Blogger just ate my post...

Well, I just wrote a whole post & tried to publish it & Blogger ate it. Man, I hate that. I've been up since 5.30am & so I am now too tired & cranky to re-do it. You'll just have to wait until the weekend now. Yah booh sucks - it had links, pictures, dancing girls, dancing boys, bread pudding and proof of life on mars...

Bed, bed, bed...

Oops, my heart went oops

Let me just say at the outset that, despite having worked as a trainer, I always forget just how much work is involved in showing people how to do something. I just made a box pouch, the last one of the eight I was making for my WMIL, and took 44, yep, 44 photographs... That makes it sound complicated, but trust me, it's not, I just wanted it to be really clear... so, my first instruction is, read this all the way through before starting, just like an exam. There are some good hints there which will make life easier for you.

After re-reading this, I've decided to simplify it by assuming you all know how to make a zip sandwich and a box pouch already.  If you don't, check out this excellent tutorial on zipper sandwiches and this one on Box Pouches. 

Hints:

• This pouch was made using 6.5" X 4.5" or 16.5 X 11.45cm rectangles.  Don't make your first pouch much smaller than this, it becomes way too fiddly.

• If you are putting a label inside the pouch, either stitch it to your lining fabric before you stitch anything to anything else, or after you've attached your lining and focus fabric to your zip, otherwise you'll have to do it by hand through the hole in the lining!

• I always use iron-on interfacing on my focus fabric, it helps to maintain the shape and makes it easier to work with.

• Make it easy on yourself by using a much bigger zipper than you need, 9"/22cm zippers are great for 6.5" pouches, that way you can gnore the zipper pull altogether. Leave it at the top of the zip and start stitching below it.
• When you put your zipper in, make sure the cut-out bit of your zip foot is resting on top of the zip. That's what it's for, to help you get as close as possible to your zip.

• If you are putting pull tabs or ribbon at the ends of your pouch to make it easy to open and close, stitch them to the right side edges of the focus fabric after sewing up the bottom seam. They go at the point where the side seam and bottom seam meet, right on top of the zipper.  It's much easier than trying to hold it all together when you come to stitch the side seams. Make sure the tabs have enough length in case you have to trim the side seams to straighten the pouch out.

• If you want to top-stitch or decorate the bottom of your pouch, first stitch the seam, then do the decoration before you stitch the lining seam. It's much easier to do this way because you don't have to try and avoid the zipper, and the space is much larger.  Try it the other way and you'll see what I mean!

• I recommend at least a 90/14 needle to help you sew over the zipper comfortably.  Anything smaller will probably break.

• If you're making a bigger bag, use bigger corner angles.  Remember that whatever size corner angles you use will effectively be doubled once you form your corners.  If you have a 1/2" cutout, you will get 1" corners.  If you use a 1" cutout, you will get 2" corners.  It's the old "sum of the square of the hypotenuse" thing from school (half plus half equals one, one plus one equals two etc) 

• Be careful!  If you make a 6.5" bag and use 1" corner angles, your pouch will be square, not a rectangle.  It will still be cute though.

• If your side seams start to open where you have cut the corner angles out, it's okay to stitch over them again.

Okay, so let's get started.

We have assumed here that you have already stitched your focus, zip and lining together to make a zipper sandwich, and that you've top-stitched the zip to make it look nice and to stop the fabric from getting caught in the zipper.

This is the Most Important Thing! When you stitch the bottom seam of your lining fabric, leave a big gap (big is a relative term - big enough to turn the pouch inside out through) in the middle of the seam. Reinforce the stitches on either side of the gap, because this is where you will pull the entire bag right-sides out:

Assemble the pouch so you have two tubes, with your bottom seams centred over the zip.   Stitch in your ribbon pulls or tabs now, right where the side seam meets the zip.  Make sure you put them on the inside, having raw edges even.

Next, stitch across the side seams, but make sure the zipper pull is inside the pouch.  I like to pin the end without the pull together to make sure the opening isn't too big.  Do some double stitching over the zipper itself, because this is where all the pulling happens.


Again, making sure you haven't stitched the zipper pull on the outside, trim off the ends of the zipper.  You should have a small box looking like this:  

You can still get into the box from the lining side, which looks exactly like this, only with the lining fabric showing.

Now, this is where the good bit comes in!  Take your quilting ruler, or anything you can use to mark off a half-inch/1.27 cm square.  You must do this from the focus fabric side, because that is the side which is seen when the bag is finished.  Place your ruler on the side seam, and align it with the edge of the pouch:

Mark the corner angle with a pencil or wash-out marking pen: 

  

Snip out the half-inch square.  Note that one side will be longer than the other because you have to cut off all the edge after the seam stitching.  If you don't believe me, trim off the fabric after the seam; it will then definitely be a half-inch square :-) 

You will end up with your pouch looking like this:

Flip the pouch over and reach inside the pouch, via the gap in your lining fabric; open the zipper all the way down.  This makes it easier to move the bag around when you are making the corner angles.

Okay, now the fiddly bit. You need to take the angles and bring them round, or open them out, so that the 90° angles you had are now gone, and you have a nicely horizontal edge.  Some of you older people may remember the "sides to middle" repair we used to do on sheets that had torn - it's the same principle.  You are pushing the sideseam towards the middle of the bag, wrapping the corners round.  These are your perpendicular corners. 

The edges should match up, but it doesn't matter too much if they're not 100%, 95% is fine.   It is fiddly, and I find that a bit of spit on my fingers helps to make the fabric move more easily.  See here:

Pull the angles outwards so that they become flat:

You will need to do this for all four corners.  A bit of shuffling makes the corners more accessible, don't be afraid to manipulate the bag to give you easier access to the corners.  The first few times you do this you will find it very fiddly.  Keep manipulating the fabric until you've got all four edges (two outside, and two lining) all lined up.

Once you have one end aligned, pin and stitch them.  Don't wait until you've got all four pinned before stitching, because it's harder to  stitch if they're all pinned up - moving the bag is constrained by the pins. 

This is what it looks like in progress:

Once you've stitched all four, your bag will look like this:

I recommend turning the bag right sides out now through the hole in your lining fabric, to check that you've caught all your edges in the stitching.  There's nothing more frustrating than thinking you've got it all in and then blam!  A gap!  Pull it through the hole gently, a bit at a time.  Remember that you have to pull two pouches through, the lining one and the focus fabric one, so be gentle. 

Check your lining seams:

You should be able to see your magic half-inch slice has turned into a magic inch seam. 

Once you've got it all okay, turn it back inside out again and zigzag over the seams. This way you won't be unpicking the zigzag if it isn't right.

Okay, so now it should be perfect. Turn it right-sides out again but don't press yet, because you still need to stitch up the hole in your lining.  You can either handstitch it invisibly, leaving no clue as to how you made this excellent pouch, or you can be lazy like I am and machine stitch it closed:

The finished pouch should look something like this:

Now go and press it and go and have a glass of excellent Hunter Valley Semillon and a good lie down!  Phew! 


Thanks are due to the following excellent tutorials for leading me to the water jump, and stimulating my brain on how to get over it without flinching:   

Firstly, twelve22 - her no-fuss approach to zips in pouches helped me with the zipper sandwich - love it.

Secondly, three bears showed me how to get the box shape, and how fiddly it was to get those corners perpendicular without using a ruler, or something else, which led me to...

Twenty Acres and no sheep - she provided me with the excellent idea of using a quilting ruler to get the corners right.

The rest of it I came up with on my own.  Please feel free to use this, and spread it around.  If you have any questions, please post and I will try to answer them.  Or, if you think it isn't clear enough, especially round what to do with the corners, please let me know.  I may have to go to YouTube.  Scary.


Ciao!

World spins, I'm part of it...

That's nicely obscure, but somebody might know from whence it came..

Anyway, this is just a teaser to say "yes, I haven't forgotten I said I would do a tute on the magic lining for the box pouch"... I've been very busy this week, had to go out to our offices way out west (well, 47 kilometres from home) twice - the first time was Monday, when it was raining quite heavily & I thought "I'll go by public transport". I got on a bus at 7.07am (it's printed on the ticket) & walked into the office at 9.20am. Two hours, 10 minutes. The workshop I went out there for started at 9.00am & my bit was from 9.00-9.30. Can you imagine how I felt? Apart from very very cross, I was hot, bothered, hungry, tired and embarrassed. Thursday, I drove. 75 minutes, door to door. ''Nuf said.

Anyway, that's my excuse for not getting out to the world between last time & now. Good news is that both my lucky birthday people loved their gifts, man, have I ever got good taste or what?, and my lovely DSSIL bought the jumbo pyramids & toilet bag I made for her. I love seeing those "Congratulations on your sale' emails in my in-box :-))

Anyway, I will be posting the instructions this afternoon at some point, I keep hearing that tutorials are hard to do well, so we'll see.

Stay tuned people.

I'm not going to get too sentimental...

like those other sticky valentines... okay, so it's not a song title, but it is a line from a great song.. and it was a lovely day - Friday was our 16th wedding anniversary, which is amazing, really. We've beaten both our married and subsequently divcorced siblings, but I don't think we'll ever catch up to MWH's parents, who were married in 1955, and who lasted 49 years before my lovely FIL gave up the fight against Alzheimers disease..

MWH surprised me, too. He, who isn't normally given to moments of spontaneity, had organised a surprise night in the hotel where we spent our wedding night, which was lovely. For dinner, we went to the Italian Restaurant we've been going to before we even were a couple, run by another advertisement for marriage. Dad waits at table, Mum cooks & number 3 son splits his time between the kitchen & the restaurant, depending on how busy they are. Lovely, fresh and generous - that Nocello bottle made a couple of visits to our table and I had a slight headache yesterday morning, but it was worth it!

The view from the balcony was gorgeous, too...

And because Friday should have been a wholly happy day, today I feel a bit like I should take down the rant about the injustices of large corporations taking advantage of their workers, but one of my fellow DUSTers, Sayraphim, obviously felt the same way! Check out her shop in Etsy, she does beautiful work - and she made this for me as part of our February Craft Swap - I've named him Captain, for reasons which the older readers amongst you may find moderately amusing... and because I was so thrilled by the Captain, I've made her some lavender pyramids as a small 'thanks!', also pictured here. Hope she doesn't read this before they arrive on her doorstep!

Also good news, the last of the pouches I made for the Oz Bushfire Appeal Shop on Etsy has sold, to another person in Georgia, USA. Two to the States, one to Mexico & one to Grose Wold. Wonderful. I'm thinking of making more... maybe... I'm loving making the box pouches, and the flat ones, and I just sent my Mum the links to the tutorials that helped me get started - I'm thinking now I should make a tutorial about lining the box pouches, seeing as I haven't found one anywhere on the 'net & had to figure it out myself... any takers?

Working for the man...

Sorry, but is it me, or is it completely unrealistic of an employer to give you so much work that you have to stay there until midnight and regularly work seven days a week to finish something? And if you do that, are you creating a monster and making it really hard for the rest of your colleagues? Australians work more unpaid overtime than any other nation, apparently. I think it's indefensible that an organisation which can make billions of dollars profit can happily squeeze 60 or so hours a week out of somebody without paying them a red cent to do so. Unconscionable. Unethical, unprincipled, immoral. And don't give me that line about "we're paying you above-market rates so you should be fine with working a few more hours...", it's just another way of saying "we're bloodsucking leeches and we're going to squeeze every free minute out of you that we can".

When I was in my 20's, I had a job like that in a small organisation owned by 2 guys - and I wasn't making huge money here, less than $20k a year, if memory serves. These guys didn't pay overtime, they didn't pay leave loading, there were no meal allowances, and no taxis home [note here for non-Aussie readers - leave loading is something you are paid by your employer as a 'thanks for going on holidays' bonus, it's 17.5% on top of your salary & the reasons for it are lost in the mists of time, but suffice it to say, pretty much everybody gets it], they were pretty much in the 'you should be grateful to us for giving you a job' kind of employment space, rather than the "we're an equal partnership & we can't survive without each other" space I have experienced elsewhere.

I regularly worked 10 or 12 hours a day for these guys, for nothing. I gave up my Saturdays, and I even worked until 2.00am once trying to finish something. And for what? Nothing. I came to my senses and left, and they said "thanks for coming", and carried on. I could have dropped dead and they would have just kept going. So why, why, why, even in this "harsh economic climate" do employers think it's okay to expect that people will just give up their lives, for no return? The irony of it is that they proclaim they are "family friendly", and that the 'work/life balance' is really important to them. Hah! Bah humbug, I say. I refuse pointblank to do it anymore. If it means I don't get a bonus, so be it. I'd rather have a life.

On a much happier note, my lovely DSSIL* came to visit, and she brought Chloe with her, and so I was able to take a photo... she also ordered a dog from McCalls Craft M4893, some jumbo lavender pyramids, and three toilet bags, one in the box pouch style & two in the flat bottom 'toilette' bag style, so now I have no spare time... but I've started on the order already.. at least the pyramids are quick to make!

*defacto step-sister-in-law

Remember my name, fame...

I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly (high)... or something. I have never watched that movie, right up there with Thelma and Louise, and Pulp Fiction. Apparently this makes me some kind of social misfit, but I'm coping, trust me. The McVities Ginger Nuts are helping me cope... There's a couple of shops in the city called "Sweet Treats from Home" [I just had an ABC kind of moment, as in "Should I be doing advertising here?", and then I realised, "it's my party, I can cry if I want to..." or, I can say what I like without worrying about the perception of impartiality. If people don't like it, they don't have to read this... so...] and these shops sell food, drinks, some household items such as, get this, Fairy Liquid, and of course, McVities Biscuits, all from the UK and Ireland. I love McVities Plain Chocolate Digestives, which in the hemisphere I live in, is actually 'dark' chocolate. We can get those in the supermarket, mostly, but the Ginger Nuts are harder to come by. They are so good... dunked in tea, milk, old fashioned lemonade.. not so great in coffee, but still great to eat on their own. Yum.

Anyway, surprisingly, I have digressed... Oh yes, social misfittedness. No, Fame! That was it! One of my photographs has been selected to go into something called Schmap, which is an "online digital travel guide"... apparently they don't pay you, but you get kudos and people all over the world get to see your photos. There's a widget too, apparently, but I'm not going to include it - all the photos on my flickr page are shown on this blog anyway, under the "My World' thingy - the one that Schmap is including is right in there... so, small moment of Fame...

Other news: I've just made 3 more pouches, 2 for gifts & one more for the WMIL's easter gift parade, only 4 more to go for that. The gifts are for two of my favorite people who have February Birthdays, and although I had the gifts in good time, it's just taken a bit longer to get the pouches organised. I've fallen into a bit of analysis paralysis, where I can't make anything because I can't choose which fabric to use. On a brighter note, I have almost finished moving stuff from big boxes into smaller boxes, only the huge upholstery, curtain and remnant box to go.

How excited am I about doing that one? Not at all, really, but it's got to be done, then we can sacrifice the large, ugly, ungainly shelving unit to the garage, and my small but perfectly formed sewing room will look a lot bigger. Isn't it weird? MWH has built an L-shaped unit, with four low shelves & six high, and although it's taller, and wider, it makes the room look bigger. Maybe because it isn't that terrible orangey-red colour the other one went (we did stain & varnish it about 15 years ago, and I'm sure it wasn't quite so foul then, so I'm blaming the colour change on the varnish...) but rather a nice neutral pine colour.

Anyway, the other nice news is that my lovel DSSIL is coming for a visit tomorrow, to pick up her froggie, and to have a quick lesson on the sewing machine I'm gifting her - much fun ensuing tomorrow, and hopefully lots of fun sewing, and no dithering about which fabric to use... I've just ordered this, too, which I think is gorgeous, so we'll see what comes of it... maybe some birdies... maybe...

Message in a bottle

I was going to forgo the musical theme (what, you thought it was all a coincidence?) tonight because I've had two glasses of wine (normally I don't drink during the week) and didn't think I'd be able to come up with anything witty, but hey, Crowded House is always good. Ooops. I think it was Split Enz. See, I've had a glass of wine.

Anyway, for those who care, an update on the raffle - we've had so many neat donations that I'm now embarrassed & need to run around selling tickets like mad to make sure people win all the stuff! Thank you everybody : -)))

Sewing news - well, MWH worked late, really late, last night, and I made a box pouch, instead of having dinner, then I had a bowl of cerel at 10.00pm. See, having no kids means you can eat what you like when you like. Then I woke up in the middle of the night telling MWH that I knew how the guy was doing it [doing what?] but I just didn't know how - apparently I was convinced somebody was spying on us through the light fittings, and no, she says, pouring scorn on HWH, it wasn't an alien, it was a real guy... and no, I'm not asleep. Zzzzz. Wow. Weird or what? I remembered doing it this morning but not what triggered it.

Actually, I do know what caused this one - I was watching Stargate, the episode where Daniel is being interrogated by Osiris in his sleep & they capture her & remove the go'auld - I fell asleep in the middle of the episode & obviously it decided to play out in my subconscious...

When I was doing the last semester of my IT Diploma I used to sleepwalk downstairs to the front door & check it was shut. This was somewhat different but not hugely - stress is the trigger for me - and if the current project keeps going the way it has been, I may be doing the ironing whilst asleep before I know it... so if you hear of a house burning down because a woman was ironing whilst alseep, it's only me. Don't panic!