Belt bag

Belt bags are usually attributes of sport or sport casual styles. But at the same time they are very convenient to use for those who prefer walking to public transportation and a bike to a car or taxi.

For me issues is that while I use bike at least 300 days in year I cannot wear sport uniform all these days. I can get up in different mood and this is not always "wearing tight fitting synthetic sport cloths" mood. I wear civil cloths independently of transportation I use. So I need accessories which fit this style. Belt bag is still very convenient and must have thing.

After spending few years trying to find one which can fit civil cloths I realized that the only option is to create such a bag myself. Question was: which material to choose for such a bag? First option can be leather, but I don't sew leather. Also leather is not good option for using a bag on beaches when it can be in contact with salty water. I need something which can be easily washed and better if I could use my machine.

Crocheted texture can have very beautiful look while being less flexible than knitted texture, so I decided to use tunis crochet which usually adds even more stability. Still I needed strong support. I have chosen denim fabric for it.



Details:




I wear it with many cloths I have, but want to show pictures of most unusual variations: with a dress and with a skirt.

And, to finish this post, I want to tell funny story about this bag. Last year I took few Coursera courses. One of them was design course. First task was to create a design, tell a story what is new about it and show a picture. I could simply draw a picture and nothing more, but I could not, because I have almost no artistic talents. So I decided to show this bag which I just finished. I wrote why I made it and placed a picture. This text was supposed to be reviewed by peers, so week after I received feedback, saying that "your idea is nothing unusual, there is even design object for your idea exist, I saw it on the picture you provided." Damn, I created it myself!

Dark blue shawl

I am in love with wool fabrics usually used to sew costumes for men: they are very responsible to iron, easy to clean, cool and at the same time warm enough to wear during whole year. I am also like to use unconventional materials. So when I had a piece of fabric, left from my trousers, I decided to make a project which is not typical for it: a shawl.

But simple hemming can look boring and I decided to place embroidery on my feature shawl. Embroidery should not be technically difficult, because I did not want to spend years on these one and half meters of the fabric, so I drawn curvy lines and chose very simple chain stitch which presents on many folk embroidery pieces and can be sewn using either a needle or crochet hook. I decided to use crochet.



I did not use embroidery hoop to achieve folding effect. Ending for this shawl is very easy: crocheted arcs and fringe.

Infinity dress

When we moved here we did not bring sewing machine with ourselves. But I wanted to sew something! I was not brave enough that time to create complete hand sewing project, so wanted to make something simple, with only couple of seams. Thus my choice was Infinity dress



I acquired  rayon fabric which is very popular in this area, sew those two seams and stayed before choice of hand-stitching meters of edges! Well, this is not something I like too much and I decided to create endings using crochet (this is very popular in this area too, although my crocheting skills are much, much worse than those which local women have!)

I used pattern from Boutique knitting magazine for the skirt and improvised small version of this pattern for all other sides.





So what about variations? Plain rayon is not elastic, therefore I use only limited set of them: only those, which can fit me secure and don't interrupt movements at the same time. Here are two my favorites:


And few details for the second look:

White dress with blue crochet endings

I got this fabric from my mother-in-law's collection. It was common for women in USSR to collect fabrics and quit sewing when borders were open in 1990-s and shops became full of all kinds of clothing.

First idea which comes to mind when you decide what to sew from such a fabric is a blouse in peasant style. But I had one already. And creating such a blouse would be very trivial project. So I decided to start different one.

It was a dress, published in a Soviet magazine in 1960-s: thanks to popularity of vintage. I suppose authors of this dress had in mind fabric with a print when designed it. And I had to create a dress which does not look like a lingerie. This is how idea of crochet endings came from. When I designed pattern of the endings I decided to repeat geometrical motifs of the fabric, but not to repeat them literally. This is how circles were converted to triangles.

Technical part was easy: I acquired blue and white "Altın Başak" cotton yarn, took crochet #1.25 and knitted it. Fitting was easy too: crocheted trims are flexible and I simply stretched and eased when needed.