Holiday Vacation

I'm on vacation in Utah right now but I'm still sewing so I will have lots to share when I get back!
Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy New Year!

Winner!

The winner of the napkins and fabric is Caroline. Congrats I sent you an email please respond with your name and address so I can send you your prize. Thanks to the rest of you who participated. I had a lot of fun reading your traditions.

Its finished

The giveaway is now closed. I will have a winner shortly. 64 comments what a great turn out!

Welcome to my first give-away!

It's my first give-away! I just created this blog a few months ago and I'm excited to have you all visit me over here! So on to the give-away. I'm giving away a set of 4 napkins (about 15" square) that would be great for late summer or fall and some fabric to help you get started on your projects for spring!


The napkins are double sided so you can use either side. I love these!
Here is a close up of the fabric. There is half a yard of the pink one and the yellow one is a strip that is about 8 1/2" by 43/44."
Just leave me a note and tell me a tradition you share with your family during the Holidays. I'll pick the winner tomorrow night after 6pm. So you had until 6:00pm (Central time) tomorrow night!
I almost forgot I will only be shipping in the US.

A suit and travel bags

My Hubby has been asking and asking to the point of pestering me to alter this suit. We found it at a thrift sale at the local school. It fit him perfect except the sleeves and pants were a little to long. So pants hemmed, check; sleeves taken up... ummm in progress. When I was in school I worked as a seamstress in the theater costume shop and so I had a lot of experience hemming and doing all sorts of alterations, as well as making new costumes from scratch. To this day I think it was my favorite job. But I digress... anyways fixing his suit has brought back some fond and not so fond memories (think getting in a fight with the pins and loosing) of the shop.

On another unrelated subject. We are leaving to go spend time with my family in Utah in 1 1/2 weeks and so I thought it was high time I make my self a soiled clothing bag. I hate it when the clean ones get mixed up with the dirty ones, and I hate using plastic grocery sacks for this because I always have issues with them. So here we are a bag just for the soiled stuff that is labeled and NOT plastic. Yeah.
I am trying to use up some of my stash and so I just found some fabric I liked together and started sewing. The ribbon pull string I really like. I sewed the pink one to the shear white one and then made a bit of bias tape to enclose all the frayed edges. I love it.
Of course I couldn't have it just plain, so I added some applique and a bit of hand embroidery. I haven't done embroidery much ever so this was a fun experiment, I enjoyed it so I think I will do more in the future.

Christmas cheer anyone?

I made these for my churches women's group. They are some square table cloths and a quilted table runner. I have to give some credit to Kathy from Pink Chalk Studio

for the basic table runner idea I saw hers and just had to try it out. Kathy's was featured on the cover of Quilting Arts, she did a post all about it.

Anyways, this was so fun to make and I am in love with it so now I will have to make one of my own. If I only had the time, it might have to wait until next year... we'll see.
I love this snow flake that I designed, but I didn't like appliqueing it on. It took so long!
What are you making for Christmas?

A give-away from film in the fridge

Over at Film in the Fridge there is a give-away going on. She is celebrating 100 posts on her blog, great job! I'll get there some day. Anyway, she is giving away pot holders, napkins and fabric!

A gift for a cute little guy

One of my friends from college recently (about 2 months ago) had her 3rd little boy; and because I believe every baby should have something new I made these:

They are double sided burp cloths. Both sides are made of flannel from JoAnn's, I added ribbon to one side of each to dress them up a bit. The green one was so plain so I also appliqued the cowboys by the fence on it too. They are also bigger than most other burp cloths I've seen. In my experience this is very helpful to the mother (she doesn't go through so many shirts a day). They are about 12'' by 17.''
I made a bunch of these after I had my second baby, mainly because the others I had were very worn. My son loved these, they are simple, cute and fast to make. If I have another one I think I will make a bunch more- you can never have to many burp cloths.

Quilt Festival

Quilt Festival was great! There were so many inspiring things that I forgot to take pictures until the very end. My friend Jena and I went together and we got there just as it was opening. They had 20 isles of booths with about 12-16 booths per isle on each side I think. Then they had a whole other section that was just quilts on display, We didn't get to look at all of those we never would have gotten out of there.

This is the fabric I got there. A charm pack of Moda's Woodland bloom line by Lila Tueller, a fat quarter butterfly print (I can't remember the line), ginger blossom by Sandi Henderson for Michael Miller, and the red and pink apples from Farmers Market. I was the most excited for the apple print because I have been wanting it for awhile but all the places I have seen it online have been out of stock on this color. So when I spotted it I had to get some right away.
These are pictures of some giant size ric rac that I saw; and if I can dream up some project to use them in I will be ordering some. If you have any ideas let me know.

This is me at the serendipity booth where I got my fabric.
I put this picture in here for fun. Its a huge shirt to advertise a steamer iron I think. I just saw it and thought I would never want to make that or iron it.

A give-a-way

A give-a-way

Over at See Katie sew she has a give-a-way for her 2 year blog anniversery. Congrats Katie! I really like reading her blog it inspires me with what I do. 

Handmade Holidays

Over at sewmamasew they are dedicating a whole month to handmade gifts for anyone and everyone. I think it will be great to get some ideas.

Houston Quilt Show

I'm going to the Houston Quilt show! It will be my first one, I am so excited. I wish I would have known that they had a meet and greet for bloggers this last weekend earlier so I could have gone to that too but maybe next year. I'll let you know how it is.

Sewing is slow these days

It seems that I have been busy doing lots of things but have no finished projects to show for it. So I will show you all pictures of the finished top and back to a quilt I'm making for my youngest son. He is really into cars and trucks.

Nursing cover

I have been waiting to post about this until I got this blog up and running so here it is. I was teaching a small basic sewing class and this was one of our first projects, (most of the students were young mothers). Here are the fabrics I used. The darker fabric is for the back.

Here is the completed cover all rolled up and ready to go into a diaper bag.

Here is the strap that goes around the mothers neck, it is adjustable which I love.
This is the whole cover, the pattern I used was for a one sided cover but I wanted it to look nice from either side and I also wanted it to be a little larger because I know babies like to wiggle a lot.

It's great to be created!

Hello all this is the new blog for just my crafting whims and anything else I want to talk about. Welcome Please leave a comment so I know you have been here.