Boys Will Be Boys

Well my project this week was patches . . . I have 5 and 6 year old nephews. About a week ago, I got a desperate call from my sister asking me how to patch jeans. Her boys are TOUGH on their jeans. She said that they had managed to rip holes in every single pair of pants they had. I had to go and see it for myself. How could these sweet little angels tear up the knees of their jeans?

Aidan (6)

Judah (5)

But I was amazed when Cindy started laying out the Jeans on the table! There were about 8 pairs of pants with ALL of the knees torn out.

We knew that iron on patches are worthless so we went to the internet to find a good way to patch. This looked promising. We went to work. We found some old jeans to use for the patching material. We cut out patches and pinned them to the back side of the hole (right side to wrong side so the right side of the material showed through the hole).

The tutorial said to do a Running Stitch around the patch, however I felt it was a little sloppy. I decided to do a Catch Stitch around the edge to help reduce fray and to just hold things down a little better. This certainly took a bit longer than it would just do the Running Stitch, but I felt like it worked well. I also took a bit of time to show my sister how to do a Catch Stitch. The patch itself was really big, but I wanted to cover areas where the material was very thin hoping to reinforce the entire knee area.

Once I was done there, I turned the leg back right side out and trimmed out the excess torn material and turned it under and pinned it. I then did a tight Whip Stitch around the edge holding it all down. Here's the finished product.

Now, I just need to repeat about 16 times! Hopefully, this will hold up to the beating the boys will undoubtedly give it!

Boys,

Be.Loved

New Year, New Project

I hate how life gets in the way sometimes. My "real job" (read on the right) has been consuming my free time lately. I haven't done any sewing projects since probably August/September. The fact that I can't remember my last project proves it's been too long. So here we go, new year, new project.

My boyfriend's sister, Kendall, is expecting her first baby at the end of April. I felt so honored when she asked me to make her a diaper bag. And when we found out it was a girl, I got even more excited because, I LOVE sewing for girls! So Kendall picked out a pattern and we went to get fabric yesterday. We found some really cute hot pink and apple green damask fabric.

I quickly Googled the pattern to see what I was up against. Butterick B5005 . . . good lord, what am I in for? Gremlins?, Bad Choice for Beginning Sewer? Well maybe I can avoid some of the mistakes they made. Although an upside down zipper sounds exactly like something I would do!

I also have the challenge of working with some materials I have never used before. We decided that we need the inside to be durable, wipe-able, and water proof. The pattern calls for Iron-on Vinyl. That sounds pretty awesome and a perfect solution, but again a Google search proved to be menacing . . . GAH!!

And WTF is hair canvas? Google seems to be my best sewing friend these days. Turns out to be an interfacing option made out of goat or horse hair. Seriously?!?! ... ... ... In a baby diaper bag?!?! No, I don't think so. So now I need to find some durable, stiff interfacing. Joann has a good selection of that stuff, so at least that is one crisis averted. And I have some coupons to save some cash as well. So with that, I am off to the store to see what I can see.

Here is to challenging my my skills with a new project this year. Bring it on.

Baby,

Be.Loved