Saturday, July 21, 2007

Travel Tissue Cover

I've found a new and fantastic source of patterns! It's a blog called Craft Leftovers and it's got lots of great ideas for what to do with scraps of things you might have in your craft stash. Aside from the wonderful patterns, great ideas, and being based on a premise of using whatever happens to be laying around, the projects are fairly small and quick to do.

Here is my first finished project from a Craft Leftovers pattern (okay, it's actually the second, but the first was done as a pattern tester for the site so I won't reveal it until the pattern is posted):

They're Travel Tissue Covers! I made one for a friend and one for me. Now I must say, they look like a very simple sewing project, but for a novice sewer like me, there was plenty of frustration that went along with this project, not the least of which was the machine coming partially unthreaded without telling me causing the seams not to sew up properly and me having no clue why. That of course ended with a lot of ripped stitches, swearing, and all sorts of other untoward behaviour. But in the end I got them done and I think they'll work just fine. Making the second one went a lot smoother but still involved ripping out stitches.

The first one I made required some hand stitching in the final side seams where the folded over sections meet. It was just too tough for the needle I had to get through the fabric. But fortunately, some miracle happened with the second one and the needle slid through that section with no problem.

One thing that the pattern doesn't mention is that in the end, after making the final side seams, the whole thing gets flipped inside out. This is very important to know so that the fabric you want on the outside actually ends up being on the outside

I've found that the bottom lip of the opening puckers a little, nothing too serious, but enough to annoy my perfectionism when I was making the first one. I accepted this fact by the time I go to the second one.

Materials:
  • 2 pieces of 9" x 6.5" fabric (I used gold satin for the linings, red crepe satin for one and some shimmery stiff purple for the other)
  • Sewing machine (though you could hand sew)
  • Thread

2 comments:

Emily RugBurn said...

Beautiful, T! These turned out, really, REALLY nice! Great job!

(And they probably wouldn't have looked as nice had you taken my advice and used duct tape instead of a needle and thread.) ;o)

Kristin said...

Oh they turned out really great! I'm glad you liked them. I love the fabric, I wouldn't have thought to use a satin.

The first one I made slid right though too so I didn't think to mention hand sewing, but all the others I've had to hand sew to get over that bump. Maybe it's my new sewing machine. I used to have one that was all metal and from the 60's so maybe it was made of tougher stuff and thought nothing of stitching though 8 layers of fabric:)