Finally took some time out yesterday to catch up on a few sewing projects friends have been patiently waiting on.
I altered a bunch cooling dog coats; replacing painful-to-configure latch/clip-type fasteners with elastic and velcro. These have been sitting around for weeks because they were being a little painful. To stop the elastic fraying I was folding it twice and and sewing the folds. However, because the width of the elastic is only 2.5cm the feed dogs on my machine weren’t playing nicely and pulling the elastic through, rather they were just bouncing up and down, without being much help at all.
But then yesterday, on our way home from an Apple appointment, my mind jumped to the idea of trying to melt the ends of the elastic to form a plasticised end that won’t fray. So when we arrived home I tried it, it worked perfectly and from then on the job was a billion times easier. I was then able to knock them out relatively easy. It helps I’d done all the hard work of removing the clips earlier. It seems each one had 4 sets of clips heavily sewn into place in a chamois material, they were quite fiddly to unpick.
While I pick on these coats from Lil Cracka and refer to them as painful to configure. I’m guessing if you have just one dog it’s a lot better, because you can set it up and you’re done. But the folks I’m altering these for are breeders and have a bunch of dogs, trying to keep tabs on whose coat is whose would be a pain.
They’re now sitting in the kitchen awaiting collection so some doggins can be cool on this 41°C day.
The other project was a Wonder Woman tote bag for the son of a friend’s friend. His mum saw the bag I had made for Sue and thought it would make a great gift for Justin who, like me, is a massive Wonder Woman fan. So she asked if I could make one for her to give her son.
The totes aren’t hard to make, I have even had templates made in acrylic making the material cutting so much easier. But they can be time consuming as I try and make sure my seams all line up properly. And they all end up unique with the cuts and fabric combinations; I believe I’m yet to make two bags the same.
The bag I made for Sue had the same Wonder Woman fabric, but had drill fabric as it’s bottom material. I liked using the drill as it is like the material of which Diana Prince’s (Wonder Woman’s alter ego) military uniform would have been made.
With Justin’s bag I went with the white stars on blue as the base and handle. This of course represents the starred pattern of Wonder Woman’s costume.
I still have plans to make a three-material-bodied bag with the stars at the bottom, a gold in the centre and red at the top and gold handles to represent the full Wonder Woman outfit, but that will have to wait.
So that’s the sewing I got to yesterday. Today is all about work, coding, coding, coding, which is good because the workroom where I do my sewing has no air-conditioning and is quite the sweatshop on hot days like today.
Don’t mind the mess, the image below only shows half of the room, there are shelves behind me. One day I will organise the room properly and will take a full 360° of the room when it’s done. Oh and the vacuum doesn’t usually live in this room, the room really just needed a good vacuum to pick up all the threads. Might have to replace the carpet with floorboards to make it easier to keep clean, a project for another day.
