Apron for Haiti Number 2

When I first started thinking about sewing, I spent a lot of time on eBay trawling for cheap fat quarter sets (not knowing what a fat quarter was for the most part) and in my newbie haste I acquired some fabric of questionable taste. Last quilt guild meeting I took some of my most depressing fabric for the swap table and was kind of mortified when not all of it had been taken by the end, I mean I knew it was bad but that bad? So I'll admit that charity sewing is also a way for me to use and get out of my house fabric that I'm no longer in love with, hopefully in non-boredom inducing form.

This time I tried to jazz things up with vintage rick-rack. I may have taken things too far.

To make this apron I followed the four fat quarter apron tutorial here. Then went bat-shit with the trim and produced something that looks like a cross between a circus tent and a religious vestment.

They can't all be winners, but they can be functional and hopefully someone over in Haiti will like it.

Aprons for Haiti - Number One

A few years ago I started a photography project whereby I took a self-portrait a day for an entire two years (a 365 times 2 project, friends and family only now). Posting that regularly to flickr and thinking of something to say along with the picture was part of the reason why this blog fell by the wayside. I felt like I already said everything over there as progress shots and finished items became co-opted as self-portraits. In that time I became pretty adept at wielding my remote and tripod and coming up with pictures that I thought were halfway decent. But it's been a while and well, at this point I think the couch is a better model than I am. May I present the first of my Craft Hope aprons for Haiti.

 

Like I said previously, I'm not much of a garment sewer (sew-er?), I tend to rush and then things end up wonky and looking decidedly homely. And while that's OK for pajama pants, it's not really the look I'm going for in my every day life. This apron can testify to my lack of skills, but hopefully it will stand up to the rigors that it's recipient will inflict on it! I used fabric bought to fill up my shopping cart from the sale section of Fabric.com for the front, kona solid on the back, and fabric sent to me from Cauchy for the bias tape and waist ties. There are no close ups on this because oh boy, my top stitching skills suck ass. As do my bias tape making skills. There was an extraordinarily comical moment while making the tape where I royally fucked everything up and so the tape is made from teeny-tiny 6-7 inch segments. Read instructions, folks, it's what they are there for. Speaking of instructions, the tutorial I based this on is here.

                                       

Crafting a little bit of hope

If one were to reach back far into the past on this little piece of the internet, you would see that sock monkeys have been close to my heart for a while. I like them so much in fact, I have a woodcut of two drunk sock monkeys up on the wall opposite my bed to greet me every morning.
 

I haven't made many sock monkeys since I started grad school, somehow I never got into enough of a routine that I could reliably give my Monday nights over to the sewing circle. I did make one on a whim a while ago though, and he went away to live with a flickr friend.

In one of my many random flittings about on the internet, I came across the Craft Hope site. At the time they were running a project to collect sock monkeys for children affected by wildfires in Texas. Perfect! I'd had two sock monkeys in the back to the cupboard for literally years that I'd attempted to sell on my original charity's behalf, and I had no qualms about sending them off to this one. When the next project came up though, I was determined to actually make something myself.

The next project requested bags or hats for children fighting cancer. I broke out some lonely jelly rolls, scraps of batting and in a couple of hours I'd made two bags. And off they went...

 

The current  project is asking for handmade aprons for the women of Haiti. I am not much of a garment sewer but I really want to learn so I figured this would be a good way to go about starting. I'll show those soon, once there is day light and time to photograph them.

Is this on? Tap tap tap...

It's been, how shall I put it, a while. For my own edification, I think I might pick this blog thing back up. And then perhaps put it back down again. We'll see.

There have been many projects that have happened since June 2010. Not least, the blanket was finished! I use it so frequently it's hard to believe that it was ever just a little nub of a thing started on a whim late one night. In fact, it's been so long that there is a second blanket that's almost knit to completion but I'll ave the details on that for when it's actually blocked and dry.

For now, the original insanity blanket in all it's gloriousness!