I was pleased as Punch when I woke up this morning to find The Big Lug - Wolf & Friends Edition handbag *SOLD!* to maker of beautiful jewelry and fellow Etsy seller Crow and Iris. Thanks so much, Crow and Iris!

This Lug is so much fun and just a burst of color and personality. I love the patchwork look of it and of course the medley of animals: butterflies, birds and dragonflies - oh my! All of whom are now off to their new home in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Hooray!

I made a run to Home Depot today, and I couldn’t believe what I found! What luck. I had to pick it up right away. It was the perfect match for Big Lug!

Sniff. So precious!

The Big Lug - Lurking Leopard Edition has crept back onto the scene!

The original Lurking Leopard Edition bag made its way over to a happy new home in Bloomington, Indiana back in May, so I’m happy to replenish the collection with this happy new number.

Made with my ever favored Japanese import fabric, the Big Lug - Lurking Leopard’s topped with rugged yet lovely wide wale corduroy in a cool shade of gray.

And, as ever, the Lug features sturdy cotton twill lining, 3 interior pockets, a key tether…and of course the essential lip balm holster!

For some reason, some of the fabrics within the Echino line are heavier weight than others. This one’s a little on the lighter side than say the Green Ladybug Edition, but I’ve added extra structure to it with lightweight fusible interfacing so you’d never know the difference. It’s just as sturdy without being too stiff, and it’s definitely got more oomph than a lightweight cotton.

Tomorrow I’ll be adding another Lug in a funky new print and will start cutting fabric for another small batch of Lugs, after which I’ll have a decent enough collection to send an announcement to my treasured mailing list about!

I suppose that in the grand scheme of things it’s just a drop in the bucket, but I can’t believe that today marks our 7 month wedding anniversary!

Source: Jesse Leake Photography

Time has just flown by and although the past 7 months have been chock full of activity, I mostly feel like our wedding just happened. Maybe it’s the 4 beautiful weddings we’ve been to since our own, or the 2 that we have yet to attend this year…all of which I’m able to appreciate that much more after planning one of our own!

Seven months, and yet there are so many wedding-related things we have yet to do! Our thank you cards, for one thing (gulp…we’re uh…borrowing from the 1-year-from-wedding-date gift guideline — although it seems Emily Post begs to differ on that rule); sorting through and ordering prints of our photos, for another. And, posting photos of all the handmade items in our wedding, like my veil and gown! Roberto and John’s one-of-a-kind orchid centerpieces and calla lily boutonnieres! Christine and Don’s hand-stained wheatgrass centerpiece boxes! Clara’s cupcakes! Jenn’s slideshow production! So many things to do…

But for now, I’m just happy swooning with happy memories as I listen to the song we chose for the bride & groom entrance at our UC Berkeley Faculty Club reception — Lovely Day by Bill Withers.

Come on sing along! You know you want to!

When I wake up in the morning, love
And the sunlight hurts my eyes
And something without warning, love
Bears heavy on my mind

Then I look at you
And the world’s alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it’s gonna be
A lovely day
… lovely day, lovely day, lovely day …

When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way

Then I look at you
And the world’s alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it’s gonna be
A lovely day…..

I thought I ought to end my day with a post of this photo, which I came across today whilst gathering lip balm-making photos for a collection of tutorials that Jenn and I are putting together for our “special project”.

This scene here was just a few nights before our wedding, and this is the groom looking fierce (or is it mad? naw I think it’s fierce) while applying our handmade labels to half of the 200 tubes we produced.

We both had some sleepless nights over this project, but in the end it was so worth it. What’s best is when, months after the wedding, we’re hanging with our friends and they bust out one of the wedding lip balms still going strong seven months after our big event. Some are partial to Jimmy’s Cool Cucumber Melon flavor, while others enjoy my Hot Chocolate Mint concoction. Aah the memories!

Wow, try saying that five times fast. I’m THRILLED and delighted to have gotten accepted into this year’s Bazaar Bizarre craft fair at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park!!!

I’m so ready to start dreaming up some new bags/pouches/wristlets and of course keep whipping up those Big Lugs! Looks like I’ll be busting out that craft fair production schedule again, woohoo!

Thanks Bazaar Bizarre team!

I made a pair of curtains to hide the mess of fun but unattractive pile of board games we’ve got lying around.  Here’s a little tutorial so that you too can disguise the clutter while simultaneously bringing color and texture to your room! This how-to is dedicated to Liao, whose mind surely will be blown away by the sheer ingenuity of this clever storage solution.

Game shelf - BEFORE

Game shelf - AFTER

Materials:

• Adjustable spring tension rod
• 2 pieces of mid-to heavyweight fabric (see below for measurements)
• 2 strips of flat 1″ horsehair braid (optional - elastic can be used as well)
• Matching thread

Steps:

1) Take shelf and rod measurements, and cut your fabric
Measure the inside dimensions of your shelf to determine the finished measurements of your curtains. Also measure the diameter of your curtain rod to determine the height of your casing (the little channel that you’ll pass the curtain rod through). Allowing an extra 1/4″ or so to avoid any problems sliding the curtain onto the rod.

My shelf was 32″ wide x 14.5″ high, and the diameter + allowance of my rod was 2.25″. I wanted two panels, so I split the width measurement in half and added seam allowances as follows: 1.75″ at the top, 1″ at the bottom, and 1/2″ on each side. So, I ended up cutting 2 pieces of fabric measuring 16.75″w x 17.5″h each.

The horsehair braid should be cut to the size of the finished width, so I cut two 16″ pieces.

2) Turn under and press seam allowances
Starting with the left and ride sides, fold the fabric in by 1/4″ and iron flat. Fold the same seam another 1/4″ to hide the unfinished edge, and iron again.

Moving on to the top, fold the top under by a 1/2″ and press. Fold it again by 1.25″ and press. The Dritz hem gauge is pretty nifty here for measuring a consistent seam/hem/casing. You’ll be unfolding the top to stitch the side seams, but you can temporarily pin or binder clip this all in place if you want. (Note: Skip the binder clip or substitute for a wooden clothespin if your fabric is fragile.)

3) Stitch the side seams
Unfold the top one time (i.e. so that it’s only folded once instead of twice). Sew along one side edge, then the other. I sew with the right side up since the top side of the seam usually looks a little cleaner than the bottom…although if your stitches are crooked like mine are for whatever reason, it doesn’t really matter!

4) Make the curtain rod casing
Fold the top back under along the crease you pressed in Step 2, and stitch the casing closed. Be sure to stitch close to the bottom edge of the casing so there’s enough room for your rod to slide in. Woops, I forgot to take a picture of that part!

5) Hem the bottom edge of the curtain
I got lazy with all the turning and pressing, so I used my machine’s overlock stitch (aha! good thing I kept the Janome 4900QC!) to finish the raw edge. If you don’t have this stitch/foot, you can just use a zig zag stitch or simply fold and press, fold and press.

Optionally, place your strip of horsehair braid along the bottom edge of your curtain and fold the fabric in by 1″ (so that it covers the horsehair braid entirely). Press, and stitch along the entire bottom hem. Horsehair braid is used in things like wedding gowns to help keep the shape of hem and make the skirt hang better. I had some leftover from my sewing my own wedding gown and figured I’d try to use some of it up! Apparently, elastic serves a similar purpose though maybe not in wedding gowns. I’ve seen elastic sewn into IKEA shower curtains, for example.

6) Check your work
Slide the rod into the newly made but unphotographed casing. I pulled off the rubber tip to make it easier. Give it a test run on your shelf to make sure you’re happy with the size.

7) Lather, rinse, repeat
Follow steps 2 through 4 for the 2nd curtain panel. BUT, before you hem the 2nd panel, you might wanna just slide it onto the rod alongside the 1st panel and mark where the hem should be. This way you’ll avoid ending up with two panels of different lengths, as I would have if I hadn’t checked. Sloppy! =P

THEN, complete step 5 for the 2nd panel.

8) Nip your thread tails, hang and admire!

Hooray! Clean as a whistle.

I actually got lazy and skipped the horsehair braid on the 2nd panel…and you can tell! Well, I can tell. Jimmy wouldn’t notice, but the 1st panel with the horsehair has a cleaner hem and hangs just ever so slightly straighter. So, using horsehair braid is optional but recommended!

Thought I’d take a crack at writing a tutorial for inserting a zippered pocket in a handmade bag. Until now, I’ve used the method shown in all the handbag-making books and home sewing patterns I have, as well as in all the incredibly helpful online tutorials I’ve found, including:

• SewPixie’s tutorial on Craftster
• U-handblog’s Sewing Zippers in Bags Tutorial

I’ve been perfectly happy with those techniques, but the result is that the zipper tape sits on top of the pocket fabric and is therefore visible if you peek inside to look…which most people probably never do. So, I changed the approach a bit so that instead of the visible zipper tape in the photo on the left, I get a hidden zipper tape as seen in the photo on the right. Yay!

I started thinking about it more when I saw the post over at Fashion Incubator for a Zippered Welt Pocket Tutorial. (Note: You’ll need to be an owner of Kathleen’s book in order to access the tutorial, but the book is well worth the investment if you’re planning to make a business out of designing and/or making sewn goods.) She’s got an approach to zipper insertion I hadn’t seen before in which she does this flipping inside-out trick with the zipper that would skip the step of laying the pocket fabric on top of the main fabric.

A little confused, but definitely intrigued, I planned to try it. But alas, the zippers that I needed to use were too short. Soooooo, here’s how I did it instead! Note: My material changes color because I snapped the photos across two different projects. Oops!

Materials:

• The piece of lining fabric that the zippered pocket will be on
• Zipper (mine is a 7-inch #3 sized zipper with metal teeth)
• Fabric for your pocket (mine is 9″ wide x 15.5″ high, for a finished pocket size of approximately 7″x7″)
• Strip of interfacing or contrasting fabric

Steps:

1) Center your interfacing or contrasting fabric over the spot where you want your pocket to be, right sides together. Draw a rectangle to mark the opening, and stitch along the border to reinforce the opening.

2) Cut a slit lengthwise down the middle of the rectangle, then cut two slits at 45-degree angles at each end

3) Push the interfacing through the slit you’ve made, and finger press it flat. The right-most photo is the view from the back.

4) Place the zipper along the bottom of your pocket fabric, wrong side of zipper to right side of fabric. You can baste the two pieces together to keep them in place. Center the zipper and pocket underneath the rectangular opening, and pin in place. The right-most photo shows the view from the back.

5) Using a zipper foot, stitch a straight seam along the bottom (or left, in these photos) of the rectangle. Backstitch to lock the seam at both ends.

6) Here comes the part where you get to bust out your origami skillz. Flip your material to the back and remove the pins. Fold the pocket fabric down and finger press (or iron) to flatten the fabric downwards, away from the zipper teeth. This is important because you don’t want the fabric to get stuck in the zipper. Now, fold the bottom of the pocket up so that the bottom seam now meets with the top of the upper half of the zipper tape. Flip your work around again, and pin in place.

7) Straight stitch around the 3 remaining sides of the rectangle, backstitching again to lock the seam at beginning and end.

8) Flip your work around again, stitch the left and right sides of the pocket together, and you’re done! My pocket has three seams along the top instead of just one. I had issues with my zipper foot. =[

Now you’ve got a zippered handbag pocket that looks just like the ones in store-bought bags - no zipper tape in sight!