Quarantine Chronicles: Sewing Adventures

Good day!
Hope you're all doing as well as possible! I've been doing a lot of sewing during our time at home and wanted to share my projects with you. If you have any questions about how I constructed the projects I can post a more detailed description in a later post.

I started out making several things for my coming little one, starting with the diaper bag. I had planned this for awhile, but never got started on it until the quarantine. Probably because it involved many things I haven't done before and I felt needed more time to focus on it. I don't usually make bags, but this one turned out so good! I will definitely be trying my hand at others.


I had a chance just as the quarantine closed up several stores, to go out and get fabric for this with my Mom. We had a blast picking out the fabric for the diaper bag as you can see above. I had picked out the pattern, the Maker's Tote, almost a year ago. We also got supplies to make changing pads in a similar theme.

 I, of course, did a test packing after it was done to find out if it really was a good size and it's perfect. The only thing I might add on later, somehow, is a shoulder strap.

The next thing I made was two changing pads which were super simple. The hardest part was deciding what size I wanted them to be.

I got some iron-on laminate, so that I could make whatever cotton I picked out become water proof and used a soft flannel for the other side. Some cotton quilt batting went between and then I just did a typical bias binding like you do on a normal quilt.

I took the extra time to hand sew the binding down, so I wouldn't break the water proof side. That took a long time, since I'm still not that used to hand sewing, but it was worth it! They look perfect!

 I also sewed in a strap at the top. That way I could fold them in thirds long ways, then about the same up and tie them in a small bundle, for when they were in the diaper bag.

I still had flannel and laminate left so I decided to make some sheets for my bassinet. I put the laminate on the underside of the flannel so that it would still feel like flannel to lay on, but wouldn't let water damage the bassinet mattress.

I spent awhile sewing masks and cleaning the house. During which time we realized that a cloth bag would be the perfect way to store this wood train a friend got the baby. After going through my scraps to make the masks, I found this piece of fabric that I couldn't make into a mask to be used elsewhere, but I realized it would be perfect for the train. I lined it with muslin for neatness and extra durability and it turned out perfect!

I've run out of this to make for the baby, because I don't have clothing patterns for the little one yet, but I did buy those the other day! These are some of the books and patterns I got. They should be coming in by the end of this week, so next week I'll be having a lot of baby/toddler clothes to sew.

For this week I'm working on two maternity items I need soon. One is a cute pair of overalls that I'm making a shorts version of. It should fit me after pregnancy too, which is always great. The other is a sun dress from a light weight rayon fabric Tom picked out for me. You'll have to wait till next week to see those finished products. Hope your week goes well and I'll be posting again soon! Stay healthy and sane out there!

Quarantine Chronicles: Mask Tutorials

Hello people!

A week ago I was asked to make some masks for my mother's household. So I spent some time designing and making some cloth masks to keep our droplets to ourselves. This is not a design that will do much more than keep droplets out of your mouth while it's on, but it will also keep your droplets from other people in case your sick and don't know it.

It's a simple design that my husband helped me with to mimic surgical mask. It's two layers of cotton fabric, so it's breathable. You'll need two pieces of cotton fabric that are 8"x9", 6 inches of elastic, pins would be helpful, and some way to sew it together. I used my sewing machine, but it can be hand sewn if you don't have that.

Step 1:
Cut your fabric and elastic. Two rectangles of 8" by 9" and 6 inches of elastic is what I've been using. Thinner elastic is generally most comfortable and if you're making these custom than you can size the elastic better.

Step 2:
Place fabric piece right sides together. We're going to use 1/2 inch seam allowances so on the 9" sides measure a half inch on top and bottom, put a pin in place to mark it.

Step 3:
Now put the elastic up against the pin on the side away from the edge and pin it. This way they will but at the very corners at the end. I learned that pinning it straight more than a half inch in keeps the elastic from moving around right before you sew it. Also watch out that the elastic isn't twisted before you pin it down.

Step 4:
Sew with 1/2 seam allowance around the rectangle leaving a hole to flip it right side out. I usually just start 1/3 of the way down one of the sides without elastic.

Step 5:
Flip right side out and press all sides.

Step 6:
Pin pleats on the elastic sides, the sides that were 9" to begin with and are now 8". I found that 4 pleats are needed for comfort. Three don't allow good coverage, but 4 are very comfortable. I didn't measure these exactly, I started one inch down from the top on both and trying to get the bottoms to generally match. Mine were no more than a half inch, but not much smaller.

Step 7:
Top stitch around the whole thing. Be careful not to let the pleats slip out, so wait until your in the first pleat to remove the first pin. After that I removed the pins as I came to the pleat, a bit before it went under the foot so I could make sure the edges lined up well. This is mostly to make it look neat rather than any functional reason.

Now your done! It's pretty simple and quite fast after the first one. Be careful not to put the elastic on the 8" side, it's easy to forget. Hope this is useful to you guys and stay sane out there!

Quarantine Chronicles: The Beginning

Hello there,

It's been three strange weeks as we all shelter in place here in California. Like the rest of you, we have been trying to figure out how to continue some kind of normal enriching life. I haven't been working at my lovely yarn store for three weeks, but Tom is still working at the hospital. We are lucky that most of our income comes from Tom's job, and I was able to get unemployment. This means we haven't been economically effected in a major way, which is a blessing.

Neither of us fall into high risk groups, even with me being pregnant. So we are keeping to the safety procedures, but mostly for others safety. We have been missing our close people. My sister and her household are completely locked down, because of someone in her household that is very high risk. My grandparents are also fully isolated, and most people I know are generally not taking visitors. The world seems a bit lonely than it did three weeks ago, but I've got very good at video chats and have three different apps so I can chat with all my different people.

The saddest thing for me so far has been the fact that I don't get to share my first pregnancy with others besides Tom. It's definitely not that worst news some people have right now, but it's been sad for us. On the other side it's been a positive thing we have to think and focus on. This has kept us motivated to stay active and have been taking long walks most days and are keeping up on our strength workouts. Which feels great to do when we're not as able to be out and about.

After the first week we realized we were spending so much time on the computer and were sick of it. So we decided to try an experiment and not go on the computer for anything other than looking up specific stuff. We wanted to see what parts of our lives were being effected and how long it would take to kick the addiction and browsing. For caffeine it takes five days to go back to normal, so maybe it would be similar to that.

 

It was a great second week! The first day so or we spent a lot of time just trying to come up with things to do, but we came up with some long term goals and got to them pretty fast. We decided to declutter the whole apartment and were just able to finish today. We also had some fun with sewing and Melody (our cat) got into some fun while we were working. I'll be writing a few posts on those things, since I'm bored and I thought some of you might be as well. Hope you enjoy reading and that it relieves some of your bored during these times.

Dense Living: Japanese Style

After a few years of trying to rent into a rural like situation and having blow up in our faces about 3 times, we decided to accept that for the time being we are living in the city. Our idea of good city living is very different. You loose out on several different things, like our own gardening space and being able to keep animals, but you gain convenience and low management living.

I think you should always trying to use your space as best as possible, because in our age of over population space is a limited resource. After living in an old three bedroom house, we decided to downsize and try really dense living that we hadn't tried before. We recently moved into a one bedroom apartment and brought all of my craft room stuff with us. To be able to make this work space-wise we used the traditional Japanese style of dense living. We gave away our bed and our living room and dining room set and traded them in for a futon and a Chabudai table.

During the day we have the Chabudai table in the living room area and it's used as a dining and lounging space. The space we are now not using as a dining space is used as a nursery, waiting for when we get pregnant again and finally get a little one. The futon sits happily in the closet waiting its turn to be used and the "bedroom" is used as the craft room/office.

At night the table is folded up and leaned against the wall and the futon is put out in the living room. We thought about whether the living room or office would be the better sleeping area, but we tried the living room first, because it's more spacious and we liked it enough to never feel like trying out the bedroom.

We wanted to try this method of living out for awhile, because it seemed to interesting. We wanted to downsize anyways, because since the events last year in Butte county, it was too much for us to keep up with everything that needed doing at our old place. We knew this would be a long term living situation so we knew if it was awful, we wouldn't need to do it for long.

We are loving it! I'm surprised how good it feels to have all areas available for use during the day and not have a whole room that's left unused, or largely unused, during the day. The futon is amazingly comfortable. The first week or so I would wake up a bit sore, but somehow still feel more rested. Now I'm never sore. The Chabudai table is nice to eat at the a great place to sit a knit at too. We are still adjusting to sitting differently. Both of us are gaining more flexibility in our legs and strengthening our backs.

So just using the futon and table has been enjoyable, but it's even better when you count the areas we can use for different tasks now. The bedroom is now a fully functioning craft room and a work space for Tom to work on his videography. Plus the dining area is now a nursery that will function perfectly, because it's easy to access, but also a little out of the way.

I can tell why this way of living is still used in many places in Japan. It's so comfortable even in much tighter spaces. It also feels good not taking up more room in this crowded world than I really need. Do you guys have any questions? What are some things you do to live more densely or efficiently? Thanks for reading! Hope to see you next week!

Out of Fiber: Black Iris Hat

I've been working at our local specialty yarn store for six weeks and I get to tag all of the new yarn that comes through our doors. About two weeks ago a yarn came in that I couldn't resist. It's call Eco Puna Black. It's made from naturally black baby alpaca wool. So It is godly soft and the black is so dark it's hard to believe it isn't dyed. Alpaca have more natural coat colors that any other fiber sources we use and one of those colors is a true deep black. It's very rare now, but it's stunning to see in person. Because it hasn't been dyed the baby alpaca fiber is even softer than after dying.

After seeing and feeling this yarn I had to make something out of it. It was just too cool to have a piece made from the few alpaca in the world that have truly black wool. Especially since alpaca is my favorite fiber. I thought a hat would be perfect. Not to much wear and tear, since alpaca is a soft fiber and it wouldn't take too much, so I wouldn't have to spend too much. I found a cute hat pattern from Ravelry and got the approval from the husband.

I've been working on it for a bit, because I had to pull it out a few times and go off pattern to get the effect I was wanting. I worked through to a puff row after the back loop row, before decreasing to have a bit more of the lace. I worked the large size first, but it was incredibly huge, so I pulled out what I had worked until I felt it was a good size and went from there.

It was a bit frustrating, because I tried another pattern with this yarn first that my husband wanted and it didn't turn out well. So I picked this pattern and the pattern wasn't accurate to the picture, so I had to correct that. The yarn held up much better than I thought it would and still looks great even though I had to pull it out three or more times, during the whole process.

I'm glad to finally have it done and it looks great and it really comfy to wear. Now I have a cherished alpaca beret that came from the few black alpacas in the world. I'll be wearing it with pride.

I've been wanting to incorporate more darker colors and outfits into my wardrobe to have fun with Dark Mori style stuff. This hat will make a great addition to that goal.

September Update

Hello, those of you who might still be there. I haven't posted anything in a long time, because google kicked me out of my blog and I couldn't find a way back into it. I finally figured it out, so sorry for the long absence. Things have changed as you might have guessed. I quit my job selling sewing machines, got pregnant, had a miscarriage, got a new job at the local yarn store, and moved from my three bedroom house into a one bedroom apartment. (The images are just from various goings on since I last posted).

Good-bye to our old house.

I know, that's probably more than you expected. Trust me, it was more than I expected either. Our roommate moved out and after the miscarriage we wanted to simplify our lives. We really didn't need three bedrooms for the two of us and we wanted to live closer to our value of not taking up more resources than needed.

The tiniest baby Pipe Vine Swallowtails of the year.

My Beltane body paint for this last year.

So we decided to try something new, something we had thought about for awhile. We're doing a more Japanese style of living, meaning we don't have a bed, but a futon, and a Chabudai table (short floor table) instead of living room and dining room sets. I'll going into the whole thing in more detail in another post.

Our camping trip to Patrick's Point. Tom had a bit of fun with some light rock climbing.

We moved into the apartment last week, so we're tired, but hopeful for the future. It seems just right that we're settling in to the new place just before Mabon, which we'll celebrate tomorrow.

We took a trip to Monterey Bay Aquarium. 

The other thing that has my focus is my new job at the local yarn store. I wasn't looking for a new job, but it happen to come up during one of my visits, so I went for it and have been enjoying my work there immensely. While I worked at the sewing store I grew as a sewer a lot, even though I was pretty experienced. I'm hoping that happens here too.

We also took a trip to Vancouver Island.

Tom got to sail for his first time and really enjoyed it and I got to get some lovely yarn to remember out trip by. 

I can feel it happening with knitting, since that's my worse of the fiber skills I have. I'm excited to improve and get knitting seriously. I'll be sharing my projects with you all as I go, but I also post them on Ravelry, so check them out if you're interested.

This is our new apartment. Melody is loving how easy it is to join us with the futon and Tom is excited for a new member of the family, our lovely peace lily.

Autumn has arrived here in the North Valley and it's so lovely having cloudy mornings and some chilly evenings. Hopefully the leaves will change soon and we'll have a beautiful long autumn. I have a few little autumn projects that I'm planning, that aren't fabric or yarn related, including apple picking and some felting. I'll do some posts on those as they come up, so look forward to that.



How's life going for the rest of you? Any big changes? See you next time (which will be soon)!

March Update

I'm so good at updating this blog on a regular basis, I just impress myself everyday (not....). Things have been pretty wild here in Butte county, as I'm sure you all know. I wish I could say things are calming down, but they're not. Our little town is full to the brim with people and it's a struggle to deal with all of the new people here. Many of the people who lost their homes are still not able to find places to live, aside from trailers. I'm lucky, I didn't live in the effected areas and didn't loose my home when landlords decided to sell. We were able to renew our lease and are locked in until the summer of 2020. That's all I really feel like saying about the fire, because all of us are tired of talking about it and tired of having to still deal with all the chaos it has brought to our area (fire victim or not).

Life continues on, and there's a lot of things that have happened since I last wrote. I am still working at the sewing and vacuum store, but I also opened up an Etsy store. I wouldn't say it's gone well, but I've learned a lot and have a new plan and direction. I don't have enough time at the moment to make the Etsy store what I want it to be, not while I have my other job. So I'm working on earning money to put us in a position where I can dedicate myself to the Etsy store.

I also have a new plan for my products. I'm going to be dying all of my products myself with natural dyes. I've been really interested in them for a while now and by using them I can also buy materials in bulk without loosing the customizing ability that I want to have. I have been studying up on the process and the species to use. This summer I plan to start practicing and perfecting it.

As of today we have another big change in our situation; we have a roommate. A coworker of mine wasn't able to find a place to live, because of the influx of people to the area, so we are renting our extra room to him. It gives him a place to live and will help us meet our financial goals, so everyone wins. It will be a pretty big change though, we haven't had a roommate since I was 19. He's a relaxed guy, that is good at being clear about he's needs and feelings. So we should be able to work out any problems between us.

The last thing that has become a big part of our lives is a fitness routine. We have been doing body weight exercises twice a week (since October) and have been hiking once or twice a week. One of those hikes includes my niece, who has been wanting to join us on a backpacking trip. At the beginning of January we told her that we would take her on a hike every week to train her up to going with us in the spring. We took on her first backpacking trip this month and she did a great job. There was a lot of new things, from how we eat to bathroom stuff. She was pretty ready to go home to familiar life. The day after the trip she was happily talking about her adventures. I'll cover the trip in more detail in a later post.

April is just ahead of us and spring has just begun this year!