Goofing Off

I have been doing some serious goofing off lately. Mostly I've just been enjoying being home. The weather has been unseasonably warm and precipitation-free. The birds are enjoying the feeder. We've had dark-eyed juncos, our resident house finches and chickadees visiting the feeder. Skip saw his first grackle today.

Last night the Whitby Spinners met (as they do every Monday night) at Coffee Culture in Whitby. I plied some of the red Dyeing for Colour singles I had spun. It didn't have enough twist and just fell apart when I was trying to chain-ply it so I Andean plyed the single and then plyed it on the wheel. I'm enjoying the Woolee Winder but I switched back to the regular flyer when I did the plying.

Today I got the urge to do some sewing so I made a cosmetic bag to test a pattern I found online. I used medium weight fusable interfacing rather than any batting. I like how it turned out, I just didn't make it big enough. I want to make a couple of large zippered bags. One for my cosmetics for when I'm travelling and the other for all my electronics cords, chargers, adapters, etc., also for when I'm travelling. I really like the 'cool cats' dancing.

It wasn't too hard to cut the fabric so the edges would line up.

I trimmed the interfacing 1/8" all around before ironing it onto the main fabric pieces so it wouldn't gum up my iron.

This one is too small for what I intended for so I'll use it for makeup. I now know how to modify the pattern to make the larger size that I wanted.

I then made a couple more earbud cases. One with batting

and one with interfacing instead of batting.

I didn't get a shot of the one with the interfacing but it has the same fabric as the one above but the white fabric is inside, the green is outside and I used a black a black zipper and topstitching.

Back Home

Skip and I got home yesterday after a 3400km (2125 mi) drive from south Texas. We're not people who like to drive for 12 hours a day. We're more like the 7 - 8 hour per day people. As a result, we just can't seem to make the trip in only 4 days. Oh well. We're home now and that is good. We had fantastic weather for the entire drive home. We kept our eye on the weather systems that were going through, particularly the violent one that had tornadoes touch down in IN and TN. But they were well north or east of us. I'll outline some of our escapades in another post.

Since returning home, I've tried out my new Woolee Winder which I had delivered to me in TX and I really do believe it will speed up my efficiency. I did spend quite a bit of time shifting the single to different hooks to wind the bobbin evenly and now I just spin and spin and spin. My spinning group continued on in my absence on Monday nights and we have lots of upcoming events we're planning for including a couple of spin-ins and perhaps even an overnight or weekend retreat!

I've also been doing a wee bit of sewing. I've been doing quite a bit of stash-building and thought it was time to actually make something! I was intrigued by this tutorial for an earbud case. I did it exactly as per the instructions.

My top stitching is a little wobbly. I had to pick out the first attempt and try it again.

I think I will make future ones a little bit bigger - perhaps another 1/2 inch bigger.

 

I like the music print I used for the lining.  It's just random notes.

I used the thinnest batting I had but it was still pretty puffy. However, I think it will protect the earbuds. A little zipper case like this could be used for lots of things - stitch markers, loose change, flash drives, dental floss, gym ID card, etc.

It's an easy, peasy project. I see a few more in my future.