Fun Quick Sewing

 Made a zipper pouch from a candy bag using Missouri Star's Tutorial here.  This is a nice quick project and they are really fun to give.  I made one a couple of years ago for dear daughter and she thought that I was giving her a bag of candy.  It was so funny.  Here is the one I made tonight.  It took me about an hour to sew up after I gathered all my supplies and cut up the candy bag.  The one I made tonight is kind of on the small side.  I might frankenstein two bags together next time to get a bigger pouch.  I hope it works.

I've been saving candy bags for a while and I have a whole bunch.  I also have a load of zippers to use up so I think I'll be making some more of these.  

A Little Sewing And A Lot Of Knitting

     
       I made some zipper pouches for dear daughter for her to use as travel organization.  She has a couple of trips planned in the next few months and I wanted to thank her for helping me out with something recently.  So I made three pretty quilted zipper pouches for her.   She has quite of few of these in her collection, she loves them.  This is a quick and easy project. 

        I use the Crafty Gemini zipper pouch video tutorial on Youtube for the directions. Here is the link.  The only thing I need the tutorial for is how to put the zipper in and where to add the wrist strap if I'm putting one on my bag. 

       I did not put a wrist strap on these bags.  I make my pouches whatever size I can made from the fabric I have, I just have to make sure I have the zipper that is long enough for what I want to make.  I used 12" zippers for these.  When I add a wrist strap, I make mine wider. 

      You can't really see it in the pictures but these are a very soft aqua color with tiny white polka dots.  This is one of my favorite fabrics.  I was proud of myself for giving it up to make something for someone else.  Zipper pouches are a great way to use up small pieces of fabric.

    I'd like to try to make some boxy pouches.  I found a few video tutorials for those.  They are pretty simple, you just have to box the corners which I have done on other projects before.

        I also did a lot of knitting on my ribbed stocking cap.  The red section is now 15" long.  I'm not sure I have enough yarn to get to the 48" of red that I want, but I'm going to give it a shot.  It doesn't look like much, but the white cuff fits perfectly and that's exactly what I needed.

    No progress on my hexie quilt top.  I pulled out the box with the pieces in it and I'm planning on getting started on it again this weekend.

6 New Drawstring Pouches

   I've been making these for the last few days.  I love this pattern [link to the tutorial is here] and I really enjoyed making all of these for myself.  All of these pouches were made with fabric from my stash.

    I think my favorite is this one with the cute winter camper fabric that I found several years ago.  I couldn't resist it when I bought it, and there was also a summer camper print that I had to have as well.

      I also did a little organizing.  Yesterday I labeled all my thread containers.  I have had all my different threads separated into different containers for a while, but I wanted to slap a label on the boxes to make sure anyone else looking would know what was in the box.

    The top boxes are those plastic boxes with the spikes and they hold all my multi-purpose polyester thread.  That's the small collection of thread from the last 15 years or so of garment, accessory, and home dec sewing.  

    When I started quilting 4 years ago I wanted to use only cotton thread in my quilts and I bought lots of thread from connectingthreads.com for quilting and it's all in the middle box.  I even organized it by color in the box and laid the spools on their side to make it easy to see.  

     The bottom box is my messy collection of polyester embroidery thread I purchased in the last year to do embroidery with my Brother PE 770.  I bought all those small spools from threadart.com.  They sell them in sets so you can get a nice variety of color without having to shop individual spools.

    I think I have enough thread to last me quite a while.

The Christmas Quilt Is Finished.

   Here it is.  It's kind of ugly but it will give me a a pop of red and green color in the living room during the holidays and it's something that the most destructive kitties in Christendom cannot tear up.  You can see the black/red/green poinsettia flowers on the binding material.  It kind of blends in with the top, but it shows up nicely on the back.

      I'm making fun granny squares to cover a pillow for my pink and green bedroom.  I'm using a 16" pillow form, pink yarn leftover from my afghan project, and the pink rose fabric leftover from my pillowcase project.

   I'll be working on vinyl pouches after I finish covering my pillow.

   I still have to varnish my barn quilt.  I want to do that job outside and I'm waiting for drier weather.

All Ready to Make Vinyl Pouches

   I pulled out my zipper stash (15 of them ranging in size from 6" to 16") and some fabric choices to make vinyl pouches.  I probably won't use all of these right away, but I have a nice variety of colors and sizes.  These are my selections:

       Last Saturday I bought some 8 gauge vinyl to make my pouches.  I have never sewn vinyl before.  I know that you should use a teflon presser foot or a roller presser foot to sew vinyl and leather, but I don't have either one of those presser feet.  I did look for a snap on teflon presser foot in JoAnn's Fabrics while I was there, but they did not have any.  I'll be using this tutorial from the Make It and Love It blog that has a great tip about how to prepare your presser foot and needle plate to make sewing vinyl a little easier if you do not have a teflon or roller presser foot for your machine.  The simple instructions for making the pouches are also at this link.  I'll be changing my pouches up a little bit.  I will be attaching my zipper to a fabric top and the bottom half of my pouch will be vinyl.  I'm also thinking about making the pouch with a fabric top and bottom and the middle will be a cool vinyl window.  There are so many possibilities.  We'll see how these come out.

I Need To Make Vinyl Pouches

      I found this fun tutorial on how to make a clear vinyl pouch.  It's so super simple it's ridiculous which is good because I need simple sometimes.  The writer even gives you a tip on how to sew vinyl.  It's gets sticky when you sew it, so you put scotch tape on the bottom of your presser foot and on each side of the feed dogs on the needle plate.  I'm planning on making some and incorporating some of the pretty fabric I purchased recently.  This will be a fun project.  These would make a nice birthday gift for a certain boss.

   The link for the vinyl pouch is here.