Sunday, March 13, 2011

A Plethora of FOs

So, another month goes by and I have the same excuse: school! Although it's busy (and hard), it's going really well. I'm in the process of interviewing for internships, so please keep your fingers crossed I land one!

I've been sporadically crafting over the last few months. I started a lot of these projects in December and worked on them slowly until they were all done.

My good friend Ellen planned a trip to Mexico to celebrate her 40th birthday and she invited me and a bunch of her friends to go. Unfortunately, I couldn't go, but I was happy to help when she said she wanted to give the girls personalized travel bags for the trip.

She bought all of this wild fabric and picked the Weekend Travel Bag from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross. I made them assembly line style which helped to make them go pretty quickly.


I embroidered everyones name on their bag, which took some time, but was totally worth the effort. The only regret I have is not using a stronger interfacing. The fabric was a little soft and even with interfacing, they weren't as stiff as I would have liked. No worries, though because Ellen loved them!

Of course, as I was making of all these bags, a certain (not so) little person decided she HAD to have one with a flower. She drew what the flower should look like and it was simple enough, so I obliged.

She picked out this great home dec weight polka dot fabric in the clearance section for the outer bag. The pink lining is from my stash... it was a clearance buy when I visited Philly a few years ago.

With a home dec weight fabric and interfacing, this bag turned out much stiffer and with better corners than the first set. Love it!


Piper mentioned that she wanted to use the bag when she went bike riding (she claims she's too big for a basket now), so I added some cotton webbing to the side seam. Now, she can fling it right onto her bike handles.

Last, but not least, one of my sweetest co-worker had a baby shower in late February. Since I've been pressed for time, I went with simple squares and white sashing.

Do you recognize the pink fabric? It's the same stash fabric I used for the lining of Piper's bag. Piper also found this great turtle print in the clearance section and it matched the pink flowers perfectly! Meant to be, wouldn't you say?

My favorite part is the green Minky on the back. It was my first time sewing with Minky, but with a few tips, I didn't have any problems. First, I pinned, pinned, and pinned some more. Then, I used my walking foot and voila, no puckers!

The teeniest of scraps were left over and I didn't want to throw them out. So they got pieced together and became a matching bib. Swoon! I love sewing for babies.

Well, that's the end of show and tell for today. Hope all is well with you guys!