Resolution for a New Year

Pattern - Love Notions Resolution Bottoms
Skill Level - Confident Beginner
Fabric - Jegging from l'oiseau fabrics
Skills - Serging elastic

If you haven't yet made your New Year's resolution - well how about making this:  resolve to make more things for YOU!  And how about starting by making up one of the Love Notions Resolution Bottoms?

Joggers, leggings and yoga pants with options for a moto look on the leggings and straight leg or boot cut for the yoga pants.  There's even a choice of yoga or contour waistband!  And pockets! There's something here for everyone.  And talk about comfort!

I chose to make the straight leg yoga pants with a contour waistband.  They are pretty quick and simple to make up with the usual Love Notions tutorial that's easy to follow.  Tami makes her patterns so that if you just have a sewing machine, you can make any of her patterns.  If you happen to have a serger, though, I'll share a tip with you that makes putting in the elastic for the contour waistband a snap.

The pattern calls for 3/8" elastic but I could only find 1/4".  The width of your elastic doesn't really matter, though, as the tip works for all widths.

First, stitch the waistband ends and then serge them together at the top.  I butted the ends of elastic together and zig zagged across the join with my sewing machine.  Doing it without an overlap means that you have the least bulk possible and it's more comfortable.  The first thing to do is to quarter your elastic and quarter the top of the waistband.  Now pin the quarters together on the wrong side of the waistband and you're ready to take it to the serger.

Turn off the knife and put the waistband and elastic under the presser foot with the elastic on the top. Gently stretch the elastic so it's the same length as the quarter section of waistband and serge.

That's it!

Now turn the waistband right side out.  Quarter the waistband where it will join the pants and quarter the pants.  Don't assume that the seams are the quarter points of the pants - they aren't!  The back of the pants is a little wider for your caboose.

Pin the contoured waistband to the pants, matching the quarters, and serge them together.  Hey - you're done!  Now you just have to hem and you've got yourself a great pair of bottoms!

And if you don't already have the pattern, you can get it through my affiliate link.

Love Notions Resolution Bottoms

Reusable Produce Bags

Continuing on my quest to tread more lightly on the earth, today I started making reusable produce bags to take shopping.  These can be made of any fabric, but you want something really light in weight.  It would be great if you can see through it, but the bags can always go through the checkout open so the cashier can see the contents.

At first I thought of net curtains from the local thrift store but all they had was an embroidered tablecloth for $5!  Instead, I bought batiste curtain fabric at Fabricland for $5/metre - and really wide in the bargain - so I bought 2 metres.

Next - do I serge the seams or do French seams?  They need to be properly finished because light woven fabric frays like crazy!  I decided that serged seams could trap odd bits of stuff from the veggies, so went for French seams.  This is a quick sew - it took me half an hour from start to finish, taking pictures along the way.

First, I cut a rectangle 24"x16".

Next stitch a seam down one side of 1/4" - this will be on the right side of your fabric.  Now flip the resulting tube inside out and stitch slightly wider than the 1/4" seam to enclose it.  That's the side seam done.

Turn the tube inside out again to the right side - the French seam you've just sewn will be on the inside.  Stitch a 1/4" seam along the bottom.

Flip the bag open and stitch across slightly outside the seam.  Now to finish the top.

With the bag turned so it's inside out, turn the edge 1/4".  This will be on the outside of the bag as your drawstring sleeve will be on the outside.

Now turn it over another 3/4" and pin this hem in place.  I put a clip at the seam and another at its opposite side.  This is where I'll leave openings for drawstrings.

I put pins on either side of the clips so I'll know where to start and stop stitching, making sure there's an opening big enough to take a safety pin holding the drawstring.

Stitch on top of your previous stitching line from one side to the other, making sure you aren't stitching over the planned opening.

You're almost done!  Cut 2 strings double the width of the bag top, with some extra for tying a knot - I cut my strings 31" long and used hemp twine because it's what I had on hand.  You will be inserting 2 drawstrings in the bag from opposite sides.

Tie a knot in the end of one string and put a safety pin through the knot.

Feed the safety pin through the channel right the way around, untie the knot in the end and tie the two ends together.

If you can find light-weight nylon twine, you can melt the ends with a match to prevent them from unravelling.  Now feed the second string length through, starting at the opposite side and tie off as you did the first.

The bag is done!  I weighed my bag to see how heavy it was and it turned out to be 20 grams.  Some bulk outlets will take that off the weight of your produce so you could even mark that on the outside in indelible marker.  One of these days plastic produce bags will be banned in my local grocery store - I'm ready!

Beeswax Food Wraps

We are trying hard to reduce our use of plastic - it's becoming a huge problem world-wide!  To that end, I've been experimenting with making my own food wraps.  I've scoured the Internet for videos and blog posts and have come up with a method that works best for me.

First of all, here's what you need for each wrap -- I'm making mine 10" squares:

cotton fabric cut to your preference - I'm making mine 10" squares, but you can cut circles, rectangles, whatever you want.  You can use pinking shears on the edges to make them pretty or leave them straight.

An old cookie sheet with sides - mine has an 11" base

2 sheets of parchment paper - I cut mine about 13" long and the paper is 15" wide

For each sheet - 2 tsp of beeswax pellets or grated beeswax (pellets are so much simpler!), 1/2 tsp jojoba oil and 2 tsp powdered pine rosin.  You can make it with straight beeswax, but the jojoba oil makes the sheets more pliable.  Pine rosin makes it clingier for bowls.  I didn't have the pine rosin and just used the pellets and oil.

An iron with the steam turned off

So let's get started!  Lay one of the parchment paper sheets on the cookie sheet and place your fabric on that.  I mix up the ingredients in a bowl so that the pellets are coated with the jojoba oil - so much easier I found than distributing the pellets and then trying to get the oil evenly distributed as well!

Sprinkle the pellets on the cloth as evenly as you can.

Then place the second sheet of parchment paper on top.  Now press with your iron - steam turned off.

I found this so much simpler than baking it in the oven.  You can use the iron to push the melted wax around.

You will inevitably get spots that didn't get wax.  Simply place a pellet or two in those spots and iron again.  When the sheet is thoroughly coated, lift if off and air dry it.  When cool, it's ready to use.  The cookie sheet and parchment paper I put away to use again another time.

The heat from my hands warms the wax enough to make it usable for wrapping this block of cheese.

I fold the wrap over it as if I'm packaging up a present with all the folds on one side.

When fully wrapped, it's ready for the fridge.

And it works, too!  Here's an onion that was put in the fridge 2 days ago.  The cut side is still juicy!

To clean the wraps, just wash them in warm water and you can use a gentle soap.  If they're starting to show wear, you can refresh them by putting them in the oven for a minute or two, and even giving them a new coating of the ingredients.  We've decided to have foods with strong smells wrapped in their own patterned cloth - onions will always use the fabric with tiny roses on it!

And how to store them.  You store them flat in a drawer or on a shelf.  I think they're so lovely, that I roll them up and keep them in a glass vase!  Getting rid of plastic wrap just got a whole lot prettier!