We Made It!

We made it through the holiday season and Planet Nice Crafts’ first year to 2019 and the blog’s second year. As predicted, the holiday season was quite hectic with cleaning, shopping, writing out cards, baking, decorating, wrapping presents, cooking meals, and socializing. It was sometimes a blur, but I am happy with how it all turned out.  I hope all of you had an enjoyable holiday season.

As for the holiday recovery process, it has concluded. The Christmas tree is gone, the chairs are back in storage, and any leftover cookies were put in the freezer. This is good news because the new Winter semester is starting next week Tuesday. What put the final touch on the transition was the resuming of Planet Nice Crafts activities. The bean bag chair was initiated. This has been a good project because it has given me an opportunity to become more comfortable with a plaid fabric. The chair has two layers: a lining bag that will hold the pellets and an outer bag. The pattern suggested to use a muslin fabric for the lining bag instead of the design fabric. But because there is so much of this blue plaid fabric, it was decided to use it for the lining bag as well but just inside out so the outer bag is not distorted with any revealing blue plaid from the lining. Another decision was to make the lining bag first to become familiar with the fabric’s pattern.

Because all six of the panels are cut at the very same point in the plaid, a lot of fabric is being used which is good – that was the idea.

After cutting, the construction has been rather smooth, it is just not the most photogenic. After each seam is sewn, it is pressed and because this fabric frays easily, all of the seam edges are finished with a zigzag stitch and pressed again.

Putting the panels together for the lining bag – this is right side out.

Below I have attached the bottom and turned it inside out to check how the stripes have lined up as a trial for the outer bag. I am pleased with how it will look and will follow the same procedure for the outer bag. The bottom will never line up perfectly as it is a circle but that is OK because no one will see it.

The finished lining bag with a top too. The opening is to allow to pour the pellets in. I don’t think there is any way to make this bag more captivating 😉.

Photos aside, previously I was thinking of making this bean bag chair a little more fancy by putting cording throughout. While constructing the lining bag, I decided not to go in this direction but instead stick to the top stitching as the pattern suggests. I am pleased with how the process is going, the Burda pattern is straightforward so why tamper with it?

In the past, Burda did not include seam allowances in their pattern pieces so you had to draw the extra 5/8” or so around each pattern piece on the fabric or another piece of paper so you knew where to cut. This pattern has all of the seam allowances included so this Burda pattern is not any additional work than a typical Simplicity or McCall’s pattern. I actually have traced pattern pieces on paper in the past because those patterns have been multi-sized and I wanted to preserve the pattern pieces instead of cutting them for a particular size. Luckily these are single size pattern pieces too – there is a set for the bigger chair and a set for the smaller chair.

There has been another crafting activity other than the bean bag chair which is a bit more photogenic. A few years ago, I purchased a very handsome peacock feather-themed ribbon and it was never got around to make bows with it. That has changed as a bow maker was obtained and a few bows were made with it and a few other pieces of ribbon that were in the Planet Nice Crafts stash.

The E∙Z Bow Maker

The bow maker was easy to use due to a nice instruction booklet and was a nice crafty activity that was relatively fast and not too mentally taxing.

Stacking the loops.

I recommend it if you have a need for these types of decorations. Most importantly, I really liked how the peacock feather themed bows came out.

Finally, there has been participation in the 3^rd Annual One Book, One Community program. What is it? It is an effort to build community through reading (1book.org). It is organized by the library districts of Cook Memorial, Indian Trails, and Vernon Area. In addition to a book being chosen and book discussion, all sorts of activities are offered that have a related theme to the book ending with the author’s visit. This year’s book is Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford. I just finished reading it and I registered for a Japanese Tea Ceremony and a discussion on the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago in a couple weeks. I am excitedly anticipating this deep dive because I feel there is a reiteration of some of the themes explored in last year’s PBS series, Civilizations.

I hope to post a couple more times before the semester really starts going, not only coverage of bean bag chair progress but also some photos and anecdotes from a couple museum visits.