Doing Domestic Duties

Today I decided to take a little break from art. I did have to sandwich a quilt this morning so that I could use the table to move on to some more domestic things. One of which was a bag.

I don't consider myself a very good sewer for functional, practical items, like clothes, that require some 3D construction techniques (quilts don't count). I have made a few items but must always follow the instructions.

Today I made this bag with instructions from the Handmade Home book by Amanda Soule. (I love reading her blog). This was made with some fabric I found at a garage sale and I think it is truly vintage fabric. I used part of a man's shirt for the lining, some fabric I had for the handles and some ric-rac ribbon for the tie (although I may change this).

It was a nice mind break to just follow someone else's instructions to sew something. For some reason, though, I can't seem to make something without modifying it a little bit. Here I made the straps longer than what the instructions said, as I wanted it to hang lower off my shoulder. I also added little tuck pleats at the bottom corners, to make it a little fuller, which was not in the instructions.




Next on the list, besides some laundry, was modifying some shirts for Anna. We are having a very hard time clothes shopping for Anna right now. She is kind of between the girl's section and moving on to the junior's section. Also, most of the styles right now are skinny jeans (not good for Anna) and low cut tops.

Being how Anna is still only 12 years old and somewhat modest, we have not been able to find many shirts. Yes, you can wear a tank top underneath many of them, but the tanks are also low cut. Anyway, we found a couple of shirts she really liked except for the fact they were too low. Even though I don't like it, I said I would buy them for her and attempt to modify the brand new shirt. Below is one where I just added the black triangle. The other shirt was pretty much the same idea.


Domestic duty number three was to make blackberry crisp. Yesterday, Anna and I walked down to the field where there is a ravine that has blackberry bushes. Anna watched me as I attempted to pick some, as they are a bit hard to get to. The good thing was that there were lots and lots. The bad thing was that the bushes had thorns and the berries were fairly small. But they were free and I have enough to make something. I started to make a crisp but realized I didn't have any brown sugar. I went over to the neighbors to borrow some, but they were not home. We are now waiting for Frank to stop and get some on his way home from work.