Leather make up bag DIY aka the You-can't-be-good-at-everything cautionary tale

So for the last few weeks I've been going to the gym a lot, because my awesome youthful metabolism is failing as I get older and I don't want to have to stop eating cake, basically. Anyway I wanted to make a bag that was big enough for shampoo and stuff as well as make up, because I'm mainly going before work (who can honestly be arsed with that after a 10 hour shift???) and my conditioner leaked all over my work clothes the other day. I didn't realise until it was too late to go home and get new clothes, and it was all kinds of terrible. I basically looked like I was covered in spunk. Very professional.

To make this I used:

.25 metres faux leather

.25 metres lining fabric

25 cm zip

Thing is, I've spoken before about my possibly over dramatic resentment towards zips and other fiddily fastenings. Eughh they're just the worst. But I got to thinking one day, hey man, I did textile design at school for seven years, I'm sure I could make a little bag with a zip fastening, people do that kind of shit all the fucking time, and people are essentially morons. And although I was right in the end, I did make a little bag with a zip fastening, it was not a good little bag with a zip fastening. So copy at your peril.

Out of each fabric cut 1 rectangle and 2 triangles to the above proportions.

I made a paper pattern first out of a few sheets from a pad of graph paper from Wilko. Seriously, cheap graph paper is bloody amazing. I use it to make my own cross stitch and fair isle knitting patterns as well as for small sewing project patterns, and it's like 40p a pad.

Here are mine cut.

Pin one of the triangles to the corner of one of the long sides of the rectangle.

Sew along with 1 cm seam allowance, but stop 1 cm before the end. 

Making sure the needle is in the fabric, lift up the presser foot. Then cut a slit going from the corner of the fabric to nearly where the needle is.

Now bring over the shortest side of the triangle fabric, put down your presser foot and sew along. Do the same for the next corner coming up.

Repeat on the other side of your rectangle, and then repeat the whole thing with your other fabric.

Okay so for some reason one of my sides overlapped by about an inch. I'm still not really sure why. But it's fine I just tripped off the excess, no biggie. Now with the lining fabric wrong side out, and the main fabric right side out, put the lining inside the main fabric.

All of that was the easy part, now is where it started to go horribly, horribly wrong for me.

I pinned the zip to the outside fabric and then to the lining fabric afterwards. I don't know if that's how you're supposed to do it but it but whatever man. Fuck the system.

When I was pinning it, it seemed to fit a bit awkwardly, which probably would have been a warning sign for someone who doesn't have shit for brains like I apparently do.

But it zipped up! So I thought it was probably alright? Anyway I sewed it up, but I found it really difficult at either end of the zip, are you meant to do that bit by hand?

But I hate hand sewing almost as much as I hate zips so I thought fuck it, just leave it and hope I don't lose my eye liner pencil.

There's also a part where I didn't catch the end of the lining fabric so it doesn't fold over properly, but I didn't want to un-pick it and sew it again because a) the stitches would have already left little holes in the leather and b) laziness.

So okay mainly due to my own ineptitude it's not really super pretty and I'm not massively proud of it, but it will work for what I wanted it to and also it taught me a valuable lesson: just stay the fuck away from zips you idiot.

Faux fur cushion set DIY

I found some awesome grey faux fur in Fabric Land for like £6 a metre, but you can buy that shit all over Amazon. It's surprisingly pretty good, I mean the wrong side is rough as fuck, but if you lined it with something nice you could probably make a throw pretty easily. I might make some to match my cushions.

Anyway, I used this tutorial I did a while back to make a set of dope fluffy cushions. Sewing with the fur was pretty easy, I mean you're supposed to only sew with the grain of the fur and a bunch of other stuff but I didn't bother with any of that and they came out okay.

Kitchen cabinet curtain DIY

To make this I used about .75 metres of printed cotton, 2 metres of elastic, and two suction hook thingys which you can buy here in packs of 12 for £1.99.

So I live in my granny's old house that my dear mama owns and renovated a few years back. When it came to designing the new kitchen, my mum (being a chronic food hoarder in the way that most mothers seem to be) decided to put about five thousand cabinets in it.

Trouble is, my kitchen is literally completely fucking lined with cupboards, except this one little gap, which we have tastefully filled in with saucepans and spare chairs. Looks cute right? 

First I measured my 'gap' that I wanted to cover with the curtain. It was about 60 inches across and 35 inches down. You'll need to add a bit extra for side and bottom hems (add 1 inch both length and width) and for the channel for the elastic at the top (add 2 inches). So I needed a 61 x 38 inch rectangle.

Sew half inch folded over hems along the bottom and sides of the rectangle first. Then sew a fully inch folded over hem along the top to thread the elastic through. It's helpful if you attach the end to a safety pin and then thread that through.

Helpfully illustrated with the above photograph.

Then all that's left to do is attach the ends of the elastic to the hooks on the sucker things, and stick them to either side of the gap.

And now nobody needs to see my rusty saucepans and half drunk bottles of amaretto. Victory!