2 New Bags

In December I made two bags as gifts. One of them was a small messenger type bag and the other was another Zoe Messenger bag.

Sariah's bag

The smaller bag I made for a long-time friend who I had not seen in person in 9 years. While she lives in another state, her parents live near us and since she was coming to visit them for the holidays, we were finally able to meet up and catch up. I wanted to give her something special, as well as useful, so I found a bag pattern that I could make using some fun fabric I won a while back.

I made the whole thing all the way to the last step (topstitch) and it looked really funky. The flap was too small for the bag and it looked terrible. I had stitched from about 7:30 or 8 pm until after midnight. Problem #1 was I should not sew when I am tired. I went to bed really upset about it and woke up realizing the mistake I had made was assembling the bag with a too small seam allowance. I had 3 choices, live with it and gift it as is, live with it and stick in the closet or disassemble it all and put it back together correctly. I had about an hour to finish it, so I ripped it apart and reassembled it. Thankfully, she was running late so I was given a little more time to finish it. I was much happier with it and gave it to her. She seemed happy with it so it was worth the time.
I added custom pockets to it, because I love pockets. :) I need to re-size them for next time I make this bag though. The edges ended up really close to/in the seam allowance.

Interior pockets

Bag number 2 has been on my mind for a few months. I have a friend who loved my first Zoe bag and wanted one. I told her I would be happy to make one, just bring me the fabric and I would do it.

Black and White and Grape Zoe

Then later, it seemed like she was going through a rough patch and I decided to gift it instead. I messaged her husband for color ideas and started the fabric hunt. I looked and looked and could not find anything that looked like something she would like. I wanted to get the bag done, but I didn't want to settle on just any old fabric. Since we were going to Texas for the holidays, I knew I could look at at least 3 quilt shops there, plus look at Hobby Lobby.
I had success at the first shop! (The super fabulous Quilt Asylum in McKinney).
My daughter helped me tremendously in choosing just the right combination and it really turned out great. I almost wanted to keep it for myself. :)

Exterior pocket

Cute little Hedgies as a surprise inside.

 I gifted it Sunday and she liked it. Yay!


 

Baby Quilt done!

Quilt pattern is a disappearing nine patch, machine quilted with straight line quilting in a super-size crosshatch with squares in the centers.
I used a marker directly on the quilt to label it, though it faded a lot in the wash, it was still legible.
It says: Made by Amy W.... for E.....H.....W...... Vista CA, 07-16-2013

This quilt was machine quilted originally with a meander in the blue areas, with some custom doodles, like the baby's name, but it had to all be un-sewn due to major folding and bunching of the backing fabric. After hours of ripping stitches, I had to walk away from it for a while. When I came back I decided to go with straight lines instead.
On the first try it had just been pin basted. Second go round, I tried basting spray with a few pins around the edges. Not sure I like the spray much. See how wrinkly the back is? This is before I washed it. It helped up nicely for quilting and I had no trouble at all with bunching or folds in the back. But, it also gummed up the needles.
I actually hand bound this one, even though it is going to used. I usually prefer to machine bind for sturdiness but I had some down time at the dentist coming, so I used the opportunity to improve my binding talents. :)

One more UFO off the list.

WIP Wednesday: Christmas UFOs

Linking up these works in progress at Freshly Pieced

It's Wednesday and I actually worked on some long time Works in Progress that can be classified as UFOs, the Thangles Tree Skirt and matching Advent Calendar (Tutorial here). I finished the stockings in time for Christmas last year. I am hoping that at least one of these 2 will be done before Christmas this year.

The Advent calendar just needs to be bound. That means making binding.

November 2012

I know, it looks kind of atrocious. Apparently I am terrible at pressing consistent 1/2 hems. None of the pockets is the same size, exactly, so when I sewed them down, going up and down and the rows and across the bottoms of the pockets, the quilting lines went really wonky between them. (Yes I was being lazy.) I have not ironed it yet, so that might help. Or I may need to quilt the white areas to death to hide the crazy. :)
I had some trouble fitting them all on the background, probably from my inaccurate pressing. I had to trim the header a ton to get them to fit. I think if I made it again, I would cut the background a couple inches wider all around and give the pockets a little more room. I also need to ping Lee and see what batting she used. I used fusible fleece, which looks pretty darn bad. It only fuses on one side too, so I quilted down the middle and around the edges to get the front to stay down. I used the cruddy looking side for the back.



The tree skirt is transitioning to a quilt, or rather not transitioning from a quilt top to a tree skirt. I decided to keep it as is and use it to cuddle under and keep on the couch instead of under the tree. I can still put it down there, it just won't be so easy to do without the slit.

October 2010

November 2012

December 2010

December 2012

Did you notice that I put the corners on backwards? :) I noticed too late, but since it is not going to be a round tree skirt I don't mind, so they stay.
The reason it has not been put together is that when I trimmed the blocks, I had no idea what I was doing (still don't) and left very little seam allowance, which cuts off points. I put the rows together and lost the points. I ripped them out and packed it up. 2 years ago.
So this time when I put them together I used a very scant seam allowance and only lost one point, just barely. Of course, when/if I border it I might lose a few more.
I plan on doing a scrappy back with all the leftover fabrics.

I still have several scarves outstanding that I need to get going on. Then my holiday sewing will be done.

Have a great week!

WIP Wednesday November, 11 2012 - lots of ripping

 I set a goal in October to spend the month working on and hopefully finishing some UFOs. I did finish one, and worked on one or two others.  I am continuing the goal into November. Some of the things I brought out to work on were the Hot Wheels mis-quilt, the Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt, the advent calendar, the toddler dress and shirt make-over and trying to finish up one of the Beginners quilt along quilts to give as a Christmas gift.

Here is the BQA set of blocks partly sashed. I think the fabric (Kaffe Fassett shot cotton Granite) I chose is pulling the other fabrics together nicely. I  just need to decide on a layout so I can sash the right side.




Ah the Hot Wheels mis-quilt. :) I ended up ripping out the blocks and ripping the blocks apart from each other, but they are still whole blocks. I have played with them a bunch and still can not get them to work well, so they may get de-constructed even further. I decided to save myself the trouble of ripping the borders because I may be able to just cut what I need. So now it is a window quilt. :)

The progress on the Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt is I ripped the misaligned border off.  I need to just sit down and knock this one out. It is just borders.

The weird shirt makeover didn't happen, because it turned out that the pants were really too small to be useful, so I passed the whole outfit on to a friend, who also thought the shirt was weird. I wonder how many people it will get passed to before someone uses it. :)

The bubble dress makeover went reasonably well. Littlest Miss refused to model for the "before" shots, so we just have it laid out.

 

The bottom/inside of the dress.

After seam ripping and hemming the lining and outer dress.

 She wore it to church last week with no fuss, and other than wrinkling like mad it was fine. It looks WAY better this way. The funny thing was that her little friend at church was wearing a bubble dress that was actually really cute (I don't usually like the style at all.)
The difference to me was the drape. Our dress had fabric that was too stiff; it puffed out in a strange way making it look like an upside down mushroom. The other little girl's dress fabric was lightweight and silky and hung really nicely. I am glad I made this one work for us. At least I don't feel like I totally wasted my money now.

Before church, I also took off the blue ribbon dangling down. It looked like an award ribbon which kind of bugged me. Plus, it kept covering the flowers. 

 This is one project where there was no seam ripping involved. Just pressing and cutting.
After 2 years, I am finally getting back to my version of Lee's great Advent Calendar.
I got my pockets cut and pressed and replaced my fusible fleece for the 3rd time. (I kept borrowing it for other projects.)

I am linking up at Freshly Pieced. Go check out some great ongoing projects!