Psycho bunny, qu'est-ce que c'est?

I've spent a lot of time laying on the couch watching TV lately thanks to a particularly nasty virus.  I caught reruns of the first season of Project Runway and decided to find out what Jay McCarroll is up to these days. Hello, two fabric lines for Free Spirit.  In an interview from last fall he describes them as the following:

"It’s like cotton for a more cultured, crafter’s world, like, the artsy girls who make cute little tote bags or little outfits. It’s perfect for that."

You have to love someone who tells it like it is. Can't you just see some of his prints fitting right in at the Black Apple?

Project Wednesday: pretty project bags

After my success last week cleaning up my mess of patterns I thought I could continue my organizing trend with some pretty fabric bags for my embroidery and knitting works-in-progress. I present Exhibit A, my previous Ziploc-based method of organizing my embroidery supplies. Utilitarian and affordable but not so pretty (although I still like to use the snack sized bags to store embroidery floss).

I pulled out some fabrics and my rotary cutter and a couple of hours later I had these:

A linen bag with a pocket just the right size to hold a Stitchette guide, another drawstring bag from one of the new Heather Ross prints and a third bag with a fabric and embroidery detail. The two larger bags are both 12 x 16 inches and the smaller bag is 9 x 9 inches.

I even gave fold-over elastic a try as a closure for the small bag. It was super easy to apply (thanks Amy/Angrychicken!) and I think it will be perfect for keeping yarn clean and untangled while knitting it.

I love these bags and am going to make more to have on hand. They would make great reusable gift bags, come to think of it.

Project Wednesday: pattern caddy

Not only did I stay awake for all of Project Runway last night, I managed to start and finish a project. While the designers had Heidi to give them their assignment, I turned to an issue of Cotton Time for inspiration.

I flipped through it and found a project which looked like it could be completed in an evening without having to struggle too much with non-English directions. I pulled out some of my favorite Summer in the City prints and a coordinating Japanese cotton and started cutting. From the diagram it seems like the point of the project was to make a piece of patchwork and then cut it up for the box, but I just cut five squares of fabric and five of utility canvas for the lining and sewed them together to make two boxes. I used fusible interfacing to give the canvas lining some extra strength, definitely the right thing to do.

The inner and outer boxes weren't exactly the same size, so I added some giant rickrack to hide the sad looking stitching around the top. Two twill tape handles with decorative buttons and I was done.

Now I have a lovely caddy for my patterns, which were previously propped up next to the crafting books.