The Long Long Weekend

The kids ended up having a five day weekend, due to the Easter holiday, and their dad visiting from Toronto. Dad had to leave on Sunday, which left me wrapping up the long, long weekend by myself. Let me just say, I love my kids and I love hanging out with them, but by Monday afternoon I was counting the minutes until the school doors opened!

Fortunately the rain clouds parted long enough to enjoy some of this:

This is my favourite time of year in Vancouver. I first moved out here about thirteen years ago, in April. It was still wintry and dirty back East, but Vancouver was green and lush, full of these beautiful buds of spring.

I did manage to finish a couple of started projects over the weekend. The first is a second 241 Tote. This one is for my cousin's birthday. Last March. She chose this fabric, based on the buttercup bag that I made the School Fair last year.

This is Ruby Star Rising fabric, lined with a vintage sheet. I perfected the zipper pockets on this bag (not so perfect on the last version), and used an adjustable handle and added the key fob like last time.

I heart the hot pink top stitching. I started doing the top stitching on my featherweight, but ended up finding that using a denim needle on my newer machine gave a better result, and struggled less with the thick seams.

I did however use the featherweight to make this:

This is the Shearwater Kaftan made with Wrenly voile. My other sewing machine kept trying to eat this lightweight fabric, but the straight stitch plate on the featherweight made it no problem. I bought that featherweight off Craigslist last year for $175, and I keep seeing them all over CL for around $500. They're not selling, just keep getting relisted. Crazy!

Overall I'm happy with how this turned out - although telling the right side from the wrong side of the voile was so hard that I ended up with a piece the wrong way out - oh well, I figure if it was that hard for me to tell, then no one else will notice. I am still learning the secrets of bias binding, I found the bound neckline was a little stretched, but still wearable.

There were two other important finishes, but I will have to save them for another day!

Thanks for visiting!