A Crafting Failure and Secret Birthday Sewing

    I tried three times to make mouse ears for a future trip to Walt Disney World.  It looks so simple in the youtube videos and I figured I can cut fabric, use a sewing machine, hand sewing needle, and glue gun, how hard can it be.  As it turns out, it was not easy for me.

    The first set of ears turned out like round potatoes.  The second set were floppy and wouldn't stand up on the headband and the third set were just wrong.  I have officially given up.  I wasted about 15 dollars in supplies so it wasn't a terribly expensive experiment, but I hate to fail at something I really wanted to be good at.

In the future, if I want ears, I will be buying any ears from etsy sellers or Amazon.  I'll let the professionals make the ears from now on.

    I wasn't going to do any secret birthday sewing this year, but I found something I just could not resist making.  It's something I already know how to make so it won't be a failure.  I had all the material I needed in my fabric stash.  I'm making this scrappy and it should be extra cute.  I did have to buy one notion that I don't normally keep on hand, but it was small and inexpensive and will certainly enhance the project so it will be worth the wait (I should have it next week) to get it.  Here is a sneak peek at my start.  As always, I will share the whole thing as soon as soon as it is gifted.

Quick and Easy Hexagon Backpack Decorations

          I recently got a new backpack for travel.  The old backpack was coming apart at the zippers and I wasn't happy.  

          I like to add charms to my backpack that I use for travel.  I sew on tabs with rings for extra space to decorate with when I run out of zipper loops to add carabiner and lobster claws.  Charms include a butterfly, a teapot, several cats, moon, stars, sun, Bugs Bunny, Snow White, and Tinkerbell. 

           In 2015 I attended the International Quilt Show in Paducah, KY and I made a hexagon flower to go on my backpack.  Dear daughter came with me on that trip so I made one for her backpack as well.  With the new backpack it was time to update my hexagon flower.    

          I make two of the hexagon flowers, this time they are identical but scrappy works as well.  I make a strap from a piece of fabric about 3" wide and about 10" long folded and topstitched, sandwich the strap between the two flowers and sew them together by machine or by hand.  This is the newest flower I made for my backpack.   

Christmas Decoration and Luggage Strap

       I had to make another block from the Lori Holt Vintage Christmas book of quilt blocks and my daughter picked out the train engine.  It was fun to make.  I used scraps from my fabric stash (including the embroidery floss) so all this cost me was time.  I had the cutting and the sewing done in about four hours, which included the embroidery of the smoke (I made two of them identical).  It took me another 2.5 hours to sandwich, quilt, and bind them.  I put hanging triangles on the back to slip a dowel stick in so we can hang them on the wall.

      I thought a custom luggage strap for my carryon would be the perfect accessory so I can identify my luggage readily.  Of course I made an identical one for dear daughter.  I used approx. 57 inches of 4.5 inch cotton fabric and added the 2" parachute buckle to the ends.  Each buckle cost $7.79 and the fabric for both cost about $3.00.  Easy to make.  Each strap took about an hour to make.

    Note on the luggage strap.  After I made both straps dear daughter suggested that I machine embroider names on them.  I agreed that would be awesome and was disappointed that I hadn't thought of that before I even made them.  So we each picked our special names, I set up the machine and did them in bright red.  The embroidery came out very nicely but would have been done better before I put the strap together.  I didn't get a picture of the embroidery, but it took about an hour to do both on the machine including the machine set up and it cost me nothing but time since I had the thread and  stabilizer already on hand.