Sunday, March 16, 2008

Traveling quilts

I am deliberately holding out on posting pics of progress on my quilt. For one very specific reason. I am traveling to Idaho with Chaun, George and the kids next week to visit her parents. (Cori, I SO wish you could come out too...) Chaun's mom owns a longarm quilting machine and is going to teach me how to quilt my own quilt! The longarm machine will make it so much easier than trying to deal with my sewing machine here at home. The quilt top is done and as a matter of fact, I am just about done with another one. :) I will have quilting-in-progress photos when I get back. I am so enamored with the idea of working my own quilt from start to finish. Any quilt tops I do after the trip will be sent to Idaho and Chaun's mom will do them up for me.

Friday, March 07, 2008

I sewed some more!

Just one more bag, folks. Once I tried it, I had to make the perfect bag for myself. The original was based off an actual plastic bag and I forgot to add seam allowances so it ended up a skinny tall bag. Second time around, I didn't use a template, I just measured and sketched on the fabric itself, the size of bag I wanted to end up with and then added in extra for seams. I made this bag wider, shorter, and gusseted. I also made one handle 1" shorter than the other so I can loop it over the tall handle and the bag will stay closed. Oh! And we added interfacing (Chaun's brilliant idea) to give it more structure. I forgot to measure the finished product but I will add those in once I remember to measure.
SIDE ONE:

SIDE TWO:

SIDE VIEW:

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

I sewed!

I found this tutorial recently on how to sew a lunch bag by using a plastic grocery sack as the pattern. I don't know much about sewing or my sewing machine but I figured this could be easy. And after a few rookie mistakes, I had myself a cute little lunch bag! I didn't take into account seam allowances (another rookie mistake) so it's smaller than I would like but having done it once, I know I can tailor the pattern to exactly what I want. I used a few fabrics from my stash (I find it extremely funny that I have a yarn stash AND a fabric stash) which made me quite happy.