Kevin and Olivia’s ivory silk ring pillows weren’t too hard to construct once I figured out what I wanted them to be. Each pillow was 8 inches square, wrapped once around in a feather edge ribbon, topped with artificial magnolia flower petals and secured with a flat, silk-covered button. The rings, one for each pillow, were attached with a narrow velvet ribbon. Here’s a reminder of what they looked like:

And, thanks to Tinou, here they are in action! The ring bearers are soooo adorable.

image from Tinou

Here’s the how-to for one 8×8 inch ring pillow.

Materials:
I bought my materials from a few different places, but most of the materials can be found at your basic crafts/fabric shops such as Jo-Ann Fabrics or Beverly’s, if you have one of those near you.

• Pillow
  • 2 squares of 9×9 inches ivory dupioni silk
  • 16″ length of 3/8″ wide feather edge ivory satin ribbon
  • 12″ length of 1/4″ wide violet velvet ribbon
  • 2″ square scrap of ivory dupioni silk
  • 2″ square scrap of lightweight cotton or featherweight interfacing
  • 7/8″ flat cover button
  • cream white faux magnolia flower
  • flat faux pearl bead

Tools:

• Sewing machine
• Hot glue gun
• Hand sewing needle (to attach button) and ivory thread
• Scissors

Steps to make:

1) Take apart the faux magnolia flower and cut out individual petals
This flower separated by removing the plastic stamen (the center tip) of the flower and simply pulling all the layers apart. Cut the trio of petals into individual ones. Snip off the thick bottom portion of each petal to remove excess bulk. If you skip this step, you may find it difficult to hand sew the button onto the flower.

2) Trim 5 of the petals into a smaller size
Cut out a piece of paper to use as a template for the smaller flower petal. For each petal, fold the petal in half lengthwise, place your paper template on top of it and trace around the shape. Then, with the petal still folded in half, trim the petal to size. Repeat until you have 5 small petals.

3) Create the bottom layer of the flower
Start with the larger petals. Stack one petal on top of another to create a pair of petals, allowing the bottom petal to peek out slightly from the top. Using your hot glue gun, squeeze a dab of hot glue onto the lower tip of the bottom petal. Place the top petal back into position, and hold the two petals in place for a few seconds to allow the glue to set. Repeat this for the remaining 4 pairs of petals.

Finish off the bottom layer by stacking one pair of petals on top of the other to create a circle of 5 pairs of petals. Insert a drop of hot glue in the center of the circle, between each stack.

Here’s what it looks like from the back (oooh):

4) Create the top layer of the flower
The top layer of petals contains only single petals, so you’ll simply place a dab of hot glue on the lower tip of one of the bottom pairs of petals, then lay a small petal on top of the large pair. Repeat this for each of the 5 small petals.

Since the couple’s colors were lavender and green, I decided to add the little green leaves back onto the flower. The edges of this piece had a bit too much brown in it, so I trimmed that off as much as I could without making it too uneven. Then I hot glued that puppy right on!

5) Create the silk-covered flat button
Cut out the circular template on the back of the flat button package. Take your scrap of silk and lay it on top of some featherweight interfacing (I fused mine but it’s not necessary), trace a circle onto the silk from your template and cut the circle out.

Center the flat side of the cover button onto the back side of your silk-and-interfacing layers. Here, the cover button instructions say to use a pencil eraser to push the fabric onto the teeth of the cover button. I don’t know about you, but I can never get this to work. So I cheat and use the rubber mold that comes in the regular (i.e. non-flat) 7/8″ cover button kits. Place your silk, interfacing and button on top of the rubber mold. Push them down into the rubber mold, keeping the button centered onto the fabric. NOW you can push the fabric towards the center, put the back cover onto the button and follow the rest of the instructions which say to use a spool of thread to help you snap the back cover onto the button. PHEW!

Pop this out and you have a lovely, matching silk button.

I think I’d better stop here for now so I can drop off my latest orders at the post office before the first pickup! But by now you’ll have your pillow embellishment all ready to go, and all you have left is to sew up the pillow and attach all the fixin’s!

LAAAAA! That’s the musical note sung with vibrato as the kind of sound that would trumpet with the gates of Heaven opening up, like the way I just opened up a whole new world in Adobe Illustrator! I use Illustrator in very crude fashion to draw out handbag sketches, and I pretty much know only the basics of how to use it. But TODAY I discovered the Brush Library!!! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about this treasure trove before?!

It all started when I read about Google celebrating its 10th birthday by re-releasing their search index as it was back in 2001. I thought, “Wow, 10th birthday already?” Then, “What day is it today?” Followed by, “Omigosh, it’s October already! And it’s even starting to feel like fall!” All of which led me to think that ooh maybe I should seasonalize my blog header like Google does! Of course they do it for holidays and other special occasions too but me, I could at least do it for seasons.

But dangit, I can’t draw. So I did a few searches for “free clip art maple leaf” and other such variations, but those didn’t get me very far. Then I recalled finding a cool article during my wedding planning days on how to draw a bamboo stalk in Illustrator. That was pretty cool, so I searched for “draw maple leaf illustrator” and wound up with this swell tutorial. But that was too much work…and THEN! Then I found Illustrator Brush Basics. I could draw leaves galore at the click of a mouse! And so I did! Three falling leaves in my little header. =} Here’s an excerpt of the how-to:

Easy as pie! I’d never gotten past the 6 default brushes that show up in my Brushes window, so I had no IDEA I had all those brushes at my disposal! I’m giddy just thinking about it.

Not only that, but a) BioRUST.com has a bunch of other Illustrator tutorials, and b) this all led me to discover BittBox.com, which has loads of how-to’s AND free downloads of all kinds of Illustrator brushes!!! Here are two that have got me a little bit excited:

• Free Illustrator Brushes: Teardrop Foliage

• 30 Illustrator Pattern Brushes for Making Flowers and Circular Designs

images from BittBox.com

Wow, right?!? I know!!!

Google’s Picasa 3 beta was released earlier this month, but I didn’t hear about it until I saw the cool collage over at Filipina Sakura’s blog. “Ooooh, cool collage!” I said, and ran straight over to Google to get my own download. The earlier version of Picasa had a collage feature too, but the new one’s got more options — 6 collage types to be specific, and more options for toying with each of them.

From Google:

• For ‘Picture Pile’ collages, click an image to drag it to a new location or use the wheel to rotate and resize it. Add or delete images to your collage as you go.
• Grid spacing: Use the slider to precisely control the space between images.
• More background options: Select an image as background or select any color you’d like.

Print your collage in high resolution, and choose from 10 different display dimensions.

So, I made this neat little collage of some of my fabric swatches. So tidy!

But I could have made this crazy “Picture Pile” collage, which I added white borders AND a watermark to:

Or one of these fun Mosaic collages, with no spacing on the left and slight spacing on the right:

Or perhaps if I had been feeling a little more professional I could have gone with this Contact Sheet collage, to which I added the Polaroid effect:

The options are endless! Okay not really endless, but much more bountiful than before! Sorry Mac users, I guess Picasa 3 isn’t available for you just yet (although I’m guessing Apple gives you plenty of cool software to use yourself).

I also love the easy watermarking feature that allows you to add text to your photos when you either export them or upload them to a web album. It’s so fast and easy! And weeee liiiiike fast and easy. =] There are a slew of other things I like about Picasa — their basic photo editing and effects features for instance, which are great when you can’t stand to wait for your Photoshop app to load on your slow-*ss laptop —but for now these are my top two.

Wow. I gotta say, I didn’t think I had it in me. But I did! Well, sorta. I added a third column to my Wordpress theme and even figured out how to make the dang thing match, but I haven’t figured out how to shift everything over to the left. Darnit. Maybe tomorrow when Jimmy wakes up. =}

Adding the new column — a second sidebar, to be specific — wasn’t actually that difficult. Especially since I followed these easy peasy instructions on…Adding an Extra Sidebar to Your Wordpress Theme. Ha ha ha.

I modified the header a bit to throw a few product images on up in there, but I dunno…is it too busy? Maybe I should extend the blue background all the way right so it still feels like part of the header? Hmm…will sleep on it since I’m getting that woozy lack-of-sleep feeling. But if anything’s amiss, it’s because I messed with the layout and didn’t realize it! Oooh that reminds me, the interior pages are probably screwy. Yup they sure are. Guess I’ll be doing that tomorrow then…woohoo!

I’m lucky to be surrounded by a ton of friends and family who are WAY into photography, so now that Jimmy’s got some new equipment, said friends & family have started hearing from us. =]

While they’re definitely far from perfect, I started working more on my own product photos about the beginning of summer this year. My goal was to take better photos at the outset so that I wouldn’t have to spend as much time fussing with the file in Photoshop, since my bag of Photoshop tricks is quite small and the whole experience can be plenty time-consuming and frustrating.

For example, at one time I shot photos against a red towel and used the magic wand in Photoshop to get rid of the background, and after a couple of hours for the set of photos, this is the kind of less-than-stellar result I ended up with:

Ack! The edges are ugly and you can even see a red glow on the fabric. Woops! I used the red towel because I thought that the color contrast would be easier to select using the magic wand in Photoshop, but obviously this was not quite the right approach. I’ve since switched to a white background and skipped the whole step of trying to delete the background. The result, while not perfect, is still clean and saves me a WHOOOOLE lot of time. Both shots below are taken against a sheet of white craft foam. The one on the left is taken with our Canon PowerShot SD800 point-and-shoot, and the one on the right with Jimmy’s Nikon D60 DSLR.

I don’t get the perfectly white background I originally wanted, but again, I sure do save a ton of time. I’ve got  a ways to go, but hopefully the new photographer in the family, along with help from brother-in-law, will be able to help me out! =D

In my initial research, I found a bunch of articles that were really helpful in terms of giving me ideas about lighting, backdrops and styling, among other things. I thought I’d dig these up again, which is actually a great thing for me because there are a bunch of neat tips that I totally forgot about!

TableTop Studio has a whole index of product photography articles, broken into different product type categories. I checked out the one on Clothing Photography Techniques, which offers a bunch of great examples illustrated with plenty of setup and before-and-after photos. In it, they stress the importance and value of finding photos that you like of items in your category and studying what makes the photo/styling appeal to you. That sounds obvious but I get caught up and forget to do my homework there. They also demonstrate the technique of laying your item flat on the floor, steamed and stuffed with cotton batting and/or tissue paper for added dimension, and photographing it from above. I haven’t quite gotten there with this technique, but these are a couple of my attempts (flat and minimally stuffed on left, not flat but stuffed on right):

TableTop Studio also has a blog with more how-to articles.

Then there’s Photojojo’s article on Shoot to Sell: Taking Better Photos for eBay, Etsy & Instructables. Although perhaps better suited for small objects, I really liked the section about playing with different backdrops like wood, fabric, metal. There are a couple of neat examples of jewelry photos, one set against blue leather or vinyl, and the other atop a page of a book. The tip I did try out was to recruit a cute friend to model my products! We only did this once so I need to work this back into the mix, but here she is!

Finally, Etsy had a couple articles of its own on getting better product photos:

• Shop Makeover Series: Photographing for Success
• Give Props: How to Style Your Photos

…not to mention a fun video!

Well, I look forward to making my way towards better and better product photos. Actually I have to admit, I look forward more to the end result of better product photos, not as much the path to getting there! <=P After all, my main goal is bags, baby. BAGS! =D

Our friends Kevin and Olivia are getting married tomorrow in Carmel, and I have the pleasure of supplying the wedding couple with a pair of ring pillows for their two little ring bearers. Ever the procrastinator, I started thinking about this weeks ago, have had the materials for a couple of weeks now, but I just finished the first one this morning…and here it is!

It’s a relatively simple design inspired by a floral element on the bride’s lovely gown from the Amsale Bridal Collection, along with her colors, lavender and green.

image from Amsale Bridal Collection

The pillow is made with ivory dupioni silk trimmed with ivory satin ribbon. The flower is reconstructed from a cream white faux magnolia from Beverly’s, and I topped it off with a 7/8″ flat button that I covered with matching silk. The ring is a faux silver wedding ring also from Beverly’s that was sold in a $2 pack for a whole bunch. I used a flat pearl bead on the back of the pillow to hide the ivory thread used to secure all the stuff on the top. A few more views!

I always get a little paranoid about whether my projects really turn out as good as I hope they are, but I really hope she likes them! The magnolia petals are a bit more creamy in color than I was originally looking for, but I’m hoping that it’s actually a good thing because they look vibrant and alive even though they’re not an exact match to the flowers on Olivia’s gown. I’d love to hear what you think!

UPDATE 3:48pm: Phew, they’re done! Here’s the 2nd of the pair. I decided to move the velvet ribbons around, as well as use a green one on this one and the lavender on the other.

Time to pack - Jimmy’s there already playing a round of golf with the boys!

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!