Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Sew Kneurotic

Being from a Chinese family, I grew up eating a lot of white rice. When my sisters and I still lived at home, my mom would buy rice in 10kg bags and up to a few years ago, the rice was packed in beautifully patterned cloth bags (some cotton, some polyester, always an unknown material). Nowadays, they come in nylon sacs.

Over the years, my mom saved up all these bags/pieces of cloth and when she found out I took up quilting, she gave me her entire stash. The stash was so large, I was only able to bring 9 of these "bags" to Toronto. With some trial and error, I made the following goodies - a yoga mat bag and some reversible environmentally friendly bags.
I also started piecing together two quilts.

The first pink one is a kit I got from the last Creative Festival. It's pretty but I have no idea what to do with it; it's too small for a blanket and too large for a table cloth. So, I have not started the quilting process and just threw it into the closet.
The other one is currently just a bunch of fraying squares. It's my own concoction for a summer blanket.
Knitwise, I've encountered some set-backs.
1) I completely underestimated the chubbiness of my dude's feet. Dude Sock II will need to be frogged to the toes... and it's toe-up socks!
2) I started a shell knit-in-the-round and have reached the neck decreases when I realized the front and back are not the same size! 4 stitches difference, I will try to disguise as a "design feature" but I might be in store for more frogging.

There's a handful of spring/summer projects I want to start but I still haven't received my Interweave! Boo hoo!

10 comments:

yuvee said...

They're so pretty! I've never seen rice packed in those kind of materials before, how interesting.

Sandi Purl said...

yeehaw! you posted! thanks! I'm loving the sewing and quilting. I totally dig that yoga bag. can i have it? ;-p sounds like you're super busy and the dude needs to go on a foot diet. lol!

opportunityknits said...

Our rice never came in such pretty sacks before. You sewed some nice bags out of it.

Regg said...

nice :)

mjm knitting said...

it was nice meeting you at the snb tonight.

once again great job on the reversible bags. it's such an wonderful idea.

-Melinda

Anonymous said...

Really, I haven't known that they use such beautiful fabric bags to store rice and so environmentally friendly too. Your bags are lovely.

Yvette said...

So beautiful. A similar concept to the flour bags of old.
Isn't it a shame that packaging has changed so much and has become basically, another form of advertising?

Mimi said...

It's so nice to be able to reuse the rice bags. The new bags look great with the pockets and for being reversible as well.

Anonymous said...

your sewing is so pretty too. btw, come check out my blog, i have just tagged you a meme

Anonymous said...

Wow! You have such great items created since my last visit!!! I love the corazon mittens from knitty! All these bags (& quilts) are beautiful as well! The colours are fab! I love to make bags as well, but i find my straps tend to go limp after a while...Even if I use interfacing. Do you have any suggestions for me??? ^_^

Lana
http://knittingcollage.blogdrive.com/