More goodie swap sewing!

This week has not been good for sewing. I feel like I managed to get hardly anything done, a combination of work, kids and still feeling under the weather. Plus feeling quite lethargic about it all! But yesterday evening I decided I had had enough of feeling uninspired, sewing-wise, and knew that the only way to "cure" myself was to go and do a small, fun project. I've been mulling over my mug rug for Partner no 1 in the Goodie Swap for a few weeks now and after seeing Judith and Fi both turn Lee's great block tute into a mug rug, I decided that was the way to go. I really really love Lee's tute and this block is a strong contender for my month in Sew Bee Blissful. My partner's colour are a little different from the sort of palette I normally like but I just love how they go together.  I mixed in some solids as I had them in the right shades, and I used lots of fabrics in this one - Kate Spain (Fandango and Central Park) more Aviary II, Loulouthi and more! I felt it needed a neutral border so added on a strip of Kona Ash and think it finishes it off nicely although this is measuring up as a very,very big mug rug!! Oh well, I don't think my partner will mind.

After finishing binding it, I decided to break out my new Perle Cotton which I had in an Iris/purple variegated colourway and did a little hand quilting in the Ash border - a line of small stitches on the inside and longer stitches on the outside. I like the effect although I wish my stitches were more even!

So, partner no 1 is now done. I think and hope she will be pleased with her package when it arrives!

I moved on then to Partner No 2. Now, I feel I know partner no 2's taste reasonably well and she has been very active commenting in the Flickr group which is always a help. I I know exactly what I am doing for her mug rug although I won't get to it till later in the week. I've been mulling over her goodies and I know that she would probably like the needle case I made for partner no 1 too. But one of the things I love about this swap is the opportunity to do different things for different people and work with separate colour schemes. So I have been looking for an opportunity to use Ayumi's patchwork wristlet tutorial for a while and decided Partner 2 would like this.

I used Kona Ash to make my feature fabrics stand out more and I think it has a fresh clean look that I love! This is the back - don't you love those seahorses?

And this is part of the front - I'm afraid that one of the feature fabrics will just make it too obvious to my partner so I'm not showing the whole thing!

This is a really practical little pouch. It has a wrist strap (matching the interior lining) and would be perfect to hold a few small things if you don't want or need to bring your handbag out with you. Its lined with some Modern Meadow fabric, with a pocket made from Kona Ochre. The pocket is divided and easily holds some cards, notes and a lipstick. Plus your phone and keys would fit easily in there too.

So partner no 2 - I hope you like it! More on the way for you - I have another (little) goodie in mind for you as well as your mug rug. Keep watching :-)

PS. If you're looking for my Kona solid giveaway for 5 half metres of Kona cottons, pop over here to enter! It closes tomorrow evening so don't miss out!

Linking up to:

Operation {Stash} Transformation....and a possible giveaway!

I made this cute little zipped bag last night. I used two squares of fabric (trimmed back) that I had to swap out of a blanket I was making (thanks E for scribbling all over the top bits!) and a great little tute I found for making the zipper ends really neat. I was really pleased with how it turned out. I always have issues with getting my zip ends as neat as I would like and this tutorial was really good, I have a couple of things I need to improve on but this is a massive improvement on what I've done previously. It's now residing happily in my sewing basket!

However, searching around for fabric scraps big enough to use as lining completely wrecked my head because my scraps were all jammed into a big hat box in no order and all scrunched up. I know that in blogland most of what is seen is the finished product and pretty perfect. This nice minky-backed pram blanket I made for my friend for her new baby girl, which, with the little pouch above, are my little projects for Fabric Tuesday this week, for example:

But (like everything) few things in my world are perfect. Here's my non perfect little scrap box:

Between not being able to find scraps for lining my little pouch, and dreading the thought of getting started on my Bottled Rainbow mini-blocks because I couldn't actually find any scraps I actually wanted, I decided today it was time to do something about it all. (In fact, this looks a lot better than it actually was, because this photo was taken half way through the sorting when the fabric had a chance to breathe and was no longer completely crushed in there!)

After sorting out my yardage and FQs a few days ago, I decided today to do something about the scrap stash today. I spent the afternoon on Operation Transformation - scrap style! I ironed and sorted, and ironed and sorted some more and this is what I ended up with. Three lovely neat little baskets, divided broadly into warms, cools and neutrals/multi-coloureds.

Now, this doesn't look like a lot of scraps, does it?

Actually, it is.

Here's the warms:

And the cools:

And the multi-coloureds and neutrals:

And these are only my small scraps! I have another big box of FQs, fat eigthts & large scraps. Plus a huge box of yardage.

So why am I telling you all this?

Well, despite all that stash sorting this week, I am waiting for another delivery (Central Park half yards - 6 of them in the blue and purple colourways. Yum yum!) and my wonderful friend H brought a beautiful little gift of Tanya Whelan FQs with her when she came to visit on Thursday:

So I thought maybe, just maybe, I might do a little giveaway from my stash - in the spirit of keeping it under control. And as a little belated Easter gift to one of my lovely readers!

I'm thinking, a scrappy giveaway. Maybe a zipper bag of varied scraps from my lovely stash and a few FQs? And one of my little scrappy pincushions if you're really really nice to me?

What do you think? Are you interested? Let me know!

If you are I'll start putting the scraps together and will post the giveaway & how to enter towards the weekend.

Style Stitches Origami Bag



Let me preface this post by asking: who hates putting zip in bags/purses? Seriously? How many of you are jumping up and down waving your arms (well, in your mind at least?) Yep. Me too!

I've had a bit of a dubious relationship with zippered bags for a long time. Zips in skirts, fine, no problem. I found a super easy tute on doing zips in skirts last year and never looked back. But zips in bags just freak me out. They never turn properly for me and they always look messy and untidy.

Now, I know the answer to this is practice, practice, practice. But that assumes some level of craft-fail and I'm not good at craft-fail, it totally discourages me and I HATE making something and then not being able to use it. That's why I do buttons in all the bags I make!

So it was with a little trepidation that I  approached the Origami Bag pattern in the Amy Butler Style Stitches book this evening. One thing about the patterns in this book is that they have a lot of written instructions and not very many pictures and diagrams. When it comes to sewing, I'm totally visual (mostly because I have very poor spatial sense, just ask Himself about my parking!) and I was interested to see how I found the pattern as a result. But, I have to say, the pattern was really well put together (as I would have expected!) and anywhere that I really needed a diagram, there was one, which was great.

After faffing about with fabric for a while trying to decide which to use, and chasing the kids back up the stairs more than a few times, I finally settled on these:

Alexander Henry's Willow Wren, Girl Friday Cosmo Cricket and Ta Dot in Berry by Michael Miller.

I found the pattern fairly straightforward to make, there were a few little tricky bits in it around the zip ends when sewing up the seams but nothing too challenging. And I even managed to sew my zip reasonably respectably! Its by no means perfect but its functional (a big step forward!) and looks ok-ish, it could be a bit tidier and less bulky, but I'm planning on making a few more of these so hopefully I'll have it perfect by the time I get to the last one :-)

I really like this Willow Wren fabric, its super cute, I have a half yard and will definitely be ordering more of it! And the Ta Dot lining gives is a great lift on the inside. This little bag is a good size for sewing notions, threads etc. I'm going to make a few of them for my sewing box in this size and the next size up. I also want to do one for my handsewing kit.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased. It was nice to follow a pattern for something like this and not improvise as I went along which is my normal approach. Even better, my bag turned out not a million miles away from the shape of the photo in the book. I'm going back to tackle the Cosmo bag later in the week - more about that later in the week!

I'll be linking this up to Fabric Tuesday on Quiltstory and other great blogs -> check out the links on my sidebar!