Monday, March 30, 2009

Bike Seat Cover and FO Scarf!

I'm designing a bike seat cover! My 1970's Raleigh Record road bike has its original seat made by the Wright leather company, and it somehow fits my, well, seat so well that I never feel sore or bruised. The problem is that one of the metal bolts rubs on my jeans, and although I don't feel it at all (cushiony cheeks?), it is wearing a hole through any pair of pants I wear while riding. Not cool! So I decided to make a seat cover, just to give some barrier between the bike seat and my own. I got this beautiful black and white oilcloth from a store in San Francisco, and it dawned on me that this seat cover could benefit from being waterproof too - the leather won't get ruined in the rain, and it won't turn my pants brown either. This genius idea brewed in my head for weeks before I finally took that yard of oilcloth over to the bike and imagined a fit - only the curvature of the seat does not lend itself to a flat cover from non-stretchy material. I was deterred for another few days, but I slowly envisioned a three-pieced cover that I could sew without having a seam down the center of the seat. This evening I finally made a paper pattern and then cut the three pieces out of oilcloth. They are currently scotch-taped in place on the bike seat, awaiting a non-nighttime hour when I can turn on my sewing machine without annoying my roommies. Normally, sewing a seam involves placing two pieces of fabric right-side together and sewing them together, but in this case I might just sew a zigzag stitch right on top of the two overlapping pieces, right-to-wrong sides. Maybe in a bright color like red, to make the stitch look like part of the design. Hmmm. More to come!
In other news, I FINALLY finished my lace ribbon scarf! It only took me a year! Ta daa!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Knit Blue Baby Hat

So my labmate David's wife had a baby boy a few weeks ago, and upon hearing this I started knitting a hat for him. It was actually my first attempt at knitting something on double-pointed needles, and I was a bit afraid that everything would fall off each needle as I knit the other ones, or that I would twist the stitches all around. But I really wanted to make the plunge into knitting non-rectangular things, so I picked a really basic pattern for a baby hat, and it turned out pretty well! It was pretty quick to finish once I started decreasing to close up the top. I love how it came out! Maybe I'm ready to move on to mittens?!?