a few FOs and some WIP

a yoga bag:

it’s a big ‘un, made to fit a mat, a couple of blocks and a blanket or two.

all the fabrics were sitting in the stash, so the stacks are that much smaller now.

and i added some embroidery to a pair of plain black yoga pants:

boy, the lint on the pants sure does show up nicely in photographs.

the tree trunk is variegated cotton floss, 3 strands. the branches are variegated cotton floss and size 8 perle cotton (purchased a very very long time ago). the “fruits” are 3 strands of rayon floss. i like how shiny that floss is, but it’s a pain to work with unless it’s run through beeswax first.

and i sewed some cut-up t-shirt fabric on to another t-shirt, but i’m not sure it’s finished yet.

and yesterday was my first foray into bagel-making!

they were delicious and pretty easy to make, using the recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.

and of course, i’m still making the knitted dishcloths, which i’ve posted previously. i’ll have to take a picture once i get up to a couple dozen in stock.

yo yo yoyo

i wish i could tell you how many hours i’ve spent on this little project over the past few years.

hours and hours.

days, i’m sure.

or not – i never did time myself to see how long it would take to make just one little yoyo.

to be fair, the construction of the individual yoyos coincided with the watching of videos. so it’s not like i was just sitting around, sewing little fabric circles.

in any case, i am DONE with the darn things now. all that work, and i ended up with…

uhhhhh… a 19″ X 47.5″ rectangle, made of 360 yoyos.

it was a lot of work!

no idle hands here…

i have no idea what to do with it now.

um, d’oh.

for the dishes

freezer-paper stencil skull with embroidered border and flowers.

the paint bled a little at the edges, because the towel fabric is so loosely woven.

this is also not an apron

this is a painting.

12″ square canvas, acrylic paint.

i’d glopped a bunch of paint (purple, green, blue) on the canvas and laid a sheet of printed pattern paper over it before it dried. i liked the texture it created after it dried, but wasn’t sold on the look. i made the mistake of scribbling some lines on it with sharpie marker (acrylic paint is not very successful at covering sharpie – it just keeps lifting itself up through the layers of paint!), then added a layer of pearlescent paint over it. and then a lilac square in the middle, and the rest of it after that.

no aprons to report

what i DO have to report is this skirt.

it’s made entirely from stash scraps, some of which have been hanging around for more than a decade.

it’s a 3/4 circle. i didn’t use a commercial pattern – i just drew up a 1/4 circle on a piece of pattern paper, then cut 3 panels from pieced-together fabrics.

the waistband is a length of cotton fabric i’d made into wide bias tape. there’s a zipper in there as well.

the ribbons attached at the hemline were also from the stash. so YAY! i put a sizable dent in the stash with this project.

in other news, i made a loaf of no-knead bread:

it was filled with deliciousness.

just try and stop me!

there’s no use fighting it. the aprons win.

mccall’s 5551, view b.

i used fabrics and ribbon from the slowly-dwindling stash. the pattern called for lace on the pocket and around the curved edge, but i didn’t have any on hand. the pocket fabric is from a vintage dress i bought and wore back in the early 90s. after i outgrew the dress, i couldn’t bear to get rid of it.

i’m not sure that i’ll keep the pocket as-is. i may sew a horizontal line about halfway down, so the pocket isn’t so darn huge. do they think i need to keep actual pots and pans in there? because that’s how big those pockets are. HUGE.

and then there are the dishcloths. i can’t stop making them! which is good, since my old dishcloths were getting faded and ratty.

my loved ones are getting concerned…

can’t. stop. making. aprons.

i’ll admit it. i have a problem.

how many aprons can one person wear at a time, anyway? how many does one person truly need?

this one was an experiment. the skirt was part of the front of a dress i made a few years ago, that i hadn’t worn for awhile. the band, ties, ruffle and pockets were scraps of muslin. so YAY for not having to buy fabric! and YAY for not having to follow a pattern, either.

now to head to my craft table and start another apron…

black and white and red all over

yes. i made another apron.

mccall’s 5643, view b (“lucie’s cafe”). i previously made the two other versions of this pattern here and here.

this version is my least favorite of the three. the neck strap was way too long (by about five inches!), and there’s a lot of wasted fabric where the two main parts overlap. the pocket was a bit of a pain to put together, too. not horrible, but definitely not something i would make again.

at least i got to use up some of my stash fabrics.

another apron

ah, bad lighting.

you get the idea, though, right?

butterick 4945. a vest-like wrap-around style apron.

the fabric is from ikea. how cute are those anthropomorphic veggies?

anatomically incorrect

a collaged and painted canvas. started earlier this month, finished yesterday.

size: 12″ X 12″

ingredients: paper, glue, gel medium, pencil, acrylic paint, chalk, oil pastels, crayon

it took me a long time of staring at the collaged canvas before i figured out what to paint on it.

one more layer of varnish and it’ll be ready to hang!