Update : Beanbag

The Bean bag is nearly complete! Here it is filled and the denim skin added. Its apparently quite comfortable, and has become the favorite choice for sitting in the house. I'm glad that it turned out like it did. I"m even glad I had to back up and redo it, as the original plan would have been much too big.

The bag in entirety weighs about 60 lbs, so its easily moved around when it needs to be. The only thing missing at this point is to add velcro to the open flap on the bottom, and that's it. The velcro I bought is too small and there isn't enough to do what I need, so I'll need another trip to a fabric store.

To be honest, i'm glad this went as well as it did. after the failue of the last project (the laptop bag), I needed a win to keep up my motivation.

 

Jenn playing some DS game. 

Update : Beanbag

Here's pictures of the foam being unloaded into the inner lining of the beanbag. I used a super-cheap sheet set for the fabric.

Laptop Bag Project = Failed

So the fasteners never went on the laptop bag. The bag was ultimately a failure, for one reason ; the laptop doesn't fit in the bag. It's too big by a half inch, or rather the bag is too small by about a half an inch.

To tell the truth, it's an ironic end, as I worried through the whole process that I was adding too much seam allowance, adding too many bag patches together, generally making the project too BIG for the bag to be properly protected.

Well, failures are inevitable. and on reflection, if any of my current projects were to fail, I would rather this one than any of the others. That doesn't mean that this bag failing precludes my other projects from failing as well, but it's best to remain as optimistic as possible.

The bag isn't an entire failure. The fabric is salvagable with work, and I would hate to cut up one of Jennifer's favorite sweaters to just end up tossing the scraps in the garbage.

Laptop bag Ver. 2 will commence shortly. Right now though I'm going to focus on making progress on the bean bag. with effort and a quick trip to the store, I think I can complete it this weekend.

Laptop Bag

 

As you can see the plastic and fabric sides have been sewn together, leaving one side open. This was a lot more difficult than I had planned for, as the plastic isn't stretchy at all, and the knit stretches under its own weight. this led to constant headaches keeping the 2 sides together, as I couldn't pin them together. Making any more holes than absolutely necessary in the plastic would weaken it. I went back to the video and looked for ideas. Of course I missed the part about the bobby pins standing in for sewing pins.

Needless to say, that made things go a lot more smoothly.

After sewing the sides, I turned the whole thing right side out ;

 

Notice I kept the pockets, thought they would be a cool addition.

Stuffing the bag was easier than harder than I thought. Adding the stuffing to the bag and sewing every few inches to keep it  stable was easy, and took less foam than I anticipated. The hard part was the foam. Shipped vacuum-sealed, the foam started expanding immediately after I opened it and spilling everywhere. I tried my best to limit the damage, but now there's a liberal scattering of little foam pieces all over the floor of my workspace.

The inside padding.

I sewed the sides together, checking after one side that the laptop would fit (yes it would) I sewed the remaining side, finally forming a recognizable bag.

Bag.

I hemmed the sides of the flap and I'm almost done. just add a fastener to the flap to close and that's it.

"Recycled" plastic laptop bag.

Update : Beanbag

So about six months ago I decided that instead of paying the $400+ for a Lovesac, I was going to make one.

While contemplating the idea, I decided to add to the project by attempting to make this lovesac as cheaply as possible.  I was going to build it out of discarded supplies. It was going to be an art piece about the ammount of waste a city throws out and how used fabric and textiles can easily be repurposed.

That project failed. After spending 2 months collecting free clothing from craigslist and local shops going out of business, I had a mountain of cloth. I planned on building the bag out of a sturdy material, make a second "skin" on the outside that could be removed and washed, and fill it with shredded clothing.  Another month shredding discarded clothes (after washing them), It quickly became apparent that this was not a great idea. The pile of shredded clothes was very heavy, even my my standards (no one who saw it except me could even move the pile). Even when split up into more manageable bags, the shredded clothing wasn't very comfortable. It was hard, and lumpy, and mo amount of shredding into finer and smaller pieces resolved that. I put that part on hold while I contemplated the next step. The skin.

During the 2 months of collecting, I had decided that I wanted the skin to be in denim. I put all the jeans and denim jackets I found aside for this purpose ( I also left out all the soft cotton shirts for another related project). There wasn't enough. So I relented and did the next best thing; I bought a pile of "plus-sized" jeans from a local thrift store. Approximately 16 pairs cost me about $20. I proceeded then to rope Jenn into helping me remove the seams on all of them.  I started sewing. 2pairs sewn together became 4 pairs, then 6, then 8. Soon I had nearly 14 pairs of jeans sewn into a giant banner.  I planned on sewing a 8-foot tube, then add domes to the top and bottom.

After adding the first dome, I ran out of steam. I was almost done with the skin, but I had nothing to fill it with. I became unmotivated and overwhelmed by the gigantic mass of denim in my living room. I let it sit while I contemplated my next move.

Weeks passed, then a month. I moved into a house, and the denim went into storage while the shredded cloth went into the trash (I know, shame on me). spring and summer came and went. The denim stayed in a duffel in the storage shed.

When I decided that I needed to start this blog, and the projects that it accompanied, I remembered the beanbag idea I had. If I was going to reboot by self-motivation by starting these, I needed to face the Ghost of Abandoned Projects Past.  I pulled out the duffel and took a long look at it.

If it was filled, it would be an 8ft sphere.

While working my way through the projects on Threadbanger loooking for more details on the laptop bag idea, I came across their beanbag project;

College Dorm Beanbag

It had the pattern I should have used; a baseball. it was perfect. I would re-make my beanbag using that pattern.

While looking up possible fillers for the bean bag, I decided to look up what Lovesac uses, since that's who i'm trying to emulate to begin with. They use a shredded mattress pad type foam that collapses  for ease of shipping, but holds up well once allowed to fully inflate.

I found suppliers for both this foam and shredded memory foam. Memory foam is denser, thus a lot heavier, thus a lot more expensive. I opted for a 80% poly foam 20% memory foam solution. I calculated the volume of multiple sizes of spheres and how much it would cost to fill each with this mix of foam.  A 4' sphere would cost about $80 in foam, not counting shipping. Each 1 foot increase in size brought a doubling in volume, and price as well, as a 5' bag would cost $175 to fill, and around $295 for a 6 foot bag.  I stopped there, not even wanting to know how much my original 8 foot bag would have cost to fill. at almost $300 just for the filler on a 6 foot bag, I might as well just buy a lovesac.

So after consulting Jenn and Richard, I went with the 4 foot option. Its cheapest, and more likely to find room in the living room. Now I needed to modify my 8 foot capped cylinder into a 4-foot baseball shape.

I found that the proportion of the baseball (or peanut) pattern is about 3/4 the diameter of the bag. by this I mean that the diameter of the widest point of the pattern (across the bulbous ends) is 3/4 the width of the entore bag once inflated. This made things vary easy. Since I wanted a 4 foot bag, the widest part of the pattern needed to be 3 feet across.

 

I couldn't get the full pattern to fit on the fabric a it was, so I had to improvise. I would cut out 4 copies of half of the pattern and sew them together in the middle. It worked out rather well. Here's pictures of the process.

 

This is actually 1/4 the pattern, still pretty big.

I traced the pattern on one half,

Then flipped it over to finish.

After cutting the excess away this is what I was left with.

Next, I will sew the halves together, sew up the inner cover, and fill it. Not far left to go on this one.

Update : Laptop Bag

So I Collected all the grocery bags needed fr this project. Jenn and I had...disagreements about what bags to use, in what colors, show logos or don't etc. Eventually I caved and decided that since it's going to be her bag, it should be something she wants to carry around.

So here's my process;

We collected a number of bags from the same establishment, so they would have a uniform color across the piece. Jenn picked Fresh and Easy because the khaki will match well with her outfits. I dunno. Personally I despise khaki, or neutrals in general. In my opinion, if you're going to do something, do it big and flashy. But that's me and this isn't my bag. So khaki it is.

We also bought some wax paper for this project. I already had the tiny ironing board. I think I brought it back from Japan.

I then cut the handles and tabs from the top...

...and the seam from the bottom. at this point I turned the bag inside out to keep the ink from the logo from melting to the paper or the iron. I forgot to turn one during this project, it was very messy.

Then I folded the bag once,

twice to create an 8-ply plastic sheet.

Once the bag is prepared, I sandwiched it between 2 pieces of wax paper,

  like so.

Ironed the paper on medium for approximately 30 seconds per side. I spaced and forgot to flip a few of them, so I just ironed those longer, but the end result is much better if you iron both sides. When the layers of plastic didn't melt in the beginning, I realised I had the iron set too low, and remedied that issue.

 

After that I just peeled off the wax paper and let them cool (takes just a few seconds to cool off, so I had to be quick. )

There they are. I did much more than I needed, in case any failed or I screw up later down the line.

Next on this project, I sew the plastic sheets into the external layer of the laptop bag. Stay Tuned

Update : Coffee Table

So I finally cut the tabletop into the coffee table. It was a cool experience. I haven't used a saw like that since high school.  There weren't a lot of safety glasses around, so we used what we had, which ended up being a pair of Richards dieselpunk goggles, and my replica Sky Captain goggles.  Jenn took pictures while giggling at the nerd she lives with. It was fun though.

 

Orlando the cat was fascinated by the cacophony going on outside. That cat doesn't run from loud noise, not even vacuums.

Update : Coffee Table

Here's draft 3, created in illustrator and finished in photoshop.

I received the brass porthole. Now I just have to find a way to cut it, as its solid brass.

Update : Companion Cube

So the Pattern fits the fabric perfectly. Less than a handful of fabric was left over. Making the Pattern so dense was a risk, but totally worth it.

Construction of the Center circles is next. Stay Tuned

Project Update : Coffee Table

Here's Draft 2 of the coffee table plan.

I plan on modeling the statue in clay and molding a copy out of resin, as well as the large gear in the corner design.  The sun rays are going to be cut from brass sheet, and there will be gears interspersed  in the spaces between them. Jenn came up with the final dimensions for the table. Its 42 inches long, an especially geeky number, and at 26 inches wide, its a Golden rectangle, with a ratio of 1.618.

New Project : Coffee Table

I've had this dining room tabletop for years. I'm not entirely sure why I kept it after throwing away the legs, but I did, and now I finally found something for it.

I'm going to fashion a fold-away coffee table from it.

The idea is to have the table have both caster wheels and folding legs, so that when the legs re up, its a normal table, but when the legs are folded away, the caster wheels make storing under the sofa easier.

I'm going to try for a combination of Art Deco and Steampunk. The central piece will be deco, with brass rays radiating from it, and a statuette on either side. The corners will have brass portholes with large gears inside them, and between the rays will have gears interspersed. The entire design will be sunken in resin, like a bartop.

Here's the initial sketch I came up with. 2nd draft to follow soon.

New Project : Bean Bag Chair

This isn't really a new project. I am almost completely finished with it, but it has sat in storage for more than 6 months, and I need to drag it out into the light and reinvigorate it.

I'll post picture for what I have done so far, and new ones as I get new materials for it.

Project Update : Companion Cube

My companion cube ottoman project is on hold until I can salvage my hard drives from my failed computer, convert them into external drives, and transfer the illustrator files to Jennifer's computer to continue. I still have the pattern for the first yard of light grey fleece, and will continue as far as I can with it, and post the pictures as I can.

New project : PC Case Mod

So last night my PC burned out. Either the motherboard, the power supply, or the processor, with the motherboard being the most likely suspect. My PC is a Shuttle, which means that I pretty much need to replace all three (the core of the computer) to continue with it. At this point I am loath to buy a pre-built system, as I know I can build it myself for nearly half the price.

Since most PC cases are boring, and I've been milling around the idea of building my own case mod for a couple years, I'm going to use this opportunity to start on that project.

I'll be posting sketches for the case, the final plans, and the production and assembly pictures here.

Companion Cube Update

So I needed to get my dense sewing pattern from my PC to the fabric. This was soon to become an issue I had not anticipated. The pattern is 36 inches wide and 58 inches long, while my printer obviously can print up to 8 inches by 10.5 inches.

Having spent hours searching the internet for some application that would let me print the pattern at once in multiple pages (I know they exist, but couldn't find a one), I decided to do it the hard way. I sliced up the pattern into 30  8" x 10.5" pieces, and printed them out individually. Not fun.

After cutting off the edges of the paper not printed on and taping the pieces back together, I have my sewing pattern recombinated, frankenstein-like.

Here's the pictures. The first is mid-taping of the pieces. The second is Jenn staring daggers for me pulling her away from her stuff to help me assemble this monstrosity.

One down, three more to print.

New Sewing Patterns

I have updated the sewing patterns for the light grey fleece and added patterns for the dark grey fleece. I make a number of mistakes with the light grey; I didn't include a seam allowance for the center circles, the corner edges were one inch instead of two like I had designed them, etc.

I was able to cram in all of the pieces into 2 yards for the light grey, but it will be an incredibly dense layout, and very difficult to pull off. There is no margin for error on this, and if I make a mistake, I screw up 2 pieces, since 90% of them share an edge.

The dark grey was a different story. Its the background, so mainly just big square panels to sew the light grey parts onto. I fit most on one yard, but one or two pieces had to go on the second. I'll probably stitch together the inside bottom panel from scraps off of the first yard of the dark grey, as it's less waste and noone will see it under the game controllers anyway.

So here's the updated layouts;

Light Grey Yard 1

Light Grey Yard 2

Dark Grey Yard 1

Dark Grey Yard 2

New Project Announcement

My girlfriend Jennifer purchased a new laptop to replace the one that was stolen last fall, and I felt that it needed someplace safe to go when being transported. I found a cool idea over at Threadbanger, and I am going to try it out.

Here's what I have collected so far;

 

Of course, Jennifer's laptop

 

A collection of shopping bags, mostly from grocery stores. Jenn isn't to thrilled about these, so I gave her the option of finding better ones to suit her.

 

The liner. Jenn recently abandoned this sweater because of the holes and stains it has accrued from her job and time. I think this would be a great way to recycle it rather than toss it.

So there it is. Details to follow as this project progresses.

Sewing Patterns are hard!

Companion Cube update:

All day today I've been working on the sewing patterns for the blocky pieces for the cube. The next step was even more challenging; trying to get all the required pieces to fit on 2 yards of fabric. I think I finally got them down, but it's a really tight fit.

If anyone's Interested, here they are;

Layout for yard 1

Layout for yard 2

Today I start with a project I have been thinking about for a while. I will attempt to turn this;

 

Into one of these: 

 

This past weekend I took the leap and bought the fabric for this project.

 

3 yards each of light and dark grey fleece, some small amount of white fleece, and a bit of shiny pink polyester for the details.

As I move through this endeavor, I think i'll take a lot more pictures than I need, but maybe if I get motivated, I can make a entry for Instructables.com .

Thus begins...something or other.

Following my failed attempt to start a blog on LiveJournal.com, and my inability to commit to owning a physical personal journal and actually writing in it, I start this project. Starting today, I attempt to 'get my ducks in a row' as they say, or more commonly, to 'get my shit together'.

In this blog I will be recording my attempts at becoming a professional artist. Considering that i'm 5 years past college and no closer to my goal than I was when I accepted my degree, this is overdue. I will be posting my projects, large and small, as they progress towards completion.

If anyone sees this, great. At least if this entire scheme fails, someone has seen my art in some form or another. If noone sees it, and I am sending messages into the void, just as well. Better that then sitting on my hands and doing nothing.