Sunday, March 28, 2010

Covered & Heading Somewhere

After the previous jeans bag project, I was already packing up my sewing corner, until I stumble upon a sewing magazine and got distracted. Browsing through the magazine, I was fascinated with the idea of having my own hand-made hat to travel with, plus it had quite easy and straight-forward instructions. So I unraveled my sewing gears and was on my way to a new hat.
I ransacked around for fabric and decided on the leftover from my 'obi-belt' project and also loose scraps of denims that I had saved. There was only 1 pattern cut-out, to be reproduced in 6 panels for the insides and 6 again for the outside. Since this was supposed to be a reversible hat, both sides had to be neatly constructed. Well, I tried my best. It was so easy, I completed it in less than 1 hour.
Tried another photo of the hat with uplighting from my bedside table lamp, for a better illustration of the fabric on the inside.
There, the collapsible (easy for packing) and reversible hat. I tried it outdoors.
The pattern came from the Spring Edition 2009 vol.30 of Cotton Friend (Japanese sewing/craft magazine)

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Travelling with my craft

I've always found it rather difficult to fit everything in my travelling slingbag. Being rather disorganised, I am always digging for things in my bag like it was a lucky draw. What I really need is a bag with lotsa pockets inside; different sized pockets for different items, and better still, if they all had zippers, for when I need to seal them up. Gette even suggested bear traps, I guess the zippers comes close.

Started out planning the inside layout of the pockets, which was the primary driving reason for this bag, anyways.
Not quite the genius with sewing pockets, so I slapped 2 layers of fabric together and divided up the spaces by sewing it through according to the length of the zippers, like so ...I was going to use fabrics I had saved up from previous projects but I finally decided on using a really old pair of jeans I dug out from de-cluttering my wardrobe. I was on the roll, and forgot about documenting the process, so no how-to pictures. But, it's just lining up the interior of a jeans bag, just like that project I did 2 years back, with an inside full of pockets with zippers.

Recycling that old pair of jeans, proved ideal, because of those pockets it already has on the outside. With full intentions of filling up my travel with lotsa sketches, I stuck in my new red Moleskine sketchbook, into one of the pockets on the outside.
Here's a peek into the inside ... space for books, and water bottle (and umbrella)!!! Now, I'm 99% ready to go away, next month! ;)If you noticed the belt ... yes, those are recycled from the de-cluttering project too. They were supposed to be an alternative strap for one of my sling bags, which now ended up as a decorative trim, while holding up the shape/brim of the bag.