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Category Archives: crafting

I make! Lemur laundry bag edition

I bring your attention to this.

I trust that you remember it?  The giant circle eventually because a part of this.

Lemur!  I stuffed a comforter, a smaller blanket, and like five pillows in there and there was still some room at the top.

Yes, when I said it was that time of year again, I meant it was that time of year in which I make a lot of oversized laundry bags (two links…it also occurs to me that I’m missing a year’s worth of laundry bags) for the graduating high school seniors.  Remember, gifts should be useful…and embarrassing.

This year, I only had to make one and I decided to make a lemur.  Obviously.  It took a long time to figure out which animal to base this laundry bag on this time and then even longer to figure out how it should be posed.  I really wanted to do a sleeping lemur, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to make a 3D version of what I wanted and also, it kind of negated the reason as to why I chose the lemur (the big eyes).  So, I settled on a sitting lemur with its hands resting at its side.

Here are some detail shots.

I tried something new this time and appliquéd the face.  Except for the pupils.  That’s fabric dye.  Appliqué means that it was easier to make all the details of the face, but it is really stiff right there.  The rest of the pieces were done as I had before, which is how Tally made her patch here, only on a much larger scale.  All previous bags had all the details made that way and sometimes it’s kind of hard to control how exactly it turns out when you turn it inside out.

I really like how the hands and feet turned out.  It was actually the same pattern for both.  Lemurs have hands and feet that look quite similar.  I sewed the general outline of the hands/feet and made the individual digits by using black thread with a gray bobbin.  Really like how it turned out.  In case you didn’t catch it the first time.

I based the laundry bag on a ring tailed lemur, so of course it needed a nice, fuzzy, ringed tail.  I made the tail out of fleece so that it was fuzzy.

I believe I have perfected my bias tape technique.  Even the round on the bottom of the bag was wrinkle free.  Except I didn’t get a picture of it.  You’ll just have to trust me.

And finally the grommets.  I had originally planned on using silver grommets, except then I realized I only had two left.  I did have a new box of gold colored grommets, so I started using those.  Only to have each and every one I tried putting fail at the last instant.  They would all warp in weird ways right at the end and not actually grip the cloth.  I thought it was the anvil and setting tool I was using, as I had two sets, but both sets were producing the same results.  I ended up having to buy another set with another setting tool and anvil.  These ones worked just fine.  I have no idea what was going on with the other grommets I had.

Anyway, tada!  Lemur laundry bag!

I make! Congratulatory card edition

Remember this?

It eventually became paired with this (also from the week of ALL THE PROJECTS).

One of trainees from the Bible school (of sorts) that helps us out with the kids in my church group graduated from the Bible school a few weeks back and I thought it would be fitting to give her a small gift and card.  And so…I made them.

I was quite pleased with how the mug rug turned out.  Definitely gift caliber.  I decided to pair that with a simple card with unusual proportions and text alignment.  As it turned out, they went perfectly together because the mug rug was 6″x9″ and the card was 6″x9″ fully opened.  I hadn’t really planned it that way.  I mean, I wanted a card that was long and skinny, but I hadn’t specifically thought about the proportions.  I just decided on a certain size and it ended up being the same size as the mug rug.

I decided on making the letters mirror image across the fold.

I suppose you wouldn’t need an “& thanks” on the inside if you only wanted to congratulate the recipient.

Erm…the card was made with blue cardstock (obviously) with a creamy, bespeckled white cardstock (not as obvious).  I kind of regret using the bespeckled cardstock for the lettering because most of the speckles didn’t end up in the letters.  The few specks that did kind of ended up looking like accidental marks.  Oh well.  Overall, I’m quite pleased with how the card turned out.

If I were to make the card again, I might decide to make it two layers with the text cut out in the card and have a white underlay just so I wouldn’t have to glue so so many individual letters down.

OH!  I also just realized that this is the first thing I made with my Silhouette.  I have given up on the Cricut, not necessarily because it’s a bad machine, but because I do not agree with Provo Craft’s business model.  With the Silhouette, I am no longer tied down to cartridges and I can design my own things AND I can cut any True Type fonts (I believe I used Georgia for the card).  I had originally thought about getting a Cricut Expression (I had a Cricut Personal) because I needed to cut some bigger stuff but I decided that it would be better to cut ties with Cricut sooner than later and opted for a Silhouette instead.  And I am pleased that I have done so.