Yuuko box innards, part the second!

[telophase]

And now for the next item in the Yuuko box!


I have a book called Omiyage: Handmade Gifts in the Japanese Tradition, which is basically a book about how to make any number of small pouches - some nifty, some not. Despite the author's insistence that hand-sewn was automatically better, my primary thought was that if I owned a sewing machine, it would be so much nicer. Yeah, a master of straight lines I am not. At any rate, after only two false starts and having to unpick things and redo them three times, I finally produced a pretty damn nifty little pouch, if I do say so myself:



Which went into the Yuuko box because I have absolutely no use for nifty little pouches and don't really want a bunch of them to clutter up the place. :) I'll probably try a couple more projects in the book, but in all honesty I'd rather have a sewing machine to try the rest, because it would cut the making time down, even factoring in my tendency to sew it with the wrong side out, then do it again, then sew the wrong edges together, then sew my finger to it, etc.

What does the cute little pouch contain?

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EYEBALLS



TASTY TASTY chocolate EYEBALLS.

Provided it doesn't shift in shipping, this is what the recipient will be confronted with when she opens the package:



The pouch and eyeballs are wrapped in a furoshiki, in one of my less successful wrapping jobs. A furoshiki is a large square of cloth traditionally used for wrapping items for transport and for giving, and the Ministry of the Environment in Japan is trying to get people to use them again, after they were discarded in favor of the plastic shopping bag. :) A publication with examples of how to wrap objects.

This would have been much nicer if I'd (a) had a larger square of cloth and (b) bothered to hem it, but without a sewing machine, I couldn't be bothered. :)

Comments

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

HAhahaha! Awesome!!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

EYEBALLS

[chomiji]

You just inspired me to buy that book. Lord only knows when I'm have time to make nifty little pouches, but it certainly looks like a good idea!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

There's lots of cute stuff in there, despite the author's tendency to announce that something would be really good as a cute purse with an evening outfit, which makes one wonder where she goes out for the evening that this rather casual item would fit with a dressy evening gown.

There's a few doll-type items in there, but the other projects are mostly small bags and pouches for putting other things in.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

A lot of that comes down to fabric selection, really -- I've seen some perfectly dressy evening purses that are essentially just little fabric pouches or envelopes, just done up in really luxe material -- velvets, silk or metallic brocades, silk cords and beaded or embroidered trim, etc.

(And I have DECADES' worth of fabric and trimming remnants, and can never get enough little pouches for jewelry and cosmetics and such not...oooh, sounds like I need to add this to the sewing-and-craft bookshelf!)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

(Just be mindful of the errors people report on the Amazon site - it apparently needed another round of proofreading. XD My mistakes were due to misunderstanding the directions and folding bits the wrong way before sewing them down, but this is also the simplest bag in the bunch.)

[chomiji]

(I can only hope that a moderate amount of origami experience will help ... also, I tend to temporarily pin things in place and proceed as though they are sewn when I'm working on something funky like that ... have to do that with Folkwear patterns, for example.)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Heee...I've been sewing since I was a wee snarkling, and have long since reached the point where I mostly treat pattern layout and construction instructions as "things to glance at, snicker at all the UR DOIN IT WRONG bits, and then disregard", so no worries there. As long as it's got shiny pictures and pattern diagrams, it's all good. :)

[chomiji]

(We oughta have a scrap swap ... you've probably got more than I do.)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ah ha ha, well, that depends. Do you have a walk-in closet that's more than halfway filled with storage cartons stuffed with fabric and notions? Some of 'em dating back to your grandmother? If not...yeah, I might have just a little bit more of a stash than you do. Just a skosh. I come from a long line of crafty packrats. XD

(My Oysters discs just arrived this afternoon, BTW! Not bad for shipping from London, especially at the low rates they were charging.)

[suileach.livejournal.com]

That is SO COOL. Eyeballs!

Have also wishlisted book, though I suck at sewing.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

EYEBALLS! If I'd thought of it at the time, I'd have written something about the yokai that consists of a tattered shoji screen with a pair of eyes in every square, but it didn't occur to me until later. :D

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

EYEBALLS!!!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

YUMMY!!

[badtzphoto.livejournal.com]

cute little pouch
... eyeballs!!!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

AWESOME!!!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

YOU CAN'T MAKE A MANGA WITHOUT BREAKING AN EYE


(FYI, I just created an account on etsy.com - they allow self-published comics on there, so I figure: hey, another outlet for PBR. I'm going to try a few prints there as well, and maybe some kanzashi, if I can do them well enough to satisfy myself. I'll let you know when the actual store is set up.)

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Itty bitty bag o' eyeballs!

Furoshiki are for sale in big stacks, at several price points (and thus increasingly-fancy types of cloth) in San Francisco's Japantown, in at least one shop in the Kinokuniya mall. I never knew how to wrap and tie them up!

The nicer furoshiki pieces would be good for making little pouches.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nifty! I have a seekrit desire for furoshiki, but nothing to wrap up in them, really. I have a thermal furoshiki for a bento box, but it's not really large enough and can't be tied properly (it's got an elastic loop and button for fastening).

If you search YouTube for 'furoshiki,' you can find some videos on wrapping. There's one guy from a Japanese shop who makes a purse out of one. :D

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nifty! I have a seekrit desire for furoshiki, but nothing to wrap up in them, really.

Heh, aside from gift-giving, I get a decent bit of use out of mine when I'm hauling things that I don't want just banging around loose in a tote bag for some reason -- books that I wasn't actively reading on a commute, dressy zoris I was going to change into later, box of imps for a BPAL sniffy-fest, etc. -- also I've occasionally used them as a decorative cover for a box that I needed to leave out in a visible spot, but was too ugly to just leave sitting around bare. The biggest thing discouraging me from using them more is that the handful I currently have are made of fairly nice chirimen, and I don't want to drag them around enough to get seriously snagged or stained or worn-looking. (I really should just make a few more everyday types out of cheaper fabric from my stash, but...so many projects, so little time.)

[fuchsoid.livejournal.com]

I love the little pouch full of eyeballs!

The book looked familiar, and to my shame, I see that I actually own a copy, but haven't made anything from it yet.

I have a couple of furoshiki that I bought in charity shops, but I never knew how to use them either.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend this pouch! If you read the instructions more closely than I managed to, it's quite easy and quick!

[fuchsoid.livejournal.com]

And then all I have to do is find some eyeballs *evil laugh*

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

WIN.

And I could never sew straight with a sewing machine, either. This is why I knit.