judyonthenet

Last week, my old purse officially bit the dust when one end of the strap completely snapped off. I knew it was eventually going to happen; the leather had been fraying away at the ends the last few weeks. It lasted almost a year and a half, which is okay considering I only spent $20 on it at Kohl’s and I put a ton of crap in it. I got another purse from Kohl’s last weekend, this time bigger, but still in the low 20s in price. (It’s kinda like this one, but not exactly. Same brand and extra crap, tho.) The downside of the new purse is that there’s no top flap, so anybody could reach in and grab stuff. There’s a zippered middle section, which seems like a good place to put pricey electronics.

However, it doesn’t have another zippered section (aside from the “secret” pocket all purses have) where I can put all my miscellaneous small loose junk nor card holders to put miscellaneous cards and stamps. I don’t want to put those things in the big zippered section as they may scratch up whatever handheld I put in there, and I don’t want to put them in the main, large, open sections where they’ll be impossible to find and may fall out if my purse is knocked over. This missing feature was driving me nuts, so I did something about it. I really liked the zippered front portion of my old purse, and since I’m trying to recycle more and be more crafty, I decided I’d make a similar section for my new purse, with help from my old purse.

My old purse, with one end being held together with staples :\

I wanted the card holders from my old purse, so I seam ripped it out. While I was at it, I also took out the zipper. I cut out some of the lining from the back part of my purse for more fabric of the same color, and I saved the metal rings and leather strap. You know, in case I ever needed to make any bondage stuff in the future :P

What’s left of my old purse.

My plan was to make something like a basic zipper coin purse, with the cardholders on one of the sides, and sew that into the inside of my new purse. Not exactly complex, but whatever… it works for me. I found these ghetto instructions on making a zipper purse, but it’s not the clearest tutorial, so I winged a lot of it. (Not that there’s much to “wing”… zipper purses are pretty easy.) Anyway, that’s my excuse as to why mine came out kinda gimpy. There’s some nicer instructions on how to make one here, but I didn’t find this until later. I wanted my zipper on the top anyway.

I realized the fabric I cut from the lining of my old purse wouldn’t be enough to make a zipper purse with, so I had to find some other material. I had some leftover black fabric from I don’t know what; I’m guessing it’s scraps from when I made ninja costumes a couple Halloweens ago. The inside of my purse is a dark brown, so black was the closest thing I had. I cut out two rectangles large enough would encompass the cardholders.

Two rectangles of black cotton fabric and the cardholders from my old purse.

I pinned the cardholders to one rectangle and sewed along the edges of the cardholder with my sewing machine. There’s an extra stitch on the bottom because there was extra fabric hanging out and it was bothering me.

With the inside side facing me, I ironed ~1cm of the top edge towards me on both fabric pieces. I laid the zipper down with the zipper pull on top, and I placed the ironed edges along the zipper, with outside side facing me (meaning you can’t see the cut edges which are folded in). I pinned the fabric pieces to the zipper. I had the zipper pulls pulled past the fabric so that the zipper would be flat, and the pulls wouldn’t get in the way of sewing the fabric.

Using my sewing machine with a zipper foot attached, I sewed the fabric to the zipper.

One side of the zipper sewn.

Both sides sewn on to the zipper, shown from the back.

I pulled the zipper pulls back to the middle and left the zipper a little open. This opening was needed to pull the purse right side out. I aligned the two black rectangles as evenly as I could, with the inside side facing out, and pinned them together. I sewed the edges avoiding the zipper parts. I did this since I wasn’t sure how to deal with the zipper, as I was worried about bending the needle.

Purse completely sewn, still inside out.

Because I was paranoid my construction wouldn’t be enough to keep the zipper together (though I’m sure it would), I did a criss-cross stitch very slowly over the zipper to make sure it stays shut.

Ignore the loose threads everywhere, please.

With all the sides completely sewn, I trimmed the edges a bit, cut off the excess zipper, turned the purse inside out, and voila!

The fabric by the ends of the zipper are wrinkled cuz the zipper was folded over when I made the seams. Oh wells.

The hardest part was definitely attaching the small purse to the insides of my large purse. I had to hand-sew this, since I wasn’t taking my new purse apart for kicks. My hand sewing is terrible; I have no form or technical stitch. I couldn’t turn my large purse inside out, so I had to sew inside the purse, which cramped my hands. It’s dark in there, and all the material and fabric is dark colored, so I couldn’t see anything. There’s also a lining on the other side of the lining I’m sewing on, which is lining to another purse section, so I needed to avoid this. So I’m “hand sewing” (randomly poking the need in and out) blindly, in a cramped space, with little material support since I’m “holding” the lining by pulling away an adjacent lining. I don’t know if that last sentence made any sense, but basically, it was freaking hard.

This is where the purse/pocket thing is going.

I only sewed one seam along the top. The rest of the zipper purse should be adequately supported by resting on the insides of the large purse.

Look at my crappy hand-stitch job! Argh!

And now, my finished product!

In this photo, the purse is rotated from the previous picture.

Now I can stick coins, card, stamps, random small unimportant objects into this zippered compartment. So what if it’s not on evenly and the inside edges are fraying? It’s functional and sufficiently contains small junks. My new purse is now officially adequate for my needs. Yay. This took me an evening to do, not the hour or so I spent ripping my old purse apart. I could have just cut parts out and then glued them to my purse, but no, that’d be too easy :P

Materials:
Old purse (cardholders and zipper) I was going to toss out - $0
Leftover black cotton fabric, 2 ~6×7″ pieces - $0
Black thread

Total cost: $0

I’m not sure where Kelvin heard about them (probably from some tech or DIY blog), but he’s been wanting to take classes at a place called TechShop. Currently only located in Menlo Park, TechShop is basically a place where nerds can play with large, dangerous tools, be creative, and make cool stuff. You pay for membership and access to their machines, but a lot of them require safety classes so you know how to properly use them. Kelvin was particularly interested in the laser cutter, so he dragged me with him to take a class last Saturday. I wasn’t fond of not doing nothing on a Saturday, but whatever… maybe I’d learn something.

TechShop is located right off 101, very close to the exit. It’s in a nondescript area of old office buildings and warehouses near the bay. When you first walk in, there’s a front desk to the right where you sign in, and to the left, a small room with random materials and tools you can purchase. There’s only 3 chairs in the waiting area, and a display with random brochures of tech-nerdy stuff sits in the back. The class we were taking, How To Cut Plastic, Wood and Paper with the Epilog Laser Cutter, cost $30 a person with no materials fee. Kelvin signed us up the day before online through their website. The class has a capacity of 5 people, and when all 5 showed up, our instructor, Laura, led us to one of the back rooms that held the Epilog laser cutter.

Walking towards the back of the building, you pass by a very large work area with a bunch of tables to your left. The far wall is covered with boxes of donated junk and scrap material for potential projects. To the right are small rooms with fun-sounding labels, like “3D-Printing Room”. Past the work area is a workstation with several computers, probably with software for the computer controlled machines. Past the computers is a lounge area with a small kitchen, where you can microwave your lunch or munch on complimentary popcorn from their popcorn machine.

The room with the laser cutter is pretty small, with the laser cutter in one corner and a desk with a computer against the wall and adjacent to the cutter. A large whiteboard is hung behind the desk, and the wall has all sorts of laser etching and cutting samples. The first part of the class was a mini-lecture. It started off with Laura giving us a tour of the machine. We learned about the important things we need to do to properly set up the machine and what (expensive) parts get damaged easily. Next, we sat around the worktable in the middle of the room to go over the printed material given to us. We learned about safety procedures, like what to do if your project bursts into flames. There’s a list of approved and not-approved materials, with some weird approved ones being edible (chocolate!).

For the second half, we spent time trying out the machine. Using CorelDraw (which is what they use to send images to the laser cutter), Laura made a simple design: an oval with some text in the middle describing the current machine settings (DPI, power settings, etc.) plus a couple small shapes to demonstrate the difference between etching and cutting. As example material, Laura used cardboard leftover from cereal boxes in the break room (hence the lack of materials fees). After she sent her design to the cutter, the machine etched and cut shapes in the cardboard. The oval is supposed to be cut out, but it wasn’t cut all the way through on Laura’s try. Each of the students took turns messing with settings to see how the results change. As we waited, we could watch the laser cutter or go through Laura’s binder of cut/etched samples. The laser cutter is pretty neat; even though you can’t see the laser like in the movies, watching the cutter burn in shapes into the material is fun to watch.

Once everyone had their turn, the class was over. Even though there were only 5 students, the class still went an hour over its initial 1-hour estimate. I don’t think anybody was in a rush though. I like that the class went at a relaxed pace, and I thought Laura was very good at explaining things and very patient with questions, which were easy to ask because of the small class size. Overall, we really enjoyed the class. Laura mentioned she would be teaching a class about digitizing images for embroidery later this month, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be taking that. Kelvin wants to take one of the metal welding classes.

So now, Kelvin and I are seriously considering become members. The laser cutter has a lot of potential applications I’m thinking of using for maybe wedding favors or invitations, so once we figure that out, we’ll probably join for a month. They offer daily/trial (currently $30 and can go towards monthly membership), monthly ($100), and annual ($1200) membership options. For couples or families, you still need a membership for each person, but they do offer corporate and family discounts. (TechShop suggested the corporate account option for us, which is where 3 people get membership for $150 a month, but only two people can show up at a time. Anybody interested in a TechShop membership later this year? :P) Membership gives you access to all the machines available at TechShop, assuming you’ve taken the necessary classes. They weren’t many people this Saturday afternoon, but Laura mentioned things get more hectic during the holidays and Burning Man. However, you don’t need a membership to take the classes they offer, and classes range in cost from $30 a person to $60. Currently, the only TechShop location is in Menlo Park, but according to their website, 9 more locations are opening all over CA and in a few other states this summer.

I’m pretty excited; even if we don’t come up with any sort of useful application, I’m sure it’ll be fun to make randomly cool stuffs.

New thing I learned today: The founder of TechShop is Jim Newton, who is a veteran in combat robotics (including BattleBots) and was a science advisor for the third season of MythBusters.

Kelvin being Kelvin, of course he had to come up with some really wacky idea to out-crazy everybody’s crazy hats at Ravi and Jess’s Crazy Hat Party. He wanted some sort of head sucker, so I thought he was going to make a Half-Life Head Crab hat or maybe a Metroid hat. It turns out he wanted to make a hat where a dog is chewing at his head. His initial sketch:

And with Kelvin being Kelvin, he had to make this thing at the very last second. Ignoring my advice to start the night before, we bought all the materials at JoAnn’s and got home around 2:30ish, with the party starting at 7PM. He was supposed to be done by 6:30PM, but he was half an hour off his target. Regardless, I’m impressed with what he came up with in that 3-4 hour period, considering he had no patterns and very little time to make mistakes. I still would have preferred he started earlier so we could iron out some of the details.

Materials:
1/2 yard of black 100% cotton fabric (a few square feet used)     $4.00
50″x60″ Northpoint supreme plush throw, light brown color (less than half used)      $9.99
Black buttons (2 out of 3 used)      $1.99
3 9″x12″ squares of felt (red, black, white)      $.60
12 oz. bag of PolyFil (very little used)     $2.59
Black thread
Scraps of tan suede from Andrew’s puppet material
Andrew’s glue gun and glue
Total cost: $19.17

I was really hesitant about him using a throw blanket for material instead of other fabric. You can’t predict how they will unravel. Sure enough, when he cut up the throw, fuzz got all over the living room. The material stayed intact tho, and Kelvin was right in that it was appropriate for a plush dog.

Kelvin made relatively little mistakes in making the hat. He started off making a small black inner cap to stick the dog to. This cap was made from scratch and his own made-up pattern, which I thought was unnecessary since buying simple caps is easy PLUS I have actual hat patterns. Obviously the rest of the dog was his own made-up-on-the-fly pattern, tho he did use an Afro-Ken doll as a reference for the body. I think there was some initial problem with the teeth, but he fixed that. The eyes were stuck on using twisty-ties. I helped make the ears :) I had to wear the hat with dog partially sewn on as he stuffed it.

Amazingly in the end, it did look like a rabid dog of ridiculous proportions was eating his head. It’s far from perfect tho. The lack of time caused there to be some holes in a few locations on the dog due to rushed stitching, and the teeth and blood could have been a lot better looking. There’s a bunch of uncut thread, and there’s brown fuzz all over the black cap from the throw material. Still, not bad for <4 hours with no pattern or instructions. We’ve affectionately named him “Chopper“.

This is my first completed sewing project on my sewing machine. Ravi and Jess threw a “Crazy Hat Party”, so I figured it was a good time to start a small project and complete it. I found a McCall’s pattern with both an apron (need one for the kitchen) and a chef’s hat (goofy looking, yet possibly practical), so I decided to make a chef’s hat but use an interesting fabric to make it “crazy”.

Materials:
1 yard of Batman Brick Wall 100% cotton fabric (most of it used)      $5.99
30″ of 3/4″ wide Velcro (3″ used)      $1.49
McCall’s Pattern M2233 - Chef Uniform Essentials      $1.99
Red thread
Total cost: $9.47

I haven’t figured out how to organize the costs, since I obviously don’t use all of the material I buy specifically for the project. I think if I already had it before I thought of doing the project or mentioned it in a previous sewing post, I won’t include it in the cost.

This sewing project was very simple, as I wanted my first sewing project to be. The pattern basically consists of a giant circle for the poofy part and a rectangle for the base. Even though it was easy, I still made several mistakes as I didn’t know some of the terminology in the instructions, so there were parts where I winged it. I’m not sure how long it took, since I did this at my leisure over a couple days, but it wasn’t very long.

1. The most n00b and risky mistake I made was sewing over one of the pins. This is bad, as you risk damaging or breaking your sewing machine needle. (Some people do this on purpose, sewing very slowly to avoid damage, but generally it’s not good practice.) However, I didn’t just sew over the pin, I sewed over the head of the pin. Luckily, Sandra just convinced me to buy flathead pins, so in needle vs. pinhead, needle won. So I think my current sewing needle is fine, but I ended up sewing a pin to my hat. That was a bitch to rip out.

2. The next n00b mistake I made was completely ignoring the term “interfacing” in the instructions. Apparently, I was supposed to buy interfacing, which is a textile you sew into your fabrics to stiffen it. It’s what’s used to make shirt collars stiff. I didn’t notice on the pattern envelope that I was supposed to get this interfacing stuff, and I didn’t know what it was in the instructions. I was supposed to get some so the base of the hat would be nice and rigid. Oops. Thankfully, the hat still had decent form without the interfacing.

3. There was a small portion that required hand sewing. I still don’t have good hand sewing technique, plus I’m hella lazy, so the hand sewn part is really ghetto (loose, wide apart, ugly).

4. Originally, you’re supposed to Velcro the left flap of the hat over the right flap of the hat. My left flap ended up looking a lot uglier than my right flap (instead of having a nice edge, I accidentally sewed some the gather on the end, exposing the wrong side of the fabric), so I flipped the Velcro placing so the left flap would be hidden.

5. I was too lazy to sew finishing stitches around the edges of the base.

6. Tho the instructions didn’t say to do this, next time I’d sew the Velcro on before sealing the base. I don’t like the rectangular stitches that show up on the other side.

Yeah, those were the things I need to learn from in this project. It still turned out pretty okay; I mean, it looks like a chef hat! Now that I have a nice Batman chef hat, maybe I should actually start cooking…

Kelvin told me Andrew was coming over on Friday, which was a little disappointing to me since that meant we weren’t going to spend the day doing nothing. I already knew I wasn’t going to do nothing ALL day because I already planned to meet up with Sandra at some point, but it would have been nice to have some of the day to do nothing. I knew he was going to come over to work on a puppet for his next cosplay costume, which is cool and interesting, but requires energy and thought. Kelvin reassured me they were only prototyping, but I knew it was going to be an all-day affair for Kelvin.

Andrew arrived around lunchtime with his backpack of stuffs, which mainly had materials for his puppet and DVDs to try on our new TV. I don’t really remember much much of the going-ons this afternoon because I didn’t really get involved, but I recall watching several videos on making muppets, some prototype heads made of muslin, and eating lunch at Fresh Choice. I think I eventually played Picross and took a nap while Kelvin and Andrew worked on prototyping. And by work on prototyping, I mean watch DVDs on our TV. Sandra finally called me as I was napping and was ready to meet up, so I dragged Kelvin and Andrew with me to go pick up Sandra. I wanted to go to JoAnn to pick up sewing supplies so I can get started on sewing projects, and with the machine out for the puppet making and Ravi and Jess throwing a “Crazy Hat Potluck” soon, I figured it was a good opportunity do some sewing.

It turns out JoAnn’s was having a big Thanksgiving weekend sale. Nothing insanely Black Friday crazy, but still pretty decent, I think. All notions (sewing necessities and randomness, like needles, bobbins, pins, zippers, etc.) were 50% off, and all McCall’s patterns were $1.99. I have no idea how good these sales are since I don’t buying sewing supplies often, but every time I’ve bought stuff in the past, it’s been at retail. So I pretty much went to town. I bought all sorts of sewing junk I needed (like bobbins, sharpener, flat-head pins) and some sewing junk I didn’t need (long measuring tape, second seam ripper, invisible ink marker). I bought 5 different McCall’s patterns: 2 dress patterns, 1 animal costume pattern, 1 chef’s gear pattern, and 1 hats/scarves pattern. (I was really excited about the patterns, cuz at $2 they were way cheaper than their usual whatever % off and cheaper than eBay.) I bought some fleece that was on sale, too. They did make some money off me, as I bought several things at not-as-huge-sale price or even at retail. I bought a bunch of thread at retail (which probably wasn’t smart, since I’m sure they’ll eventually be on sale), and we got some sort of thick canvas material (for an apron I want to make) that wasn’t cheap. I also bought more muslin for practice sewing. My total came out to be quite large that day, simply for the quantity of junk I got. I made everyone stick around for a couple hours, but oh well… I was pretty happy with my load.

Afterwards, we had dinner at Pot Sticker King. I’m still quite fond of that place, tho their beef noodles weren’t spicy that evening. After dinner, I dropped Sandra off and went back home with Kelvin and Andrew. With more muslin, Kelvin made a final prototype for the night that turned out quite good. They drew on eyes and nose and kept playing with it all evening until we left to drop Andrew off. I wish I had taken a picture of it.

Andrew left his iPod at our place, so he came back the next day. Of course, this meant more working of the muppet. The muslin muppet they had played with yesterday was a good start, but it needed a wider neck for Andrew’s wider forearm. They seam-ripped the poor thing apart to make modified patterns so they could make it on real material. (I didn’t know this, but Wal-Mart apparently sells fabrics for pretty cheap, including the suede stuff that Andrew got for $4 a yard.)

Kelvin worked at Muppet Alpha, while I had Andrew be slave laborer and cut out some of the patterns I got the day before. I was working on my first “crazy hat”, which is a chef’s hat. (Apparently, there’s still a lot of sewing terminology I need to learn, so I’m really winging it at the moment. I haven’t finished it, but I hope it doesn’t turn out too terrible.) I was also doing laundry, as Kel and I were heading up to SF later that day and staying overnight. Kelvin eventually finished a prototype with the suede, and it turned out pretty good! We obviously still need to add all the other components, but it’s a decent beginning.

Our apartment looked like a fabric warzone after all this, though we were able to clean a lot of it up last night. Right now the dining room table is serving as our crafts table and sewing machine holder until we get a folding table from Kelvin’s folks.

New thing I learned today: Muslin is a tightly-woven undyed cotton fabric, and it’s often used in clothing in areas of hot, dry climates because it breathes well. Because of its cheap cost, it’s often the material used for test sewing before sewing something with expensive fabric. The resulting garment is also called a muslin, though a prototype garment made of other cheap material may also be called a muslin.

I only knew to use muslin for test material because a while back I asked a JoAnn’s lady what the cheapest material available for test sewing was, and she pointed me to the 99¢ a yard muslin. I didn’t realize this was common practice, but of course, it’d only make sense for it to be.

I decided I need more productive hobbies outside of sleeping, video games, and blogging. I’ve enjoyed sewing in the past, and I always wanted to eventually make it a serious hobby. Since my mom’s sewing machine is kinda junky, I wanted to invest in my own. I’ve also been curious about embroidering, since getting anything embroidered is obscenely expensive. After reading Amazon and Joann reviews, it seems like the Brother SE-270D sewing/embroidery machine is a fairly economical way (even at $430) to get an introduction into embroidery, along with getting a sewing machine with a ridiculous number of features. Then Amazon dropped the price of the machine to $397.76, and with Halloween coming up and at least 4 other people agreeing that I should get this machine, I bit. Thanks to Rodney’s Amazon Prime subscription, I got the machine on Monday and tried it out immediately, so here are my somewhat-newbie-at-sewing-machine initial impressions.