Chickadee Purse and Matching Skirt

These two projects I think may be some of my favorite that I have ever made. Sewing is still really frustrating sometimes and I still pull out a lot of stitches because I sew things backwards or other dumb things but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. I can imagine something in my head and translate it to fabric pretty faithfully.



I had been looking at the bags on homegrown skinny's etsy page thinking about buying one when I decided that I should just try to make a similar bag myself. I think that is a problem with selling handcrafted stuff at either crafts shows or online. A lot of the people who look at your work and really like it are far more likely to get inspiration from it or outright copy it than to buy it. If I want people to buy things from my etsy shop I should really start patronizing other peoples more often.



Anyway, I had last Friday off work so I made this bag. I actually started the embroidery earlier but I finished the rest all that day.



The main fabric and the wool that the bird is embroidered on came from a church thrift store in Glendale. The trees are fabric I bought from superbuzzy a long time ago and for some reason hadn't used yet and the birds are of course from Marukai 98 cents. Oh, the hedgehogs are also from superbuzzy. I made the bias tape from canvas I got in the "as is" section at Ikea. It was the first time I made my own bias tape from something other than ribbon. It worked out pretty well.



So I also had Monday off because it was Columbus day. I had a pretty unexciting four day weekend. On Monday I made this skirt from corduroy I got at the same church thrift store and more of the superbuzzy tree fabric. I absolutely love how it turned out. It seems very fally to me. Actually perfect for fall in LA that isn't actually much cooler than the summer.

Sorry the pictures aren't better. I tried to take pictures of myself with the timer because I don't think Nate will come home from work before dark ever and I didn't want to wait until the weekend.

This was my first attempt at doing French seams. I wanted to avoid all the strings that come with raw edges. It sort of worked. I didn't attempt it with the zipper. I didn't want to do anything that might hinder the zipper's ability to zip. I keep using these cheep Marukai 98 cent store zippers that keep breaking and pissing me off. That is one thing that that store isn't so good for.