legal threads » Crafty goods

The Era of the Beast!

admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:52:35 +0000

Flossy (the sewing machine you’ve seen in other posts) is no longer my sole sewing machine. She’s a great little trooper, but for a while now I’ve really wanted a machine that was more powerful, had more room to work, and had more appreciation for the import of sewing a straight line. This weekend, I went to the Long Beach Quilting Show and spend a surprisingly tiring day test driving a bunch of machines, and finally made a decision. She’s home now, and we call her the Beast. She’s huge, and has tons of potential that I’m just starting to explore.

This post is NOT my love letter to Beast. I’ll formally introduce her another day, when I don’t feel so much like her b*tch. Lots to learn.

Between work, an awesome little road trip and the anticipation of buying a new machine (it’s been in the works for a while), I haven’t spent much time sewing in the past month. Beast is getting me back in the saddle and finishing quilting Ellie’s quilt, finally. In short, I’m back!

This morning, I used Beast to make a quick little project… I have a new car that is practically perfect in every way EXCEPT having a good place to store my key card for work. So I created this little band to hold cards and tickets on my sun visor:

The front, with key card

Back - the ties

I know it would have been better with elastic, but I didn’t have any and I am impatient. So for now, I have ties. I can always make a new one later!

Sunday morning quick project

admin — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:51:42 +0000

I’m still working on Ellie’s quilt… Jet lag has been a bitch! I was heading to a baby shower today, and despite the great ideas I’d had over the week that I’d sit down and create a little something, the next thing I knew it was the morning of and I had nothing! When I picked up the gift, I’d picked up some cloth diapers – I was inspired by a variety of the custom burp cloth tutorials out there. Such cute ideas – cutting out words like “burp” and appliqueing onto the diaper. But with one hour and a lack of applique skills, that was not going to happen today.

I figured this was my chance to bring in some Snoopy for the baby. I dug out a couple of Snoopy fabrics and put these together. I threw in the giraffes for good measure. I think I can master these a little more, but I’m pretty happy with the first try. Maybe I could have centered the pieces a little better or made them a little truer of a square, but when I think about the purpose these are going to serve, I think it’s OK that they’re not perfect.

A for effort?

admin — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 05:31:28 +0000

I decided to try my hand at a little project this weekend – a notebook cover. One of my coworkers has a stash of spiral bound notebooks she uses in the office. For her birthday, I thought I could giver her a cover.

I found this great little tutorial for a felt cover, and thought it could translate well into a quilted cover. I was kinda right. Almost.

Maybe if I didn’t decide to make a contrasting spine and flap covers, it would have come out a little better. The biggest issue was actually finishing it. I wound up hand sewing the binding on the top and bottom – binding that I didn’t even want to have to do!

I think I’ll try another one, but I have some ideas of how to make it a little better . . . But for tomorrow, this is the one she’s getting, but I’ll make it clear that she doesn’t have to use it if she doesn’t want to

See the pen holder on the side?