As I said yesterday, I’ve been working on some fun projects lately, mostly sewing. It all started because I wanted to get better at sewing zippers. When I sew, I usually just alter the clothes; I like to buy clothes in second-hand stores and remodel them to my (peculiar) taste. I rarely make clothes or put zippers on anything, but now that I have space for my sewing stuff (I took care of the guest bedroom when Noah moved out), I find that I want to use it more. I watched several YouTube videos to get tips on zippers and then made a bunch of small things, mainly bags and pouches, to practice.
I’ve been doing a lot of spring cleaning/organizing (although it’s still really cold here) and when I was organizing the “craft room,” I decided I needed to make a big dent in all the denim scraps I had. . When I end up with a pair of jeans for whatever reason, I cut them up and wear *each* piece in some way. However, since my weight hasn’t gone up or down that drastically in recent years, I haven’t had to replace all of my jeans, lol. (Notice I said “super” drastically; it’s certainly not at the point of being consistent yet.)
All my denim scraps had been sitting there for a while, so after a lot of inspiration from Pinterest, I came up with a couple of ideas to try. And I *love* how they turned out!
The first is a small bag that I started with the intention of turning it into a fanny pack. And it could be, if I change the strap, but for now I like it as a normal shoulder bag. I picked up the seams of some jeans I had cut and arranged them in rows.
I wanted to keep the entire bag in light to medium shades of blue (no dark denim) and didn’t have enough to do the front and back like this. Instead, I unrolled the leg hems, ironed them, and used them to mosaic my way to the bag. I added little loops to the sides to attach the D-rings (for the leash) and a lining that I thought complemented it. A simple zipper at the top. And I didn’t want any pockets, inside or out, so it was easy.
It’s the perfect size! It fits exactly what I need (including my Kindle, which I like to take with me to appointments and basically anywhere I can read) without having room for random junk. This is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done.
After that, I got to work on the pieces which were literally little pieces of denim. I wanted to make a large piece of fabric by cutting small squares and piecing them together into a grid (like I did a long time ago with my denim quilt). I cut out as many 2×2 squares as I could and hoped they would be enough to make a messenger bag. I needed the piece to measure approximately 15 inches by 32 inches. I didn’t do the math or anything, I just hoped that when I put them together, it would be at least this big.
It worked *perfectly*. I didn’t have a single spare square left and the final measurement was 15.5 by 33 inches. Then I had to decide what to line it with and for a while I had a very oversized men’s dress shirt with my sewing stuff (I occasionally buy clothes at Goodwill to sew later, if I like the fabric). I cut it to use as lining fabric and decided to leave the pockets on.
Sewing a million layers of denim is HARD, but the end result was worth it. I love this bag! I’m not sure what to do with it since it’s a messenger bag, but I’ll figure it out because I want to use it.
And lastly, on the denim side, I’m putting my denim quilt back together. I took it apart last year intending to put it together differently and then I got bored working on it so I put it in the back of the closet. This is what it looked like before:
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| This is what the quilt looked like before |
I already have all the boring things done (*hate* cutting fabric) and now I’m working on putting them together. I basically just rearranged the squares, cut them smaller, and sewed them back together without the frayed edges at the top. I had several pieces of denim that I was playing with embroidery floss on, so I cut those into squares as well.
And while I’m rebuilding it, it looks like this:
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| I turned most of the squares the wrong way to give it a different look. I want to quilt it instead of tying it when I’m done, but I have no idea how to do that! |
I have other projects too, but I have to go to Eli’s baseball game, so I’ll save them for later!
