I’ve made a number of interesting things this year… and apparently haven’t posted about any of them. I’m going to try to post more regularly for the next year, as I’m blissfully unemployed while The Professor and I are traveling for his sabbatical.
The Happy Couple
One reason I haven’t been blogging is I was a little busy planning a wedding and getting married.
I made a few things for the wedding, and didn’t want to post anything about them until after the big day, cuz I’m superstitious like that. But now that we’re happily married, I want to share what I did.
The rehearsal dress was the biggest effort, but I’ve already posted about that. The next biggest project was making little clutches for my bridesmaids. I actually ended up making 6 of these – 4 for bridesmaids, 1 for the flower girl, and 1 for one of our officiants. I was originally thinking of just doing a simple zippered pouch, but as I was looking for directions, I came across a great pleated clutch pattern by ConstructivPatterns on Etsy.
Having a pattern and 7 pages of instructions was a vast improvement over my plan to just kind of wing it. Really, the $6 for the pattern was money well spent. The pattern calls for using a stiff stabilizer material to maintain the shape of the bag. I had no idea such a thing existed, so that alone was a revelation. Other great insights from this pattern were the use of a zip facing to set in the zipper and sewing on a wristlet strap. I think all three of those things make it a more polished bag. I used a quilting cotton for the exterior and interior fabric. The fabric actually coordinates with all of the different colors of dresses the bridesmaids wore: green, blue, turquoise. For the interior I succumbed to the chevron trend. And I embroidered each person’s initial onto the inside pocket. 60 easy steps. No big deal. It did take a long-ish time. Glad I started early.
I love the way they turned out. And at least one of them is being used on a regular basis in real life. Yay!
One of the other crafty items I was pretty excited about was the cake topper. Another Etsy buy, they are little wooden peg dolls that you custom paint to resemble the bride and groom. I think they’re freaking adorable!
I also made my veil and the flower girl’s basket, but I don’t have any great pictures of those. Maybe when the pictures come back from the photographers…
Occasionally Obsessive Crafter 