Sewing News

I noticed that I haven’t posted a lot about sewing lately on the blog, but I actually have been doing some sewing…I need to take some pictures!

Here are some recent projects or works in progress:

I am so bummed I forgot to take a picture of this project! I had three lovely baby showers thrown for me in the last couple of months. As with all showers, I racked my brain as to what to give to the hostesses. For my first shower, all the girls sew, so they got fabric from one Patricia Bravo’s fabulous fabric lines. For the second shower there were 6 hostesses! That’s a lot of gifts! So I decided that I should try to make them all a little something and just use what I had in my stash (this is the moment I actually realized that I have a ridiculous amount of fabric!). I pulled out my copy of Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts and read through some instructions for a simple little bag. I ‘whipped’ up 6 of them! The individual bags really didn’t take too long but when you multiply it times 6, it can be time consuming. I had just one more bag to go before the shower started and was trying desperately to get it done but I was exhausted and not feeling well (turns out I was sick and didn’t know it!), so I decided to lay down for the last hour before the shower and rest. I finished the bags over the weekend. They were all different fabrics and I wish I had taken a picture of the stack of them because they were pretty!

I also sewed a crib skirt for Capri’s crib in Taupe Double Bloom from Patricia Bravo’s Paradise line as well. I used Amy Butler’s Little Stitches for Little Ones – it’s the second time I’ve made this pattern since I made it for a friend a while back.  It turned out pretty cute and I’ll have to take a picture of it too!

I have also been sewing some items for Capri’s room. I sewed some curtains that I need to take a picture of. No pattern was used, I just measured the window and sewed two rectangles. I lined them to add some thickness too. They took longer than I expected because as it turns out I’m not very good at cutting straight lines! However, they look nice in the room. I used Patricia Bravo’s Paradise line in Daylight Pond.

One thing I wanted to do in Capri’s room was make my own mobile for above her crib! I used All Sort’s Softie Scotty Dog Pattern (it’s free!) which I have used before. I made it smaller than the original pattern and added a little loop of ribbon to the backs of the dogs so that I can hang them. I had purchased a half yard bundle of Patricia Bravo’s Paradise line and so I decided since these were so small that I would make one in each one of the fabrics – yikes! I’ve been working on these for a while. They are all sewn up and I have slowly been stuffing them and hand-stitching the stuffing into them. I only have a few more and then I have to figure out how I can hang them up. They are small and a little hard to work with so they are far from perfect but I think they are going to be super cute. I’ll take a picture once the whole thing is complete – I’m not worried about getting these done before Capri is born – she won’t be in her crib at first anyway. It has been a fun project!

Another project that I almost finished with but have now stopped working on (temporarily) was my diaper bag. I had all the fabric cut out and ready to go and then worked on sewing it at our last Sewcial. However, once I got to the point where I had to sew the interior to the exterior…well, let’s just say that’s where I stopped. I was using Amy Butler’s Everything Bag pattern from her Little Stitches book. The pattern was not the problem. The problem was that I had decided to use laminated cotton (pictured) for the interior of the bag and my machine really struggled to sew on it. Once I got to the part where I needed to sew the home dec exterior to the laminated cotton interior with stabalizer in the middle together, my machine just freaked out. Also, because the laminated cotton has no give the exterior of the bag was quite a big bigger than the interior so that wasn’t matching up either! Both problems that I think can be fixed but I was so frustrated by it that I didn’t even want to look at the bag. I decided to put it aside for now and pick it up later. I had extra gift cards to Babies R Us and decided to purchase myself a diaper bag for now and work on this one later. I’m sure it will still get used but it was stressing me out and I decided it was one thing that I needed to let go. So someday I will finish the bag and post some pictures!

Finally I need to finish up my January Bag for the Amy Butler Style Stitches bag challenge. There really isn’t much left to do – I think an hour will probably do it, so I hope to finish that up this weekend. I really like how it’s turning out but was disappointed that I didn’t finish it on time. I have already ordered the rest of my supplies for February’s bag so I need to get going on that pretty quickly so I can finish it up before Capri arrives!

So, sewing has been going on in my house! I’m sorry I haven’t been sharing! I’ll try to get some pictures taken of the finished projects and blog about them some more!