wonky windows #15.

a collection of random photos from the past week.

this is a picture of my inner elbow. i had to go through a three hour glucose tolerance test, which included four, yes FOUR blood draws. not cool. now i know that my veins are challenging, but typically after some whining and griping, the nurses do hit their target and there is no problem. ummm..not this time around. this is the chronology of my arm. on the left is the day after the test. in the middle is about five days after the test. and on the right is seven days after the test. it is now nine days after the test and it is still the same. i am starting to wonder if this is permanent.

this picture was taken through my windshield. i was stuck behind this behemoth the other day and i could not help but chuckle. i always find it amusing to see gigantic gas guzzlers making claims towards environmental friendliness. now i realize that this company deals with liquid waste cleanup (i.e. sewage spills), so that is probably a good thing for the environment, but it still made me laugh.

i am overly fond of buying large bags of oranges, clementines, tangerines, etc. unfortunately they often sit on the counter until they rot and then we throw them away. terribly wasteful, i know. but last week i bought a bag and promptly devoured them. deliciouso!!! holy cow they were so perfect easy to peel and super duper juicy. so i bought another bag. and another. the mister and i have consumed approximately nine pounds of these mandarin oranges in a mere ten days. and the stickers? could they be any cuter?? i mean, seriously, could they?

this is the cutie that got away. it rolled behind the tv stand and bikes. the mister declared it out of reach for mrs. prego. i grumbled that he was being ridiculous. and then i saw the location and realized that he was right. grrrrrrr.

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ikea mi amor.

i went to ikea today. i needed cheapo bleapo blankets, which as it happens are readily available in ikea, but secretly i wanted to visit with their minuscule, yet delectable, stash of fabric. i wandered around the place for at least an hour. what is it about this place? i often leave there with a whole lot of nothing and yet the prospect of a visit is enough to leave me giddy with excitement. in homage to this swedish treasure, i have made a list of the top ten reasons why i adore ikea...

10. they make simplicity cool and take the blah out of the ordinary.
 9. there are lots of bright colors, stripes, and polka dots.
 8. the prices are pleasant.
 7. they encourage excessive amounts of organization.
 6. everything has a swedish name, which makes it all seem more interesting, despite the fact that the names are incomprehensible (to me).
 5. there is a restaurant inside the store, just in case you are famished in the middle of your visit.
 4. there is a little nook where i can buy stupendous fabrics at spectacular prices.
 3. they banished disposable plastic shopping bags in favor of gargantuan and indestructible blue totes.
 2. environmentally friendly is not just a punchline.

and the number one reason that i love ikea...

1. i am certain that they give good hugs.

snack baggie tutorial.

are you still motivated to be green? no? then make yourself a snack baggie and you will want to be the greenest kid in your neighborhood!! this here is a tutorial to make as many snack baggies as your heart desires. these are fabric snack baggies, perfect for all dry snack-ums....pretzels, cheerios, jelly beans, etc. these baggies are not for storing snacks, because they have no ability to maintain freshness over extended lengths of time; however, they are perfect-O for packing yummy delights into lunches.

for those of you thinking that you could make these with a plastic lining, be warned...food-grade plastic is not readily available in fabric stores, so unless you want your snacks rubbing up against weird chemicals, stay away from random sewable plastic. you can certainly use food-ready plastic (large chip bags are a great option), but that is a tutorial in and of itself, so for this go-round i decided to keep things simple and stick to cotton fabric for both the outside and the lining.

now if you are like my mumsy you are thinking that this these baggies will be the perfect breeding ground for all sorts of bizarre bacteria. you might even try to refer me to dr. emory, as my mother did, to discover the number of pathogens that will inhabit my creations. no offense to all of you germ-a-phobes, but i think this is plain silly. you can make yourself lots of snack baggies and then wash them after EVERY use. personally i am planning to wash mine weekly. at the end of the week i will either drop the little guys into the laundry or wash them by hand and let them air-dry over the weekend. by the time monday morning rolls around the baggies will be dry. so if you're with me, then read-on!!

materials: two 12" squares of material (1 for the outside and 1 for the lining), a 6" piece of thin width elastic, and thread.

note: click on images to see them larger.

step 1. choose a light-weight cotton fabric. you can use the same fabric for both the outside and the lining or you can use different fabrics. i opted to use unbleached 100% cotton for the lining and a pretty 100% cotton fabric for the outside. these instructions will make a snack baggie that is about 7"x5". if you want to make your baggie a different size decide what size you want and then use the template [the template will be posted soon...i promise] to calculate the dimensions that you need to cut. the example calculations shown in the template are the calculations for the baggie i made.

step 2. cut out two 7.5" x 11.5" rectangles. one will act as the outside and one will be the lining. cut a 6" piece of elastic (i used 1/4" elastic). i will refer to the 7.5" sides as the "short sides" and the 11.5" side as the "long side."

step 3. find the center of one of the short sides and mark with a pin. with the right-side facing up, make a loop with the elastic and pin it in the center of the edge of the rectangles. place the lining fabric on top of the outside fabric, with right-sides together. (this step sounds confusing, but look at the picture - it should make sense).

step 4. sew down the short sides using a 1/4" seam allowance. as you cross the elastic, go back and forth a few times to reinforce the stitching.

step 5. pull the layers apart and reposition so that the seams you just sewed are lined up together. pin. sew the long sides, but make sure to leave a 1.5" gap on one side (this should be on the lining half of the bag). you will use this gap to turn the bag right-side out. you can see my gap on the bottom right corner of the third picture.

step 6. turn the bag right-side out through the gap/hole you left in one corner.

step 7. pin the gap. sew the gap closed. sew as close to the edge as possible.

step 8. tuck the lining inside the bag. press the top edge with your fingers and pin. then carefully stitch around the top edge. sew as close to the edge as possible.

step 9. fill with yummies. fold the top edge down and secure with the elastic wrapped around the bag. drop in your lunchbox and off you go!!

go greeeeeeen!

p.s. i got the idea to create reusable snack bags from here, but i created a different style bag to fulfill my dream.

last weekend all the necessary pieces finally lined up long enough for me to find my way to the local farmer's market. there is actually a company that coordinates six farmers markets in the surrounding megatropolis, four of which are within what i consider to be a "reasonable" distance. it should be noted that while it took me almost two years to unearth these potential gems, once discovered, it took me mere seconds to realize that arranging my appearance at one of these locales was about as likely as our fifth story apartment requiring the flood policy our insurance representative tried to sell us. why so difficult to go to a farmers market? oh boy, did you have to ask. well, for starters, the closest one is closed for half of the year, which is coincidentally the only half of the year that i ponder what my life would be like if i regularly attended farmers markets. the second closest one is open on saturdays, which is fine except that i only remember this fact on sundays. the third and fourth markets are in what i dub a "reasonable" distance, yet they are on sunday. a day on which my motivation hovers somewhere around lay-on-the-couch-all-day-watching-televsion, and the ten mile drive seems akin to a thirty-seven day camel trek across the sahara.

but the stars were aligned last weekend and the mister and i ventured down to south beach for a glimpse of the newest addition to the group of farmers markets. there was a lady selling soap, a man selling olive oil who did not seem to notice that his tasting dish was filled with suicidal flies, a smoothie stand, a ridiculously overpriced french bakery stall, one plant lady selling only two kinds of plants, and two farmers. not exactly the bustling farmers market that i am used to from my days living in los angeles, but i decided not to be picky.

being a plant-killer, i naturally fall madly in love with plants on first glance. i dont know what it is. some sort of chorophyllic magnetism. i simply love to buy plants. you might think we have a problem with finding space to put all the plants, but in actuality i kill them so fast, this issue never arises. so i saw this little gem, which reminds me a whole lot of the spiral aloe found in lesotho, and lucky for both of us, the mister was present to offer instant approval on a non-food purchase (remember i am banned from shopping). yahoo!

so we get home and i plop the little guy on the table, but quickly realize that the poor thing will have to live in the crappy plastic pot in which it arrived, because buying a new pot would constitute more shopping. damn damn damn. oh the misery of it all. i tried to make it better by putting it on a gold coaster. sadly, this only served to make the plastic container that much more depressing. but, lady luck was on our side this lovely sunday, because i rode my bike to the grocery store, which thankfully led me off my usual path and right past the dumpsters on the west side of our building. i spotted a withered and dying lucky bamboo sitting in a pot next to the garbage. i told you it was a lucky day. especially lucky that i am the kind of girl who sees nothing amiss with acquiring worldly possessions at the dumpster.

after hacking away all the lucky bamboo, dumping out the contents of the pot, and giving the pot a scrub scrub with sandpaper, our wee little plant has a new home. since i am not exactly a professional gardener, i decided to leave the guy in his original plastic pot, which i propped up on rocks to provide drainage. wowee zowee, if i keep talking like that i might be able to convince some folks i know how to keep this plant alive. uh huh. sure. anyhow, end result is that the little man looks rather handsome in his new white pot. and this was another environmentally friendly adventure as i decided to REUSE the pot that an anonymous neighbor discarded.

i think i am going to name the guy mr. green. not only because he is part of our current "go green" theme, but also because maybe, just maybe, if he hears the word green every time i talk to him, he will remember that his leaves are supposed to be green, even if i forget to give him water. welcome to our home mr. green!

chicken love.

waste not, want not. when it comes to fabric, no scrap is too small to find its way into a project, so i never throw out cloth. thanks to my handy dandy storage boxes i have a place to keep all of my bits no matter how bitty they might be. i even have a box that holds what most would would consider to be garbage, namely bits of thread and fabric that are smaller than a pea. in general i do not consider myself to be a hoarder, but i figure that using every last fragment of fabric is environmentally friendly. speaking of saving the world...i am even incorporating reduce, reuse, recycle into my world of sewing. the mister does not yet know it (although plastering it on the internet is a surefire way for him to find out), but one of his holey undershirts was dismantled. the large chunks went into the closet as dust rags and everything else was tossed into storage box #12 to be REcycled into a shmancy sewing project.

hmm...what to do with the armholes of an undershirt? cut into teeny chunks and voila...stuffing. 

stuffing for what? a chicken. naturally. i found this blog mollychickens that has a header image of ten positively adorable chickens. although she doesn't include a tutorial for the chickens, i used her love bird tutorial to make a love chicken. cute, eh? pumpky, this one's for you!!

shopping bag tutorial.

my writing seems to wander through themes and apparently the current theme is "go green." it only makes sense that i decided to make some reusable grocery bags. the mister and i already have gads of reusable grocery bags, but i have been thinking about making these for other people. i thought that for gifts it would be best to create a set of bags with a little carrying pouch. since i am not only a fan of reusable commodities, but also a HUGE fan of free sewing tutorials, i decided to write a tutorial for sewing a shopping bag (the pouch is not included in this tutorial). now this is my first try at tutorial composition, so please be patient and definitely let me know if something does not make sense. ready or not, here we go.

materials: 1.5 yards medium-weight fabric, thread, and safety pin.

note: click on images to see them larger.

step 1. choose a medium-weight fabric. these instructions will create two tote bags that are approximately 19"x13.5". if you want to make your bag a different size, decide what size you want to make your bag and use the template to calculate the dimensions you need to cut. the example calculations shown in the template are the calculations for the bag i made.

step 2. cut out a 35.5"x20" rectangle for the bag. cut out two 3.5"x24.5" rectangles to make the straps.

[steps 3-7 will guide you through creating a french seam, which is delectable because it is a seam that leaves no raw edges of fabric. if you are struggling with my directions, then check out this lovely tutorial at colette patterns.]

step 3. fold the large rectangle in half with wrong sides together. sew down the sides using a 1/4" seam allowance.

step 4. cut off 1/8" of the seam allowance, so you are left with a 1/8" edge.

step 5. iron the seam to one side. DO NOT iron the seams open.

step 6. turn the bag inside out. wiggle the corners so they completely turn inside out. iron the side seams flat.

step 7. sew a 1/4" seam (french seam tutorials will tell you to do a 3/8" seam on this step, which i am sure is great. i just chose to do a smaller seam and you can also choose to do what you like. fancy.) the inside of your bag should now have a seam with a finished edge that will not fray.

step 8. turn the bag right-side out. now we need to square the bottom. we need to square each corner by pulling the front and back layers of the bag apart and flattening the side of the bag to the bottom of the bag. line up the side seam with the crease running down the center of the bottom.

step 9. measure 2.5" from the corner of the triangle (i use the diagonal on my square ruler to make sure this triangle is properly squared, but you can use a ruler and eyeball it.) draw a line with tailor's chalk. this line should be perpendicular to the side seam/bottom crease. pin along the line to make sure the fabric does not shift. repeat this process with the other corner.

step 10. sew along the chalk line. cut 1/8" from the sewing line. repeat with the other corner. turn the bag inside-out. wiggle the edge until the corners are completely turned inside-out. sew 1/4" seam. repeat with the other corner. (we are once again creating french seams.)

step 11. fold the straps the long ways, with right sides together. sew down the length with a 1/4" seam allowance. turn the straps inside out. the easiest way to do this is to attach a safety pin to one end and then feed it through the tube and pull until the tube turns right-side out. i am a high-falutin lass, so i use a bodkin to do my turning (that's the adorable doohickey in the picture).

step 12. press the straps flat. tuck the ends inside and sew down the edge, so the edges will stay tucked in.

step 13. turn the bag inside out. make a hem along the top of the bag by folding the top edge of the bag down and pressing. this should be about 1/4" to 1/2". in the picture, my hem is about 3/8".

step 14. turn the bag right-side out. flatten out the bag. find the center of the bag and mark it with a pin. measure 3.25" to either side of the center and mark with pins. do this on both sides of the bag. then to avoid confusion in the next step, take out the center pin (see picture with step 15).

step 15. line up the top edge of your strap with the top edge of the bag, and the inside edge of your strap with one of the pins. secure the strap with pins. then let the loop of the strap hang down towards the bottom of the bag (this seems strange, but the straps will be "flipped up" into their final position in the next step -- in the picture the bottom of the bag is at the top of the picture, sorry for the confusion), and pin the other end of the strap next to the other pin. if you have completed this step correctly, there will be about 6.5" between the two ends of your strap. repeat this process with the second strap on the other side of the bag.

step 16. carefully turn the bag inside-out again. fold the top edge down 1.25". MAKE SURE the 1/4" hem you turned down in step 13 is still tucked under. press and pin. the straps should now be "flipped up" so that they are they will be ready for hanging on your shoulder.

step 17. sew the large hem at the top of the bag by sewing twice around the bag. once 1/8" from the bottom edge of the hem and once 1/8" from the top edge of the hem. as you are sewing this hem, MAKE SURE the loops of the straps are out of the way. otherwise you will end up with the middle of your strap attached to the side of the bag.

step 18. reinforce the straps. mark an X where the strap meets the bag. sew a box and an X inside of it to reinforce the attached strap. [tip: when you need to turn sharp corners, such as sewing the box or the X, sew down one edge. when you reach the corner, leave the needle securely embedded in the fabric, raise the presser foot, spin the fabric, drop the presser foot, and sew the next edge.

congratulations!! you have made a lovely shopping bag. you can add a personal touch by sewing your own tags into the bag. i got my tags at namemaker.com. french seams. personalized tags. it does not get much more fancy than this! now that you know how to make the bag, you can use the remainder of your fabric to make a second bag.

 

gift idea: sew a set of bags and create a little pouch to hold the bags.

i created my pouch using this tutorial from mairuru. so cute. since i did not want the inner pocket, i used the same size rectangle for the lining as i did for the outside fabric. i also attached my button and tie closure before assembling the bag. i guess i just discovered that my next tutorial.

happy sewing!!!

brown bagging in style.

i like to think of myself as a person who puts in some semblance of an effort to be environmentally friendly. i participate in recycling, i bring my own bags to the grocery store, and sometimes i use my bike instead of my car. so naturally when it came to deciding how to bring my lunch to work, i clearly selected the reusable bag option. my search started in target, where i discovered that insulated lunch bags cost $10-15. whaaaaat?!?!?! that was not gonna work for me. luckily i found a rather wimpy, but serviceable bag at another store for only $3. 

this bag proved to be a bit of a challenge as reusable food containers were not typically inclined to fit inside. somehow the mister has not had such difficulties, so after almost two years in my care, this flower-encrusted bag was passed on to him for his culinary needs. it does not take a genius to realize i was thrilled when the p.t.a. at my school decided to give all the teachers an insulated lunch bag. a bag big enough to hold all my favorite food containers. yahoo! at the time i did not realize that this bag would not last long in day-to-day life with yours truly. the bag's demise started when the lining started separating from the bag. eventually it was so bad i ripped out the lining. i was not prepared for what i found. a crumbling layer of floppy foam that also had to be removed. the end result? goo. it was at this point that i added "lunch bag" to my list of sewing projects.

 

a few months later a fellow blogger shared her adventures sewing these "buckets" from the stitchin chicken. at the time, although i recognized that they were a clever creation to bookmark in the noggin, i had no idea that these buckets would factor into my lunch bag conundrum. but yesterday i had an epiphany. the buckets are designed to maintain their shape via the insertion of batting, which could double as insulation. voila, a lunch bag!! luckily, months back, upon the downfall of my p.t.a. bag, i had added rain-gear fabric to my stash for the eventual day when i would create a new lunch bag. so, on the heels of my inspiration, i quickly decided on dimensions and got to work creating my template and cutting out my fabric.

since this is a lunch bag, i made a few modifications. i added a pocket to hold my utensils, elastic straps to hold my water bottle upright, a strap and button to hold the bag closed, and longer handles for carrying. the final product makes me squeal with joy. i am actually eager for the weekend to end, so i can use my new lunch bag. okay, fine i do not want the weekend to end early, but i definitely think that i might now have in my possession the world's most adorable lunch bag.