It might look like I haven’t been doing much of anything crafty in the last few months, but that’s not entirely true. (It’s not entirely false either though.)

I’ve been pretty busy at work in the last few months, and the only crafting I did for awhile was participating in craft group meeting projects or making mini envelopes for my eBay auctions. That changed last month though, after a huge Halloween crafting project developed.

So, I haven’t dressed up for Halloween much in the last decade or so, and certainly not at work. However, when I found out that it’s a big deal at my new job, especially within my group, I thought I’d at least give it a try. My team talked about dressing up in a common theme, and eventually we (mostly) agreed upon one theme. One of my co-workers and I took this project on fully, and started coming up with rough sketches and even creating a prototype costume to see if it would actually work out.

After the first version worked well enough and the whole team seemed to like it, we went shopping and set up a few sewing sessions with the team. Ultimately, it was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun (with only occasional frustrations ), and in the end we made 6 whole costumes from scratch and helped put together a 7th costume from purchased items. Here are a few photos of the final result:

I hadn’t sewn for awhile, but I am definitely thinking about doing a bit more. But may after I recover from these, and hopefully not with any ironing board fabric or much felt!

Last night’s South Bay Stampers meeting was nice, though there were only two people there: Khris, the organizer, and myself. It would have been nice if more people had attended, but I didn’t mind a quiet evening of playing with stamp supplies.

I did bring my wrapped postcards to the meeting, though I wasn’t as interested as working on them. The finished pieces didn’t really turn out as well as I’d hoped, but I got to experiment with different inks and embossing powders, as well as try out chalks for the first time. I think I want to buy some chalks of my own sometime, though the ones I want aren’t inexpensive. Here are the cards though:

Khris and I ended up talking more about trying to get people involved in and attending craft groups, and how we’ve both found it to be somewhat difficult. We have all sorts of theories on it, but nothing that stands out as the most accurate. A new suggestion I had was that perhaps it’s a bit intimidating to go to a new group, where you don’t know anyone and are going to work on projects in front of the other members. I can definitely understand this, having had the same concerns when I first attended a South Bay Craft Group meeting, but I soon found that the attendees were all pretty laidback and it was definitely a relaxing environment. Purely social, with a bit of educational curiosity mixed in, and not a bit of pressure to follow along or work on anything in particular.

I’m not sure what it’ll take to crack this problem, but I have a feeling that word of mouth will have a role. We’ve definitely had a number of evenings when friends of regular members appear and then begin to become regulars themselves. And the social crafting activities I’ve participated in outside of these meetings, though with people I’ve met at them, seem to happen a lot more easily, since there’s some familiarity and a social network already established.

Related to this, my Saturday afternoon was spent with Amytha, who founded the South Bay Craft Group. After letting her rummage through my excess craft supplies, we drove up to parts of Los Altos and Palo Alto to stop by a few estate sales. I think it was my first time attending an estate sale, and there’s definitely a creepy, morbid sort of air to the idea of walking through the home of someone who has died and poking through their belongings, with the aim to take some home with you. Not disturbing enough to keep me from going to others, but still kind of sad.

Amytha bought a few things, including a few vintage, women’s hats (40s/50s era?), and then we headed over to the Los Altos Library to take part in a t-shirt alteration workshop organized by Sarah, the teen librarian there. It was inspired by the book Generation T and though it was geared towards teens, it was fun. I ended up using an old sweater, embroidery floss, and a few buttons to make a three-eyed monster plush toy. It was hard to embroider through knitted material, and we didn’t have any stuffing on hand, but I made do with what I had and I like how it turned out:

My “Coloriffic” swaps are definitely done. I scaled back the handmade items as I wrote last time, and even so, I think my swap partners will be pleased with the results.

For the international version of this month’s Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama, the colors were chocolate brown and light blue (or aqua). I made a tote bag and card/envelope set, to go with a bunch of sewing-oriented craft items for my partner.

And for the US/Canada-only version of this month’s Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama, the colors were black and white. I didn’t really get into this one as much, but I made a zippered pouch and another card/envelope set to go with more paper-oriented craft items.

Everything will go out first thing in the morning, and hopefully the recipients will like what I picked. I tried my best to consider their personal interests, as any good swapper should!

I’m still signed up in a few more swaps via Swap-Bot, but fortunately they’re not as involved and aren’t due very soon. I will definitely not be doing any sewing for them, which is fine because I’m not really in a fabric sort of mood. I think stepping on a needle this evening sealed the deal for me, at least for awhile. ;P

Working on these swaps has definitely reaffirmed my interest in playing with color combinations in my creative projects though. Color is just a very exciting thing to look at, enjoy, and experiment with, and after my recent art class on the subject, I really want to play around more, especially with what I learned about color schemes. I have plans for a few “colorful” series of projects, focusing on paper for the time-being. Here’s what I consider the first piece for one of these series:

I am really not feeling the crafty thing this week, and today has been the worst so far. It feels like everything I touch today, at least craft-wise, is bound to turn out wrong.

Like I mentioned the other day, I have a few swaps and a birthday gift to get out by July, and I’ve been collecting items for them all. I just need to finish the handmade items, so yesterday I cut out and pressed a bunch of fabric to make several tote bags and zippered pouches for them all. I had some trouble getting the sizing right, but it eventually got done.

This morning, I had the sudden realization that I should really get a few things mailed out today, due to the long weekend. As soon as I got dressed, I started sewing away, starting with a tote bag for my sister’s birthday. I should have been good to go, what with everything ready from yesterday, but it went so poorly. I ended up with crooked seams, holes where there shouldn’t have been, and slight imperfections everything that were so glaring to me. I almost ripped it all apart at that point, but I just left it and walked away. Eventually, it was fixed for the most part by folding the top over like a cuff and sewing over that.

I took a break and worked on a few other things, but I decided to scale back a bit on my swaps. One handsewn item per swap is probably good enough, and the recipients will understand if they’re not immaculately done. They’re not meant to be as good as store-bought, especially since I’m not very experienced with sewing yet, and besides, the results aren’t that horrible.

That said, I think I might take a break from the rest of the sewing for now. I have the whole weekend to work on everything and with how poorly things have gone so far, I don’t want to ruin the rest of the day for myself. It’s beautiful outside and I want to enjoy this great weather before it gets too hot again. I’ll leave you with some more “work in progress” and finished project images.

My attempts at learning to knit are on hold for the time being, as I just got too frustrated with the whole experience for now. I think I was doing it right for the most part, but all the stitches were too tight and everything kept slipping off of the needles. I’ll come back to it eventually, but in the meantime, I’ve tried to jumpstart my craftiness with a bit of embroidery and sewing.

After the knitting thing didn’t seem to be working, I dug around my stash to find something I could actually do and feel good about doing. I found a kit from the DMC Linea series and decided to go with that. Basically, you get a fabric base item (purse, pillow cover) with a pattern already printed on, and then you can pick your own colors and stitch it all out. I ended up choosing some pinks and ended up with this after a few hours:

I think this series is DMC’s attempt to get a younger, more “hip” crowd into embroidery, which is fine by me, especially because it’s so easy to do and the kits are pretty nice. I don’t know if they’ve done well, but I know they look a lot better than the usual embroidery kits you find in the same aisle. It’s kind of depressing to look through all the same old designs of clothes-wearing teddy bears, fairy-filled fantasy scenes, and awful, inspirational quotes, so when I saw these, I was pretty pleased. I hope to work on a few more of these, and then move on to some of my own designs.

Originally, I was thinking that I’d buy some readymade items and embroider them, but after looking through some newly acquired craft books and fiddling around with my sewing machine, I think I might make some of my own from scratch. Awhile ago, I’d emailed Sarah of Hip to Piece Squares about how she makes her tote bags (aren’t they all just gorgeous?!), since I couldn’t find any good patterns elsewhere, and she offered a lengthy set of instructions to get me going. I put off trying it out for awhile, but after making a zippered pouch at our last South Bay Craft Group meeting, I was able to figure it out. The approach isn’t too different really, with one using handles and the other a zipper.

I messed up on a few bits and even had to rip out some stitches at one point, but I like it as a first try. I even made a little zippered pouch to go with it!

I’ve also been trying to catch up on old projects and intended projects lately, and it feels so good to get them done. First, I finally washed and ironed a major embroidery piece that I worked on for months and that is a very belated wedding present for a good friend. (No photos yet, but after it’s been framed and delivered, I’ll post some.) And then I sewed up a pillowcase that I had intended as a Christmas gift for my sister. It was so much easier than I thought:

She’s attending my alma mater and is a lot more “rah rah” than I ever was, so I thought this would be perfect for her. We’ll see what she says when it arrives though.

Anyway, I feel so much better having worked on all of these projects now. It’s just no fun being in between projects, so I’m hoping to keep up this momentum and move on to other things. It’ll help, considering that I have a bunch of swaps on Swap Bot to work on over the next month or two!