Baa Baa Baby Shower

On Saturday, we celebrated pending birth of a very lucky baby. Great parents, a super cool sister and a room full of lambs. I made the bag with Gretchen's superior cutting skills late one night. With some spare fabric, I made the changing pad and it was begging for something adorable on it. I tried my hand at applique. It was a lot of fun. Surely it could have turned horrible, but apparently, I do my best work after a 9:30 pm nap.


The amazing thing about this fabric...it was the first one we picked up. The floral on the outside was perfect for Katie (maybe not so much for Mark). It took us a very long time to find a liner fabric and so settled on gray. We grabbed the matching stripe for the inner pockets and the changing pad.
I hope she likes it and more importantly, I hope she uses it.

Up next...commission purses and perhaps a Christmas stocking or two.

Momma Bag

Six days.

Six days late.

A new record for me. I am consistently late on completing gifts. I am trying, but still more often late than not. AND I must add, I didn't even start it until after her birthday.

I wanted to make my mom a big bag that she could use on her travels to work to hold her lunch, magazines, etc. I also really wanted to try an Amy Butler bag pattern so picked up the Nappy Bag pattern and edited a bit with shorter pockets on the one inside panel and omitted the bottle pockets (obviously). Which, if any of you have made this pattern, are in a really odd place that almost eliminates the end pockets. Let me know if we measured these totally wrong.

The assembly was fairly quick relative to the time it took to pick out the fabric. After I finally chose the fabric and got to the cutting table, I found this fabric above and totally changed my choices. I'm glad I did.

I love the freshness of the fabric and the weight and feel of the bag.

There are definitely more of these to be made.

A Big Bag

I have realized that the plane is good for my Etsy Shop - Wash My Cloth. It allows me the time to let my brain relax and think about one thing only. A new bag. This is bigger than all the others I have made, but same concept. Use wool and felt the bag after completed. But, I made a mistake on this one. See that yellow? It is Wool-Ease. Not Wool. Yes, there is wool in it, but not enough for it to shrink. I only realized it until after the thick blue line you see in the pic - a full plane flights worth of work. So, I am keeping it and hoping for a really cool mistake. I believe that the yellow will pucker and give a dimensional feel to an otherwise flat surface. I hope my mind is showing me what the future holds. We shall see. There were some other things I wanted to do with this bag prior to felting, but with the unclear outcome, I may not waste the time.

The colors aren't all that accurate. They really do go nicely together. The salmon looking color you see is really Paprika, and is a shade lighter than the real paprika, the blue is a peacock blue and the yellow is more toward the mustard side.

This will be interesting.

Another Bag?

I love bags.

Many women love shoes. Shoes are nice, but I really only wear sneakers, flip flops and simple black shoes. That is all I need. But bags, I can never have enough bags. And bags are cheaper than shoes and a lot easier to make. Back when Tom and I were 'a courtin', I made him some suede high leg moccasins. It was a fun project, but not a very practical shoe.

The pleather diaper bag I made last month was made with a pattern. The pattern shape for the base of the bag is the simplest idea, yet works great, even if you don't really like to measure, or follow directions (like me). I have a real problem with following recipes, crochet patterns, sewing patterns, really any type of direction - except for electronics, you shouldn't mess with that stuff. I don't know why I alter, omit or edit. Maybe to be just a little different and feel like I have a bit of control.

The first year Sam was in Pre-K, I saw all the other kids give teacher gifts. On Valentines Day! In fact, every holiday, it seemed that other kids (moms) were sending in something for the teacher. So, we found some simple glass votive holder with pretty embossing at Michael's and decided that would be better appreciated than the silk rose or the wooden heart wall hanging. I forgot to buy little bags to put them in, so thought about the pile of felt I had.

The basic bag pattern for this is two slices of felt, folded in half (4X8 ish). On both bottom corners, I cut out squares, approximately the size of one blue four button Lego. Sewing the bottom and sides, leaving the cut out Lego space unsewn. Then open up the Lego space and match the two seams in the middle, this will form an angular shape to the bottom of the bag. Do this on the other Lego space and your bag shape is formed. Since I used felt, and wanted the sewn edges to show, I just trimmed the hems to be consistant with each other. I slipped a piece of ribbon in between the two layers of felt and stitched.

It didn't take too long, unless you ask Tom.