ironing.  None of which I’m particularly good at.  But Maia from Glass Beach has a fantastic and clear tutorial on hemming napkins here that you should check out.  It’s brilliant in its simplicity.  I will try to re-create her instructions as best as I can, but hers are better.

First I used a rotary cutter and a ruler to trim all the squares so that I had right angles.  They don’t necessarily all need to be the same size as their partners (unless you’re making napkins for the Queen or something), but right angles make things a lot easier to deal with.

I highly recommend using a rotary cutter and mat for this job.  It’s very hard to get straight lines with scissors alone, and it’s easier on your hands.

Gren helped by sitting on the fabric as I was trying to cut it and making off with the scraps once I cut them loose.

Save the scraps to stuff a toy later on.  Or do something else with them.  I made mine into a placemat, which you will see on Friday.

Then I gave myself a 1″ seam allowance and traced that with a fabric marker.  Actually I couldn’t get to the fabric store and so used a Crayola washable marker.  It washes out just as well, if not better, than a fabric marker.  Guaranteed.

Then you cut 1/2″ tips off all the corners.

Fold the edge of the fabric so the cut line matches up with that line you drew and iron it to create a flat edge.

To get a nice mitred corner, unfold one of those new flaps at the corner.

Fold the other flap over itself, along that marked line.  This seals in your raw edge and prevents fraying.

Now take the corner bit and fold it down so the edge of the folded part lines up with the drawn line on the side with the unfolded flap.  If you have big fingers or are in general not the most dexterous, you could use an awl or a seam ripper to hold things in place for you, like I did in this photo.

Then you can fold down the unfolded part again, and then fold it over itself again to seal in the raw edge. You can either iron these new edges flat, or simply pin them.  Either way, I’d add a pin or two in the corners just to hold everything in place.

And look at that — it looks like you know what you’re doing!

Now all you have to do is sew that down, making sure to backstitch at the beginning and end to keep your thread from unraveling.  Use an awl or seam ripper to hold the corners in place while you’re sewing them down, too.

And what a pretty napkin you’ve come up with. They look nice with these copper-sprayed spoon napkin rings, don’t they?

Tie them up in a nice little bundle and give them all away!