Merry Christmas!!

wishing you and yours a merry and bright holiday season!

Not Really A Tutorial...

My middle son asked for THIS for Christmas - a Venom, full zip, hoodie. It was only made in men's sizes, as far as we can tell, and it's been out of stock for years, as far as we can tell - but he saw it on someone and that was that. I told him we could not find one. The face crumpled.

and then I said it.

"Well, we could try to make one..."

oh boy.

So. I used McCalls pattern 6158 (don't tell him it's a girl pattern) because it has the thumb hole that the other sweater has. Anti-pill fleece was on sale, so I used that.

First, I made the template for the Spider front.

I laid it on the fold of the white fleece and cut it, then cut the fleece in half on the fold. Then I pinned it to the front of the sweater, leaving a little room for the seam.

I drew a shape for the mouth and cut out the tongue, then the little bitty annoying teeth.

I sewed those on to the lower part of the hood.

I had to fudge the instructions just a little - the hood is supposed to go on after the zipper but since this is a full-zip hoodie the zipper needed to go on later.
I also cut out eye holes and sewed a thick tulle in their place.

The instructions said to sew the zipper on to the front, right sides together. It was later turned to the inside, and a facing applied to the other side. The fleece was bulky for that - I would use a different fabric if I were to do this again (which, I won't).

You can see I managed to make the mouth uneven. Am I going to fix it, you ask?

hahahaha.

funny.

I DID have to add about 4 inches of width to the center back of the hood, narrowing at forehead and neck, so it would wrap around his face without suffocating him.

After sewing on the waistband and cuffs, the last step was to sew the spider leg shapes into the white front.
Ta Da! It's definitely not perfect, and I used the longest zipper I could find that was open on both ends - without using a 36 incher, you know. The zipper was still a couple of inches short and the zip ends right as the waistband starts. So it's open at the bottom.

Still, I'm fairly certain he's going to love it.

.....he'd better.

Update - he loves it. Success. :)

The Evite dreaded by every crafter, ever.

Several weeks ago, I received an evite for a "Handmade Christmas Party" which was hosted by 4 ladies up in the Santa Clarita area. One of them I have known since college, and rarely get an opportunity to see. The invitation informed me that there would be lots of food and a White Elephant style gift exchange - with the catch being that the gift each person brought had to be handmade. By them.

Enter Stress. Enter dozens of ideas being thought up and then discarded as lame or "too easy". Then I thought - I've never made a purse. It would be fun to try to make a purse. And lots of late nights on Pinterest ensued. I bought a book; The Bag Making Bible, and figured I would make something smallish from the patterns inside.

The bag I ended up making is not small. It is a carry-on sized weekend bag. How could I not? It was the cutest one in the book! I spent one day cutting the fabrics and then fusing them to the interfacings - the outside fabric to a woven interfacing and the lining fabric to a wool/fleece interfacing.
There is an outside flat pocket with a magnetic snap closure. That snap was incredibly easy to install. I'm addicted.

A flat zip pocket on one side of the inside. This was one of the more difficult things to put in. My fabric didn't want to press flat so there was a lot of pinning to be done. I broke 3 needles on this project!

3 row pockets on the other side. The bottom is hard - made so by inserting a plastic grid base which I bought at JoAnns. (I got all of the materials there. I had wanted so badly to make it out of oilcloth but the fabric is just too darn expensive and as it was this was not a cheap project by any stretch of the imagination)

In the end, I get so say, "I made a bag!!" and I didn't even have any major catastrophes during the construction! I omitted the long shoulder strap because I did not like the way it was attached to the bag (looked lazy) AND I could not find a sliding strap ring to save my life.

I came home with something which I will say was definitely equally awesome. My children think I more than came home with the better deal! Behold:

3 giant pillows. You can guess who they are. :)