Homemade Gifts Keep on Giving

Usually when I post about sewing, I post about my own projects. But today's a little different; this is one of Munchkinhead's amazing creations.

Munchkinhead is queen of pattern-less wonders, so I was extra surprised when my birthday box contained a blouse sewn by her from a retro pattern. Mommy helped, but Munchkinhead's careful attention to detail was evident in many places where I could tell Mommy or I would have been like "forget that step; that's too much work!" It's a sheer cream chiffon with butterflies, hummingbirds and flowers.

Seam binding on the hole for the head to go through.

The side seams are French-seamed so the delicate fabric won't unravel. The collar and arm-hole seams are completely covered by seam binding in a perfectly matching color. The collar ties lie flat and straight with no pulls or tucks, their exact evenness giving me my best possible chance at tying a half-way decent bow. And all the stitching lines, even the hem, are straight and even. Mommy used to have me practice sewing straight lines by running lined paper through a threadless sewing machine; I wasn't any good at it then and I'm only slightly better now. Munchkinhead's lines look like someone's called "ten-hut!" and they're ready to march.

It's one of my favorite blouses now.  I wear it almost every week, and every time I do, I get a new compliment from someone.  "Thank you, my sister made it for me."  And then I call or text Munchkinhead to tell her, especially when that compliment is from someone famous.

Me in my fabulous Munchkinhead blouse.

Second Life Tights

H&M.  The label rather gives their history away, these worn-out black knit tights lying in the gigantic pile of mending on what used to be a place to sit.  Some people build mountains out of molehills; I build them out of clothes that need to be fixed.  Much like my mother does with items that need to be ironed.

I like H&M, too, but not as much as Munchkinhead.  Or, at least, I don’t shop there quite as much as she does.  And a pair of knit tights from there is most certainly in my possession as the result of a wonderful Christmas present from her.  I wonder what the label said.  Probably something about “to: long legs, from: short legs” or some such silliness.

The tights have been through a lot.  A present when I lived in Cali, in the Yay, where one needs to wear woolly knit tights nearly year-round.  Then put to good use again in Wisconsin’s bitter cold winter, likely serving as a layer of warmth buried beneath slips, long thick skirts, fuzzy socks and sturdy boots.  It’s no wonder the tights no longer provide any coverage for toes or that it is easier to see through the heels than through Betty’s rear window.

I’d given them to Munchkinhead to darn.  She’s quite good at darning.  “These cannot be darned,” she informed me.  It seems they were already damned; one cannot darn nothingness.  So she sent them back, via Mommy, to sit on Mount Sewme until I decided what to do with them.

Munchkinhead helped.  With the decision, that is, indirectly, sending a smattering of additional torn-up legwear after cleaning out the large filing cabinet in her living room.  Within the new stash, old hold-up stockings with their own holes and runs and perfectly intact whatever-you-call-the-garter-replacing-sticky-bands-at-the-top.  A seam ripper, a scissors, and a sewing machine later, I have new black woolly knit hold-up stockings.

If I have to shorten them again in the future, Munchkinhead will have new hold-ups.

 

 

 

For Rain or Shine

“Mommy, can we do the umbrella class at Bungalow?”  “Well, ok,” she said, neither of us realizing what we were getting ourselves into.  I don’t know what we thought making an umbrella entailed.  A couple hours?  Some scissors?  Magic?  Well, it turns out to be a little more than a couple hours,  a little more than some scissors, and no magic.

The hardest part was choosing the fabric.  I had a concept in my head, but nothing was singing out to me, and the fabrics I kept finding myself drawn to didn’t match a thing in my wardrobe.  Mommy, however, little over achiever that she is, found her fabric right away.  She was a good deal of the way into assembling her umbrella before I had my fabric selected.

Mommy chose two complimentary fabrics: a cute  print on white with 1950s-style Parisian women doing things around Paris, shopping, sitting at a cafe, standing by the Champs Elyse or near the Eifel Tower; and a large grey polka dot on white. 

I chose a black and white print of cityscape silhouettes, people in business clothes going here and there with briefcases interspersed with large round clock faces and park bench scenes. I liked the modern, busy city feel of the images combined with the old-fashioned simplicity of black & white.  It seemed perfect for a busy city like D.C.  I had some trouble choosing a complimentary fabric, but eventually went with a black, grey and white flower on a variegated pink background.  I hedged a bit, looked at lots of fabrics, and pretty much just went with this combo because I was tired of looking and race-horse Mommy was on her third lap.  And being the little trouble-maker that I am, that wasn’t enough.  I decided I wanted a binding along the bottom and picked black with small white polka dots.  Mommy and the lady helping us, Peggy, cut the polka dots into strips and ironed it into double-fold bias tape.

First step to making umbrellas is to cut out your 8 panels.  Then – here’s where things seem a little backwards – you hem them each individually.  Since I was putting on binding instead of hemming, I had to sew each bias strip onto the bottom of my panels while Mommy hemmed hers (well after Mommy hemmed hers cuz I’m a slow poke).

Next, you sew all the pieces together, being sure to leave an opening at the top for the umbrella post.  You also make a strap to wrap around the umbrella and hold it closed and stitch that onto the umbrella.  It turns out those are the easy parts.  Then, you put your machine away and take out the hand needle.  Oh boy.

The umbrella frame is kind of scary on its own, like a giant pokey spider.   It comes with 9 parts to be assembled onto the frame, 8 little metal tips and 1 cap.  The metal tips are sewn onto the umbrella covering and then lock onto the ends of the metal frame.  The tips are sort of like little metal tube socks.  At the top end, there’s holes in the metal across from each other for stitching the tips to the umbrella.  It’s a little tricky at first, and it helps a lot to safety pin the tips to the umbrella covering and slip onto the frame first, then slip them off the frame one-at-a-time to sew individually, removing the safety pin after a few stitches.  The really cool part about this step is you get to see how your umbrella’s going to look!

We had to go home before I got to sewing on the tips, but Mommy was able to finish her umbrella during the class.  After she sewed on all the tips, Peggy helped her glue the cap onto the top of the umbrella.

Next, Mommy sewed each seam to the umbrella frame.  When she got home, she added a button and button-hole to the closure strap.

 

 

Voila!  A beautiful umbrella.

 

Mommy’s going to spray hers with waterproofing so that it can actually be used as an umbrella.  I want mine to be a parasol for the hot D.C. summer sun, so I’m not spraying it with waterproofing.  I originally wanted to add lace to it, before I picked out my fabrics, and am still toying with the idea.  But for now, here’s my parasol.

 

It wound up perfectly matching the outfit I had on that day, the polka-dotted side of my wrap skirt and a light pink blouse with black and white spectator stilettos.  Goes ok with my suit, too.

Apparently, the Okapi Says “Meow,” Too

People seem to always think my Halloween costume is a cat.  At least this year, it was only one person.  There were a lot of interesting guesses: cat, reindeer, giraffe.  The giraffe was actually the closest.  And I’ll cut them some slack; a lot of people don’t know what an okapi is, unlike a zebra.
So yes, this year, I was an okapi.  My second-favorite animal, after a giraffe.  Okapis are actually the nearest living relative to a giraffe.  They have shorter necks, but very long tongues.  Look ‘em up; they’re pretty neat.

Here’s an okapi.

Okapi CC-BY Charles Barilleaux, available on Flickr.

And here’s me dressed like an okapi.

As is the custom, I made my own (um, custom) costume.

I ordered a brown sweater dress from Amazon, figuring at least when I’m done I’ll have a nice new sweater dress.  I wear my sweater dresses a little longer  than was suitable for okapi-making, so the first thing I did was tack the hem of the dress up quite a bit.   (Right: actual length of  PattyBoutik Women’s Cowl Neck Long Sleeve Knit Dress.)

I had ordered women’s brown tights and white leg warmers from Amazon as well, but the leg warmers were cream and the tights were dancer-leg brown, so neither of those worked.  I decided to go with an old pair of brown tights I had even though I was originally thinking I wanted something thicker.  They worked.  (Left: Okapi legs.)

For the bottom of the legs and the forearms, I used little girls’ tights.  I got size 12-14 for the legs and toddlers’ 2-4 for the arms.  I cut the feet off (and hemmed them and sent them to Munchkinhead) and cut leg lengths suitable for their purposes.  Then, I cut rings out of the rest of the leg.  It worked really well.

For the bum stripes, I used the top of the toddlers’ tights because they had the cable-knit pattern all the way up to the top, unlike the girls’ tights, which had a sort of control-top looks-like-tightie-whities thing going on.  I hand stitched the whole thing with big stitches in back so it’ll be  easy to remove without snagging the dress.  I sewed the bum stripes with the dress on my dress dummy to ensure everything would stretch correctly once on me.  First, I sewed the top down on the full piece.  Then, I cut one stripe, sewed it’s bottom and the top of the next.  Then cut the next stripe, and so-on and so-on.  (Right, above: Okapi bum stripes in progress.)

The bum needed one more thing after that, a tail.  I bought some chenille, fake fur and quilt batting at Jo-Ann’s.  I cut a wide strip of the chenille, making the stripes in the fabric vertical.   I cut a matching width of  batting and basted the two together.  I cut a piece of fake fur about two inches long and basted that to the center of the bottom of the fabric and batting.  I folded it in half, including the fur, and stitched across the bottom and up the long side.  (Right: basting and stitching tail.)

 Then, I had to turn the tail.  This was almost as difficult as turning a Barbie sleeve, and on top of that, I could hear my friends @tromboneforhire and @jackgibson laughing hysterically in my head.  Eventually, I got it fully turned and sewed it to the top of the bum.

Lastly, I needed headwear.  Mommy and I realized while looking at photos of okapis and the stuffed okapis in her zoo, that okapis have horns.  I needed horns and ears.

For the ears, I found giant brown pipe cleaners at JoAnn’s.  Who knew such things existed?!  (Probably Munchkinhead…)  They were super easy to bend into the right shape and wrap around a brown headband.  I have enough left to make a nice monkey tail if anyone ever needs one.  (Right: Ears in progress.)

For the horns, I used another  brown headband and Styrofoam cones covered in brown felt.  I tacked the felt to the cones with small pins and used scraps of felt pinned to the bottom, around the headband, to attach the cones.
 

I found out the day before Halloween that only male okapis have horns.  I wasn’t ready to give up on them because 1) they took some effort, and 2) the cones were expensive!  I had to buy a pack of 6 for $9.  One of my coworkers saved the day by declaring that it was fine, I was just a transgendered okapi.

One thing I know for sure, I was a happy okapi.

Okapi with her friends at their Halloween party.

Wrap Skirt

It may have been the worst pattern I’ve ever seen, but it is one of my favorite skirts.

That’s the summary on the wrap skirt I made; my first fully-Bungalow project.  I don’t remember if there was one on display, or just the picture on the pattern envelope, but whatever I saw looked cute and I went for it.

The wrap skirt is reversible.  My goal was to make it something that would go with most of my blouses so that when I’d come home from work, I could take off my suit and have a house skirt to throw on over my slip instead of changing my whole outfit.

I chose black with medium-sized white polka-dots for one side and then looked around the store for another fabric for the reverse.  I found a fun print with lions and India-looking circles and leaves.  I thought the fabric was grey with black leaves (like it looks in the picture).  It certainly looked that way in the store light, but when I got to Mommy’s, I discovered it’s actually beige with blue leaves.  Blue and beige don’t really go with black and white.  I tried to remedy this by picking a sash fabric that goes with both.  I chose light grey and white chevrons, which I fear instead goes with neither side, but whatever.  It works well enough.

The “pattern” was a sheet of paper with two parts of a trapezoid printed on top of each other.  You can’t even cut them out separately and tape them together!  You’re  supposed to trace each part onto freezer paper and then tape the freezer paper together.  On top of that, this pattern was designed by a quilter.  That trapezoid doesn’t include any seam allowances!  And, the instructions tell you to stitch half-inch seams.  What nonsense is this?!  I could have – should have – skipped buying the pattern and just drawn my own trapezoids on the fabric with chalk.

Ceci n’set pas une pattern

Being a garment sewer, I gave my skirt proper 5/8” seams when I made the skirt.  I also had to lengthen it several inches as the “tea length” version barely came to my knees.  Apparently this quilter is also quite short.  She may also be a little on the chunky side as this “one-size-fit-most” pattern gets just small enough for my waist when the ties are pulled as tight as they go, and at 5/9” and 165, I’m not exactly tiny

Crazy pattern and instructions aside, the resulting skirt is quite cute.  I don’t quite wear it the way it’s designed. The ties are super long so that the ends of your bow hang down almost to the bottom of the skirt.  I prefer to wrap the ties all the way around my waist.  That helps keep the skirt up.

 

If I Can’t Be a Housewife, I’m at least Dressing like One

“Mommy, Betty White’s wearing my dress!”  I exclaimed into the phone.  I’d been watching Life with Elizabeth on the Roku’s Pop Films Classic TV channel.  - I love that show; Betty White in 1954, amazing.  Anyway…  Just a few weeks earlier I had finished this fabulous new dress and here was Betty White, 60 years ago, wearing a dress of the exact same cut.  I was thrilled.

I found the fabric first.  In the new knitting and quilting shop that opened up next door to the office.  Danger Will Robinson, DANGER!!!!  I can’t remember what I’d actually gone in there for.  Perhaps to finally see it.  The building had been built my great-grandfather as his store front and home when he was a Roundy’s salesman, well before being elected to the judiciary.  Unlike all the other buildings he built, I’d never been in it.  The ladies at Bungalow Quilting & Yarn have done a great job incorporating the original feel of the building into their shop.  It was while I was admiring this that I also found myself admiring some fabulous fabric. 

Pattern-colored, with pattern instructions and images sprawling across the fabric.  A nice, soft, light cotton.  This place isn’t your standard big box discount store, so I gathered together some resolve and left the store without it.  Then I got a coupon in my email a few weeks later.  I knew exactly what I wanted.

“What are you going to make with it?”  “I want to make a dress, use this for the bodice.”  The lady looked at me skeptically.  “Let us know how that turns out.”  I can’t blame her.  I’m sure “dress!” is not the first thing that comes to most people’s minds upon seeing that fabric.  But then, I never claim to be most people.

Mommy and I took the fabric and headed to JoAnn’s to find a suitable pattern and a coordinating fabric for the skirt.  At first, I was thinking maybe a pattern similar to the one that’s depicted on the fabric, but honestly, that style doesn’t work well on my jumbo-muscle thighs.  Instead, I picked out a fabulous Retro Butterick pattern from 1950, B6055.  We perused the general cottons, blends and quilting fabrics looking for something that would go well with one of the colors in the bodice fabric and me.  Mommy found the most delightful and perfect fabric, mint with large white polka dots!

I’m sort of notorious for messing with patterns.  Altering the sizes, the style, the embellishments.  This time, the only alteration I made was to leave off the pockets.  They looked as though they’d be an awful temptation for creating cell-phone destruction through gravity. 

I suppose I can’t really claim no pockets as the only change since I also slightly modified the belt.  The belt called for a 1” buckle.  We couldn’t find a 1” buckle at JoAnn’s or in Mommy’s stash, so I improvised.  Instead, I put two  button holes in the belt, one at each end, and secured it with a large cuff link.  I love it!  It looks awesome and the cuff link seems to keep the belt from spinning around my waist.   The belt currently isn’t size adjustable, but if I ever need it to be, I can just add another button hole at either end.  I also made the belt double-sided so it can match either the bodice or the skirt.

Oh, and I also added a skirt lining.  I guess I messed with the pattern more than I realized at the time. The polka dot fabric is pretty thin, so I added a slip-style lining with natural-colored muslin from my large bolt.  Basically, I cut the skirt out of both fabrics, assembled the lining and skirt separate, basted them at the waist with wrong sides together and sewed the bodice to the whole skirt unit. 

After wearing the dress, I also wish I’d have lined the whole bodice in the polka dots instead of just doing the collar with facing like the pattern says.  Then I would be able to turn up my sleeves and have little polka dot cuffs.  I may go back and add some false cuffs to it.

I love the dress.  I love how it turned out.  I love that it fits me pretty much perfectly.  And I really, really love, that I just happened to already have shoes in the exact right color and style.  It also goes great with mouse ears and pearls.

It’s Cold Outside…

You’re either now singing a Christmas tune or the theme song from Red Dwarf.  Me, I’m doing the later while dancing in my fabulous new pink flannel jammies! 

It seemed like a very silly project to be doing in August, but in Wisconsin, August quickly gives way to chilly fall nights.  Mommy and I found the pink checked flannel on a trip to JoAnn’s.  Since my two pairs of jammies – both satin jammies from Vickie’s – are falling apart after years of year-round wear in the Bay Area, I thought it’d be nice to have a new set.

The pattern wasn’t too hard and there was a surprising amount of room for creativity and fun because we didn’t purchase any piping.  Instead, we raided Mommy’s boxes of piping packets collected by various grandmothers and such over the past 50ish years.  We did the same for the buttons in the time capsule of button tins.

The pajamas have piping on the sleeve and leg faux cuffs, along the collar edge, down the front opening and on the pockets.  There wasn’t enough of any one piping to do everything, so I mixed and matched.  The legs and arms have black.  The pockets have pink.  The front opening has a fun bright robin's egg blue and the collar has a slightly peachier pink.

I don’t remember how many buttons it was supposed to have, but we found three big, flat pink buttons so Mommy put 3 button holes in the placket.  I sewed the buttons on.

Personally, I think the jammies turned  out really cute.  And they’re so warm.  Perfect for snuggling down into bed on a chilly night.

Pattern: Simplicity 2371, same as Monkey pants I made for Mr. Trizzle; Currently available for sale here.

Old Fabric, Old Pattern, New Skirt

Over the years, I’ve collected a bit of a stash of fabric.  Nothing, I mean nothing compared to what Mommy’s got, but still enough where I feel like I ought to be doing something with it.  One of my favorite things to do with stash fabric – whether mine or Mommy’s – is look through old patterns around either of our houses to see if I can find something good.  And that’s exactly what I did.

I had a delightful grey suiting fabric.  Light weight but rather decent quality.  I’ve been having the most miserable time finding good business clothes that fit me, so I thought I’d make a skirt for work.  I dug through Mommy’s patterns and found an old 1982 skirt pattern that she’d used to make a skirt for her Mommy.  Thank goodness!  That meant it wasn’t her teeny-tiny pre-kids size.  I had a shot at this working.

The pattern was old-school size 12, with a 26 1/2” waist.  That’s still a little smaller than mine, but not by too much.  I utilized resizing tactics that I learned in a book that is currently at her house where you add inches to the sides by pivoting the pattern piece out from an anchor at the center top. I added a bit to the waist and a bit to the hips. 

I also sort of added down the sides by carrying the expanded line most of the way down the pattern.  I should not have done that.  It would have worked better to blend the extended line into the existing pattern.  The skirt’s a bit wide at the knees.

The hardest part turned out to be the pleats.  I was so proud of myself.  They turned out absolutely gorgeous the first time, with amazingly straight top stitching.  I was so excited, I ran down to the kitchen where Mommy was cooking dinner so I could show her, only to realize I’d put them on the wrong side of the fabric.  Mommy always says, “as ye sew, so shall ye rip.”  I ripped.  Boy did I rip.  It took a long time to get those pleats right.  Let’s just say, third time’s the charm.

The pattern didn’t have a lining, but I like my skirts lined.  So, I found a bolt of black lining fabric in Mommy’s closet – I think it’s left from Alfred’s bridesmaid dresses.  I used the quasi-assembled skirt as a guide and cut a front and 2 back pieces.  I stitched the side seams all the way and the back seam up to about the bottom of the zipper on the skirt.  Then, I basted the lining to the skirt and stitched the waistband to both.  It worked well.

  For the zipper, we dug around in Mommy’s zipper drawer until we found something that was close to the called for size.  It’s a fabulous old metal zipper on black zipper tape with a wide zipper pull.  Gives some great edginess to the rather classic-styled skirt.

In the end, it may not be perfect, but I have a nice dress skirt that fits me pretty darn well and works nicely with my existing wardrobe.  (But not necessarily the part of my wardrobe that I was wearing the day I finished it.)

Pattern: Simplicity 5749 (old school)

Happy Halloween

Munchkinhead and I started planning months ago.  When was that March? April?  We knew what we were going to be for Halloween, and as fall arrived, we started working on our fabulous costumes.

I’m a half-eaten Triceratops!

 

And Munchkinhead is a T-Rex.

 

Specifically, she’s the T-Rex that’s eating me!

We were inspired by the Milwaukee Public Museum dinosaur diorama. (re-enacted here)

We bought some very cheap sweats on sale at Target – actually, they were kinda free because I used a gift card I won at a State Bar of Wisconsin program.  Munchkinhead dyed hers to be the proper shade of red-brown.  Mine were good dark grey.  Both of our tails are made from an extra pant leg. 

Munchkinhead’s tail and back have a spine quilted in by Mommy.  My guts are also courtesy Mommy’s quilting.  They’re part of a down comforter that was lying around in her sewing closet.  Mommy also stitched Munchkinhead’s sleeves for her little arms.  Mommy originally said she wasn’t going to help us, but she got pretty into it with lots of great ideas.  She watched Dr. Who has half a triceratops so I could hand stitch the frill onto my costume.

My frill is made of fabric a scarp of stabilizer, which Cathy at JoAnn’s suggested.  She also suggested pleating it for the circular effect.  Mommy did the pleats; I cut the zig zag.  My top two horns are foam and my nose horn is felt, molded on Mommy’s felt carrot scissors keeper that I got her in Texas.  It’s held on with a strap of clear stretchy jewelry line.

Munchkinhead and I both have cardboard feet.  Hers aren’t on in the picture, but she has three front talons and one back talon on each foot.  I just have giant plodding triceratops feet, and I do have to plod in them because they make it very difficult to walk.  Our costumes are also both stuffed with pillows, which makes them quite warm.  They’d’ve been perfect for your standard put-your-costume-over-your-snowsuit Wisconsin Halloween, but it was 67 on Trick or Treat this year.  We felt like we really were in the late Crustaceous period!

Trick or treat was fun.  Have you ever seen a T-rex try to hand out candy?  Tiny arms!  The kids would have to get up really close and Munkchinhead would still need some oomf to throw the candy bar into their bag.  Several kids had to pick up the candy.

After trick or treat, we had fun running around Mommy and Daddy’s house taking pictures of “T-rex attempts to do” this and “Triceratops attempts to do” that.  It was really funny.  T-rex could hardly do anything.  She fell headfirst into a laundry basket attempting to get clothes out of it!  I kept getting stuck in doorways and other narrow areas around the house.

Tonight, we’re going to ballet.  It’s Don Quixote, and they said we could wear costumes since it’s Halloween.  I’ll have to take my top half off so the frill doesn’t block anyone’s view.  Hopefully the colored contacts we got won’t obstruct ours.

We’re also going to – and this was a surprise to us; we found out about it after we’d started our costumes – the museum!  It’s a members costume party night.  Should be great fun.  I wonder if anyone will recognize us.

(Since Mommy and Daddy weren’t home, we went across the street to one of the neighbors’ and asked them to take our photo together.)

My New Purse

I loved my yellow purse.  It was actually my second yellow purse.  I loved the first one, too.  Yellow was such a nice way to immediately brighten up an outfit, especially when that outfit was covered in a black trench coat.  But, my purse was falling apart and I had to admit it was time to move on.  I was sad. I hate trying to shop for purses. None of them every seem to be what I want.

Then I saw Mommy’s new purse – purse and tote collection rather – all made by her.  And she had a new pack of yellow and green fabrics that had arrived in a kit for her.  Ooooh!  So Mommy and I got out one of her patterns and started making me a new purse.

I pulled out all the yellows from her kit as well as one of the greens and then rummaged around her fabric closet for some more yellows and something for the lining.  The purse is a patchwork quilted purse so there’s lots of opportunities for fun patterns.  In addition to the yellows from the kit, I used scraps from a dress I had with mud huts on it and scraps from one of Katrina’s dresses that was white with yellow and black flowers.  I used two greens from her kit and scraps from a pair of under trousers I’d made for Mr. Trizzle, as well.  We used her Accu-Cutter to cut the strips, so they’re actually straight.

Adjustments

The pattern is a simple, lined bag with a handle and a front pouch.  I made some additions: a divider to create two inside pockets, a row of three small pockets on the back of the inside, a small cell pocket on the inside of the front pouch for my cell phone, plastic ring to clip my keys onto so they wouldn’t get lost in the bottom of the bag, and plastic backing to make the bag water-resistant.

The Divider

The purse pattern has four pieces: outside, front pocket, handle, bottom.  I used the outside pocket to cut a piece from the lining on the fold.  I folded this piece so the rightside was facing out and the fold was at the top of the piece.  I basted the raw edges to the back lining piece.  When the lining was fully assembled, the folded piece created a pocket in the back section of the purse.

The mushroom fabric is the divider, front and back lining, the yellow is the bottom lining.

Row pockets

I know that I have lots of little things in my purse that would wind up swimming in the bottom of a bag and never be found.  To give these things a home, I made some smaller pockets along the inside of the back of the purse.  This is in the pocket area formed by the divider.  I took a long rectangle of fabric, hemmed it all around and then stitched it down across the back lining piece on the sides and bottom.  To turn it into multiple pockets, I stitched to straight lines from top to bottom of the piece at roughly 1/3 intervals.

You can almost see it in the picture.  The row pockets are the flowered material on top of the mushrooms.

Cell phone Pocket

I always want my cell phone easily accessible and in an outside pocket.  But the outside pouch on the purse pattern is quite large.  So, I decided to add a home for my cell phone in the front pocket.  It’s positioned so that when the purse is on my right shoulder, I can reach inside with my right hand and pull it out easily.  It’s a simple rectangle of fabric, sewn down on the sides and bottom with triangles sewn at the top corners to help enforce the stitching.  It works well.

Key Ring

The ring for my keys is probably my favorite addition.  My last purse had large metal rings connecting the handles to the purse.  I would use the little metal clip on my keys to clip my keys to those rings and prevent them sinking to oblivion in the bottom of my purse.  I found a brown plastic ring somewhere in Mommy’s sewing room that was once part of who-knows-what.  I cut a long rectangle from the row-pockets fabric, folded it long-wise, sewed a seam on the long side, turned it and pressed it.  Then I put it through the plastic ring, folded it back on itself and sewed a line just above the ring to keep the ring in place on it’s holder.  I basted it to the lining bottom fabric and sewed it in place when the handle was attached to the bag.  It hangs inside the purse from where the handle meets the bag.

Water-Resistant Lining

My other modification turned out to not be such a great idea.  We found some iron-on plastic, for coating table cloths and that sort of thing.  I thought it’d be great to help protect the contents of my purse from rain, puddles, spills etc.  So, I cut plastic for the lining front, back and bottom and ironed it on to each piece.  Assembling the back was a little tricker because the lining pieces were stiffer, but it wasn’t too much of an issue.

However, once in use, my purse was very noisy.  It sounded like a krinkling shopping bag every time I rummaged in it for anything.  At one point, we had to take the purse apart a bit to fix a bad seam.  When I opened the purse’s insides, I discovered muct of the plastic had torn or was coming away from the fabric.  So, I just tore it all off.  Oh well.

Finishing Touches

Mommy had put some embroidery on her purse and offered to add some to me. I chose a squirrel!  He’s got this mischievous look, like he’s up to no good, like he just stole that acorn in his hands from under your nose.  I love that.  He’s hanging out on the back of the purse.

I love my new purse.  I keep thinking about what I’d do different next time, but that’s the learning experience.  Besides, I could always make another and have one for each season, like Mommy ;)