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Saturday 20 March 2021

See It — Like It — Be Inspired By It! [Part 1: The Spark]

Personal Project Portfolio by eSheep Designs
A sneak peek at my latest project...
It's coming close to tax time again.

Actually, for me, it seems like tax time arrives as soon as the merriment of the holiday season ends.

Our business has a year end of December 31, so by the time January rolls around, I am gathering papers and downloading statements to hand over to our accountant.

Add to this the fact that I handle the personal income tax returns for both hubby and me and my mother.

I have a plastic accordion file organizer that holds most of the paperwork and receipts required for this annual headache. But it's also a keeper for other things and is somewhat tucked away, so I find it a bit of a hassle to take out and put back, especially when stuff is arriving by mail on an almost daily basis and I have to sort things properly before actually doing the tax returns.

This year, I vowed to make myself a new organizer that would streamline the whole storage conundrum. It would stay on my desk and be dedicated to everything having to do with tax time.




When I ordered a one yard sampler of my Year of the Ox fabric collection, my plan was to use most of it to sew up a large personal project portfolio.

For me, this thing would facilitate my paper shuffling during tax season, but for anyone else reading this, it might be a WIP organizer or something that allows you to take your sewing on the road.

In late February, I caught up on some missed YouTube projects and got lucky with three tutorials that sparked my latest creation. (Oddly and coincidentally enough, they were uploaded on consecutive days.)

Necessaire Book by Atelier LoveYu
image courtesy of Atelier LoveYu on YouTube...

First up is something called a Necessaire Book by Atelier LoveYu, which appeared on February 13, 2021. Isn't it just totally cute?

Necessaire Book by Atelier LoveYu
image courtesy of Atelier LoveYu on YouTube...

Practically speaking, however, this is both too big and too small for my intended purposes. But it looks seriously awesome.

Necessaire Book by Atelier LoveYu
image courtesy of Atelier LoveYu on YouTube...

If you're searching for something to make as a gift for a young lady, this one is sure to please, IMHO.


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The second tutorial is from Treasure Books, something called an Envelope Journal that was released on February 14, 2021.

Envelope Journal by Treasure Books
image courtesy of Treasure Books on YouTube...

It's a paper-based project (although the exterior is wrapped in fabric), but I've always liked taking ideas from the paper realm and applying them to sewing.

Envelope Journal by Treasure Books
image courtesy of Treasure Books on YouTube...

As it turned out, this project led to a couple of lightbulb moments for me, saving me a lot of time.

The third one is a project called a DIY Multi Pocket Pouch, from JSDaily, one of my regular YouTube stops. It was uploaded on February 15, 2021.

DIY Multi Pocket Pouch by JSDaily
image courtesy of JSDaily on YouTube...

This one would be easy to upsize. What caught my attention was the way the middle pouch was attached. It made me think that one could always take an existing zippered pouch — or two, like we don't all have many of them — and then build this wrap around to create a brand new storage solution.


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So how did I deviate from the above projects on the way to making my personal project portfolio?

First consideration had to do with size. None of the above were the right size for what I needed; i.e., something that could hold not only standard letter sized sheets of paper, but also file folders and manila envelopes. Something similar to a large three ring binder would be a good basis for comparison.

Secondly, I wanted pockets with visibility. That eliminated the idea of pouches and pockets made out of fabric that I wouldn't be able to see through. Given that I never wanted to use a lot of fabric anyway — which one can't help but do when making pockets and pouches out of fabric in the size that I was contemplating — finding a viable alternative for this was a must.

Personal Project Portfolio supplies
A secret "ingredient"...

The thrifty part of me also wanted to minimize requirements for interfacing. The Necessaire Book project looks nice and puffy as a result of some "acrylic blanket" equivalent interfacing. If I were to upsize that organizer, it might wind up being a foot thick once I put stuff into it... never mind costing a bundle in terms of interfacing.

It was helpful to be able to see the various ways in which pockets can be oriented and secured from the above tutorials. My writeup for this project encompassed four pages in my planning notebook, but they weren't filled with wordy instructions. It was mostly diagrams that I redrew as I made changes to the original plan.

What I'm saying is that it ended up being fairly easy to pull off. Come back next week to see how I cobbled together a personal project portfolio with a mix of store bought and self sewn parts.

Do you have an organizer that you've been waiting to make?

'Til next...

3 comments:

  1. Can't wait till next week.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, there's a comment a blogger always likes to wake up to... thanks a bunch and hope the result meets with the anticipation!

      Delete

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