Zakka Sewing Book

I may have mentioned my awesome friend Susan before; in her regular awesome manner she sent me a great book for Christmas called Zakka Sewing.  Zakka projects are functional objects to use in the home, meant to add an element of style and individuality to the environment.

Susan sent the book in this super cute bag she made!

We both love the "shabby chic" style, but Susan is more successful at it than I am; it's hard for me to let go of finished edges and 90-degree angles!  She knows I love pink, and hearts; look at how fun and raggedy this heart is!

Okay...getting back to Zakka Sewing...I decided to choose one of the 25 projects in this book to make and show you.  Here's what I made:  the "Flower Corsage Pincushion".  It is a wrist pincushion meant to resemble a wrist corsage.  Mine looks just like the picture in the book--success!

My one complaint with this project is that the flower patterns in the book are not full size; the directions tell you to enlarge them on a copy machine by 200%.  Well, I'm at home in my pajamas, and my scanner doesn't enlarge like a copy machine...so with a lot of scanning, editing and printing, I finally got the flower patterns to approximately the right size (the larger one is about 3" across, and the smaller one is about 2 1/2").  Would it have killed them to include full-size patterns???

After tracing the flower outline onto the fabric, you are supposed to cut it out and then sew around the edges (which are left raw).  Since I'm always thinking, I decided to sew first and then cut out the flower.  It was quick and easy this way.

Here's the flower, it's almost done!

After making the flower, you make the wrist band; that part is very straight-forward.

Sewing it all together (by hand) took a little figuring out; you layer the flower and wrist band with a felt circle and a plastic disc (cut from a milk carton or a random lid) and blanket stitch it all together on the bottom.  The stuffing is actually inserted here, underneith the wrist band (which seemed weird, but it works out okay).

 I have never used a wrist pincushion before, and I am super excited about this one--it is so cute and feels so nice when it's on (it's just like a fabric bracelet) that I hope I will use it a lot!  Once I got past the pattern-enlarging issue, it went together quickly; there is no interfacing or anything tricky, and I had all the materials on hand (you probably do too).  I can see that this will be a perfect little "extra" to add to future craft swap packages on Craftster!

There are several more projects I would like to make out of this book, and I plan to show you at least one more.  Which one will it be--the bunny pencil case, the slippers, or the sashiko pouch?