Second Kindle Bag Finished!

I finished Matthew's Kindle bag! For some reason, even though I had just made Taylor's bag, finishing this bag gave me lots of problems! It was an exercise in perseverance. Just about everything that could go wrong or that I could do wrong along the way happened. Oh well, it is now done and he likes it, which is all that matters! :D

I am so happy that I found a good use for the Pac Man and panda fabrics that I had bought for him with no particular project in mind.

One Kindle Bag Finished!

My kids got Kindles for Christmas, but needed bags to carry and protect them. I came up with a bag, which is large enough to hold a Kindle in its original box for the extra protection it will need. This one is Taylor's.

Taylor takes her Kindle to school to use in her English class and prefers a bag that she can wear across her body, since she always has to carry so much stuff, so I made the strap the same length as the strap on her favorite purse (48 inches).

I have everything I need to make Matthew's, so hopefully I'll be posting pictures of his bag in a few days!

Journal Covers

In early December, I picked up a copy of Quilting Arts Gifts, which is full of great relatively quick gift ideas.

I want to make nearly everything in it! I used one of the patterns from the magazine to make these quilted journal covers that my kids had admired. They picked out the fabrics and thread and the subjects of the embroidered designs.

Taylor's has gold thread.

Matthew's has bright orange thread.

This was a fun project and we were all happy with the way they turned out! :)

It was my first time using fusible batting and I really liked it. The kids both got Kindles for Christmas and my daughter needs to take hers to school, but doesn't have a case for it yet, so I'm planning to use some of the leftover fusible batting to make cases for them this week.

Halloween Tabletopper

My mom needed some Halloween decorations for an October event, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to try out my new Accuquilt Go Hexagons Die (#55011) while making a Halloween table topper for her. Okay, I was also excited to have an excuse to buy Halloween fabric! :)

This die cuts 2 inch, 3 inch, and 5 inch hexagons. I used only the largest for my project.

Cutting and sewing the hexagons turned out to be a piece of cake! However, the quilting and binding did not go as smoothly. I had difficulty with the tension on my machine and with seeing well enough to stitch exactly where I wanted. I spent a lot of time UNdoing. Also, all of the tutorials that I found for binding were for the method that requires hand-sewing the back. Not only did I have trouble doing this as neatly as I would have liked, but I sew very slowly by hand, so it ended up taking me at least twelve hours just to do that one step. After that, I did not have enough time to embellish the black border, as I had planned. I would have made the black border narrower, if I had known that I wasn't going to embellish it.

Not the best lighting, sorry. I used silver thread to topstich-in-the-ditch and the plaid fabric has silver stripes in it too, neither of which really show up in this picture.

It was definitely a learning experience. :) Luckily, I have since discovered all of the great presser feet that are available for my machine to make quilting, binding, and applique easier! Hopefully I won't have as much difficulty finishing my full-sized quilt!

My Second and Third Projects: Jane Market Bags

I purchased this great Jane Market Bag pattern by Alicia Paulson and these cheerful Tutti Frutti embossed cotton fabrics. I have always called this type of fabric "seersucker," but the fabric store calls it "embossed cotton." I'm not sure if there is a difference between the two. I love these colorful, cheerful prints! Also, the fabric turned out to have the extra advantage of holding it's shape.

 

The second bag, which was made from regular quilting cotton, instead of embossed cotton, is quite floppy. The bag is lined, of course, but the pattern did not call for interfacing or batting and I did not know much about the benefits of interfacing when I made these bags. I love this traditional French Provincial color combination and set out to find fabrics in these colors with patterns that remind me of the style.

The problem with this pattern is that it is so fun and easy to make and the possibilities in terms of fabric combinations are endless that I could just keep making them and never get around to any other projects! Alicia Paulson created a Flickr group for people to share photos of the bags they have made. Check it out! People are so talented and there are photos of so many great bags! I'll definitely be making more of them!

My First Project: Simple Pillow Cover

To learn to use my machine and to try out my Accuquilt Go, I first made this simple pillow cover from a fat quarter bundle. The stripey fabrics go with the decor in my parents' family room where they have decorated with souvenirs from their trips to Peru and Mexico. The solid fabrics are shimmery, so this pillow cover is prettier in person.

I used the Accuquilt 2 1/2" Strip Cutter (#55014) for this project. One nice thing about this die is that it does not cut the short ends of the fabric, so you if fold the fabric right, you can easily cut very long, perfect strips with very little waste. Also, you can easily stack several layers of most fabrics, saving a lot of time, while improving accuracy.

The purchase that started it all

Early last March, I bought a new Brother CS6000i 60-Stitch Computerized Free-Arm Sewing Machine. I chose this particular machine after reading a great many reviews by experienced users on Amazon.com. I had only sewn a few times before purchasing the machine, but had longed to quilt and sew since I was a girl. It is a relatively inexpensive machine, but it works very well and has all of the features I have needed so far. I love it!

Since I bought it, I've been thinking of sewing, reading about sewing, looking at other peoples' sewing, squirreling away fabric, and dreaming up more projects than I have time to make! (Check out my Pinterest boards to get an idea of what I mean.) Some days, I feel I will positively burst because my head is stuffed with ideas and I am unable to work on ten projects at once! :) I have finished some smaller projects and am nearly done with my very first quilt top, so I'll be sharing these soon.