Thom’s Project

posted on June 25, 2008

My name is Thom and I’m the Editorial Assistant at Potter Craft. To me, making a craft project is always half inspiration and preparation and half actually putting the pieces together. With that in mind, I invite you to come with me on the two-part journey of a newly minted sewer on the trail of his second project.

Part 1: Hunting and Gathering

The Target store at the Atlantic Center in Brooklyn is busy everyday, but on Saturday it’s a zoo. The express line looks like the one outside of Shake Shack. It often snakes around half of the women’s clothing section. Thanks to the staggering number of people that pass through the store, it’s inevitable that things tend to travel far from their rightful places. Light bulbs end up in the food aisles and I once found a pair of scissors in electronics. They were not electric scissors. But in the chaos there is sometimes a single, shining ray of beauty. Digging through the haphazardly strewn racks of clothes is like going to a thrift store. You never know what the experienced hunter might find.

Like, say, a t-shirt with a giant watercolor lion head design-its resplendent oranges and blues second only to the creature’s majestic gaze. Which is exactly what I found that Saturday, sitting atop piles of inferior t-shirts and assuming its rightful place at the top of the t-shirt food chain. If you saw it, you too would have to have it. Unfortunately, I could never wear something that majestic in public. That didn’t change the fact that I had to buy it.

So now I had my inspiration. Even though I couldn’t pull off this design on a t-shirt, I was fairly confident I could wear it on a bag. The next stop for me was Baltic Bazaar (in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn), a store so amazing it probably deserves its own blog post. This place sells fabric by the pound instead of by the yard, so it’s possible to spend 20 bucks and have enough material for the next three months. I went in with dreams of brown fabric (to go with the brown outlines on the lion head) and came out with black canvas, green vinyl, and a dark gray material with a feel (and pattern) that evoked dress pants. Don’t ask how that happened. I also picked up some heavy-duty light turquoise thread.

Join me next month to learn how not to sew and to see some pictures of the end result.

— Shawn

Comments
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Can't wait to see how the bag turns out!

Posted by: Christine at June 26, 2008 2:48 PM

Although I'm sure you could have rocked the shirt, I'm glad you found use for the lion. It is truly inspirational.

Posted by: Amanda at June 26, 2008 5:40 PM

As someone who has had the pleasure of seeing this lion IRL, I can confidently say that you know nothing of true beauty until you have experienced its majestic gaze firsthand. Excellent choice, Thom.

Posted by: Heather at June 27, 2008 10:00 AM