June Stashbusting: DIY Gold Clutch

June's stashbusting theme is containment, i.e. "sewing things to put other things in." While I could do something sensible, like make a reusable grocery bag, let's be honest -- Mr. Cation has gotten so many free bags from business school job fairs, we're probably set for life (and don't even talk to me about pens, notepads, and water bottles with random company names on them!). I'm a two-purse kind of girl (one nice professional one, and one casual messenger bag), so I don't need any more purses. I do, however, need a new clutch for dress-up events, when my giant teacher purse (the professional-looking one) doesn't cut it. My current clutch was a free gift from a Black Friday sale in college, so I think it's about time I replaced it!

While I was in Italy, I stopped by a Euro Village, which I guess is the equivalent of a dollar store. I picked up a bunch of sewing notions for a euro each, as well as this gold placemat for two euros. It was so nice and weighty, I figured it would make for a good clutch. "Oho, but that means you're not stashbusting!" you say accusingly...well, I used stash fabric for the lining! I got this home-dec sample in London on our first anniversary trip, and it was the perfect size and color scheme for this simple clutch.

Step 1: To make the lining, cut out a piece of sturdy fabric a little bigger than your placemat. Fold over and press the edges (and sew mitered corners if you want super neat corners!) to make a rectangle with finished edges. Pin or clip the lining to your placemat and sew all the way around the edge, leaving a little gap in the middle of one short side so that you can insert an elastic later. 

I used clips instead of pins because the punctures show on my vinyl placemat. I wasn't sewing too neatly and veered off at one point and had to unpick; fortunately, the shininess of the placemat distracts from the needle holes!

Step 2: Play around with how big of a pocket/flap you want on your clutch. Fold up the side that does NOT have the gap in stitching; this will be the size of your pocket. The flap with the gap will be the "cover" of the pocket. I settled for not-quite-thirds for my folds. Once you've decided, measure your placemat to determine the center, then make a tiny mark so that you know where to sew your button. Sew on the button. (If I had been making this clutch two years ago, it wouldn't have occurred to me to sew the button before sewing up the sides...and then I would've cursed my lack of foresight, since it's much easier to sew on the button at this point, while it's still flat!) 

Step 3: Find the gap that you left in the "top" flap, insert a hair elastic, and topstitch over it a few times with tiny stitches to secure. (I sewed most of the clutch with a stitch length of 4, to better match the existing topstitching on the placemat, but switched to a stitch length of 2 for the elastic part.)

Make sure that the inserted elastic is big enough to go over the button. 

Stitching done on both the button and elastic! I chose this black button with a gold rim to break up all of the gold. 

Step 4: Sew up the side seams, backstitching at the top of the pocket for extra security. 

Done!

Summary:

Fabric: 12"x18" gold vinyl placemat, similar size 100% cotton canvas. This project is perfect for showcasing a cool fabric that you only have a bit of! Of course, if you were going to make it from a non-placemat, you might need to add in some stiff interfacing to keep your clutch from being too floppy.

Notions: 1 hair elastic leftover from when my hair was still long enough to require such things, 1 shank button from the stash

Hours: 1.5...a nice quick project!

Will you make it again? Considering how few purses I use, probably not for myself, although I might make more for friends if I come across cool placemats.

Total cost: I don't remember how much the home dec fabric was, but the whole project was definitely less than $5. Not as good as free, but at least I didn't have to wake up at 5 AM and fight a bunch of other people at Express before the limited supply ran out! 

Final thoughts: It's funny, in high school and college, all my accessories were silver/stainless steel and cooler toned, but recently I realized that gold/brass and warmer tones suit my coloring better; this clutch reflects this discovery (and all the light in the room). Also, I like that this clutch is actually big enough to put things in! Which, as you know, was the whole point of June's theme.

Experimenting with how much I can fit: my iPhone, my even smaller clutch with my credit cards and ID and cash, and a little makeup thing that I use about twice a year. I bought it when I got engaged four years ago, and I still haven't used it up...

I decided that a picture of makeup in my clutch wasn't a fair representation of what I was likely to actually carry in it...so I replaced it with one of my favorite short story collections instead. Perfect for all of those times that Mr. Cation is groomsmanning/MCing at weddings (because he always gets asked! He's like a professional groomsman and MC at this point) and I'm bored. 

Proof that it still closes nicely even with a book inside!

Winner, Winner

...chicken dinner and a question for you all:

1) Winner: Congratulations to Aleah of No Time to Sew for winning May's knit stashbusting challenge! She says she's not good at improv while sewing, but if this darling dress is what results from sewing on the fly, well, I say she needs to do more of it! Pop me an email, so we can send you a little something!

2) Winner: Beth of SunnyGal Studios gets to take a crack at tracing that umm, rather intense pattern sheet from Modellina Facile! Let me know what your address is so I can send you your prize and you can get to tracing...because goodness knows, following those lines is going to take long enough.

3) Chicken dinner: It's been a while since I put up any Walnut photos, so have a quick iPhone snap of the closest thing I could get to a chicken dinner.

He had burrowed himself under the covers of the guest bed for his morning nap, and looked totally shocked when I flipped back the covers, put a stuffed chicken leg plushie next to him, and quickly took a picture. 

3) Question: Have you ever put a knit lining into a woven dress? I want to make a sheath dress from the gold lace I have leftover from making Elaine's wedding dress, but obviously the lace is see-through. I've got a cream-colored jersey that would make a nice underlay, but I'm not sure if mixing stretch/non-stretch is a big sewing no-no. Thoughts, sewasauruses?

Sewing and My Personal Sense of Style

Have you seen my guest post over at Seamstress Erin's blog as part of her series on Sewing and Style? She's been doing this fabulous set of interviews with sewing bloggers about how these two things intersect, featuring such sewlebrities as Handmade by Carolyn (one of the first sewing blogs I discovered), American Duchess (one of my favorite costuming blogs), and Meg the Grand (one of my first sewing blogger friends!).

I was so flattered when Erin asked, because, well...if you had told middle school me that one day I would be asked to write about my sense of style, I would have laughed in your face. Actually, no, painfully shy middle school me would have shrunk back behind my book and thought malicious thoughts about punching you because it was probably a joke, like when horrible people nominate the unpopular kid for homecoming queen as a big prank. See, for most of my life, style was a mystery, a je ne sais quoi that cool people effortlessly had, and which I cluelessly grasped at, only to fail miserably. See exhibits #1 and 2:

Middle school me: giant glasses, high-waisted pants (but not in the cool retro sort of way), awful print-mixing and ugly sweaters.  Oh dear. 

Yeah. I was forever being teased at school about my free t-shirts from various academic competitions and mom jeans sent from Hong Kong by my aunt and grandma, not to mention the fact that I wore huge glasses and had no idea what to do with my hair. I know it was the late eighties/early nineties, and everyone was dressing questionably, but even my dressing questionably skills were, um, questionable. When I hit high school and college and finally got to dictate how I spent my clothing budget, my goal was to dress as unobtrusively as possible, which meant buying whatever mass-produced item was hottest at GAP and Old Navy. By the time I started teaching, I had more confidence and a slightly better sense of myself and who I was, so I began branching out into colors and quirky science t-shirts, but even then, my wardrobe was heavily dictated by what was available at the mall and in my price range. So how did I make the leap over to dressing like a cool geek (as opposed to a dorky geek)? Go check it out!

This is cool geek, right? 

A Look Through Italian Sewing Magazines

While I was in Rome, I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to bring home any gorgeous Italian wool suiting or silk chiffon because of the prohibitively high prices. For someone who thinks that anything more than $3/yd (or $3/thrifted sheet, which translates to less than a dollar a yard!) is pricey...well, let's just say I'm lucky I didn't keel over right then and there in Fratelli Bassetti Tessuti! I really wanted some sewing-related souvenirs, though, and somehow, elastic and zippers don't cut it. They're so...boring. Thankfully, Assorted Notions' blog post about fabric shopping in Rome clued me in on the treasures waiting for me in those ubiquitous green newsstands -- sewing patterns in magazines! I picked up four different magazines while I was there, from different stands:

Let's take a look through them more carefully, shall we? First, Burda Giovane & Easy, meant for the younger set and presumably with easier patterns:

There are a lot of gathered elastic waists, simple shapes, and trendy design elements.

There are other articles about make-up, style, and crafting, like this one with directions for making an envelope clutch.

Pattern sheets in the middle, printed on tissue paper. I like that they take a basic shape and build on it for different looks, kind of like the Feminine Wardrobe book. I really like the first set of patterns.

I want to give 3D a try, as I need a nice basic button-up shirt. 

The instructions include how to take measurements, layout, and basic construction. 

There are some nice line drawings illustrating the steps, which is good because I don't read Italian. 

Then there's the actual Burda Style magazine, which goes along with the site that I used to post on, except that I got tired of reloading my pictures for every make (when you have to load them on the blog, Flickr, PR.com, and BurdaStyle, it gets to be a lot of extra time spent summarizing and linking and loading).

It starts with a helpful article about how the patterns in the magazine are similar to runway trends.  

I love that all the technical drawings are gathered onto one page! 

Patterns like this don't scare me anymore, after my experience with Japanese sewing books. However, I have no idea whether these come with seam allowances or not. Anyone know? 

There was this cutesy section featuring matching mother-daughter outfits. 

Just watch me have SHBs that are all male...my SHB and I won't be able to wear matching star-print skirts!

Little accompanying article about what household objects one could use for stamping fabric. 

Oh hey, random article with recipes for sandwiches! Is it just me, or do other people think that 1) it's weird that there's food in a sewing/style magazine...it feels unsanitary somehow, even though I know that there's no way to get printed crumbs and oil stains onto patterns that are stapled in the middle of the magazine, and 2) who the heck needs a recipe for a sandwich? A pot roast, I understand, but don't you just assemble things on a sandwich? 

I had never heard of La Mia Boutique until reading Assorted Notions' post, so I was quite intrigued.

There's a whole bunch of Grace Kelly-inspired dresses and coats, including the lovely gray outfit on the cover.  

I love the pleats on this dress. Also, Grace Kelly does not do bold colors? All of these are pastels and silvery grays.

Technical drawings. I'm quite keen on trying #8!

I got really confused when I saw the bottom of this page of drawings, until I read further in the magazine...

...and realized that there are patterns for a men's tuxedo?!

And *whew*, if I have a male SHB I can still dress him. 

And lastly, Modellina Facile, which was also new to me. Going by what I know of Italian, this translates to Easy Tiny Models? Since the suffix -ina means a smaller version of the thing?

A whole set of patterns for going to the beach/pool! It's too bad the fabric they chose is so busy...it obscures the cute style lines of the swimsuit.

I really like the look of that blazer.  

The directions don't have illustrations like the easy/teen magazine does. Still, if you either had a similar pattern in your stash, or you were really good and winging it, you could probably figure it out. 

The whole collection, unfortunately displayed on models, instead of technical drawings. That is, it's unfortunate that there isn't a page of all the technical drawings, and not that the modeling itself is unfortunate.

Okay, now here's the fun part -- one of you gets to fake-visit Italy with me by winning your own copy of the last magazine, Modellina Facile! Just specify in your comment that you'd like to enter the giveaway, and tell me what's the most you've ever spent (per yard or per meter) for fabric...let's see how  close we get to that ridiculously-priced cotton-viscose blend in my last post! Also, if you live in Italy, you probably shouldn't enter this giveaway :)

In the spirit of full disclosure, this is what the pattern sheet looks like for the Modellina Facile magazine. Happy tracing!

I'll choose a winner on Friday night. Speaking of things that end on Friday night, have you voted on your favorite knit stashbusting project yet? Go check out the link party; there are some pretty spectacular makes!

Oh Hai, I'm Back From Italy!

Sorry about the blog silence (and lack of replies to all of your thoughtful comments on my last post...I'll get to that soon, promise!) recently, but I've been busy traipsing around Rome and Florence! Yes, that's right, Mr. Cation whisked me away to a certain boot-shaped country to celebrate the end of the school year (although I still had to read final papers input grades...but better to do that on a train through the Tuscan countryside than in TCOCC!) and our third anniversary. We managed to quite a bit of walking and sight-seeing (and eating) in the course of eight days:

It was a bit of a nightmare actually getting to Rome, thanks to a United snafu that gave us only 45 minutes to make our connection in Newark, and so of course they delayed our flight out of LAX by two hours. At which point they offered to put us on a flight two days later, but Mr. Cation talked them into sending us to Heathrow that night, where we were able to wrangle a Lufthansa flight to Munich and then finally to Rome. That shower and sleep after 36 hours of travel was one of the best I've ever had in my life. Thankfully, the wonders of the Eternal City soon put that poor early start out of my mind!

While I loved our previous Europe anniversary trips, this one probably wins in the epic grandeur category -- I've dreamed about seeing the Colosseum since I was eight, when I was first intrigued by a book that my parents had originally bought on their honeymoon trip there. I was fascinated at the time by the thought of secret pulley systems used to bring tigers up to the arena from the underground passages, so it was a little surreal to actually be at the Colosseum (which I also spelled wrong countless times while typing it because of the stupid Oakland Coliseum's influence). And of course, all the other piazzas, palazzos, and chiesas were gorgeous and ornate and so very ancient feeling! It's not a feeling one gets too often here in TCOCC, where it's a big deal when a building is from the Jazz Age.

It was just as spectacular as I was hoping it would be. After all, it was spectacular enough to convince my very thrifty Asian dad to actually purchase a gift shop book!

Almost as exciting as the Colosseum though (okay not really), was the prospect of going fabric shopping in Rome. I'd read the NYTimes article about Fratelli Bassetti Tessuti (how's that for a name that I'm never going to remember, except that I typed it into Google maps countless times) and marveled at the Selfish Seamstress' pictures. I thought I was mentally prepared, but there's nothing like actually wandering through the labyrinth of rooms stacked with fabric in person. I was too overwhelmed to do any actual shopping (or take any pictures), probably to Mr. Cation's relief, which is fine because the fabrics were Ex. Pen. Sive. Buon giorno, signorina, would you like to purchase some lace for $500/yd? No? Other fabric stores in the area weren't any better, even if they were a little easier to not get lost in.

This was around the corner from FTB.

Fabrics so nice, they're still wrapped up in protective plastic. Also, what happens if you want to take a look at something that's ten feet up? 

That rack on the left was just one many racks of almost identical-looking bolts of wool suiting. Gray pinstripe? Gray pinstripe with slightly larger stripes? Gray pinstripe in a slightly different shade of gray? Gray pinstripe with slightly wider-spaced stripes? 

Not the same store, but equally scarily priced, this gorgeous silk is €95/meter, or about $125/meter! Incidentally, I learned the Italian word for silk while I was there: seta. It took me a little bit to figure that one out. 

It's not just the silk that's scarily priced, either -- that dotted gingham-ish cotone-viscosa blend at the top is €196/meter, on sale from €327/meter! What could possibly make it that expensive???

See, at least bridal laces I can understand. These went for anywhere from €165-398 a meter. Yikes! 

In the end, I didn't bring home any Italian fabric, but I'm strangely un-sad about that. When it comes down to it, I'm a thrifty Asian at heart, my favorite yardage is thrifted sheets, and I'm generally too haphazard in my sewing to do justice to a fine piece of material. Instead, I got my sewing souvenirs at a lot more affordable place and price...

Is that cans of pet food to the left? Yes, it is!

That's right, a normal grocery store has a whole rack of sewing notions! A closer look reveals that besides the more normal measuring tape, hand-sewing needles, elastic, and velcro, they also carry Gutermann thread in quite a few colors,

And not just in black, white, navy blue, and beige, either! They also had gold, neon orange, and invisible nylon thread, among other colors. 

jeans needles,

I do wonder at the selection of only standard and jeans needles, though...do people sew that much denim there?
What about ballpoint needles for knit fabric, or Italians just secretly wear Canadian tuxedoes? 

Sorry about the blurriness, I was apparently too wriggly with excitement!

Jeans buttons! In a regular grocery store at the Termini bus station! What kind of gloriousness is this?! Oh, what I wouldn't give to have this kind of thing at my local Trader Joe's. I ended up coming home with lots of jeans buttons (but no jeans needles, since I wasn't sure if they'd fit my machine), elastic in various sizes, sewing machine oil (now I have no excuse for not doing maintenance), and four different Italian sewing magazines. Because that's right, they've also got sewing magazines at normal newstands on the street corner. I'll show you those tomorrow, though, so that I can give them a properly thorough look. In the meantime, I'm trying to fight through the jetlag by sorting through our gazillion photos...

Mr. Cation was all about the auto-stitch app. 

The Fontana di Trevi was just as impressive as I remember from my parents' honeymoon pictures.

The Arno River at night...we totally fell in love with Florence!