Another Bag, Part II

Where was I?  Ah... the zipper woes.  Let's just move along.

Once I had a zipper that was long enough and stopped breaking needles, I was good to go.  Here is how the zipper placket-thingie came out:

I used a variegated thread, as you can see. It's by YLI. Purples, pinks, greens ... it's really a nice one.

Bag construction went well:

The bags from KSU are a bit heavier than the grocery store bags, so they're a little stiffer. It makes for a bit stronger bag, I think. I layered one layer of heavier bag with 3 layers of grocery store-weight bags.  (You can see the recycle - HyVee logo on the inside in the photo above!)

Here is the outside of the bag, in the flat stage:

I needed it to be a little wider than what the KSU bag was, so I added the purple bag strips. I really like how that looks! I also did a little top-stitching, as you can see, to help flatten the seams.  The purple bag might have come from the Vet School, too; I can't remember.  But it's purple. That's what counts!

Here's a look at the front of the bag:

This is the first one I put one of my tags on. It just felt right.

Here's a look inside:

Nice tall divider in there, to keep items separated!

Here it is, all finished:

I took apart a little-dog leash, then sewed snap hooks on either end.  I like how the variegated thread stands out a bit!

The zipper I used has a smaller pull than what's easy to grab on a bag, so I made a little pull tab using some of the purple bag parts:

Easier to grab!

Here's a close-up of how the snap hooks are attached:

I couldn't resist playing with the back of the bag a bit. I "fussy cut" a plastic bag warning and layered it into my stack to be fused:

These are the touches that totally amuse me.

Speaking of being amused, I thought Beth's bag should be modeled and sought a volunteer.

"Hmm.  It's for Beth, huh?  Very nice!  I think maybe Cam should model this one!"

How did I know he'd let his sister take the reins on this one?

"It's for Beth?  I've just about got her wrapped around my dainty little paw ... I'd love to model it!"

Cam has just about everyone at the Vet School convinced that she is the sweetest, most cooperative, prettiest thing on four paws.  (Which she is.)  It hasn't taken long at all.  (I've been taking her there for non-appointments, to check her weight, pick up meds, that sort of thing.  It's part of my process to help her get used to car rides and to see trips to the hospital as fun.  She's really SO GOOD about everything and I want to keep it that way!)

She struck a super-model pose for me out in the front yard:

"I wonder if the handsome Border Collies will smell me on this!?!"

Is she good at this, or what?!!?

Beth seemed really happy with her bag (Cammie helped me deliver it!) - I hope it works out great for her!

Thank you for reading!

Another Bag, Part I

Sorry I didn't post yesterday like I said I would.  My husband and I ran off to the lake to do a little birding instead.  Hot and thick, but very enjoyable!  (You're welcome to view photos here, if you'd like.)

Speaking of birding, I wanted to make a little fused bag for my birding buddy Beth!  She saw mine and was complimentary ... and I had JUST the plastic bags to use for her!  She works at the Vet School at KSU, so ...

How fun is that?

See the zipper there? Got right to work on that. It was another re-purposed one. I started working on its placket thingie:

Did the tabs (above) then got the ol' #4 foot out to stitch nice and close to the zipper, switched back over to my #37 foot (the 1/4" foot) AND ...

BOOM!

Follow the arrows to find the pieces of my needle.  Yes, the needle I forgot to move back to the CENTER!!!  Readers, once again I say ...

The #4 foot is EVIL!!!

I'm soon going to need to replace my masking tape; I just may do a frowny-face on it this time.  GRRRR!

Moving right along ...

Somehow, I made that zipper too short. Go, me!  Oh, well.  It'll work great in another smaller bag.  So ... I grabbed another pair of pants, ripped the zipper out, and ...

... nice.  All set.

Except that that one was too short, too.  Where was my HEAD?!?

Having had my fill of re-purposed zippers, I got out the only store-bought one I had.

Now that's a zipper!

Yeah.  Just a TAD long.  No problem.  That's why God gave us scissors, right?

Much better!

Despite zipper "learning opportunities", the bag came out REALLY great!  More on that tomorrow!

Until then, thank you for reading!

More Experimenting

When I was a senior in high school, my mom hurt her back and had to lay flat in bed for what seemed like an eternity.  It was up to me to take on all household duties.  Most chores (cleaning, vacuuming, dusting, laundry...) were ones I was already well-trained in, but cooking was totally foreign.  To say there was a sharp learning curve would be an understatement.  The whole concept finally clicked for me when my dad compared following a recipe to conducting a science experiment.  That totally put a different and understandable face to it all!  Science (and Math) had been my best and most favorite subject area(s), so it made perfect sense to me and everything fell into place!

Quilting and bag-making has also been much like that.  I think that's part of the appeal of this whole fusing plastic bags together kick I'm on.  It's like a big science experiment!  Too cool!

I've made a couple more bags and thought I'd show you one today.  I did a bunch of fusing, then cutting!

Pieces for the next bag!

I wanted to see how it would be to piece the bag - more of a patchwork/quilt type of look.

It's a little slippery to sew through, and I found myself inserting the occasional pin (tucking into the seam allowance or along the sewing line -- any hole made in the bag itself would stay a hole!) just to keep things lined up.  It went quite well, though!

I pressed the seams flat with that wooden presser, as I showed you, then decided to add a line of top-stitching to help keep it flat.  Can you see it in the photo above, in the brownish stripes?

This bag was for me.  I need something to hold my car keys and phone when I go birding/wildflowering; a lot of my outfits lack pockets, so I needed a small, cross-body bag to compensate.  This fit the bill perfectly.  Because it's plastic, it's SO light - I've tested it out and I barely remembered I was "wearing" it.

Here's my supermodel, Cameron, with the finished bag:

"Does this make me look like a bumblebee?"

Yeah, OK.  I sort of forgot about the bumblebee effect, but that's OK.

"No, you look great, Cam!  Doing an excellent job with that bag!"

I think her brother/mentor was more than happy to see someone else have to model for me.  He did want to be in on the action a bit, though, in case there were treats involved.

I'll post another bag probably tomorrow.  This has been a great experiment!

Thanks for reading!

Science Day Two

The fusing and bag-making process using the recycled bags is just way too addictive.  As I mentioned yesterday, I was back at it the very next day.  I was seeing plastic bags in a whole new light and started trying to find every plastic bag in the house to experiment on.

Things might have gotten a bit out of hand as was feeding the pups.  We were at the bottom of Zim's Prescription Diet bag.  I looked at the empty bag and thought ... go for it!

I mean - how cool would that be!?! I cut it apart, scrubbed it, and soaked all the pieces over night in Dawn. The next morning - no smell! Excellent - let's hit the Studio!

OK, it failed. But hey! I had to try. The plastic is too thick. It warped when I tried fusing it AND somehow, when I hit it with the iron, the smell came back. There's a reason we call Zim's treats that I make with this stuff "Stinky Goodness Treats" ... let's leave it there. Fail.

Did you notice in the stack of "plastic fabric" from yesterday I did one with the PGA logo? I wanted to do something special for my husband. He had requested something to hold note paper on his desk. (When we have "misprints" from the printer, we cut the paper up and use it for scratch paper.) Here's what I came up with:

Just cut, fold, and I used grommets to hold it together!

So then I got back to fusing. Not dog food bags.

I wanted a little zippie bag to hook to a leash to hold bags. A bag made from bags to hold bags. I might be going backwards here. Anyway ...

The plastic "fabric" cuts very easily! Just know that it's a wee bit slippery and you'll probably need a new rotary cutting blade if you ever tire of making these.

For this bag, I need a tab for a carabiner clip:

I decided to use a variegated YLI thread, so it would look decorative. I also used a 70 microtex needle and it did very well. This stuff is like butter to cut and sew through.

I know. How cute is that carabiner? I wish I had more than one. Perhaps I need to see about ordering some.

I took apart another piece of clothing so I could have a zipper:

I wonder if I should buy some of those, too? Nah. It's more fun this way. A challenge.

I decided to have a little divider inside the bag:

I folded the top down about 1/4" and top stitched for durability. And because it looked cute.

Here it is, with the zipper sewn to the sides of the bag, divider in place. My snips are tucked into what will be that pocket-divider.

Stitch it up and voilà:

Here's a look inside. My orange squishie thimble is on one side of the divider and some black binding clips are on the other.

One side for bags, one side for training treats!  Cool, huh? Let's see what Cam thinks!

"I think we should take it for a test drive!"

She had a lot more to say about it on today's Ao4 Digest post, and shared more photos.

I'll be doing a lot of baking, so I'm not sure if I'll get back to fusing today.  I can tell you that the Super Shopper went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and came home with one of those gigantic bags yesterday.  Oh, is THAT going to be fun!!!

Thanks for reading!

Bags From Bags

Yes, we do get our groceries in plastic bags, but trust me, we put them to very good use. To put it as delicately as I can, let me just remind readers who don't know that we have two Siberian Huskies and we scoop as we go. You're with me, right? Thaaaaat's it, "poop bags". Having said that, we also use regular small plastic bags and so sometimes the grocery bags mount up. What to do, what to do...

Then I remembered a tutorial on etsy labs about fusing the bags together to make a sewable "fabric".  I tried it a while ago, and I did something wrong. It didn't work. I mentioned it to a friend; she tried it and got what I thought was a mighty cool-looking product, so I gave it another shot. This time - BINGO! Here's a link to the tute - and now some highlights from my bag-making spree, or a little thing I like to call Science Day in the Studio.

First, let's cut some bags.

Just cut the handles and the bottom seam off.  It's kind of addictive.  The whole process is.

Use 6-8 layers when you use the flimsy-type bags.  I like 6, but that's me.  Iron between 2 sheets of parchment paper.

The first time I tried it, I think I used either a paper bag or freezer paper.  Whatever it was ... THAT'S where I went wrong.  Parchment paper is THE way to go.  According to the tute, you should use the "rayon" setting.  If, like me, you don't have a "rayon" setting, start slowly and just keep upping the heat until you find the happy place.  That's the best I can tell you.  Think of the whole thing as a cool science experiment.

Before too long, you'll have a great collection:

I did some of the thicker plastic bags, too. I think 4 layers of those, but I'm still experimenting.

I decided to try to make some little zippy bags. Yes, I do have a fear of zippers, but I'm trying to get over it. Of course, I have no zippers, but not to worry! Let's recycle those, too!

Perfect! No one needed those pants anyway.  Here's the first bag I came up with:

I'm considering posting that to Hy-Vee's FB wall or something.  I mean - did I reuse/recycle, or what?!?  What a riot.

Did I mention the addictive nature of this?  I had to make another one.  The same day.  I mean TWO zipper bags in one day?!?  That's crazy for me.  Let's get going!

The first zipper I used was actually from some work-out pants, so I ripped the one out of the other leg, too. Go, me! I made it its own little thingie (there's a name for that sort of placket thing, I just can't remember what it is.)



I really love that you can read a lot of the writing on the bags. You just have to have a clear bag or turn the top & bottom layers inside out or the ink will get all over things.  And as much as I fear zippers, I fear this even more:

Yes, it's the very scary #4 foot.  I just recently told you about it.  And yes, I've forgotten about moving my needle over to the far right or far left way too many times and have broken needles.  I don't want to think what it might have done to my machine.  Yikes!

Once you get your zipper casing (is that what it's called?) sewn into place, you'd normally want to iron it.  Obviously, that's not an option when working with plastic.  I grabbed my wooden iron I use for paper piecing and gave that a run:

Worked like a charm.

Here's what my bag guts looked like before folding it in half and sewing it together:

I didn't use a lining - I mean ... no need!  Here it is all zipped up (so to speak - ha!):

And my model, showing the finished bag:

"Sigh.  Mr. Bulldog, this is exhausting work!"

She and the Bulldog seem to have bonded.  It's a tad strange.

One more look:

I am thrilled with how it came out! So much so, that the next day I was back at it. Tune in tomorrow for Science Day Two. :)

Thank you so much for reading!

Table Clutter

There.  I said it.  "Table clutter."  We all have it, right?  Ours seems to consist of vitamin bottles and Zyrtec.  If they aren't on the table, we forget to take them ... but I HATE clutter!  What to do... what to do...

A fabric basket seemed the way to go!  I followed the tutorial I posted at this link, only didn't piece the outside.  There was plenty of action in the fabric I chose - the same fab I used when I made my kitchen curtains.  Here are some action shots:

The lining is the same fabric. Sometimes keeping things overly simple helps me get more done.

For the handles, I used two other coffee-themed prints:

The flip-side is coffee beans on vanilla. Mmm... vanilla coffee.  Mmmm!

Where was I?

I did a bit of quilting on the outside of the basket, then started putting that together.

If you use a cotton batting with a tiny scrim to it, you can skip going fabric-batting-fabric and just go fabric-batting. Does that make sense?  Just go batting side down when you quilt and spend a little extra time cleaning your bobbin area.

Box the corners:

Lining

And for the basket corner-boxing, I like to sew the seam open, like so:

It cuts down on bulk and makes your basket look tidier.

No, I didn't buy the Husky-brand screwdriver - it was given to me in honor of the Ao4. Here's the story: Years ago, there were some guys here to fix the control panel for our sprinkler system. They asked if I had a tiny screwdriver they could borrow. I gave them a screwdriver I kept in the Studio and jokingly said, "Don't break it!" Of course... they did. Ha ha ha. I assured them I didn't care; it was just a screwdriver. They brought me the one above the next day anyway. They said they couldn't find one in their company's signature color (blue) but maybe I'd like this one since it's a Husky. How perfect! I love it!

Moving right along ... here's one of the feet for the basket:

I like the feet.

Ayumi, who wrote the tutorial, has you put wrong sides together, then turn the whole basket right-side-out through a small opening in the lining seam. All that's left is to hand sew that up...

... add a little top stitching, et voilà:

This is probably the 4th or 5th basket I've made following this tute, and I just love it!  So quick and easy - and cute!  Almost too cute for table clutter.  Almost.

Thanks for reading!