2008
when was the last time you made a record book
maura @ 10:04 pm
Yesterday I cleaned the whole house and this morning I mopped all the floors, because it really, really needed it. But now the holiday weekend is 2/3 gone and I still haven’t made myself a new iphone cozy! Tomorrow we’re picnicking w/friends from Gus’s school so it probably won’t happen then, either.
Before we went on vacation I went on a sewing jag, and among other things (of a mostly utilitarian nature, like taking in some pants and a shirt and making a few new vegetable bags for grocery shopping), I made myself an iphone cozy prototype. Like much of my sewing, I didn’t plan it out as well as I could, so while I didn’t mean to make a prototype, that’s what it (somewhat frustratingly) became.
This anti-prototype thing must be genetic, because at one point recently Gus was making something and it wasn’t working out, so Jonathan cheerfully explained the concept of a prototype, to which Gus replied (rather forcefully): “I DON’T MAKE PROTOTYPES!!!”
Anyway, so I had pictured a form-fitting cozy (the old red felt one I made was getting sort of loose, and I don’t want the iphone to slip out) in a jaunty fabric, lined with a different jaunty fabric, with a thicker piece of fabric in the middle to provide some cushioning.
Everything went well enough initially. Jaunty fabric x 2, check. (And if you knew me in college you might recognize the outer fabric.) Form-fitting, check. Then it was just time to finish the edges.
And there’s where it all broke down. I like to finish edges with folded over ribbon, but actually I’ve only ever done that on the insides of bags that I’ve made. I started working on the folded over ribbon thing on the cozy, but the ribbon was too slippery and the corners were too difficult and suddenly it was 11pm on the night before the night before we left for vacation, ack!
So I cursed a lot, then decided that this is a prototype. I grabbed some (jauntily) contrasting thread and stitched up the raggedy edges on the sides, and dubbed it frankencozy. And I have spent a lot of time since then thinking about where I went wrong and how to avoid it the next time. Because there will be a next time, oh yes, there will. You won’t get the best of me, cozy!
8 comments on “when was the last time you made a record book”
I love that green fabric as well as the idea of finishing the edges with ribbon. So cute. Were they really pants?!
Unlike Gus, I *only* make prototypes.
Yes! I loved those pants. I think my friend Lucy got them for me at a thrift store. 100% pure polyester, so when they died they faded weirdly rather than wearing out. Which is nice, because now I have scraps for projects!
I’m not sure what a prototype is. It might be the thing I have to rip out before I make the real thing. I think prototypes make me cry.
Yes! If it makes you cry (or, in Gus’s case, yell), then it’s a prototype. If you plan to make one it is slightly less tear-inducing.
Knitting is better now that I think of the first 6 inches as just screwing around,,,
omg. I think I recognize that ur-pant fabric too.
To think… All those years, IT WAS ONLY A PROTOTYPE!
I know! When the prototype pants fabric is gone I will not know what to do with myself. I’ve used it in many a sewing project.
Cozy irony!
Well, not really. But I do recognize the pants!