your voice has a singsong quality

maura @ 9:31 pm

Today I finally finished my new iphone cozy. I did most of the work 2 weeks ago, but finishing the edges has lingered on and on, mostly because it involved lots of hand-stitching. But I am really quite pleased with the result.

Here’s the outside view:

and the jaunty stripey inside view:

Like the last one, this cozy has a thicker inner lining (in this case, felt) with thin fabric on either side. I used ribbon for the edging again. It took forever to hand-stitch but I think it looks pretty nice this time. I used darker fabric and ribbon because lighter ones in the last version got dirty pretty quickly.

There are definitely a number of improvements in this iteration. For the last one I cut out 6 rectangles of fabric, layered them appropriately and machine-sewed on 3 sides. Then I couldn’t get the top ribbon edging to work because the external seams got in the way (and also had a frayable bottom seam to deal with).

For this one I cut 3 long rectangles of fabric and folded them before machine-sewing the sides (voila: no bottom seam). I stopped short of the very top, then hand-stitched the ribbon onto the top edges. Then I hand-stitched the ribbon on the sides; it’s mostly decorative, but also served to sew up either side at the top where I’d stopped short with the machine. I also remembered the old trick of halting a fraying edge of ribbon with a few drops of clear nail polish.

I can already see the improvements to the next version. All that hand-sewing is a drag — I have to figure out a way to machine-stitch the top edge ribbons on. They’re so slippery, though, that it’ll be rough going. I also need either thicker ribbon or to trim the fabric edges along the sides a little closer to the seam, because sometimes the seam stitches peek out from under the ribbon. And I need to figure out how to hand stitch the tops and bottoms of the side ribbons more neatly.

But all in all I think it’s a good effort. Go me! And now I have another useful skill, should I ever need it. Because in the 21st Century Great Depression *everyone* is going to need an iphone cozy!

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like a stone thrown across the water

maura @ 10:58 pm

Guess what I learned today? You can make DIY shrinky dinks out of #6 plastic! While I have not yet tried this myself, apparently you just:

1. Get some #6 plastic (which you should really be boycotting if you can, because it is evil and not recyclable while so many others are).

2. Decorate with sharpies. What, you don’t have many colors of sharpies? What’s wrong with you?

3. Cut out the designs.

4. Bake in a 250-degree toaster oven for about 30 seconds. Watch the magic happen through the window!

I’ll let you know when we try it. Stupid lettuce growers always use #6 in their packaging, bah.

(Yes, I had a Food Coop meeting tonight, can you tell?)

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