posting a project I did for luv in the mommyhood:

Hello Mommyhood readers, Meg from elsiemarley here! I was absolutely thrilled when Shannon asked me to be a part of her fabulous crafty boxing match. It was a little hard to pick teams, I have to say. I learned how to crochet last year and very quickly fell in love with it. My winter was spent sitting on the couch, cranking out whatever cool crochet patterns my little fingers desired, as my poor sewing machine sat dusty and unloved in the corner.  But sewing has always been my true favorite: the instant gratification of sewing wins out over the sitting on your butt part of crochet (or knitting) almost every time.  And with that in mind, let's crank out a bag that will go with everything in a few measly hours. Take that Cozy Knits! Kapow!

Every spring I get the urge to buy a completely new, bright, flirty, floral wardrobe replete with matching bags and strappy sandals, but it never happens. Even if I did have the cash for a springtime shopping spree (ha!) all those accessories wouldn't fit in our little house. So I came up with a bag that can be many different bags all in one. It is completely reversible, so it will match all the springy outfits you already have and make them look fresh and new. It is also adjustable, so it can be a very ladylike shoulder bag or if you need to jump on your bike and go, it can become more of a messenger bag. Awesome, right? So without further ado, I give you...

materials

• 1/2 yard fabric A
• 1/2 yard fabric B
• 1/2 yard lining fabric, I prefer to use canvas or a home dec weight fabric rather than interfacing
• 20 buttons, yes 20! all the same, or 10 of one kind 10 of another, but they all should be about the same size
• sewing machine, buttonhole attachment (you can do it!)
• iron

directions

1. Out of each 1/2 yard of fabric cut two 14 inch wide by 15 inch tall pieces and one 2 inch wide by 41 inch long piece. You should have plenty of fabric to work with, but I want you to mark all the piece on your fabric first to see how it will fit. The strap will go along the top (the long side will be perpendicular to the salvage) and the two main piece of the bag should fit below it (the short side going with the salvage).

2. On the bottom of each piece cut a 1 1/4 inch square out of both corners. This is going to make a boxed bottom for the bag.

3. Now you need to sew all the pieces together.

• Start with fabric A: before you sew, mark a 4 inch wide space in the middle of the bottom edge, sew the bottom of the bag together, right sides facing, but in between the marks use a basting stitch (just a very long stitch). Take it to your ironing board and press the seam open. Then sew up both sides,right side facing. Don't sew around the notches we cut out! the easiest way to press the side seams open is to lay your bag flat and fold down one side of the seam, iron it (see above), then flip it over and fold the other side of the seam down and iron.
• fabric B and lining: Sew the bottom seam first (no basting) right sides together and press the seam open. Sew the side seams and iron as above.  Again don't sew the notches!

4. At on of the square notches, fold the bag so that the bottom seam and the side seam line up. Iron it flat and sew closed. Do this on both notches for fabric A, fabric B, and the lining.

5. Take fabric A where we did that bit of basting and rip out all those basting stitches. This will be the hole where we turn the bag right side out, which is the next step...

6. Turn the fabric A bag right side out and put it on your hand (really!). Then take the fabric B bag, inside out, and pull it on top of fabric A. It's important that that the right side of these two bags are facing each other. Then lastly, fit the lining (inside out or right side out, it doesn't matter) on top. You should have a big oven mitt like thing on your hand now. Poke your fingers into the boxy corners and try to get them all to match up.

7. Line up the raw edges at the top of the bag. If all the fabrics don't line up (mine never do) trim them so they do. Now sew all around the top of the bag.

8. Stick your hand through the hole we made in fabric A and pull out fabric B and the lining. Then stuff fabric B and the lining into fabric A. This is a little confusing to explain and weird the first time you do it, but it works I promise!

9. Iron the top edge.

10. Hand sew the hole in fabric B closed. It should be easy to make it straight and pretty much invisible because you can just follow where the basting stitches were. The best stitch to use for this is the ladder stitch.

11. Now for the strap. You should have three strap pieces--42inch by 2inches--one from each fabric. Stack them all on top on one another making sure the right sides of fabric A and fabric B are touching.

12. Lay the strap out flat. On the left side, on the bottom measure in one inch and cut from there to the end of the top edge. This just makes a pretty angled end to the strap. Do the right side, except measure in one inch from top and cut down to the end of the bottom edge.

13. Sew all around the strap, leaving about a foot wide opening in the middle of one side, so we can turn it out easily. You could also do the basting stitch trick here if you like. Turn that sucker out! You can use a chopstick, a pencil, a tweezers, whatever works, but be sure to poke the corners at the ends of the strap out. Iron it well after it's all right side out.

14. To sew the opening closed you can topstitch all around or hand sew it--it's up to you. If you want to topstitch it and want to match your thread to your fabrics, just put the one that matches fabric B in the bobbin and the one that matches fabric A on top. Then be sure to sew with fabric A side on top and you're good to go.

15. Now we're going to attach the strap to the bag! Place the strap so the pointed part is at the bottom edge and it is centered over the side seam.

16.  Starting about an inch from the top of the bag lay 5 buttons along the strap all the way to the bottom (about an inch before the angled bit begins). My buttons are 1 1/2 apart, but your bag might have turned out a little bigger or smaller, so just make sure they are evenly spaced.

17. Mark where all the buttons go. Then do a test run with your buttonhole attachment on your sewing machine.

18. You can see above I have my test buttonhole next to my strap (with the mark on it), so I know about where to start the buttonhole. When you hold your awesome bag all full up with awesome stuff the button will slide down to the bottom of the buttonhole, so keep this in mind for where you place the buttonhole in relation to the button. I hope this isn't horribly confusing--I'm trying to be extra clear so you don't have to rip out any buttonholes, because that's no fun.

19. Mark the buttonholes in the same way on the other side of the strap as well. Sew those buttonholes! You should have 5 on one end and 5 on the other. Carefully cut the buttonholes open. Pin the strap onto the bag and make marks through the buttonhole for where the buttons go. All the marks should all be on the side seam.

20. It's time to sew all those buttons on. Settle in on the couch with a needle and thread (and a podcast or two). You are going to sew two buttons at a time: they will be in the same place, but one will be on one side and one on the other. The awesome bag is reversible, remember? Start at the top and attach the first button with one stitch, then when you go through the fabric attach the button on the other side. This is a little fiddly, but it will cut your sewing time in half. When you are finished you should have 20 buttons sewn on!

21. Button your strap up however you like, on whichever side goes with the very cute outfit you have on today. Ta Da! you made The Awesome Bag. You are awesome!

Edited to add: It was brought to my attention that it isn't actually Anthropologie who makes the Primal Cuts dishtowel, but a very talented indie designer Sara Selepouchin. She sells her butcher's diagram dishtowels and many other amazing things at her shop, girls can tell. They are beautifully designed (the coffee one is my favorite) and professionally printed--definitely not a slap dash affair like mine.

Ellen asked me to do a little tutorial for her handMAYde month and I was happy to oblige.  There were some fabulous tutorials for weddings, babies, and kids, but this last week is for knock offs. Being the cheapskate that I am this was the week for me. I was perusing everyone's favorite store to knock off and saw these dishtowels:

Actually, last christmas I wanted to silkscreen a set of butcher diagram dishtowels for presents, but that meant learning how to silkscreen, so the idea kind of fizzled. Sadly, I still don't know how to silkscreen. I thought maybe freezer paper stencils would work, but then the images would loose a lot of detail. Iron on paper or ink jet transfer? Well then you'd have to find and buy supplies and wrestle with your printer. I wanted a quick and dirty project. So I went downstairs to my studio, rustled up some supplies and this is what I got:

to market, to market dishtowel:

a tutorial in 3 easy steps

materials:

• large embroidery hoop
• flour sack towel
• fine point fabric pen
• image to trace (2 copies)

This is the fabric pen I used and it worked surprisingly well. I haven't the faintest idea where I got it, but I'm guessing some crafty big box store. The flour sack towel I picked up at the grocery store a while back (3 for 5$). They shrink up a lot in the wash, so you should probably wash, dry and iron them before you start. The image might get all weird if you do it after.

directions:

1. fit your embroidery hoop on your towel where you want the image to go. Make sure to put the hoop on upside down--so the towel is right side up, but flat on the table.

2. Then just trace the image. I found it handy to have another copy of my picture  I could refer to as I traced. The flour sack towel is easy enough to see through, but it's nice to know exactly what the image should look like without picking the towel up to peek under it.

3. Heat set the image with your iron. And that's it! Quick and dirty--and pretty stylish too.

I don't know if you've seen what is going on at Grosgrain this month, but it's pretty amazing. Kathleen has asked bloggers from all over (me included!) to draw up a sewing pattern, so everyday until June you get a fabulous free pattern! All of this is working up to a new blog for Grosgrain and more free patterns--hers! If you haven't seen the amazing dresses she's made you are in for a treat and you will be just as excited as I am about making them.

see what I mean? and her kid's clothes? even better:

You can see all of her creations here. And you can check out my pattern for Knot Shorts while you are at it. Maybe even make some or at least put them on your list for KCWC. Do you have a list yet?

This bag is truly awesome. It's a messenger bag, a shoulder bag, a completely reversible bag...it's so many different bags in one you have to make one just so you can discover how awesome it really is. And you can! Because I wrote an awesome pattern for it.

Shannon from luvinthemommyhood is encouraging the sewers and the knitters to duke it out finally and see who is left standing. So this is my little one-two for the sewing side.  No, it's not foxy boxing, but it is one month full of super fantastic knitting and sewing tutorials with some friendly competition thrown in for good measure.  Sounds awesome, right? Head over to her blog for The Awesome Bag tutorial!

Once more for no good reason: awesome.

This tutorial is for the fantastic Celebrate the Boy series by Dana and Rae, because what could be more boy then standing up and falling down over and over again.

A balance board is an incredibly simple toy. You put a board on top of a cylinder, stand on it, then try not to biff it. It is really a fantastic toy for all ages (though my toddler is a wee bit too small). I've even found myself fighting for a turn.

For the balance board itself I don't have a list of materials or even measurements for you. The directions are basically, go look in the basement or the garage and see what you got.  The longer the board the easier it will be to balance. The width doesn't matter so much, but your kids should be able to fit their feet on it.  As for the cylinder, I started with a piece of PVC pipe, but it was just too high for my kids (perfect for me though!) so I used an 1 1/2 dowel cut down to the width of my board. I couldn't actually find the dowel when I was decorating the board and taking pictures, so what you see above is a block from my kid's toys. What I'm trying to say is, you can make this toy with what you have, all I'm going to show you how to do is pretty it up.

I wanted something on top of the wood to protect my kids' feet and make it easier to grip. Duct tape to the rescue!  You could easily just do stripes, but I thought why not make something super stylish instead. To make the chevron pattern, first you have to rip the duct tape into strips.  Cutting the tape is almost impossible, so just clip a bit at the end of the tape and then rip it into strips while it's still on the roll. I ripped my tape in thirds, but ended up only using the right and left sides--the edges on the one in the middle were just too raggity to use. So I would suggest just ripping the tape in half. You will waste less (though my son did have a hey day with the extra tape), but the chevron stripes will be much thicker.

The length of your tape strips will depend on how wide you board is. Play around a bit to see how you can make a few zigzags  fit just right. For the first chevron stripe, start in the middle and make a V with two pieces of tape, making sure the point of the V is in the center of the board. Now that you've zigged, just zag out to each side.

For all the other stripes, start from the right and work your way across. Put one tape strip down, then overlap the end of that piece with your next  piece, as you can see above. Use the manufactured edge--because it's super straight--to overlap a little bit the stripe that came before. Then trim the ends flush with the sides of your board. That's it. Just keep going until you've filled the whole board. This project is a little fiddly at first, but don't worry after 3 or 4 stripes it picks up speed and you'll be wiping out before you know it.

You can decorate the dowel with all the leftover bits of tape. It's not necessary, but it does make the dowel much easier to find. :)

The more I play with this toy, the more I like it. It works inside and outside, it's a good gift to give kids, and it's endlessly customizable. I made another one painted it with a little leftover paint mixed with sand (so it's non-slip) and I have ideas for lots more. So if you know me, you children will probably be getting a balance board for their next birthday. Or I might just keep them all for myself.