Institches: July

So, like I was saying, I am here to present you with the unmeltingest Toiletries Bag in all the land.


In a moment of great wisdom (or perhaps I was fresh out of Stupid from a morning of vinyl wrestling) I chose to create my second iteration of this month's bag from my unending swath of canvas and hot orange fabric that Lera sent me back when we were engaged in wristlet swapping.

Obviously this bag turned out better. And not only because I was being normal and using materials meant to come face to face with a sewing machine.

I feel this bag is superior to my previous efforts because it is actually fulfilling a purpose that had been going unmet in the garage. That purpose being, getting all my crap off the potting bench so that I could actually, say, pot something there.

Sure, I didn't fill it with the most essential and fabulous cosmetics so that they could be beautifully displayed in my boudoir. But since I already have my make-up so meticulously stowed in a very fancy Lancome gift with purchase bag ala 2003 and I don't really have a boudoir, it seemed to make more sense to organize an area that I spend actual time in and could use some serious cleaning up.

I mean, really, we can't have my three pairs of proprietary use work gloves (dainty poking gloves, mainstream smashing gloves and full-strength clubbing gloves) strewn about haphazardly. And there sure were a lot of half-used seed envelopes getting lost beneath the rubble of daily garden minutia.

So, crafted thus was the Garden Things Bag. Not a particularly catchy name, but much like my clubbing gloves, it does the trick.


Interestingly enough, and perhaps I will photograph this someday, it appears my garden accessories hail from the same place on the color wheel: The Orange and Canvas Place. So, without trying I've managed to color coordinate my otherwise rough-edged gardening hub with orange garden clogs (they're orange beneath the layer of filth muck, really), canvas gardening apron with orange bias tape trim and, now, canvas and orange Things bag.

I have no idea what this means, but there you go.

Also while I was experiencing a not horrible moment at the machine, I decided it would be a good time to craft up a designer dog bed for Ms. Jada (a girl can't be lazing about at the office on a store-bought dog bed, come ON) and make fancy an Anthropologie bag for a co-worker's birthday pressie.

See...

and See?

I splurged on some Amy Butler fabric during a recent Moment of Much Happiness when I discovered a new great fabric shop. This is probably the only kind of time I could justify spending that kind of money on fabric that will soon be covered with dog hair. But, it does look hot on the floor of my cube, so I'm thinking of it now more as a double-duty Dog Bed/Cube Rug which, in turn, makes me feel less like The Crazy Dog Lady who special sews expensive fabric into beds upon which furry beasts will lie.

Before I retired the sewing machine back to it's hairy home at the bottom of the bookshelf (between Rocket, Jada and myself - our house is a hair tornado which I have to constantly Swiff lest it pile up at the base of things like the bookshelf), I tossed the last bit of my energy and creativity into reusing a store bag from Anthropologie.

I'm pretty proud of myself here since this was my second try at matchmaking my machine with a material other than fabric. Thankfully this time there was less failure and killing of ducks and more straight seams and pretty results. Plus, I managed to discover a new stitch that had since gone unnoticed by simply being retarded and never swiveling the wheel that far to the left.


Huh. A fancy dotted zigzag stitch. Neato. Glad that came out nice since I was clearly not paying attention when choosing my stitch and could have just as easily chosen a random elastic stitch and fucked up the whole thing.

Seriously people, I'm a loose cannon with this machine sometimes.

Anyway, I managed to use up some scrap red leftover from May's project and reuse a shopping bag that I didn't ask for to make for a fairly cute presentation of an otherwise mundane gift of scented something or other. Sweet mother - that is some HOT reusing.

And while we're on the topic, am I the only one that finds it stupid when a gift is wrapped really nice and it's insides are not as fancy as the wrapping says it is?

I feel I may have tread unknowingly into this situation here. Honestly, I thought the bag reuse project would come out not as cute, but it didn't. So now I'm in that awkward phase of trying to decide if I should either jam something else in the bag to bring the gift up to the standards set by the pretty bag or perhaps spill a beer on the bag and lower it to the contents held within.