This is my first post of 2013. I’m sorry it has taken so long. This year we took our holidays one week later than usual. When we got back, there was only 1 week to finish preparing everything for the new school year, not to mention having to do it in between meeting up with friends and family for the holiday season.
For the first post of the new year I would like to share with you some changes in the blogging schedule as well as what I hope to achieve this year. For the whole of last year, I stuck to a 3 blog post a week schedule. Those of you who are bloggers will know that preparing for a single blog post, including the research and photographs, will take at least a few hours. When it comes to preparing free patterns and tutorials, it takes even longer than that. But I have always wanted to include more free patterns and tutorials because it would be more meaningful to have sew-alongs. In order to do this, I have decided to cut down the number of blog posts a week to 2. This is so that I can devote an entire week to preparing a sewing video and free patterns for download.
Also, to make the blog posts more organized, I am also going have different themes for each month. All the sewing projects, free patterns, book reviews and fabrics (and even some giveaways) will be related to the theme of the month. I will be posting mainly on Mondays and Thursdays, and the posts will rotate between free patterns, book reviews and fabrics as usual. I will still be taking in translation requests so keep them coming. In addition to that, on the last week of every month there will be a free sewing tutorial/pattern/video based on the theme of the month. I hope I can find time to pull it off. Wish me luck! 😛
For this month’s theme, it was a no-brainer. I have been doing nothing but back-to-school sewing for the past one week. I made a new pencil case, new wallet, new art apron and a new lunch bag is in progress. So the theme for this month is Back to School. 🙂
And to kick this off, here are some free patterns I found on back-to-school projects. These patterns are from a craft shop called Pirol that is located in Kyoto.
This is the link to the free pattern list. http://item.rakuten.co.jp/pirol/c/0000000475/ There are tote bags for art, shoe bags, bento bags, water bottle carriers, simple drawstring pouches, rucksacks, pianica cases, messenger bags etc.
Browsing is easy, just click on the thumbnails of the projects you want to make and you will be directed to the individual how-to-make page. The patterns are usually simple geometric shapes so you can just draw them out directly on your fabric like I do, or you draft them out on paper first using the measurements given.
The instructions are not always very consistent. Some are quite brief like this one below, with most of the steps in point form and some diagrams. There are also some simpler patterns that have clearer diagrams. But if you have had some experience in sewing, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out?
I know that not all of you are preparing for the new school year but this should come in handy sooner or later. You can’t have too many bags! 🙂
Well, that’s my post for this Monday, see you on Thursday with post about fabrics suitable for kiddy bags!