Finished Project!

It was such a beautiful day yesterday! Sunshine and low 80's. Almost makes a girl feel guilty when her friends up north and back in Texas and Oklahoma are freezing and prepping for another Winter storm. Then I remember that I chose to move here and they choose to stay there! I will enjoy my sunshine and warm Winters. Maybe one day this week I will even make it to the beach.

I did a lot of cutting and sewing this weekend. Sophie's pencil bag broke and I have a pattern for a bag but it is a little big. I explained it every way I could and she insisted that it would be fine. So instead of watching the Superbowl (Dallas wasn't in it so I don't care much anyway) Sophie and I went to JoAnn's to find fabric to match some pieces we already had. 

The pattern was fairly simple. 6 scrappy 8" blocks, a 14" sport zipper, 2 layers of batting, a 15"x22" piece of fabric for lining and voila! You have a bag. Being the first zipper I have ever done, of course I sewed part of it on wrong and had to unstitch it. The bag…well…it's really big! I told Sophie I would make her a smaller one and could use this one myself. She insisted on keeping this one though and proceeded to empty out her backpack of any non-important things…ie: math book…and said she would just pack an apple for lunch to save room. Oh goodness. I think I will be making another smaller bag in the near future.

Sophie and Ernie spent some time working on a very difficult Dr Who puzzle while I sewed and cut fabric for my Friday play day. It was a very pleasant evening. I do love our family time - it makes my heart happy!

Winter Cleaning…Kinda Like Spring...but Not

So, I finally got fed up with my creative work space and took the time to do something about it. Our little duplex leaves much to be desired but I am so grateful to have any space at all that I should at least make it user friendly! When we lived in Texas we had a 3 bedroom house and the 3rd bedroom was my sewing/craft room. It was wonderful! Somehow I had to cram that entire room into 1 wall. I read a few of my favorite blogs and took tips from their spaces. Let me give you a quick tour. Now don't get lost…I know the space is enormous ;)

My very embarrassing "before"

The lighting is better than it looks. We have a wall to wall sliding glass door to the left of the space and a light on the hutch behind it. I moved the Ikea basket shelf thing to the side so that I have more useable table top space and can watch Netflix and my favorite obsession of the moment. 

I added a little cheap bookshelf (Target $22) and found a little hexagon shaped tray, some cute heavy paper boxes with ribbon handles and a pack of stick on labels in the Target dollar section. I may have to go back for more before they are gone. I labeled one little box for scraps and the other one for selvedges. The blue containers on the new bookshelf are from the dollar store and I labeled those with current projects I am working on. One is for a Split 9 Patch Quilt and one is for an Art Quilt series I am creating.

All in all I love my new space! All together my "remodel" cost $27. Whoo hoo! I guess sometimes it helps to have a lot of crud you can reuse and repurpose. It's still a work in progress but I will tell you this past Sunday morning was bliss. It's so much easier to sew when you can find everything and not trip over boxes. Off to sew for the last 30 minutes of my morning…

Cheers!