Las Vegas Tote Bag & Wallet March 18, 2011

Last year I attempted to make a Tote Bag that didn’t quite turn out like I had hoped. The pattern wasn’t all that easy to read and seemed to be missing some steps. Shortly after that, I visited all of the quilt shops in the Las Vegas area and picked up several fabrics to make another Tote Bag. Fast forward almost a year later, and I never got around to making any of those Tote Bags…for many reasons, but the big one was because I was afraid of spending a lot of time on something that didn’t turn out right.

I’ve been reading the Lazy Girl Designs Blog for well over a year and always wanted to try one of Joan’s patterns. I don’t know what was holding me back. I even bought the Lazy Girl Wonder Wallet pattern at one of the Las Vegas shops last year but never did anything with it, in the hopes that one day I would get back to making another Tote Bag. I finally broke down and ordered Lazy Girl’s Margo Handbag pattern from Sew Thankful and got right on putting the bag together that evening.

It took me two evenings to get the bag and wallet done (probably because I am a little slow and inexperienced), but I am so pleased with the results. Not only was the pattern easy to follow, but the Margo includes color pictures, as well! That is just what this novice pattern reader needs! There was very little cursing, seam ripping and confusion going on in my sewing room with these projects, unlike many other projects I’ve attempted. My boyfriend even said that the bag looks like something someone would buy in a store…but maybe he’s exaggerating just a bit 😉

So let me share with you the pictures of my projects!

Workspace Pictures February 9, 2011

I moved into a new house with my boyfriend last month, and I am just now getting around to setting up my sewing room. Luckily it’s a rather large room, so I finally have plenty of space to have a separate table just for cutting, a huge ironing board and a large desk for my sewing machine…and yet ANOTHER table that I’m going to use for laying out my projects as I work on them, especially when piecing blocks. Now I wish I had taken a picture to upload. I’ll work on that!

In December, Rosebud’s Cottage posted some inspiring photos of her workspace that I bookmarked and plan to use for ideas. Also, this week Mary Englebreit posted pictures of hers.

What ideas do you have for a sewing/craft room? Share pictures or a link of your own or maybe a picture that inspires you!

3 Projects from 3 Fat Quarters December 6, 2010

I guess I’ve been pretty absent from this blog, but so have my projects. I started on a Dresden Plate table runner but only got one plate completed. It was going to be a Christmas gift, but that’s definitely not happening now. I did make  a basket or two since, but I haven’t had a chance to blog about them yet.

I still read some blogs of other quilters, and I was inspired this morning by Lazy Girl Designs with some small project ideas using just 3 Fat Quarters for 3 projects. While I’m probably not going to do much sewing between now and the first of the year, I’m hoping to tackle more projects after I move in January. I’m pretty excited about the move, as I am going from a one bedroom apartment by myself to a 5 bedroom house with my boyfriend. Since neither of us have kids (and don’t plan to have any), we’re going to have lots of extra space, including a room JUST FOR MY SEWING (and other crafts).

Anyway, my point was to share this link with anyone out there who might still be reading this rarely active blog. Go check out what Joan Hawley at Lazy Girl Designs has to share!

 

Fall-O-Ween Quilt Designer Blog Hop September 20, 2010

Quilting Retreat Weekend II September 19, 2010

 

I spent the past weekend at a cabin at Center Hill Lake with my mom and her five girl friends (known as the MRS’…My Rowdy Sisters) for the second time (the first being a year ago August). The weekend was time to work on quilting for most of us, and a couple of others worked on other crafts and reading. This blog hasn’t been updated since April, which is the last time I did any sewing. Yikes! Life has just been rather busy lately, and I haven’t really had good working space.

 

So what did I do this weekend? Well, I wish I could say that I completed one full project, but the truth is that I partially finished 3 different projects.

 

I made the top parts of two I Spy quilts for friend’s babies, but I still need to add the borders and quilt it.

 

Then I did most of the quilting on a panel throw that I started for my mom last year and never finished. She’s going to have to finish the rest of it because my sewing machine arm just isn’t long enough to quilt around the design.

 

Finally, I finished the final 5 Maple Leaf blocks, also another quilt that I had started last year. I was so hoping to get this quilt finished soon, but I just now looked at the setting kit for it, and it involves piecing 26 MORE maple leaf blocks in a smaller size. At this rate, I feel like I will never get this quilt done, though I’m sure when it’s complete it will be beautiful and well worth the work.

 

We’re already planning another weekend in March and hopefully again in September. I get so much done when we go, even though this year I feel like I didn’t get much accomplished only because I didn’t finish any one project to completion. Maybe all this motivation will stay awhile, and I’ll get even more done soon.

Las Vegas has Quilt Shops? April 25, 2010

I started this blog almost a year ago after visitng Las Vegas for the first time and discovering all of the really cool quilt shops in the Las Vegas area. Yes, I went to Las Vegas and was more excited about visiting new-to-me quilt shops than I was excited about gambling! At the time most everyone found this to be odd and amusing, but it seemed natural to me to want to visit the shops since I was a new to sewing.

 

I returned for my second trip to Las Vegas last week for vacation and visited the same 5 shops again. I won’t post about each shop again since I made separate posts for each one last year, but I will link to those posts at the bottom and provide a summary of my recent trip in this single post.

 

It can really all be summed up with a single picture of all of the goodies I purchased while in Las Vegas. I wish I had taken a picture like this last year, too!

 

 

As you can see, I mostly bought small quantities of lots of different fabrics. I bought supplies to make a few more tote bags like the one in the previous post, Funk Frogs Tote Bag. I also picked up two patterns. The first is the Wonder Wallet pattern from a designer whose blog I have been following, Lazy Girl Designs. The second is a pattern to make several small bags called Snap Happy, created by Three Sisters Fabric. The awesome thing about the Snap Happy pattern is that the Christmas Goose Quilt Shop had several kits already made up of the supplies needed to make a Snap Happy bag, so I bought a kit to make myself and my mom a bag.

 

Here are the reviews that I posted last year of each of the shops that I visited, along with a short, updated review of my latest experience with each shop:

 

Quiltique – The ambiance of this store is my favorite among the shops. It’s very open, they have the fabric organized well into different styles and colors. I love that they have fat quarters available for almost all of the fabrics that they sell. Their best deals are with the Chunky Hunks, where they package up the last 3 yards of a bolt and sell it at a discounted price. At this shop I purchased fabric to make another tote bag, mostly with discounted chunky hunks and fat quarters.

 

Fiddlesticks – This is a small shop packed with lots of character. The shop staff on my visit this year and last year are very personal and helpful. It’s like shopping with your favorite aunt! I purchased the Lazy Girl Designs Wonder Wallet pattern and some patriotic fat quarters for my mom. The ladies in the shop were also very helpful in offering to find another Lazy Girl Designs pattern that I have been looking for (the Couch Caddy, which I still haven’t been able to find in any shops, but I’ll probably eventually buy online. I just wish Joan sold it directly on her website).

 

Fabric Boutique – This is the shop that is known for selling an excluse Las Vegas fabric that I purchased to make a Las Vegas tote bag for my next trip to the city. I also purchased some other Last Vegas-style fabric like dice and four-leaf clovers. Fabric Boutique also offers several different panels in all sorts of styles that are great for people new to sewing and quilting.

 

Christmas Goose – The best thing that I like about Christmas Goose is the kits they offer. This is where I purchased the Snap Happy pattern and kit. Last year I had bought a similar kit to make Retro Dish Towels. I love the small kits like this and can’t wait to see if they have something new next year.

 

Nancy’s Quilt Shop – If you’re one who collects lots of small pieces of fabric, Nancy’s is the place to go. I added several sets of Chubby Eighths to my collection in all sorts of colors. They sell these pieces at a deep discount. Their patterns and magazines are also always 30% off.

 

Visiting the shops helped to increase my motivation to do more sewing in my spare time. I just need to find the spare time now 🙂

 

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Funky Frogs Tote Bag April 11, 2010

The last two evenings I worked on making my first tote bag. I found a pattern at All People Quilt awhile back, and it’s been saved on my flash drive for months. I finally decided to take the plunge this weekend and make it. I estimated it would take about 3 hours to finish, so I probably shouldn’t admit that it took me closer to 8 hours to complete. I’m still fairly new to reading patterns, and there are still lots of sewing terms that I don’t understand, so there was lots of ripping of seams and confusion to slow me down.

 

Now that I sorta know what I’m doing, hopefully it won’t take me that long the next time I make one. I never figured out what the pattern wanted me to do with the bottom seams to square off the bottom, so I know it’s not right, but it’s the closest that I got. Also, the pattern never really addressed creating a binding for the top portion, so I did that on my own.

 

Since I usually use this fabric for baby quilts, I was afraid it would turn out looking like a diaper bag or baby bag, and maybe it does resemble one, but I’m still proud of my work and plan to carry it with me to work tomorrow. There’s 4 interior pockets. I would love to figure out a way to make one outside pocket on my next attempt at this pattern.

 

 

Here’s the pattern for the Easy Breezy Tote Bag at the All People Quilt website.

 

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Funky Frog Hop Quilt February 26, 2010

I posted a sneak peek picture of this quilt a few weeks ago in my entry Productive Hibernation. The quilt is a gift for a friend who had a baby at the end of December. I didn’t want to write about it until I gave her the quilt, so the surprise wouldn’t be ruined.

 

Tristan’s quilt is a very simple block design, but so far it’s been my favorite design. I like the large blocks for a baby quilt, and of course the frogs are a favorite of mine. So far I’ve made two baby girl quilts, so this was my first baby boy quilt. It seems that all of my friends are having girls lately. Originally I had planned to make each baby quilt slightly different, but I enjoyed making this design so much that I think I’m going to stick with it for the others that I make in the future (with the exception of one baby quilt that I haven’t written about yet because I haven’t given it away yet. I’ll post about it as soon as she’s received it).

 

The one unique feature of this quilt’s design is that it is the ONLY quilting project that I have actually hand stitched the binding. My mom convinced me that hand stitching the binding is the proper way to stitch binding and made me believe that it should be the ONLY way to stitch binding. I found out really quickly that it might be the way she and her friends stitch binding, but it’s not going to be the way that I stitch binding. It took me about 4 hours to stitch the binding, which is about 4 times as long as it took me to piece the quilt. You can see a close up of the binding in the last picture. Thus, Tristan will have what is most likely the only quilting project of mine that had hand stitched binding.

 

How about I show you the pictures now? Oh, and I forgot to take pictures of the Signature Block on the back I’ll hopefully get one later, as well as pictures of the baby on the quilt.

 

The quilting process. The gripper gloves really do help!

 

Funky Frog Hop Quilt

 

A close up of the name embroidery work that my mom did for me.

 

 

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Organized Workspace February 3, 2010

As the final project of my long weekend and something LONG overdue, I organized.

 

Most of my projects were semi-organized…in plastic grocery bags or various other bags that I picked up along the way. My system obviously wasn’t the most sophisticated, but at least I kept each project together with the other contents. The only problem was that I would have to look in each bag to find the project I was looking for. I kept all of the bags in this huge nylon car trunk organizer (not pictured) that I found last year at Wal Mart. It worked very well for keeping all of my projects together, but I purchased the organizer for my trunk and was unable to find another one to actually keep in my trunk.

 

My mom talked about organizing her projects in plastics containers, and being a fan of plastic containers, I thought it was a good idea for myself, as well. It sure beat my current organization plan of bags in bags and sometimes in more bags. Besides, my desk was getting fairly cluttered, too.

 

BEFORE - I don't normally have everything piled up like this, but I wanted to show everything that I was organizing and putting away for the After pictures. Most of the bulk is fabric for different projects.

 

AFTER - Everything from the Before pictures is put away. Most of the bulk was fabric, which I organized by project in the plastic containers under the work table.

 

It only took me an hour to organize everything, and I must say that I am quite proud of myself. I lean a bit toward the hoarding side in life, as I am seeing by watching Hoarders the past couple of months, though luckily not nearly as bad as most of the people on that show. However, one thing I have learned is that pretty much any hobby can make a normal person lean toward being a hoarder. Now I just need to organize everything else in my life like this!

 

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Productive Hibernation February 1, 2010

I mentioned in my last post that we rarely get snow in the Nashville area. Here I am again talking about the snow. We got much, much more this time, only 3 weeks since the last snow. I love the snow, but I can honestly say that I only want to see it once a year, then I’m ready for it to go away until next year. It’s true that we don’t know how to drive in it, but it’s also true that the local government is not prepared for it with plows and salt trucks, especially for more than just a dusting.

 

I’ve been at home since I got home Thursday afternoon. I did leave once on Saturday with my dad in his 4×4 to scope out the roads. It took us 45 minutes to make the 5 mile round trip to one of the local gas stations, and my place of work is 17 miles from home. Needless to say, I had no interest in driving until the roads were all clear. I got up this morning, anticipating going into work, until the news reported ice and numerous accidents in the area where I would have to drive to work.

 

Here’s a few pictures of the beautiful snow that I now have a love/hate relationship with. (If you click on them, you’ll be directed to the photo on my Flickr page.)

 

One of the country roads a few miles from my house on the way into town.

 

For the first time in a very long time, we had enough snow to go sledding!

 

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However, all of this hibernation wasn’t in vain. My mom and I both got a lot of sewing done, including two baby quilts that I completed. I can’t show you pictures of the completed quilts just yet, because I want the recipients to be the first to see them, but here’s a sneak peek until then.

 

Baby Boy Quilt Sneak Peek

 

Baby Girl Quilt

 

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