Thursday, September 13, 2012

Cigar Box Storage



I loves cigar boxes!  
I picked up 16 cigar boxes at a garage sale that interestingly were all the same brand.  
I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them at the time.
But, I love cigar boxes.


On the workbench.   
A crate from another garage sale and boards scavenged from my mom and dad's basement.


DONE!


Today, was Junk Bonanza in Shakopee, MN.  
It's a junkers paradise. Hundreds of booths of junk.  
Some just waiting to be repurposed and some already altered.  
There was a lot of "fixin's" as one vendor called their knobs, brass numbers, game pieces, stamps, etc.
 I have had it on my calendar for months to take the day off from work so I could go this year. 
I scored 8 porcelain knobs that were just perfect.



Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Cross Body Purse


Have fabric, scissors, sewing machine....go.  

Walking around a summer craft fair I saw numerous cross body bags and begin to check them out with interest.  I wanted one.

I went home, dug out some coordinating fabric and started eyeballing a pattern.  The biggest challenges:


1) Determining dimensions of the entire bag.  I held up various other purses to my hips and tried to find a size that wasn't too big or small.  "Does this size make my hips look too big?"

2) How long do I make the strap?  "If it hangs here, does it make my hips look too big?" LOL.

3) Matching up the strap to the curves at to bottom.  I should have marked the centers, but in the end I just cut the strap really long. didn't fuss with matching and just cut it off where I wanted it to stop.

4) Interfacing and strap innards.  I wanted the body of the bag soft and not too stiff.  I sorted through my stash of interfacing and came up with one that felt just right.  For the strap I used a stiff webbed strap inside the fabric.  It's not bunching up on my shoulder yet. 



Love IT!