A Quilt Finish

I finished a quilt!  It was too cold outside today to go out there dragging a quilt around, so I just took a bunch of pictures inside.  I don't finish a quilt very often, so when I do, I take a lot of pictures!

I was going for an Americana theme.

There are some pieces of some men's shirts in this quilt.  Also some denim from jeans.

I'm hoping to finish more quits this year than last year.  HaHa, that won't be too hard since I only finished one wall hanging size quilt last year!

Sewing To Sell Book

This looks like an interesting read for anyone who wants to make money from home. I love sewing gifts for my family and also items to sell in my Etsy Shop. The problem is to figure out what people actually want! It also has to be something that doesn't take forever to make.


One of my favorite things to make to sell is Clothespin Bags. But, I have to face it, not too many people are in the market for those in this day and time! I think I could sell quilts, but they take me forever to make!


So there might be some ideas in this book.

A Slice of My Life October 9, 2017

Good Morning!

I worked in the sewing room on Saturday and completed two more of the small monogrammed tote bags that I am working on for Christmas gifts.  I also started on the 4th bag.  I felt a bit of accomplishment since I had not been able to find the time or motivation to do any sewing lately.

My plan is to work at least 15 minutes each day in the sewing room.   But, with even the best of intentions, lots of days (well most days) it doesn't happen. sigh.....

Also on Saturday my hubby and I cleaned out one of my Zinnia flower beds.  The flowers were still blooming, but the plant part was looking very bad.  I picked a bunch of the flowers and then we pulled up all the zinnia plants and I trimmed all the remaining plants.  That's one flower bed that has been put to bed for the winter!   The flowers made a very pretty arrangement that I have been enjoying all weekend, and should last most of the week.

This is the other Zinnia bed that has mostly yellow zinnias.  They are still looking pretty good, so I'll leave them for a while longer.  Its been very dry lately, so we've been watering them.

This week I am working in Zone 2 on the Flylady plan which is the kitchen.  Here are my plans:

1  Declutter and throw away some of the junky plastic ware we have accumulated.  I get so mad when I am running short of time and I'm trying to pack my lunch and none of the lids will fit the bowl I put something in!

2.  Wipe off the cabinet doors and the fronts of the appliances.  Our cabinets are white and dust accumulates on them.  The best way to remove this is to use baby wipes or Lysol wipes.

3.  Wipe out the refrigerator shelves  and drawers and throw away anything that needs to be tossed.

4.  Declutter duplicate and unneeded kitchen utensils, gadgets, pans, etc.  I have a huge pile of cookie sheets, muffin tins and spatulas. 

5.  Store some things that are normally stored on the counter inside the cabinets.  Hopefully there will be more room when I get rid of some things.  For example, I don't use the blender that often, but it is taking up room on the counter.  Same goes for the red Pioneer Woman Dutch Oven.  Its pretty, but adds to that cluttered look.

6.  Wash the window over the sink.

7.  Use magic minutes:  Those are the minutes that can be used while waiting for something else, or when you just have an extra minute.  I could wipe out one of the shelves inside the refrigerator door during a magic minute, or wipe one cabinet door front!

Ideas for food this week:

Butterbeans cooked with smoked sausage that has been cut into small pieces

Beef kabobs cooked in the oven.

Sloppy Joes

Bite size celery sticks with a spoon of pimento cheese on each one.

Hot dogs

Green beans cooked with ham bits

I hope your week is blessed and productive!

Practice first.... Sew once!

I worked on the monogrammed bags I am making for Christmas gifts over the weekend.  I had already been successful with one bag.  The monogram came out really well.  So I continued on with working on some more bags.  I was not happy to discover that different letters of the alphabet need to be spaced differently, depending on the shape of the letter!  I'm afraid I messed up two of the panels that would have become bags.

Here's the one that I made weekend before last came out great on the first try.

But this one is Bad!  That "W" is way too close to the center "S".

It turned out much better on this practice piece.  I wrote down the numbers and can now monogram the bag correctly.

This one is kind of hard to see, but the "J" on the right is just not right.

This practice piece is much better and I did write down the numbers for future reference!

This one came out ok the first time, thankfully!

Here the machine is set up to go.  Hopefully the practice pieces and numbers I have written down with make this bag a success!

I will definitely do practice pieces from now on before sewing on the fabric I planned to use!

Christmas Sewing!

I was able to  finish one of the Christmas gifts I have been planning and love the feeling of accomplishment!  My plan was to make monogrammed bags and to purchase items on sale, with coupons, etc. to go in them.

I went "shopping" in my stash and found enough of this fabric to make four bags.  I am choosing the monogram color based on what I "think" is the recipient's favorite color.  Not really sure about a couple of them.  The colors are blue, red, green and purple.  I am choosing the lining fabric to coordinate with the monogram color.

Some colors to choose from.

Several years, in the early days of my blog, I posted a 5 part "pocketbook" tutorial, and also a "fabric reusable grocery bag" tutorial.  I  went back and read the posts and this bag is a combination of the two tutorials.  The tutorials are listed on the bottom right hand side bar of this blog, if you are interested.

So far the goodies in this bag are shaving cream, razors, body wash and two lotions.  I also have several candles and will add one of those.

My "dream" plan if time allows, is to also make a small, zippered, monogrammed cosmetic bag to go in the bags.  In the zippered bag I plan to include small items such as chap stick, lip gloss, etc.  The possibilities are endless for ideas to fill the bags.  A personalized key fob would be a nice touch also!

 I ordered lotions, body washes and candles from Bath and Body Works when they had a big clearance sale a couple of months ago.  It was a great sale!  I had some high value coupons that I applied to the shaving cream and razors at CVS and through Amazon Subscribe and Save.

Are you making any plans to make any Christmas gifts?  I hope this post has given you some ideas!

The Fabric and Yarn Fairy has been!

The fabric and yarn fairy has been to my house! Well.... actually it was my sister. She is cleaning out the area where she stores her craft supplies and is not doing much sewing and crocheting any more. So, I am the happy and lucky recipient!

I haven't had a chance to really go through it all and see all the treasures, but laying right there on top is a Moda Layer Cake and a Moda Jelly Roll!  There are packs of matching fat quarters, and all kinds of wonderful scraps and large pieces of fabric.  Even the basket was included in the gift.

I see lots of sewing and quilting in my future!

 

I am also going to be looking for ideas for using the yarn and looking forward to crocheting in the Fall and Winter this year.

Do you have any easy crochet Christmas gift ideas? 

Thank you sister!

Saturday Sewing: I made a clothespin bag!

I haven't made a clothespin bag in a quite a while. In fact I had to read my own clothespin bag tutorial to remember exactly how! My tutorial is found HERE and is one of my all time most read posts.  It still gets viewed several times a day.

If you look at the quilt in THIS POST, you will recognize the fabric!

I listed this one in my Etsy Shop HERE.

Some weekend Sewing

I spent some time in my sewing room Saturday.  This wall hanging is made from 12 six inch blocks that I made last year as part of the Splendid Sampler Quilt along.  I only made these 12, so I decided to put them to use.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Have a great Monday!

Handmade Baby Gifts

Like most people, sometimes when I am working on something, no matter how hard I try, nothing seems to go right.  That's the way it was when I was making these burp cloths and crocheted hats for the new baby girl of a coworker of mine.

I measured and eyeballed it and everything, but after these burp cloths were washed, the name isn't straight.  But I figured its for spitting up on, so it won't matter.   The pink and white hat turned out a little small looking to me. 

I had planned to have the gift done by the time the baby was born, but she decided to come 2 1/2 weeks early!  So, then I wanted to hurry up and get the gift ready. 

So today the gift goes to work with me and out of my house and off my mind!

My Dream Weekend and a Sewing Machine Story

I hope all of you got through the big blizzard ok!  In my neck of the woods, we live on what is often the snow/ice/rain line. This time around we got ice.  Thankfully we didn't lose power, but, I'm seriously going to get my grandmother's treadle machine in working order in case I need to sew when the power is out!

Last week my sweet hubby loaded up my mother's old Singer and my old Singer machines and took them to the local sew and vac store to have them serviced.  I have had Mama's machine since her death in 2012, but it was not in working condition.

I love this machine!!!!!

You may ask why I titled this post "My Dream Weekend".  Its because I love to be snowed in and one of my happiest times is to be home for three days, doing what ever I want.  This of course includes lots of sewing!

I looked up this machine on line to try to date it and it is either from 1971 or 1973.  This one was originally in a home economics classroom.  I posted a picture of it on a facebook group I'm a member of, and several people said they had the same machine and that it has a classroom history.

It also has the reputation of being a "work horse".  I'm going to try free motion quilting on it.  That is if I an figure out how to drop the feed dogs, if that is even possible!

This is a partial log cabin quilt block I made using the leaders and enders system.  This will be part of a twin size boy's quilt for one of my grandsons.  I went through all my scraps to pull these kinds of fabrics for it.  Red, White and Blue, with a few boy type novelty fabrics mixed in.

I made much progress on the Sun Bonnett Sue quilt.  This picture shows the blocks laid out, before they were stitched together.

I love snow days.  Where I live, I can usually count on having at least one a year!