For the Makers

For my birthday, Olga got me a two-month subscription to For the Makers. Every month, they send you a cute little box with four different projects. There are tutorials online for each project but in general, you can do whatever you want with the materials given. So far, I've made two of the projects:

The first one was super simple but the second time took some time. I changed it a little bit from the tutorial but I think it looks very nice and clean. I have never thought about attaching beads to a rope like that but it's actually very cute. I wish the rope was thinner but now that I know how easy this is and how cute it looks, I can do it again with different materials! 

I'll finish the other two projects and show them next week. Thanks for the gift, Olga!

Nemo!

I have never seen as much snow as I saw yesterday after the blizzard (named Nemo). I think it's more snow than I've seen in the last three years living in Boston combined. Officially we got about 2 feet but the snow drifts were insane! There was a car ban for about 24 hours which was moot on Saturday since most cars were buried so deeply that there was no where to go! That along with the T and most restaurants being closed made for a very uneventful weekend. Nate took a few pictures of me on the way to MIT last night. 

Next to a random snow bank -- mostly made by the plows.

On the street with the Stata building in the background -- even after plowing there was still a good layer of snow on the roads. 

That is me next to a few cars -- all buried.

We didn't have a chance to check out our car but we also have word that is it buried. Nate will be taking the T to Harvard for the next few days since parking anywhere will be ridiculous. 

In the meantime, Nate and I enjoyed one of our Christmas presents. My parents gave us a fireplace that takes canisters of fuel to make real fire. It was really nice being at home while watching the snow and enjoying some dancing flames. 

This has definitely been an experience. I think I've had my fill of winter for the next ten years!

Blouse Part 2

Continuing from the last blog post, I went on to add the zipper. Amber had instructed me to get an invisible zipper foot and an invisible zipper. I read the tutorial she sent me and was all excited to do this.  Then I tried to get the invisible zipper foot onto my machine and low and behold, it just didn't fit. At all.  Thankfully, my machine came with a regular zipper foot so I ironed out the zipper like I was supposed to and just tried to sew it on as close as I could to the teeth. In the end, it worked out ok and you really can't see the zipper. However, I was disappointed in not being able to use the correct zipper foot!

I then went on to join the sides of the shirt to make a real looking shirt. While I did the measuring all correctly, as soon as I tried it on, I realized that it was a bit too large (as you can see in the picture below)! I am pretty sure I followed all the seam allowances so I do not know why it turned out this way. I resewed the sides by about an inch each and it started looking much more right. Another thing that you can't see so well on this picture but can see in the finished product is that the waist didn't quite sit right. I was debating when I was cutting out the materials whether I should lengthen the torso but ultimately decided against it because I wasn't sure how the sizing was going to pan out. I did know that these patterns are made for people who are ~5'4''-5'6'' and I am a few inches taller than that but I figured it was going to be ok. If I had added the two inches that I should have added, I think it would have hit the waist more correctly. Oh well! For this kind of style, it's not the end of the world. 

My two favorite parts of this shirt were learning how to do sleeves and using bias tape to make a beautiful neckline. Something about both of those things was ridiculously satisfying. The bias tape seems so random but when you do it right, the neckline (and I did it on the end of the sleeves and at the bottom of the peplum) looks so neat and professional! For the sleeves, you are first supposed to gather the material on top of the sleeve so you can give your shoulder flexibility and then sew it onto the shirt in a way that you are not introducing any folds. This seemed really hard at first, but somehow it just works out and looks so real! Now the shirt was looking like a real shirt (you know with one sleeve!).

I added the other sleeve and finished everything neatly with the bias tape. Once again, I cannot stress enough the wonders of bias tape. The pattern itself did not call for finishing the peplum with bias tape but I couldn't stop myself! Here I am modeling the shirt with a plain black pencil skirt. Yay!!

I have to say that I have not sewed something from a pattern for a very very long time (possibly since the sewing classes I took in 4th grade) and I learned A LOT of new concepts while doing this thanks to youtube videos and step-by-step tutorials online. In the end, I really like how this turned out and I am looking forward to making more clothes -- especially from fabrics I love. So, thanks to Amber for giving me the motivation and tools to get started!

Blouse Part 1

This weekend, I got started on this blouse I am making. When I was in Nebraska, Amber and I went fabric shopping and I got a beautiful silky-ish polka dot material. She suggested making a blouse and I was all over that idea. Since I've been traveling a lot, I finally got a chance to start this weekend!

Here is the blouse that I am making. The style is really in right now and I think it will look very cute with the material I have!

It took me a while to figure out the sizing of the Vogue patterns (I am a size WHAT????) and the parts that needed to be cut out on the fold. But I persevered and cut everything out. 

I started putting together the front and the back. This just involved sewing the darts and putting together the top and bottom part of the pieces. Although Amber recommended a special kind of needle for this fabric, this fabric was annoying in that it still tended to "run" once in a while even when I used the special needle (with the regular needle the fabric ran with every stitch!).

This is as far as I got because as I went to open the zipper (for the back of the blouse), I gave myself a nasty nasty paper cut underneath my nail that still has not stopped bleeding. I will finish the blouse next weekend!

Colorful Cheer

I am updating a bit early since I will be out of town for the next week. When I get back, I have many sewing plans, thanks to the wonderful Amber with whom I went fabric shopping in Omaha. Nate and I spent a week there, hanging out with his family, as the second part of our break. While there, we took a weekend trip to Des Moines for his cousin's wedding! It was super fun!

In the meantime, I found this wonderful paper craft (the link has detailed instructions that are fool proof!).

I had a lot of fun putting these "medallions" together. They look more like snowflakes to me. To make them extra happy, I used bright green and pink paper (which I'm sure you've seen before). 

Other than having to glue the two ends together (and wait for it to dry!), this was a super quick and simple craft! I made eight to hang in the my bay in the lab, but haven't had a chance to hang them yet! 

Don't they just make you feel so happy? Maybe it's just me...

Edit: Here they are hung up in my bay! My bench is on the right in this picture: 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The month of December was crazy! I failed to post for two weeks! Sorry!
Nate and I traveled to NYC for a few days and then to Costa Rica for a week! We had a great time and saw lots of natural and cultural highlights.

This one is called: "Ox next to an ox cart!"

We went zipling! This is Nate ziplining like superman! Ziplining was his favorite part of the week!

We learned how to make coffee and chocolate! 

Nate got to hold a Toucan! This was his main goal for most of the week! He was so happy!

We went to a Costa Rican cultural show. It was interesting. Here are the fireworks and "dancing" at the end. 

We went on several boat rides to see animals in the wild. This is a panoramic of a boat ride next to the Pacific Ocean. During this boat rides we saw 36 differenct species of birds (we had a handout!) and lots of crocodiles!

We went to a waterfall park. This is us under/next to one of the waterfalls!  

And since we now have front facing cameras, we took lots of pictures! Here are some!

I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas! Happy new year! See you in 2013!

Felt Ornaments

Last night, my brother and his housemates had a party. One of his housemates (Cesar) and I decided to get together and have craft time to make some decorations for this party. I suggested felt ornaments because I think they are so fun to make and pretty simple. Unfortunately, we did not end up making as many as we were anticipating (we each got like 10-15 pieces of felt!).

All of our supplies and Cesar cutting out circles

I picked four types of felt ornaments that I felt had good variety and still were straight-forward. I printed out instructions so we could easily reference the directions. I had fun, but Cesar felt like he was working in a sweat shop (he wanted me to mention this here). I guess these felt ornaments were a tiny bit on the tedious side and do require some sewing skills. It would have helped him to have youtube videos rather than printed out instructions. 

Since I am a nerd, I decided to rate these on three categories: difficulty, time, and wow-factor (1 to 5 with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest). 

1. Simple Ball Ornament

credit to the Purl Bee; difficulty: 3, time: 2, wow-factor: 2

This one took a minute to wrap my head around, but once I got what was happening (this is one where a video might have helped), it went quite fast. I attached a star to the bottom to add some sparkle! I had plans to make these as ovals, stars, etc. which would make them a little more interesting. 

2. Intricate Ball Ornament
credit to Zakka Life: difficulty: 2, time: 4, wow-factor: 4

I really, really liked how this turned out. Since I only bought silver embroidery thread, the stitches were in stark contrast to the felt and made it look even more interesting. This also could look pretty cool if ovals were used instead of circles. I added a silver puff ball to the string for added cuteness.

3. Ogee Ornament
credit to betz white; difficulty 1, time: 1, wow-factor: 3.5

I made this before with a tiny bit of felt. This turned out really well. Theoretically, it would look even better with stiffer felt. This is an ornament where the silver stiches detract rather than enhance, so it would have been better if I used green embroidery thread for this. Overall, from cutting to finishing, this took me maybe two and half minutes.

4. Random Funnel Ball Ornament

credit to How About Orange; difficulty: 3, time: 2, wow-factor 2.5

I wanted to make the funnels, but then I ended up folding my circles more and just made lots of creases and put them together. This took a bit of finagling to look good, but as I added more parts, it shaped up to look like a ball. I meant for the red and green to be distributed more around the ball, but they ended up bunching a bit.

In the end, we put up the four ornaments (Cesar only had a chance to finish 1/2 an ornament) on either side of the walkway between the hallway and the living room. We also go some non-Christmas color felt to make some to put up year round! So easy and fun!