I picked up Sew Stylish by Katie Ebben at the library the other day. It’s a pretty good book. They are mostly simple, immediate gratification projects, like edging a shirt with silk ribbon, adding a founce/tier to lengthen a skirt, and a little clutch. The demo clothes in the pictures are just great; there’s a trench coat in particular that totally distracted me from the flower pin that was the actual project. The chapters are organized around techniques like patching and hemming and trimming, and each chapter starts with a couple of pages of basic skills before applying them to different problems. The ideas are better than the advertised uses. Like this flower patch, used as an actual patch in the book. I think I might put a pinback on it and attach it to my purse. It’s machine embroidered using a tight zigzag stitch and my much beloved darning foot. My new Swiss embroidery hoops performed admirably, although after nabbing a similar one at Joann’s last week (on sale for 99 cents!), they seem less exotic.

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My sister gave me a bunch of buttons for christmas last year, sorted into 3 mason jars: white buttons, colorful buttons, and gold buttons. I had some good project ideas for the white ones and the colorful ones, but what about the gold ones? I couldn’t think of anything for a long time, and then a few days ago when I had them all spilled out on the floor, it came to me: they look like medals. I would make medals with them. Very silly medals. And ribbons too. This gave the bonus fun of rummaging through all my ribbon to find suitable pieces. I made them all into pins and clips to wear, never mind in what context you would wear such a thing.

Mark and I kept coming up with fake awards to give each other. He won “kitten’s choice” and I got a ribbon in ribbon-making. I think they’re hilarious.

Whew, that’s it for button week. Thanks for all the nice comments!

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Fun with jump rings and doll buttons. It’s only about an inch long and looks particularly nice on a long chain. I tried to make a matching ring, but my initial scheme didn’t work out. Back to the drawing board.

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If I knew how easy it was to make cute belts, I would’ve made a bunch a long time ago. Briefly: cut a 2-inch strip from a canvas and a lighter cotton, sew them right sides together with a quarter inch seam allowance, turn (this is the hard part), iron, fold in the ends, topstitch around the whole thing, sew on button, sew button holes. If you put a button on both sides (probably best with very flat buttons), it’s even reversible (or if you use some other fastening, but I like the button). I want to make one for every day of the week.

And in my ongoing project to match my wardrobe with my Blythe doll’s, this is the same fabric as the circle skirt.

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How could I not do an embroidery project, right? Machine embroidered grass and stems, felt leaves and flowers, plus, of course, the buttons. I decided to take the button-flower thing literally and chose my flowery-est buttons. The picture is not picking up the 2 layers of grass embroidered in darker greens. :/ My husband offered some very good opinions on the design, and it’s sooo much better for it. Thanks Mark!

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Two necklaces, made the same way but with different buttons. I think the white one is more casual and would look good with a tshirt. I didn’t have as many different sizes of the shell buttons, so it’s not quite as nice of a curve, but the shell makes it really pretty, I think, plus I put a real chain on it.

And look at the shell button bracelet and necklace that Creative Kismet made, plus a tutorial, even!

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I’m making button projects this week for a maybe book project. I’m having fun playing with my buttons, and having an excuse to buy more buttons. Anyway, here’s project #1: stacked button ring. I picked up the ring finding at a department store in Switzerland. Now, of course, I wish I had bought a couple more.

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My card storage bins are starting to fill up. I’ve been throwing gift cards in with the normal-sized cards, and they all tend to get lost in the bottom, so here’s a new box to store them. It’s from a new Japanese craft book, of course. Looks like I don’t have the book on Crafting Japanese yet, sorry, will get it added soon. This book is seriously so right up my alley. Lots of little felt boxes. The book wanted me to hand sew up the sides, but screw that. I used the zigzag stitch on my machine instead and it turned out exactly like the picture. I see a lot of these in my future. Any excuse to use my little binding tool.

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