Hot plate pad

One of the other Christmas gifts that I made this year was hot plate pads, as shown below.

Each hot pad had the person's name hand embroidered onto it to give it a personal touch.  I used cotton cloth for the front side with embroidery.  I traced out the person's name in my semi-cursive handwriting, and embroidered along my tracing.  On the back I used heat-resistant cloth that I stitched with about 1 1/8" squares on a diagonal.   Inside was 2 - 3 layers of heat-resistant fill (called Insul-Bright) and batting, that I had sewn with the silver heat-resistant backing to keep it from bunching up.

I then used a red bias tape to close the edges in and create a nice loop to hang the heat pad from.

These ended up being trickier than I expected, it was hard getting the bias tape to stay in the right place with all the layers of fabric.  The end product ended up being worth it though!  A nice, personalized, hand-made gift to loved ones says volumes!

Cross-Stitch iPhone Cover

One of the gifts I handmade this Christmas was for my husband's iPhone.

We both have the same iPhone with the same bumper/cover.  We constantly picked each other's up!  I saw a post online about this little ingenious cross-stitch cover, which you can get from Purl Soho here: http://www.purlsoho.com/purl/products/item/8333-Leese-Design-iPhone-4-Cross-Stitch-Case.  It comes in a variety of base colors.  I choose black since I knew that was a comfortable color for my husband!

Purl sent my case cover to me quickly, nicely wrapped, and with a hand-made note!  I was impressed.  The cover itself is made by a Korean company, Leese design.  If you're interested, you can see their website here: http://leesedesign.com/shop/main/index.php.  Below are some pics of the packaging.  It was nicely made from all angles, I had no issues with the product at all!

(Note: scratches on the plastic are due to me stuffing this in random locations to hide it from my husband.  It did not arrive this way!)

The product came with three colors of floss, as shown on the Purl Soho site, as well as a cross-stitch needle.  I choose the dark bluish grey as a color that wouldn't pop too much, but would give my husband's phone a nice personal touch.  Clearly you could buy your own embroidery floss to work with as well!

Included in the packaging

The product also came with a pamphlet that covered how to cross stitch (this was my first cross-stitch project, but I mostly just made it up as I went!), and included a bunch of patterns that you could use on the phone including a power icon, car, scooter, teddy bear, hearts, and an ace of clubs.

Included patterns

It was a fun project and it came out great!

Handmade Christmas

I hope everyone has been enjoying a wonderful holiday season!  I had a busy month preparing for Christmas with many various crafts that I set up for myself as gifts that I wanted to give.  Below you can see the range of items that I made!

I'll talk through each of these in the upcoming days.  The first one was the Earbud Pouch, thanks to the tutorial that I posted about in November here.  I made a bunch of these for various friends that I felt would likely use earbuds on a regular basis.  So far I've gotten great feedback from everyone on them!  I even made one for myself since I was guilty of a knotted headphone mess combined with pens and whatever else got into the tangle being pulled out of my purse.  It's nice to have them in an easy-to-find, separated pouch from all the other random items that get stowed away in there!

Hiatus

Well then.  Sorry for the hiatus.  I ended up working harder than expected in Eindhoven, and I only briefly saw Amsterdam.  I really wasn't able to get any great pictures since I was only out and about when it was dark, and rainy!  So even though I had posted under the guise of "Eindhoven teaser" - that's all I've got.

Moving on to the rest of the month, I've been so busy creating new things that I haven't posted a thing!  While I can't reveal my creations quite yet - I look forward to some post-Christmas posts about the various projects I have been up to.

In the mean time - check out this wonderful site that I frequent and drool over!

http://craftgawker.com/

Enjoy and more to come soon!

Netherlands teaser

We're going to take a slight digression from the usual content.  I'm traveling this week so I'm going to share some of my travels instead.  I'm visiting the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.  It's about 2 hours southeast of Amsterdam via train.  I'm too tired from the traveling to craft a full post, so I'm just going to give you a teaser picture with more to follow later.

My first impressions are captured well in this photo - neat architecture, lots of pedestrians and bikes (it's late so I could take a picture without getting run over), and wet/raw weather.

Christmas Decor

I'm slowly letting go of Thanksgiving and getting into the mode of Christmas.  Here's our fireplace mantle decor for the year.  Still looking for ideas and motivation for other decor!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope that you are all spending time with good family and friends for thanksgiving.

Which dress to try?

I was looking through Zappos today and saw these two dresses that I loved, but certainly wouldn't want to pay full price for.  I haven't made any clothing yet, but I'd like to give it a try.  Which one do you think I should try?

Tahari by ASL

Christin Michaels Eveyln

Thanksgiving Table

It's coming together...  Ending up buying the tablecloth, making the square table cover, and making the napkins of course!  I'm so excited for Thanksgiving!  Are you?  Share your favorite thanksgiving tradition with me - I'm hoping to start a new one this year as we host for the first time.

Circle Earbud Pouch

Check out this super cute circle earbud pouch tutorial made by Erin Erickson at Dog Under My Desk.

http://erinerickson.com/2011/11/circle-zip-earbud-pouch-tutorial/

I keep my key ring rather sparse since I hate having extra things dangling in the way, but you could use this to hold your earbuds in place in a backpack or other location so it doesn't get lost at the bottom of the pile.  I can certainly relate to finding my earbuds in a tangled mess at the bottom of my purse.  I'm going to have to think of someone who would use this so I can try making one!

Leaves

I'm loving the many blog posts I am seeing about using Mod Podge to preserve leaves like shown below.

http://gingerbreadsnowflakes.com/node/96

I'm thinking it would be even more fun to make some fabric leaves that match the napkins and table runner for my thanksgiving day table setting.  Working out the details...

Tri-Fold Napkins

Thanksgiving is on the way, and I have many projects in the pipeline!  I'm hosting Thanksgiving for the family this year for the first time.  With that comes the following projects:

• New leaves for our dining room table (husband's project)
• New tablecloth that fits the enlarged table
• New table runner for enlarged table
• Large amount of napkins that match the decor of the tablecloth and runner

Up first is the napkins...  I decided to make tri-fold napkins out of regular cotton cloth.  Since the cloth was so thin I decided it needed to be doubled up.   Here's the final result.  Cute huh?

A pair with a potholder I made (more on that later)

The Step-by-Step guide:

You'll need:

• Measuring tape
• Cutting instrument
• Fabric (1/2 yard can make about 2)
• Stitch Witchery or other fusible tape
• Iron

Cut two pieces of fabric to 14 1/2" x 19" (or whatever size suits your needs)

Pin together with "right" sides facing one another

I placed two pins about 3 inches apart on the edge to designate my opening.  This is where you do not want to sew.  You will use this hole in future steps to turn the napkin ride side out.

Head to the sewing machine...  (Or don't... ask me if you want the non-stitch version!)

Start sewing right after one of the white pins designating the hole.  Don't forget your backstitch and leave a 1/4" seam allowance.

Remember to pick up the foot in the corners and turn your fabric 90 degrees, making a nice clean corner.

Once you've made it all the way around the napkin to the other white pin to designate the hole, backstitch and cut the threads.  Head to the ironing board.

I usually press open my seams, but you don't necessarily have to if you have patience in really making sure those edges don't get pressed wrong once you flip it inside out.  To press open the seams, just fold over the 1/4" seam allowance and press down on each side.

Then you get to turn it inside out!

Stick your arm in that hole and pull the fabric through.  Doesn't look much like a napkin huh?  Or maybe it does look like a napkin my dad used to ball up after it was used...

 Use a pencil or some other instrument to make sure the corners get totally pushed out.  This is important or it will never lay quite right!

Now press all the edges.  I highly recommend you put your iron on a non-steam setting for this so your fingers can get quite close to hold the seams open without scalding yourself.  Yes - this is from experience!

Now doesn't it look nice?  Yes - you might be thinking - but what about that gaping hole in my napkin!  Ok, fine, we'll take care of that.

Find the hole and make sure you have the napkin pressed so the edges are folded in the same as where it was sewn.  Take a piece of fusible tape (I use Stitch Witchery) and place it into the hole so that it is just beyond the edges.

Once you have it placed right, just close the fabric and iron over it.  All closed up!

To give the napkins a bit of a stiffer feel I used some starch.  Spray on, iron.

Then folded it up, ironing where needed, and it's all done!

Enjoy!

Pumpkin mat

In honor of Halloween weekend, here is a fun pumpkin project.

Supplies:

• 1/2 yard Orange fleece fabric
• 1/2 yard fabric interfacing - iron on (fusible)
• Pumpkin outline
• White or orange thread

Instructions:
Print out or draw a pumpkin outline.  I used Adobe Illustrator to make a 4 page large pumpkin that I taped together.  Lay out the orange fleece fabric.  Place a piece of interfacing on top, and fold or place another piece of orange fleece fabric on top of it.

Add the pumpkin pattern and pin all the layers together.  You'll want to pin outside the pumpkin and inside the pumpkin so it is still pinned once you cut the outside off.

Cut to the pattern.

Take the bottom layer and the interfacing, and iron the interfacing on.  The shiny side of the interfacing should be against the fabric.

Place the other piece of fleece back on top of the interfacing, and zizag stitch or serge the edges.

And that's it, you're done!  Now you have a cute pumpkin mat that could be used on a table, as a hanging, or any other way you could think of!

Apron

I'm finally getting to posting the finished apron.  I had a lot of fun making it, and I am very happy with how it turned out.  I kept not getting pictures of it during the daytime due to the lovely fall countdown of daylight when I am home.  I finally gave up and just got some indoor pictures, so hopefully you can forgive the picture quality!

Yay!  So pleased to have it finished and working.   Let me know what you think!

Function & Style

Well, with the passing on of Steve Jobs, I think it's time for a quick reflection on the blog name.  Function and Style comes from the fact that much of my life is dedicated to thinking and and innovating on how to create functional products that have an element of style and delight to them.  As a user experience practitioner, this is a daily goal that I hold myself to.  Upon starting this blog, I realized that many of the things that I planned on blogging about also had this common theme - I want to make things with my hands that are stylish and bring me happiness, but I also love things that are functional and usable in my daily life.

(source)

Steve Jobs is the icon of this combination in our world today.  With the last decade or more of Apple products, he has continued to push his company and himself to achieve solutions that are functional and stylish.  Most technology companies focused in on function, and keep adding functionality to beat each other.  Apple and Jobs step back, find the functionality that matters, and then add style and delight in a way that draws people to their products.  Minimizing a product to find the greatest areas of impact, and then pushing the envelope on those areas, is not an easy feat.  I can only hope that in my career and personal projects I can achieve this balance.

RIP Steve.  Thanks for the inspiration and challenge you have presented to me and others around the world.

Welcome and first sewing project

Hi all!  I've decided to start a blog to capture the facets of my life. Thank you for coming to read and I hope you enjoy or get some enjoyment out of my nonsense!

I recently bought a sewing machine and have been enjoying fixing up the pile of ripped clothes, but wanted to try creating something new!  I saw this apron from Anthropologie online - and wanted to replicate it.

(source)

After looking around I found a pattern from Butterick which was similar enough to meet what I loved about the Anthropologie apron with the cut in sides and flounced skirt.

Since this is my first pattern project, I wanted to share a two of the lessons I have learned so far in the process of making this.  I'll share the final product as I complete it!

• When working with a pattern, first cut out the pattern pieces wider than the pattern edge.  This means that when you lay out the pattern on your fabric, you can then have some edge to work with to make a second cut on the pattern edge through the fabric.

Leave edges for cutting fabric as shown to right.

• "Narrow hem" means a doubled over fabric with a stitch fairly close to the edge.  Thanks to many internet searches, I found that the easiest way to do this was to do two iron-overs with a stitch along the edge each time.  The best tutorial I found was by Mary at CraftStylish.  Thanks Mary!  My steps are below.

Mark fabric at a little more than 3/8"

Fold and iron so edge hits marks (approximately, this is a very small fold!)

Sew close to edge. Cut along sew line as close as you can make a consistent line

Fold over sew line and iron again (this should get you close to 5/8").  Then sew close to edge, and you're done!  (The top sew line was the first one, but only the bottom sew line shows on the front.)

I'm excited about the final product, and will share soon!