Author Archives: Jan

About Jan

Musician and geek and Juris Doctor; lover of fine art and fine craft; mother and grandmother and significant other and friend. Passionate about sewing.

So Sew Easy Carry All Bag

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Way back when Craftsy was Craftsy, long before it became Bluprint, then was sold, and now will become Craftsy again with all their databases of classes we’ve purchased intact, I saw a bag kit that I thought was very pretty. I bought the kit – the beautiful Modern Meadow line from Joel Dewberry with his Dogwood Bloom modern print on an aqua (“Pond”) background, lining fabric in the Herringbone print in Pond, and accents from the Herringbone print in navy (“Lake”). The pattern was the So Sew Easy “Carry All Bag,” a free pattern. Because of the Craftsy/Bluprint debacle, I … Continue reading →

A Fishy Sleepshirt For Me

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Finally! A break for a few hours in all my mask making to sew something fun, something I’ve been thinking about sewing for several years. There are a lot of independent (“indie”) pattern designers nowadays, and more popping up each month. There’s a t-shirt/dress pattern I’ve been looking at for several years. It’s called the Laundry Day Tee and it comes from Love Notions Sewing Patterns, LLC. Love Notions is Tami Meyer and I am now her newest instant fan. The Laundry Day Tee was first released in 2015 as a t-shirt. It quickly became a favorite pattern for everyone … Continue reading →

Masks and a Pouch for Storage

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One of my lovely accompanees asked if I could make a couple of masks for her. After showing her the fabric choices, I made three masks. Then I ended the day by making a little pouch so she could store the clean masks safely in her bag or backpack. The pouch is from Sew Sweetness—the Hexi Zipper Pouch. This is a free pattern, a quick sew, a multi-purpose pouch. The pattern specifies foam interfacing, but you could just as easily make it with fusible fleece or even just Pellon’s Shape-Flex interfacing. I find if a bag has curves, it’s harder … Continue reading →

Remembering Travel

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Now that we’re five months into staying at home because of COVID-19, any memory of travel is precious. We don’t want to get on a plane or walk through an airport or even travel by car longer than two hours (y’know, because of the need for bathroom stops). In mid-May, the travel trailer rental site RVshare had reported a 1,000% increase in travel trailer bookings since April, as cited by the Boston Globe. I have to admit that my idea of roughing it involves a Marriott hotel, any Marriott hotel. I’ve tented before. I’ve camped in a pop-up trailer before. … Continue reading →

An Hour Here, An Hour There

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Those hours add up. Pretty soon you’re talking about a whole bag! (Photo: the front of the large Clydebank Tote from Sew Sweetness sewing patterns.) Link to Clydebank Tote pattern. I’m been making mask after mask. But before you envision thousands of masks flying out of my sewing room, let me admit that I make rather complicated masks, and each one takes a couple of hours to make, so I’m lucky to “crank out” three a day! And when people see my pictures of them, they ask me to make them one. Note to self: stop posting mask photos on … Continue reading →

Long Weeks of Maskmaking

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We went into self-isolation on March 16. This time has meant three things to me: 1) Because of the lag time in transmitting sound over the internet when using Zoom or FaceTime or a similar app, I can no longer accompany my “musical theatre kids;” 2) I’m playing a lot of piano anyway, as I started recording a song each day and posting it on Facebook and Instagram; and 3) I’m making a whole lot of masks, because it needs to be done. I have not yet gotten to donating masks to hospitals and other healthcare institutions, because friends keep … Continue reading →

Happy Birthday to Jill!

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One of my closest friends during the second half of the eight years I lived in Tucson was a wonderful woman named Jill. We’ve kept in touch since I left, and occasionally she appears in my dreams and I wake thinking I need to go back for a visit. Last week, in the midst of the COVID-19 self-isolation, I picked up a birthday card for her during a frantic grocery run. When I got home, I realized the envelope was not with the card. There was no way I was going back to the grocery store, into that anxiety-filled pandemonium. … Continue reading →

It’s All About the Fabric

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I made a bag for my friend Ellen’s Whovian daughter, Esther, three-and-a-half (!!!) years ago. Ellen and I had lunch a couple of weeks ago and she told me Esther’s bag was worn out from being loved to death. She asked if I could make the same bag again for Esther. The fabric I used for the first bag was an “Exploding Tardis” print. I had just a little Tardis fabric left over from the previous make and wondered what bag pattern would work with that amount of fabric. I settled on the Greta Wristlet Clutch from Teresa Lucio Designs, … Continue reading →