Step by almost every step bag

I had a bunch of old fabric in my basement, these are just some of the pieces I had. I chose to use that roll of yellow along with a patterned print I was going to use for a skit a while ago. Never got to that project though. My inspiration was a bag that my sister owns. I checked it out and figured out the pattern for it and decided to feature it on my blog. The bag is a pretty laid back design so I figured that it's a good design to just use any fabric with a pattern to finally use it.













This is the basic pattern of the bag. There is also a small rectangular piece, but it can basically be any size as long as the measurement of the base of the main pattern is slightly larger than the perimeter of the small rectangle.




To get mathematical... the base of the main pattern is A


2A needs to be greater than or equal to the perimeter










Cut out the pattern from the fabric. Make sure to cut two of the main design.


















Sew the bottom of the main pattern to the side of the rectangle. Do this on the other side. Make sure that you center the pattern so that equal amounts touch the rectangle so that the 2 main patterns meet at the middle of the smaller side of the rectangle. Sew the seam between the 2 main patterns on both sides.





This is only one part of the bag. You need to make another one of these. Preferably out of a different color. Then sew the right sides together and flip the bag inside out. The last step is to sew the two straps together to make a loop strap. I haven't actually done this yet so I don't have a picture.

Fourth Exercise

Do people actually care about helping out the environment, or are they just following the new fad to "go green"? It seems to me that people have started to recycle and become conscious of the things they throw out or the energy they use now that advertisers, celebrities, and other influences have told them to. Does anyone really care? In this article, they argue that people only found out about global warming because a celebrity made a movie and the media picked up this story. CLICK I'm pretty sure that this is the case. Media and merchandiser have latched on to the stories of the polar bears and what celebrities have been doing to make a profit.

My little step sister started caring about what she wore last year and would buy so many outfits. Among the accessories to go with her clothes was a bag with a peace sign and the words recycle and going green. She obviously didn't believe in recycling and conserving when she put that bag in the give away pile along with the other clothes she wore for a month. She was doing the right thing by not trashing the clothes and donating them, but she didn't even wear them long enough to wear them out to a point where someone would donate them. The trend that made that bag for my step sister probably didn't even donate profits to an organization to help the environment.

I don't see many bags with the recycling symbol around campus. Do people not care anymore? These celebrities seem to care. But the question is, would we care if they did not? There are the few people that have been die hard environmentalists and tried to support the movement for a long time. I guess I shouldn't complain about people bandwagoning on something actually worth while. This fad probably saved a couple of land fills from being created. O well.

Third Exercise

I recently discovered an article about wasteful stores throwing out bags of never-before-worn clothing that they slashed holes in so that others wouldn't wear them. This story is biased towards the consumers that find this appalling but really, who would care if this was written in the point of view of the major corporations. I don't think it would even be printed, it seemed like they wanted to hide this wastefulness. The way I see the situation is the big corporations couldn't sell their stock so they dumped it in the trash because they thought it would be easier to do rather than give it to charity. They probably could have promoted their product by saying "Hey, we did something kind and donated to charity" but took the other path and wasted. The reason I think they did that was so that their upstanding brand name wouldn't be associated with charity cases which seems really cruel to me. I think that if the people in the article were really thinking, they would have taken the ripped up clothing and done cool things with it like designed new clothes. That's what I would have done at least. I don't live in NY so I can't take this prime opportunity. The people that found these bags could even start up the torn up trend again. :) CLICK HERE TO VIEW ARTICLE

Second exercise

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-grayson/eco-etiquette-how-can-i-r_b_637415.html

http://www.recyclethis.co.uk/20060511/how-can-i-reuse-or-recycle-%E2%80%A6-old-shoes

These two webposts are about the reusing of shoes. One focus' mainly on flip flops while the other features shoes in general. Flip flops are quite possibly the best shoe to wear in the summer but the worst quality. We all have them especially after visiting Old Navy for their crazy flip flop sale when everyone buys a pair in each color. Mentioned on the one site are many ideas on how to reuse these flimsy shoes. The other site doesn't recomend ideas on how to reuse the shoes, just mainly ways to prevent from wasting them. There is user generated content that poses possible ideas.

My favorite ways to reuse flip flops and shoes:

making a door mat out of cut up pieces of flip flops

nailing them to a tree for bird nests

making slippers with the flip flops as the soles

homemade stamps

These websites have the topic of some how recycling shoes but one puts much emphasis on the ecosystematic reprocusions involved with disposing of flip flops incorrectly. The other site generally wanted to know what to do with thier old shoes. I think everyone should make sure that they donate their shoes to the less fortunate and try to reuse them as much as possible.

Get Ready Coming soon: step by step bag

Alright it's thanksgiving weekend and I had a bit of time on my hands so I decided to make a bag out of fabric some British people left us. Inspired by my sisters bag. I am half way done and then I will post the step by step process to make said bag. Should be cute and I'm pretty sure it'll be reversible. Hopefully it'll be done tomorrow. :)

New Ideas

I won't be able to start these ideas until I go home and have access to a sewing machine, but here they are:

scrap bag using scraps of fabric laying around and ties and old tshirts that I love but don't wear

embellishing clothes. I have lace and rhinestones and who knows what else. I'm going to make my old things sparkle

dye stained tshirts different colors Micheal's and other craft stores sell individual packets of dye so you can fix up your tshirts that your mom bleached by accident this can also make socks look really cool

Well that's all that I should think of for now or I won't be able to finish these

Trashcans

Basically every room has a trashcan; something to hold nasty trash and just sit in the corner out of the way. My new project is to decorate a trashcan my dad took from a hotel and make it fit for a girls room. So far I have painted a unicorn on the side and am now heading for my old sticker stash to make this ugly household item some-what cute. I thought it would be fun to change around the color on this photo. Gives me a new idea. I want to go to a thrift store and buy frames, paint them black, and then take photos and change their properties and make them look cool like some sort of surreal art. It'll be cool to hang them up because they'll be of me and my friends.

Update on the unfinishedd projects:

I started painting flowers on the Narnia dresser and outlined the actual designs in the wood with green. It's a work in progress.... I have the motivation from one of my roommate's mom. She basically told me that when she comes back to the house, the dresser better be finished.

Until an ABC party rolls around, the ductape dress will continue to be unfinished sorry

the crazy cat

So someone stole my pumpkin. This is Philly so leaving it outside wasn't the best idea. This is totally off topic from this blog but my roommates recently got cats. The one is super cute and lovable, while the other.. well hes alright. The one that isn't as well liked is named Bandit and this name was given for a specific reason. WE CAN NEVER CATCH THIS CAT! I hadn't seen him for 3 days so I went looking with my roommate and after checking the whole house, we heard meows in the kitchen, behind the stove. Kill me now. We moved the stove and while we were doing this the cat went under the stove. so we opened the bottom drawer and out popped Bandit. Geeze kitty's getting locked up for life. I decided to draw what my pumpkin looked like even though you can't see a picture.

Pumpkin progress

So.. just visited my dad today and got the pumpkin. Had to ride my bike from Park to 6th with a huge pumpkin in my arms. Lets just say, this better be worth it. My friends suggested I carve it to look like the joker so that's what I'm going to do. We'll see how this turns out... tomorrow is the big night..

First exercise :)

So fashion was brought to my attention in the last class so I was researching sites about recycled fashion to post about on the main blog page. I had meant to find articles or sites about people recycling the styles of the past but instead found the literal recycling-of-materials-to-make-fashion sites. This one site that I came across struck me. click here It was about fashion designers making garments out of things like airline blankets and used clothing. "About 30% of our collection is made from old textiles." Using old textiles is actually fun and challenging for the designer and links back to class and how designers differentiate themselves even though they don't have copyrights. This is a way to see their creativity.

The sweatshirt on the right looks really cool and it is easy to determine how it was pieced together. I have seen people walking around in similar styled clothing, but I don't think that their articles were made from recycled items.

I noticed that many of the designers were from Berlin, which makes sense seeing that there were German flags for other translations of the articles. I find that these designers are quite ingenious to do this because it not only saves money, it follows with the greater awareness of "going green" and recycling. My only problem is that this is an international article, this was one of the first pop ups on Google and it wasn't from the United States. Why aren't our designers doing what the German ones are?

If our designers found it in themselves to recycle and create like the ones in Berlin, we might have the same quality clothing, but for less money, and less guilt towards the environment

Halloween!

Every Halloween we carve pumpins into scary, happy, cute, or ugly designs that are shown to the whole neighborhood. My mom bought me a pumpkin this year which I should be recieving pretty soon from my sister. This project I will actually finish.

These are some really awesome pumpkin carving ideas.

I usually end up carving my pumpkins like the first entry because its easy and effective. This year I might be a little more creative and try the technique used on the alien themed pumpkin or the skull one.

Lazy...

Have not touched that narnia dresser in forever. We just rearanged my living room and there is no space for it. My other roommates have the plan to put fireworks in it and just blow it up so I might go with that plan instead of finishing this project. (of course ill post pictures) Currently working on painting my kitchen. I drew out designs from this wrapping paper I had and my roommate and I have been painting them with our left over paint. I'm starting to realize more and more that I seriously don't finish my projects. I didn't finish the dresses because the party was a bit sketchy, and I didn't finish the dresser because it's a pain and I have no attachment to it. The kitchen wall better get finished because I have to look at it everyday.

I was serching on the internet for cool things to paint on walls before I was inspired by the wrapping paper and came across this. I was completely blown away. He paints so beautifully and with such detail that he fooled me a couple of times. It reminds me of the ways that rooms were decorated way-back-when and how much effort that was put in. We usually don't put as much effort into our homes visually besides pictures and framed paintings. I want to turn this house into my canvas almost. I won't go as far as this artist did, but there will definitly be a bit of Caitlyn on the walls when I move out.

New Project!

Alright...so I don't always finish my projects before I start new ones. I was recently inspired by the ABC party theme to make a cute dress. I looked at these sites and found some cute ideas.



http://www.craftster.org/blog/?p4176



http://blog.snapler.com/tag/duct-tape-prom-dress/



http://open.salon.com/blog/zumalicious/2009/07/02/when_i_flounce



I saw all of the prom dresses that were sent in to the prom dress contest in google images and was very impressed by what they did, but those dresses looked horrific with their themes. I want to make a cute dress like my favorites (the skittle dress, the glove dress, and the news paper dress). I had in my possession silver, pink and turquoise duct tape so I'm set to make a good one. I made the top part of the dress so far and I'm thinking a black trash bag would be best for the bottom so i can move.

Finally painted

Again... I'm sorry for the poor quality of this photo but as you can see, the dresser is now fully painted white and is ready for a cool design. I have green, light blue, pink, and yellow paint to work with. I'm thinking vines and flowers or maybe just highlighing the designs on the dresser with the colors.

1st step

So the plan for today is to sand the whole dresser to get it ready to hold the paint. I found some sand paper in the basement so this will be easy. Not much else I can do until i figure out the design. I have a very poor quality photo of the dresser below.

Reuse old junk

Anything can be taken and turned into something incredible, be it clothes, furniture, or food. My name is Caitlyn Ridgley and I enjoy taking the ordinary things in my life and making them unique and awesome. Recently I moved into an apartment which was filled with furniture the previous tenants left. My plan is to revamp this old piece of junk dresser/narnia/armoir thing and make it worth looking at. I have some ideas after looking at this link.

http://design-milk.com/purpose-restoration/

Anyone following, I'd appreciate your feed back.