My Blue Jean Purse

  So I finally sewed up the blue jeans purse that I cut out from the legs of the blue jeans I bought to make my garden apron.  I found lots of youtube video tutorials on how to make a blue jeans purse.  I needed one that I could use my leg fabric and the one I found was perfect.  I love the shape of this one.

  Here is the link to the tutorial:  blue jeans purse.  The maker does not speak English so I watched it through to see if I could follow it.  The maker placed written notes in strategic places when they were making the pattern and after that it was easy to follow the video showing the cutting of the pieces and sewing up of the bag.  It's a 13 minutes video but it's really done very well.  It took me 3 hours to make the purse from making the pattern to the last stitch.  

   Here is my purse.  Blue jeans with navy blue gingham lining.  I love it.

  Next up I have to finish quilting my Grandmother Flower Garden quilt.

  I pulled out the fabric for my next quilt (purchased over a year ago) that I want to start.  I do that to give myself incentive to finish my current project.  I an incapable of working on more than one quilt at a time.  I will work on smaller projects while working on a quilt but I won't have more than one quilt on the go at one time.  I don't have the brain capacity for lots of quilt projects.

Blue Gingham Hanging Dishtowels

   I made some hanging dishtowels with some of the blue gingham that I used to make the kitchen curtains.  I love these.

    I have plenty of the blue gingham fabric to make a cover for my stand mixer.  I'm going to make that as soon as I get the coordinating white solid and navy solid fabric I ordered a couple of weeks ago.  I want to make the cover in the patchwork style like the one I made a couple of months ago  using 2.5" squares.  I will probably make some potholders as well.  Then I have to think of something else to make with all the leftover gingham.

   I've also been knitting some dishcloths.  I'm making a kitchen set for a niece who got married last fall.  I know it's late but I just decided the other day that I wanted to do this.  I will knit her a set of dishcloths, sew up  a couple of potholders and make a couple of hanging dish towels for her.  I wanted to show you the pot I use as a yarn bowl.  My daughter bought this strawberry pot for me about 12 years ago from someone who throws pots in Indiana while she was on vacation.  I have never used this for any plants.  I have been using it as a decoration and as a yarn bowl for years.  It's kind of fragile and I wanted to keep it nice.

Gift Set

    I made a gift set for a friend this week.  I knitted her three dishcloths and made her two quilted potholders for her kitchen.  She loves handmade items and will enjoy having these in her kitchen.

    I had everything I needed for the potholders in my stash of fabric, Insul-brite and cotton batting.  I put a layer of Insul-brite in between two layers of cotton batting in the sandwich of my potholders.  It wasn't too thick to sew using my Accu-feed foot on my Janome machine.  The yellow cotton yarn was a new purchase bought specifically to make sunny dishcloths for my friends and family.

Fun Cow Creamers Transformed Into Pin Cushions

   I have a blue delft pottery cow creamer that I bought from eBay several years ago that I made into a pin cushion.  I felted a flat disk of wool yarn and inserted that into the body of the creamer.  It works well.  I even named her Blue Bell. 

    I was checking out eBay last week and found a souvenir Hershey cow creamer that I had to have.  She is smaller than Blue Bell but she is awesome.  She has a red ribbon around her neck  with a faux bell on it.  I plan to add a pink tongue to her mouth, like Blue Bell and also insert a disk of brown felted wool yarn in her body to finish the pin cushion.  Her name will be Coco.

   I wish I could have a whole herd of these.  There were some beautiful Polish pottery cow creamers available as well.  Maybe in a few years I'll add another one.

  Pictures.

Summer Holidays Are Upon Us

  We have three lovely summer holidays coming up.  Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day.  They all deserve some patriotic decorations.  I made my whole family some patriotic hanging dish towels and I have gifted them now, so I can show them off here.

   I made ten of these, each family got a set of two including me.  These are so much fun to make and everyone loves them. 

      I bought the fabric from Hobby Lobby about two months ago and I found the pretty blue dish towels at Walmart along with the lovely buttons.  Each actual dish towel cost $2.96, and you cut the towel in half to get two hanging towels from it.  The buttons cost $1.27 for a pair and the fabric cost about $3.50 for two tops.  So a pair of hanging dish towels cost about $7.73 in materials to make and it takes me about 70 minutes to make two from the cutting out the top to sewing on the button.

Yo Yo Flower

   I made this yo yo flower to put on my 6" quilt display stand.

Plaid Flannel Rag Quilt

  I finished the rag quilt today and just finished washing it to rag the edges.  I made the quilt 6 blocks by 7 rows with 126 - 10" blocks.  I made three layer blocks with the plaid on top and the blue flannel in the middle and on the bottom.

   I love the way the blue flannel comes through in the seams.  This was a lot of fun to make and I can't wait to put it out at Christmas.

Decoupage Doilies

   I made these crazy doilies the other night.  I didn't use a pattern, I just crocheted the center and started chaining and joining the chains.  I wanted to do something decorative with them and decided to decoupage them onto a painted canvas.

You Can Never Have Too Much Blue Fabric

   I just organized my fabric stash.  It was a real mess after the last few projects I did from stash.  I do this about twice a year to organize my fabric by color and weed out little scraps I know I will never use.  I couldn't make myself take a "before" photo of the mess.  It was a complete disaster.

   I have a boatload of blue and blue print fabric.  See the pile in this photo.  It's more than double the amount of any other color I have in my stash.

   Not much red, one piece of Christmas fabric, but look at that stack of pink and green.

I think I have just the right amount of purple and white.

Here it is organized and put away in its container.

Preparing To Make Two More Quilt Tops

     Today I took some time to cut fabric from two more quilt tops.  I don't have a chevron quilt or pinwheel quilt and I love to make quilts with half square triangles.

    I'm making my chevron quilt with 5" squares cut from these bright colored fat quarters I had in my stash.  These are from the Free Spirit Collection I bought from Craftsy earlier this year.  I love the bright colors and I think they will make an awesome chevron quilt.

   I bought two sets of 100 - 5" white charms from an etsy seller.   I usually cut up my own yardage for projects but I didn't feel like it this time and took the easy way out.

   The other quilt will be a pinwheel quilt.  I've made three pinwheel quilts and they were all made with lots of fabrics so they looked old fashioned.  I gave all three of those away to family members so it's time for me to have one of my own.  Here is a picture of my very first quilt made with half square triangles.

    My pinwheel quilt will be made with two charm packs of Union Blues by Barbara Brackman for Moda and one of the pack of 100 - 5" white charms I bought already cut.  I love the Civil War reproduction fabrics and these will be fun to work with.

   With my fabric cut all I have to do is start sewing.

Disappearing Hourglass Blocks Done And The Rest Of The Quilt Is Planned

  I have 41 black and white disappearing hourglass blocks done.  All pressed and ready to sash and set into a finished top.  I'm planning a top with 5 blocks x 7 blocks.  The rest of the blocks will go into the back.

   I also finally decided on the material for the back.  I bought a solid light royal blue by American Made Brand.

    That material will go nicely with the blue starry material I'm using for the binding and cornerstones.

   This top and back will be fun to put together.

Blue Wallhanging

   I bought this kit from an ebay seller last year.  The pattern for the table runner was actually stars made with a 9 patch and the points were supposed to be made with half square triangles.  Unfortunately, all the pieces for the pattern were all pre-cut and they cut all the squares the same size which did not work for half square triangles making the points of the stars.  The half square triangles came out too small.  So I changed the pattern and just ran the white gold fabric around the nine patches I started.

    I made this to hang on the wall in my living room.  My favorite part of this project is the quilting.  I did something I haven't done before which was pretty easy for a small project.  I drew a simple flower pattern on tissue paper.  One thing I can draw is a simple flower.  The flower is the size the block that makes up the runner, there are three of them, each block is separated by sashing,  I pinned the tissue paper where I wanted it and free motion quilted the flower in each block.  I had a good time doing it and it came out pretty good.

   I quilted the sashing and the borders with a wavy vine and some pointy leaves on each end.  Easy to do and worked great.

   My quilting buddy, Taffy Morgana, loves it.  She said, "Nice work, Mom!"

Hanging Dishtowels

   I love, love, love hanging dishtowels in my kitchen to wipe my hands off after I've washed them or they are wet from cleaning up.  These towels are used for my hands only, I don't dry dishes with them or use them for anything else.  I made these real simple by cutting a huge cotton dishtowel in half (found them at JoAnn's, $8.99 for two towels that turn into four hanging dishtowels).  I gathered the cut end and sewed on some pretty fabric to brighten my kitchen.  This is the same fabric I made the crazy round potholders with.  I hemmed the sides of the fabric and just folded it over the gathered end of the dishtowel leaving it open for my ribbon to hang it.  So easy.  I finished three of them last night while I was watching T.V.

Cat Pillow Done and Another Project Started

I finished the cat pillow today.  I had to dog sit my granddog at my home this weekend.  He is an American Bulldog and he always scares my kitties, so I have to stay with him the entire time he is in my home.  Yesterday I spent my day  setting up my new computer and today I finished one sewing project and started a new one.

This is the fabric before I turned it into a pillow cover.

And this is the front of the finished pillow.  I made the pillow envelope style.  It was really easy once I got the fabric made.  I put a muslin back on the fabric and I sewed the fabric to the muslin for stability.  The muslin also gave the fabric a lot of body.

I started my patriotic door decoration for next summer.  It's a simple star, 10" squares made into half square triangles that is super easy to make.

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I have the rows put together now and the backing is sewn to it.  I didn't put any batting in it, but I am going to bind it with top with the back and I'm using the blue fabric to bind it.

I should have the binding done in a couple of days and I'll share the finish with you.