Key Fob/Lanyard Tutorial

So what do you do with that ginormous pile of odds and ends you have left over from your latest most brilliant project? 

  

You turn it into something small and cute and useful, of course! Then you either attempt to sell it on Etsy or give it away as gifts to everyone you know. The following project is for making key fobs/lanyards. You can make them in any length. If they are short they are fobs. If they are long they are lanyards. Easy. You pick the length and the style of hardware you put on the end. Instead of the "clam shell" clasps I have used here, you can sub in D-rings or key rings instead.

For this project you will need some of the above scraps, any flavor or color, interfacing, and some hardware to hang a key, id badge or whatever on. For interfacing, I use a lot of Pellon Décor Bond 809. There are always a zillion scraps of this that I can't bear to throw out.

I cut the fabric into 4 inch wide strips which I fold in half and iron. Then I cut 2 strips of fusible interfacing into 7/8 inch wide strips which are shorter than your fabric by 3/4” on each end.

 

I fuse the interfacing to the fabric along that center fold. Making the interfacing in two pieces makes a crisper fold along the edge which is easier to fold and also gives you some fudge factor when ironing.When using fusibles I always use a pressing cloth to protect my ironing board surface and my iron, which is harder to clean! Here I used a product called "Goddess Sheets" available at your local sewing or quilting center.

I iron each edge to the inside and then iron both together. You get the idea!

Then I top stitch along the edges. I use a width that aligns with a convenient mark on my presser foot! (See below!) Easy. Your presser foot may have a similar convenient mark. I think mine measures at something less than 1/4” and more than 1/8”, likely a European metric invention. Be sure to lengthen the stitch length. This will make it look prettier. On a European machine the regular stitch length is 2.2. Increase this to 2.6 or so. 

 

Next I slide the clasp/D-ring/key ring hardware or whatever onto the fabric. Make sure that the hardware and the good side of the fabric are both facing to the inside.

  

Sew the ends together at a ¼ to 3/8 “ seam allowance. Go back and forth several times for added strength. This is where that previous step where you made the interfacing shorter than the pretty fashion fabric comes in handy. There will be less bulk at this point and it will handle better.

 

Turn the project inside (good side) out. Slide your hardware to the end and arrange the seam so it's about 1 inch in from the end and open this seam out flat.

Stitch in the ditch along this seam, back and forth several times. Again, since there is less interfacing , everything lies nice and flat.

 Don't forget to tidy up those pesky threads!

 

 Viola! Now you are done!

 

 

Picture Perfect

Where to photograph my quilts? If you're coming out of winter that can be a problem. The interior rooms of the house are still dark and filled with an accumulation of stuff from the last six months of being holed up inside. The outside is still grey and brown; not a good vibe for selling happy cheerful fabric creations. So below are my choices.

1. The front entryway. I've used this space before, but it tends to be a tad too dark. I have to spend a fair amount of time using Photoshop to fix what the limited light spectrum has left out. I will also have to clean the space significantly. Dito for just about every other room in the house.

2. The dining room table. Now here I could crop out everything I didn't want you to see, like the pictures, the piano, the dusty crock pot, the ice cream maker, and the broken antique chairs that stand at the edges of the room. The light is better than the entryway.

  

3. The art studio. Paint. Wet paint. More wet paint. Glue. Solvents. Good light, though. More cleaning and picking up than the dining room, the entry way, the bedroom, and my husband's office combined. Is it worth it? Nawwwww. 

 4. The front porch has enough light at certain times of day. It also has rakes, shovels, bags of ice melt, and a layer of road dust on my white rocking chair that you could start seeds in. It is still a contender.

5. The front fence. There you go. I just have to prop it up with a wooden stake where it is falling over after 100 inches of snow fell on it this winter. And I would need to stand in the middle of the road to take the pictures. I'm not sure my health insurance will cover willful negligence.

 

6. The clothes line. Good light. Easy hanging. No artful draping required. Great view. . .of the swamp behind my house and tree branches that blew down during above mentioned winter storms. This is a summer picture but the backyard is still a bushy mess.

7. My husband's tractor. It would give a delightful country vibe to the picture. People will think I live in a red state. The tractor may be just a bit greasy and dirtly. Not clear I want to drape a quilt on it. And its not currently in the yard. I'm not sure where that dinosaur is sleeping, but I think I'm going to let it lie.

It looks like I may have to do a lot of cropping and cleaning regardless of which location I use. I'm leaning towards the front porch, and leaving the extra “ambiance” in place. It's country isn't it?

Note to Self

Self, do not drink coffee while quilting or laying out fabrics. Let's just say there were some surprising additional design elements in the fabric pattern and my Tide to Go pen got a workout. Alas, I didn't think to take a picture. Besides, who wants that kind of evidence of blatant incompetence or just plain klutziness floating around the internet? I may experiment with washing the finished product, I always wanted to know what that "old fashioned puckered" effect was all about.

Rotary Fever

Like this bad boy electric rotary cutter? It can spin its way through an inch of fabric without skipping a beat. Brilliant. Looking for and finding time savers is an essential part of “industrial” grade quilting and sewing. It can mean the difference between bringing a product to market and having it sit in a corner of your home taking up space. Which means, YOU are not sitting at that desk at your day job taking up space wishing you were someplace else.

To use this tool (which my husband clearly has some envy over) I first stack the fabric being meticulous about lining up the edges, smoothing out any wrinkles. Often, I will iron pieces first. It takes some preplanning because you have to know what size and shape your pieces are going to be. You also have to mark the top piece with the cut lines. This tool is not set up to run along the edge of a ruler. You need a steady hand, which is easier than it sounds. Many of my projects use long strips that are 2.5 inches wide, so I will stack and cut an entire yard into 2.5 inch strips all at once. I don't always know where all those strips will be used, but typically I make up block units that I combine and re-combine again and again in different ways. I like playing with the designs, changing them up and I'm always scanning the internet for new ideas. If I run into a particular look that is selling better, I make more of it.

I do have some safety rules in place when I use this. It has a hair trigger and surprisingly few OSHA enhancements. I make sure the cutting table is completely clear of all other debris. I do cord management so it doesn't get hung up on anything. I make sure my hands are accounted for and out of the way, not in front of the cutting path. Lastly and most importantly, I make sure no one is in the room with me, so my concentration is on the cutting and I'm not being distracted by random comments or questions. This is awkward when someone asks me to demonstrate the tool, but I like my limbs attached just the way they are, thank you!

The zebras are on retreat this weekend, being delightfully distracted by good company, fine food, and great cheer. Still sewing up a storm, infused with excessive amounts of silliness and goofing off. Just what the vet ordered.

Raining on the Steppes

 

The Zebras are happy today. It's raining. That means we can quilt and sew all day and not worry about doing any yard work. Praise the Lord. The housework is another matter. I have to make my bed. This is not because I have OCD or an especially strict upbringing. Its because my bed is my second work table! My production line would be chaos without it. Some day I'll have a separate work space for my fabric creations, but for now, I'm just enjoying walking by them all the time. It feeds my creative juices and keeps me motivated. I'm actually afraid if I have a separate studio it will be “out of sight, out of mind”. As for the rest of the housework, I just have to learn to look away from the sink when I walk into the kitchen. Away. Those dishes, exist, they don't. (Sorry! Channeling Yoda this week.)

Tote Bags - Heaven or Hell? The Design Process.

The tote bags featured here are a good example of my product development process. The top one is the full boat, all the bells and whistles version. It has three zippers, pockets on all sides and in the interior. It has an interior partition that I'm not sure is relevant. I added adjustable straps, which add to the look. As a gift item it rocks. People love it. It takes several hours just to cut out the pieces, an entire day to sew if you're speedy, and that doesn't include the time it takes to fuse the Pellon 809 interfacing to just about all of the parts. Clearly I don't stand of chance of being able to make one and pay myself more than someone in a factory in China.
 

The tote bag, below, is my prototype streamlined bag. I make prototypes of all my products so that I can gauge the amount of time it takes to produce the item and figure out which features give back value and which can be cut. My first decision in doing my prototype was to eliminate all the zippers. Phew! I hate sewing zippers! Like any sewing skill, it is one you have to do constantly to be good at and if your seam wobbles just a little, your bag will not look like a professional sewing job, which is absolutely necessary if you are going to sell anything. In some of the prototypes - I did more than one - I also eliminated the back pocket. I had found in using the bag that I didn't use the pocket, so away it went. I also eliminated the ties on the side pockets because I found that I never had to cinch in the pockets when I put a water bottle in them, so they were unnecessary. The interior pockets were time consuming to make, especially the central interior divide. So away they went, also. The result here is a very pruned down bag, but one that is still cute. I can sew up three of these in a day, which still puts the price a little high for some consumers.

The next step in the process is to determine whether I should be adding some features back in and where the price points are. In order to get top dollar, I have to be able to show that this bag is either special because it has features you want or its so cute the consumer will purchase it anyway. One of the features that I may add back in is the additional zipper compartment on the front pocket. Its cute. I don't really use it. I may add ONE interior pocket because the inside looks naked without it. The back pocket is also cute and some people may use it to stash newspapers. Feedback from my Beta testers has indicated they want the top zipper back. In a car, driving down the road, (when closed!) it keeps the junk from spilling everywhere. If I add the zipper back in, I will upsize the scale of it making more of a design statement. Ordinary dress zippers look a bit whimpy.

This leaves my next task at seeing if I can sew three of the enhanced versions in one day. I am concerned that I may have added too many features back in.  Below is my baby diaper bag. Isn't it cute? I have enough fabric to make aproximately 4 or 5, so we'll see how we do at parsing out the steps and doing them in batches. More about my assembly line in a future post. Let's just say no one is sleeping in that bed once I start!