Crazy Bag Lady...

I think I might have officially hit my limit...

After a week of sweatshop purse making, I made a total of 9 medium and 5 small purses using the Pleated Pouch by Michelle Patterns  to give out to the girls' dance teachers, occasional daycare teachers and a couple extra for the giveaway and to stash away.

They were a big, big hit and I've already been asked to make more for friends and family, but I think I need a break.  I'm starting to sweat at the sight of the pattern pieces and it's made me ITCH to go back to my regular quilt blocks and projects.

Of course I did not plan my picture taking very well and since the last of the bags were finished the night before they were ready to give away, they did not get a nice outdoor photo shoot and we had to settle for the fluorescent kitchen lighting.

Some had buttons and some went plain depending on the fabric patterns...

These are not glamour shots, people.

Some didn't even get photographed at all.  Sorry purses - you deserved better!!

I do have a nicer photograph of the options available for the Sew Mama Sew giveaway winner though...

Congratulations Tamie!  I have sent you an email as well, so feel free to choose between the small geometric lime green coin purse and the larger Field Study in blue clutch or pink and green floral clutch (fabric unknown!) - let me know your choice and I will mail it out to you within the week.  I hope that you enjoy your new loot!

And as a little aside, a big welcome to all my new followers who discovered me through Sew Mama Sew!  This was my first time participating and I definitely plan to do so again the next time around.  I got some fabulous suggestions for teacher gifts.  I have quite a few years of gift-giving ahead, so they are all much appreciated and will be used.  I was bowled over by the sheer number of comments, so I apologize if you didn't receive a personal reply, but thank you so much for visiting and I hope that you enjoy reading along with my crafty pursuits!

Linking up:

Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it Up Friday!

Shamrocking and Rolling...

I posted a while back about the custom quilt that I was doing for a coworker.  The reversible quilt that we are making is for her dad – the side I already shared features a paper pieced spiral heart in colors of red and blue to honor his service as a veteran.  The side that I’m working on now is to display their Irish heritage and to remember some members of the family that are no longer with them.

(Apologies for the pictures on these - it's a pretty rainy and dreary day here today and outside pictures weren't an option!)

I found this cute (and free!) paper pieced pattern of a shamrock by Trillium Design that I wanted to try.  We are creating a column of 4 shamrocks – one for each family member to be remembered.  Each has its own green fabric that my friend picked out and has their name embroidered on it in orange floss.  

I went back and forth about this pattern…I could have just made a template and cut out a shamrock shape to applique onto the white background and called it a day. It would have been a lot less work and the 4 blocks would have been done in no time.  Instead, I've been piecing 4 large shamrocks here and there for what feels like weeks.  But, I think the effort is well worth it.  These look so great and I was really proud of these pieced blocks!  

I was so excited about this one in particular...I tried SO hard to get all the fabric directional and fairly well lined up.  It went along great until I got to the last of the three large pieces.  Shoot.  Call it my humility block because I decided not to pick it out and rip the paper backing to shreds in the process.

There’s only a little bit of paper-picking and embroidery left to do and then I can get the whole back pieced and move onto the quilting.  All the craziness of the past month really halted slowed down my progress on this, but at least it’s a project with a far off deadline.  I was just hoping to have it done ridiculously early to get to focus on my own stuff.  Oh well – it is what it is and it's a quilt that's destined to be cherished and loved! 

I Hope the Teachers are Happy...

I've continued to test bag patterns here and there for potential teacher gifts and I think that I've found a winner!  This is the Pleated Pouch by Michelle Patterns.  I've made both the small and the medium sizes and I love them both.  They are simple and straightforward to make and require a minimum of supplies to complete - but still look refined enough to be proud to carry!

I did up these "samples" with a larger print that I wasn't sure would work, but I love the finished product.  I was a little bit astounded that when I finished the front pleats that it looked as though I had purposely matched up the fabric to look continuous - it was completely a happy accident.

And then I made the medium size and it looked almost as good!  I think it just must be the proportion of the geometric print.  However it worked, I'm so glad that it did!

I happened to have those buttons kicking around in my notions drawer for ages - they were the perfect fit for this bag.  The lining was a lime green and blue polka dot that I've used for lots and lots of projects lately.  It's so versatile!

One of the things that I love about this bag is that it can be so skinny and yet the pleats allow it to still hold a decent amount of your stuff.

So this is the first time that I've joined in with the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day and since I've been making quite a few of these bags lately, I'm offering up the winner's choice of size - either small (4" x 4.25") or medium (5.25" x 8.25") and the fabric will be your luck of the draw :)  Here are the rules: comment on this post at any time before 5 pm on May 10th.  The winner will be selected and announced here on May 12th and I will ship anywhere by May 15th!

There are two ways you can win:  1)  Tell me your favorite teacher or hostess gift to make - I need tips!!  Feel free to link up to a favorite pattern, but its not a requirement.  2)  Follow my blog through the RSS or blog feeder of your choice and leave a second comment to tell me about it.  Please note that if you are a no-reply commenter, you really need to include your email address in the post so that I can get in touch with you if you win!

Thanks so much for visiting and happy commenting!

Update:  Comments are closed - thanks for visiting!  The winner will be announced on May 12th!

Linking up with: Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day

Paging Tim Gunn…

So one of my big goals was to makeover my sewing space this month.  What do you think??

Sewing corner before...

Sewing corner after!

 There were many areas in my tiny corner that I improved quite a bit on, so take a little tour with me!

Fabric before...

I was pretty much keeping all of my fabric in a couple big plastic tubs that made it a nightmare to sort through and pull fabrics for any given project. All of my works in progress were scattered around wherever they could fit.  They were separated by plastic bags, but still…sloppy!

Books in a windowsill?

My pattern books and quilting magazines were stacked in the window frame because they just wouldn’t fit anywhere else.

Corner before...

Not to mention that the bulk of the corner was where our home office files and random stuff would happen to land.  This is prime real estate next to my sewing machine and it needed to be reclaimed.

I went to Target and found an inexpensive white bookcase to put in the corner next to my sewing machine as well as a bunch of smaller plastic storage bins and a couple smaller fabric bins.  This is where I wanted all of my books, works in progress, embroidery stuff and fabric to live.  Lofty goals, right?

Once the bookcase was assembled and in place, I started to sort out all of my fabric by color.  Unfortunately, those of you who have kids know that as soon as a space is cleared out, children get some sort of radio transmitter signal to their brains that you have created play space and you must report there immediately.  They got the message loud and clear when my back was turned for 2 minutes.

Sigh.

So I forced them back into their room and continued sorting.  All my bins were all labelled and lovely - and guess what?  I know you can hardly believe it, but my fabric bins took up the entire bookcase.  I don't know what I was thinking.  I toyed with the idea of leaving it all there and finding places to put everything else, but even though it was all organized, it still looked cluttered and too full for the space.  So all my organized bins got banished to the laundry room.

Fabric after!

Before you feel too badly for them, I'm happy to report that because they are all so organized (even my scraps are organized by color in their own little bins!!) pulling fabrics for projects is a CINCH and so much more fun!

Books after!

Onto the top shelves went my binders full of printed tutorials and patterns for quilts, clothing and other small projects, all my books and magazines.  The middle shelf has a fabric bin full of my embroidery projects and supplies.

Corner after!

I organized all of my works in progress into their own individual bins and those went on the bottom shelf along with a black and white fabric bin where I've started tossing all my scraps until it gets full enough to sort them out into the individual color bins.

The top of the bookshelf has a very pretty aqua organizer and pencil/scissor holder from the Martha Stewart Home Office collection at Staples (my fabric bin labels, aqua magazine holder, and black and white damask binders are from this line also) as well as a glass canister from Target that I had to have to contain all my pretty selvedge strips.  Look closely...it's a HEXIE shaped glass canister!!  How perfect and unusual!

Chair before...blech!

Chair after...swoon!

I had a HUGE office chair that was given to us as a wedding gift over a dozen years ago that took up practically the whole space.  Insert: this gorgeous damask print chair from Staples.  I should not love a chair this much, but the colors, the fabric - it was just perfect.  And it hey, its not 5 feet tall!  Score!  Did I purposely match the chair to the binders in the bookshelf?  Yes I did.  But I swear that the chair came first and the binders were a happy accidental find while in the same store.

Wall before...

Walls after!

Last but not least - the walls were improved too!  When I first started putting together a designated sewing space, I saw a tutorial for a charm pack cork board.  I went out and my local fabric store only had one charm pack available.  I didn't particularly like it.  Did I shop around until I found a pack that I actually liked?  No - I bought it to finish a project while I was still motivated enough to carry it out.  Now that I was reclaiming and beautifying my space, I wanted a cork board that was pretty.  Thanks Martha!  I moved it along with my thread organizer to the wall just above my ironing board and moved my spiderweb mini above the bookcase.

Now the only thing that I'd still like to improve upon is to find a prettier ironing board cover in either black and white or light aqua to match everything else, but that's a pretty minor quibble.  Sorry for the novel-length post folks, but I'm just SO happy to have this new and beautiful space to call my own!  It really feels like I can create some gorgeous stuff in here and not be working out of chaos anymore!

I wonder how long I'll actually manage to keep it clean...

Block Lottery...Take Two

Since my first attempt at the  SMQG block lottery was a bit of a failure, I needed to get going on my replacement blocks before the meeting this Saturday.  But stuff just kept getting in the way.  Big surprise, it got done only days before the meeting when I originally started at the beginning of the month.  It got done - that's the important thing.  And the results came out pretty great this time around!

Just to recap the gist of the lottery:  a block design and color scheme are chosen for the group.  If you feel like making a block, go for it - for each block you make, you donate $1 (a real bargain).  Each block is one entry into the lottery.  The winner gets all the blocks!

Samantha chose Greenleaf Goods' wonky pinwheel design with this gorgeous color scheme:

Source: design-seeds.com via Samantha on Pinterest

The first attempt

I had originally wanted to make 3 blocks to up my chances since I loved this color scheme and block design so much, but my first attempt was slightly (but significantly) off.  I decided to use the opportunity to improve on a few things.  One of my purples seemed too deep for this scheme, so I stuck with the two lighter purple fabrics and just used more of them.  One of my neutrals - the beige polka dot - read too dark for my taste as well, so I stuck with the solid and the light vine prints.  And on the opposite end of the spectrum, one of my greens was so light that it blended right into the neutrals.  That got cut in favor of a few darker greens in solids and prints.

I thought that I had enough fabric to just leave my "mistake block" alone and start from scratch, but when I revisited my fabric pile, I had only enough of my neutral colors for 1 block more...not acceptable to up my chances for this lottery.  So I had a fun date with my seam ripper, a cup of coffee, and an audiobook to keep me company.

I think the effort and improvements totally paid off.  Now this is what these blocks are supposed to look like!  I can't wait to see everyone else's blocks and am keeping my fingers crossed that I win the lottery!  If not, there's always the next time around...but I am definitely keeping this color scheme in mind for myself!

On another note - boy does it feel like I'm just doing bits and pieces lately!  Small projects and stand alone blocks are great, but I still have a couple of custom quilts standing in between me and quilting/sewing for myself.  I have several bins of projects to be done (for me!) that I'm dying to get my hands on, but there just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day...sigh.

Linking up:

A Few More Boston Blocks...

 The scraps and fabrics that I pulled for my Boston block remained on my ironing board over the weekend and rather than put them all away and finish up the stuff that I need to get done before the block lottery on Saturday, I made a couple more blocks and used up some scraps.  Plus I got to try out the windmill block that I've always wanted to do.  It felt very satisfying.


Verdict - I love the block but would never want to be doing more than one at a time.  Also, you are left with an extremely bulky center seam.  I need to research people's seam pleating techniques because that sucker is destined to break a quilting needle!

I ended up cutting a few extra triangles that didn't get used.  Instead of throwing those back into the scrap bin, I made a block of sparsely flying geese that also used up all my bits and pieces of white scraps.  Yay!

We at the BMQG are just completely gobsmacked at the outpouring of generosity and excitement that people are putting into these blocks as well as offers to help quilt, donate fabric, spread the word.  The flickr group is exploding and the blocks submitted  thus far are gorgeous.  Some beautiful quilts are going to be made for people in dire need of comfort and I am so proud to be part of such a dedicated quilting community!