Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Moleskine Wallet

Another day, another wallet. One day I'll get it together and put all these in my Etsy store, and that day will be soon. I need someone more graphics literate that me (Jeff, I'm looking in your direction) to make a banner for my shop and design my business cards. And I need to get some of those sweet personalized tags for all the things I make. Somewhere in there I may reconsider my business name as well. I've used Sugar Plum Creations as the default for a while. I like it, but it may be time for something new. If you have any suggestions, tell me.

This little gem holds a Moleskine Cahier pocket sized notebook on one side and all your cash money on the other side. I also put in the zippered change pouch and 4 card slots. It closes with velcro. My notebook is modeling the wallet here. If you look close you can read my "music I need to have" list. I was thinking about a little pen loop too, but that would've thrown off the proportions of the whole thing and isn't everything really about the right proportions?




Monday, April 13, 2009

Spats

I became completely and utterly obsessed with spats back in the fall. I absolutely HAD to have a pair. I saw some on etsy, but they were a little too pricey and not exactly the same as the picture in my head, so I decided to give it a go myself.

This is how they came to be, in brief. Firstly I made a rough pattern from the shaft (haha, I said "shaft") portion of a pair of zippered boots. I then made a few muslins from that pattern until I had the fit just right. Then I cut out the vinyl and the lining, stenciled the bird image on the vinyl. I stitched the lining and the vinyl, stiched them together, flipped and top stitched. Then I came to a stand still. I'd originally pictured eyelets, which I can do on my sewing machine, but once the spats were constructed, I realized I wanted something more substantial, which is when I decided on grommets. Except I didn't have a grommet setter. I went to the craft store and they only had little grommets. I ended up going to Tandy Leather and getting a heavy duty grommet setter and mallot. Then I marked and precut the holes and pounded in the grommets. It wasn't hard, but it was time consuming and VERY loud. They lace up with some plaid vintage ribbon from my stash.







And in case you didn't notice, yes the wallet and the spats match.

Vegan Wallets

So, it's been a while, eh? Yeah, that happens sometimes. A few things happened and I was busy. But then I made some more stuff that I really liked and a few people started asking me why I wasn't blogging anymore and that's all, and now I'm back, and how!

See, this store opened up very close to my house. This store right here. It's literally two blocks away. I love it. They've got a great remnant room, lots of fabrics for $2.99/yard. The guy knows me by now, I walk in and he tells me about the new stuff in "the room" as he puts it. I picked up some nice vinyl there, medium weight, and nice texture in a few colors. And he's got a bolt of faux ostrich and I made him promise to call me when he had a remnant of that, I can't wait. They've also got tons of upholstery weight cottons and drapery silks, if you're into that kind of thing. I did get some raw silk in a great shade of green and turned it into a scarf with a purple jellyfish stencil, but that's another post for another day. Today's post is about wallets.

First, I made myself a checkbook folio based off of this tutorial. And I can't say enough great things about that tutorial. Very clear, and straightforward, the pictures are great and the instructions are VERY easy to follow. I was slightly intimidated by the zipper, but I got it on the first try, which rocks. The pattern on that site is probably suitable for an intermediate sewer, but if you omit the zipper pouch, it would be a lot easier. I made two modifications. As one of the last steps I topstitched a line down to seperate the two long pockets. It just seemed like the lining material would stay flatter that way. And I used a velcro closure instead of the snap, because I had velcro on hand already.








Then I was showing off my new wallet to my BFF and he wanted one, "just like that, but different". He doesn't carry checks and wanted something that would fit in his pocket. Or something. So I made this little one. This was much easier since I didn't have to do a zipper.