Monday, September 20, 2010

My Most Recent Labour of Love...

So in order to spend time with manfriend, which is sadly usually in front of the television, I had to have a project that I could work on now and again that wasn't upstairs in my sewing studio slash our bedroom slash "Amanda's area"... yes we have space but not that much space.

Enter a little simple bag that just happened. I don't know why I do things sometimes and often because I have no plan, these things aren't fruits of my labor that can be harvested for nourishment. Well, one evening, I took an Old Navy tank top that I got on clearance for $1.50 that was 2 sizes too large (I thought it would be comfy to sleep in but in actuality my boobs hung out while I slept... wasn't worth wearing!) and I just started tearing it into pieces thinking that it would be cool to reconstruct it... and I was right. (see gray material)

Add my remnants of what was once in it's clearance rack glory to some leftovers of fabric I picked up in the clearance bin at Joann's (red and white floral pattern) with a dash of canvas backing I have had hanging around and voila, I had a project. I sewed all of the jersey cotton to the canvas by hand and I was really pleased at how forgiving the tee ended up being but how I loved what came of it, especially, I mean because I actually did the majority of it by hand (except for sewing the base and zipper with my machine).

It obvi took me a little longer than I would have liked if I were mass producing anything but it really was a testiment to keeping with something (something manfriend is constantly encouraging me to do) and finishing and not hating it.

I used the actual pocket from the tee for the front of the project, also "ruffled" the side by placing pins and positioning the fabric so that I could sew the design into place. Took finagling but Mama Likes! I LOVE buttons so obvi I had to add some in the mix. It's hard to see but the silver button is actually a really cool lion head, very "simba"lic


Using some of the thinner strips on the back, the "ruffles" were easy to contruct but a little more time consuming than I would have like... but with practice comes efficiency... so here's to practice!



Inside, I stitched a layer of the tee on the inner lining as well, careful not to stitch in the way of the zipper


Opinions would be cool if there were any!