Quilted Accessories Session 5: Stitching Up the Computer Clutch & Projects

So before we can sew this into the pouch, I'm going to add the edging that I talked about earlier, to really highlight these two decorative portions. So I'm going to do the bird first, and I'm going to do the two short sides and then I'll do the two long sides. This is really easy to do and it works best with a regular zigzag stitch. So that's what I'm going to be using, is just a plain zigzag stitch. And it doesn't need to be any particular size.

It doesn't need to cover the whole thing. We just want it to hold it down. We want the decorative portion to be this wonderful texture that you get by twisting the fabric. So I'm just twisting that fabric up, and I'm going to lay it down along that edge here and zigzag it in place and then I'll decide if I'm going to cut off the excess or leave the excess. I'm not sure what I'll do until I see what it looks like.

So I'm going to put that twisted fabric down where I want it, and then I'm going to put my foot down on top and I'm just going to zigzag. And just twist as necessary. Now, if the ridge of that fabric wants to get stuck in your foot, you could see I was giving it a little bit of a pull from behind, and that's why I was doing that because it wanted to get stuck, the foot has an opening in there. So, don't take, the fuzz off of your fabric, tell it what it has to do and tell your machine, "Yes, you are going to feed this" if it's going to be any problems whatsoever. You're not going to hurt your machine that way.

Okay now I'm just going to leave this kind of in place there because that's where I'm going to start sewing for this next one. Nice twist to that fabric. You notice that I'm not back stitching, I'm just doing that same technique that I was doing earlier where I'm holding things in place so that it doesn't feed and it stitches on top of itself which is very similar to back stitching, but kind of easier. All right. So now we've got a great frame around our bird.

Doesn't that look wonderful? So we have this wonderful frame. And so first what I always do is I say, "okay, well, if I cut it flush, "then I don't know what's going to look like "if I don't cut it flush." So I'm not going to cut it flush and see if I like that first. I'm going to cut little tails and see if I like those little tails. Which I can tell you right now, I do.

So I'm probably going to leave those tails rather than have a flush cut, 'cause I like that added texture again. Texture is what makes things more interesting. Okay, so that's nice. Very cool. All right, so now we just have this guy here and then we're gonna sew this baby together.

So this one's going to get the pink on the out, the edge here. And all I'm going to be doing is, is right across here, I'm not going to do anything else. I want this fringe to play along the bottom. And if I were to put this there, then it would kinda hide how cool that fringe is. So, I'm going to go all the way across here.

And this fabric is quite a bit thicker and I ripped it thicker too, so the machine's going to probably balk at me in the beginning, and I'm just going to tell it it has to do what I want it to do. And I stitched in place there, now I'm going to twist. And tell that guy he has to go through. And if I have to lift him up and readjust him, I will, there we go. But don't let your machine get the best of you when you're asking it to do something that kind of makes it grumpy.

And I'm gonna come back here and I'm going to give it a pull. kind of just force it to go over that. Okay. So now we've got that nice decorative edge to that and I'm gonna clip those off. They're going to hang a bit too, like they do elsewhere.

And now before I can sew this guy together, I'm gonna turn him around, I'm going to clip off all of his threads, and so he's not all messy inside, and then I'm going to trim the edges, so that they don't have any excess fabric on them. And that way I can line them up well, when I sew the pouch together. I'm going to trim everything even with the batting and backing fabric. I think that's pretty good. Now, this wanted a bunch, so I'm gonna give it a hard pull there.

I could press it if I wanted to, but it's really not worth it. And now I'm just going to trim away anything that's hanging out that I don't want hanging out. And that's about it. So, I have a couple of options here. I have a raw edge here and for this raw edge I can put a binding on it like I did here.

So this, I put basically a binding on or I can simply zigzag it and I'm going to just zigzag it. And that zigzag is kind of hold all that stuff into place. And so that's the very first thing I'm going to do in this process of sewing this together. So what I didn't do was satin stitches. Satin stitching it would have been, completely covering that edge and making it really neat and tidy.

But because there's really nothing neat and tidy about this whole technique, I don't find the need to satin stitch that, I just enough to hold it in place and not let those edges get all roughed up when I put the iPad in and out. So now, I'm simply going to fold this up to where I want it to be, and I want to make sure that my bird isn't compromised in the back. So I'll turn it over and make sure the bird is where I want it to be, and it is, make sure I like where that flap is going to be, and I do. So that looks fabulous to me. And I'm now going to stitch this in place.

And I'm going to do it with a straight stitch. And I'm going to do it several times along each side. You could pin it if you want to, but because there's so many layers, the pinning kind of seems to get in the way rather than helping. And right now I'm going to do it right on the edge, and then I'm gonna move in a little bit and then move in a little bit. And I'm starting at the fold and moving to the raw open edge here.

And then I'm going to back stitch. There it is. And that back stitch is very important because this is going to get a lot of use of things going in and out of it. So that back stitch is really going to help hold things in place. And now I'm going to just move over a bit more.

And again, back stitch. And then one more time. So what we end up with, is this kind of rough looking edge, which is exactly what we want. We don't want this to look too polished. This is a deconstructed technique.

And so, we go with that flow sort of. So I'm going to clip these threads and now we'll go to the opposite side. And I have to pay attention to where this ends and I'm doing it from this side because, otherwise this is all going to be underneath there and it's kind of a pain. right there, back stitch, and then two more times. All right, so we've cut those threads and it's up to you whether or not you want to do this last step but I kind of like this last step.

If I stitch across here, then I know this is going to close nicely. But I need to make sure my, iPad fits in there first and where it's going to fit in there first, before I know exactly where that's going to go. So yeah, we've got a great fit without our case. The question is, is do we have a good fit with our case because who knows how we're going to be carrying this about. Again, the reason I wanted this is so that I could use it with my iPad but also put in a pad of paper, the little plug for my iPad.

And it's a pretty tight fit but I've still got room in there for other things. And you can see now that this changes where this line would be. And so, if I want to put a line in here it's going to be in a different spot. So I'm going to opt not to put a line at all. And instead what I'm going to be doing, is I'm going to be putting a closure on this.

I really like the way that looks. I really like the way it looks even better with the case on because this fits right across the top so it's kind of a perfect fit. So what I'll be doing for this, and I don't have it included right now, but it's pretty simple for you to understand, is that I will put a button right here that I'll just hand stitch on. And then right here, I will hand stitch on a long piece of probably rat tail or some type of ribbon, so that when I pull this down I can wrap that ribbon around that button. And that's what's going to hold this close.

So it's a very simple closure. You'll see now how fun that fray is and how cool that looks and how easy this is. And it's a great way to, store all of your valuable equipment. You could make one for a small camera. You can make one for even your phone if you tend to be hard on your phone, and put it in a case before you put it in your phone or put it, I mean, put it in your purse or your back pocket.

It's just a really easy way of making storage containers for your valuables. It's easy to come up with your patterns. It's not tough. You just kind of have to understand how the mechanics of something would work. So this is my checkbook cover.

And again, I said earlier that this is a big rectangle. So imagine if you will, that this ribbon, which is acting as a binding weren't on these two sides, we could open this up and it would simply be a longer rectangle. And so when I did the measuring I needed to know how big my checkbook was so that I could fit twice here, so that it fits in there and it folds over, twice plus about a half inch. And so I just used that math. I measured the width of the checkbook, added a half inch just so that bulk will fit in there.

And so that when I put this kind of faux binding on, that would work. Now, this faux binding is something I did instead of just doing this multiple stitching. And I've done just the multiple stitching before too. But this is simply a piece of ribbon. And I took the ribbon and I laid it down on one side, folded it over to the other side, pinned it in place and then used a decorative stitch to stitch it down.

And I left the ends long and just tied little knots on them. Before I sewed them together I did the same thing on these raw edges, just like I showed you that I put a binding on the raw edge here. And so for this I did the same thing. I just took a strip of fabric, twice the size I wanted the width of this to be, and it's got raw edges on the inside and on the outside. And I just laid it down, folded it over, and then just used the same stitches that I used throughout the body here to stitch it in place.

No perfection. We're not looking for perfection with this technique. For this technique, we're looking for this wonderful kind of deconstructed look. So this just needs a nice pressing and it will look really fabulous. I am looking forward to having the two of these to work together and I'm loving all of my wonderful, warm colored accessories that I've made using this great, wonderful technique of deconstructed crazy quilting.