Evil zips - the battle continues

Hubby recently had a meetng up north and so stayed with my sister and her boyfriend near Birmingham for the night.  On hearing he was coming to stay my sister immediately requested that I send up a boxy pouch for her.  This gave me one evening to make one, complete it and pack it into hubby's overnight bag.  I considered saying no momentarily, then I remembered she gave me her car and figured I'd better crack on...

She was pleased, which is always a relief when I give somebody something I have made.  I'm not sure what she'll use it for, make-up perhaps, or knowing my sister chicken feed! 

I am really enjoying making these little pouches, though I admit my method of working with zips is still rather haphazard.  I have been making it up as I go along and when it comes to sewing in the zip using my zipper foot I am sure I am doing something wrong.  My process always involves me attempting to shift the bulky "pull" part of the zip out of the way of the zipper foot, sometimes it's really fiddly and I use my stitch-ripper to pull the zip out of the way.  Unfortunately this led to said stitch-ripper meeting a rather untimely end...

Guess that's why it's called a "stitch-ripper" and not "zip-puller" then.  Ahem.

Nevertheless I managed to produce two more little pouches this afternoon, in a desperate bid to get some creativity out of my system and to relax myself in what is turning out to be possibly one of the worst couple of months of my life so far.  Sometimes I wonder when the crap will stop happening.  In the meantime though there is always sewing to keep me sane (ish). 

Lined with one of my favourite organic cottons - from Gossypium.  When I looked recently they weren't doing this in blue anymore, which is a shame as I always thought I might get around to making some pillowcases from it some day.

This one is extra dinky!

So zips and I still have a way to go before we reach a happy union.  My next challenge is to be a zippered bag!  Oh yes, I am branching out.  I designed a big bow design with a lined front pocket, here's a sneaky peak...

More on this soon, as soon as I have finished wrestling my latest zip past that darned zipper foot, there must be an easier method than this.. :)

More boxy pouches

Help!  I am obsessed with creating the perfect boxy pouch!  I dream of seam free, glitch free, non wonky pouches.  And I have come pretty damn close in the last couple of days thanks to this brilliant tutorial.

I am most proud of this little lovely...

It came out so well.  No glitches!

The lining is so perfect...

...that you could turn it inside out...

So exciting.  This one is destined for South Africa for my Secret Post Club partner this month (yes, I am a bit tardy)

I made myself one too, longer and thinner like a pencil case...

I made the lining and a tab with some of the fabric I received from Parallel Botany aaaaaages ago, I am so pleased to finally start using some of it...

For the outside I used one of my favourite organic fabrics...

It is organic cotton, printed with a flower which reads "organic cotton" (well dur).  I get it from here and I will be writing more about my love of organic fabrics soon!

Right, time to continue my obsessive production line of boxy pouches...

£25 Giveaway winner!

For the crafty homebody blogger the biggest sin
must be a post with no pictures in,
I hope you'll forgive me for leaving them out
I hope you don't whine, or stamp or pout.
So to make up for being picture free
I am blogging in rhyme as you can see....

Well ok, I am not going to write an entire post in rhyme, don't worry!  But I do I hope you excuse the lack of pictures though, and the tardiness of my announcement of the winner, life has got in the way the last few days, long story.

So without further ado as they say, the winner is...

Mrs Shilts!  Fellow crafty person and devotee of the boxy pouch.

I used a random number generator thingy, numbered all the comments 1 through to 12 and, well, randomly generated...

Congratulations Mrs Shilts!  I will get the people at CSN stores to email you your £25 voucher straight away so you can get spending!  Thanks to everybody who entered and to those of you who I shamelessly bribed to follow me :)

Photos will return once more,
of this fact you can sure.
So it just remains to say,
farewell 'til another day.
("No more rhyming now I mean it...
...anybody wanna peanut?")

(First person to name that film wins a boxy pouch!)

x

Boxy pouchyliness!

Having drooled over Gretchen's lovely boxy pouches a while back she directed me here to her original post where she was starting her off on the journey to boxy pouchy perfection.  This led me to this tutorial and voila!  My very own boxy pouch!

I want to make one for a friend as a small thank-you so my first go is a trial run to see how the pattern works.  It's rather easy to do and the finished result is incredibly cute, it's just so dinky...

There are a couple of bits I'd like to amend though.  I'm not sure if I have the stitchy know-how just yet but I want to add a tag below the zip, to give a place to grip when opening and closing.

I lined it with a contrasting red heart fabric which I love...

But I want to sort out the raw edges that are on show...

I'm not entirely sure how to sort this bit out, but it'll bother me until I do! 

However my prototype is still really cool and very handy for holding spare cotton reels and bits and pieces...

Plus it gave me the opportunity to tackle another zip, I am rather afraid of zips.

x