I am thrilled to show you my first pattern to be featured in a sewing magazine!
Sew-it...today is a fairly new magazine which is published bi-monthly and features easy and quick sewing projects. My project will be featured in the August/September 2014 issue which will hit newsstands on June 24. 
I have had the idea of making a bike bag for a long time and I submitted my suggestion back in February. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so shy about contacting magazines in the first place because they picked it up immediately, how exciting!

I was even more excited when I saw that my Pedal Purse is the first project in the magazine, starting on page 8, woohoo! There are four pages of instructions and lots of helpful illustrations. As you can see there are also tons of other interesting projects in this issue: a book cover, photo frames, a table runner and a cute lunch bag just to mention a few.

I got to choose the fabrics for this project and decided to go with this happy canvas from the Fabric Loft Escape Collection (by Fabric Editions). I like the spring/summer feel of this fabric and thought it would be perfect for the bike bag. It has a spacious main compartment, two small pockets on the sides and a zip pocket on the flap.
My favorite feature: You can attach it to your bike with two attachment straps or simply clip on the long strap to convert it to a handbag!
This project is rated as intermediate. I would say if you have made a bag before you will enjoy making this project.

This is the prototype of the Pedal Purse. There was a foot of snow on the ground when I took these pictures and I was freezing my butt off :)

Sew-it...today sells for only $ 3.99 and will be available on June 24 at most Joann's, Hancock's and Barnes and Nobles or you can order it from their website.

I am so glad I can share this with you! I hope you like this bike bag and the other amazing projects of the magazine. I am off to a short bike trip now... with my Pedal Purse of course :)

This week I made a new shirt using a Burda style pattern from one of my magazines. I have used this pattern before when I made my Rochester dress and I liked it so much that I wanted to make a shorter version. The knit fabric I used is the same that I used for the dress - just orange :)

You can find this pattern in the Burda Style magazine 4/2013 or the Spring 2014 edition. There are two versions, the top #106 (as seen on the picture) and the dress #108.

One thing I like about this pattern is its simplicity. The pattern comes with only two main body pieces (front and back on the fold) and the neck facing. (The dress pattern also comes with an optional belt and pockets.) This time I decided not to attach the neck facing to the neckline but simply fold the fabric of the neckline down to the wrong side by 3/8" and stitch it with a twin needle. So all in all I only used the two pattern pieces below to sew my shirt!
This pattern is rated as "Easy to sew, with simple features" and I recommend it for a sewing beginner. Especially if you haven't sewn with knit fabricy yet, this is a nice project to give it a try.

I needed about 3 hours to finish everything. The neckline is pleated - the original pattern asks for four pleats but I folded six (as I have already done with my dress) to make it fit me better. I also stitched the side seams of front and back in a slight curve since I thought it would be nice to have a fitted version.
Finally all I had to do is finish the sleeves and the hem with the twin needle. That's it, all done!

Enjoy the weekend everyone! Are you going to be working on some sort of sewing project? Temperatures will hit 80F here so I will probably skip sewing until Monday... at least I have enough dresses and shirts now to wear for this kind of weather :)