I received a $50 gift card to Spool from Laura a few months ago for taking care of her sweet kitties. I finally made it over there today to pick out my new fabric. Spool has the most amazing fabric, with the most beautiful colors and prints. They are all unique, fun and cute, and I absolutely adore every single fabric there. They are expensive though. They sell fat quarter bundles, and after a long time of staring at the different bundles, I finally chose the huge one. Expensive or not, it had the most variety of beautiful fabrics, and it was to be mine. I only had to spend $25 on it, thanks to Laura. Yes, I know, this was an expensive bundle. However, it will last me a long long time. I make so many small items that I know these will be useful for many of my future projects.

I had to take a few snapshots of my own of this gorgeous little bundle of joy. Take a look at what I consider pure happiness:

If you’d like to visit Spool, you can find them on 19th and South St. in Philadelphia, or you can visit them virtually at www.spoolsewing.com

These potholders were a birthday present for my mom. I made them over a month ago before school started and was just waiting until after her birthday to post this.

This was a tough project. I looked for some patterns online and didn’t find anything I liked, as usual. So I just decided to wing it. I always see pot holders that are square shaped and have the opening for your hand, but I hate those because they fall off when you use them… and that’s not really safe, now is it? So I thought about it for some time and decided to make the hand opening on an angle so that I could make a little thumb opening too. I also wanted to make them small enough to fit my hand (and my mom’s, I’m guessing her hands are the same size as mine) because I really also hate that pot holders are so big and clumsy… because that’s not safe either. Anyway, so they are small at about 6″x6″. They are also filled with Insul-Brite batting to make them heat resistant. Two pieces of batting in the bottom layer and one on the top layer, made it SUPER hard for me to sew. I’ve never sewn anything that thick and fluffy before, so that was a huge challenge for me. But I did it. And I also quilted the bottom layer which was also a first for me.

Here is the final result!

It has been so long since I sewed!!!! Ok, maybe not that long, but it feels like forever! I was so happy to procrastinate today by sewing while putting off all of my school work (whoops!).

Ok, so I’m the jerk who rummages through my bag in the middle of the quiet classroom, looking for that pink pen, because all my classes are color coded. I really lost that pink pen last week and it was driving me nuts. I finally decided it was time to make myself a pencil case! And yes, I do use lots of pencils too. And no, I don’t use mechanical pencils, I dig the real deal… mini pencil sharpener and all.

I didn’t have any zippers, nor have I ever sewn in a zipper, so I’m a bit scared of them.. So I decided to come up with another idea. Originally I wanted to create a rolling pencil case like the wallet I made a few months ago, and the CD case I made. So I made that first. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to turn out, as I did not use any batting (I don’t know what I was thinking) and it just didn’t work for me. But I still love it and think I may redo it and maybe make Jen her pencil case she’s been wanting. The design might not work for her, but we can figure it out when I get to see her 2 weeks from now for Kara’s bach party and shower. (yay!) So anyway, I just decided to go for a simpler bag idea for my case. This one is nice and simple and I like it because I can toss in my sharpener too. My sister gets the credit on this design idea, because I was frustrated and complaining to her on the phone about it and she suggested I make something like my glasses case, but bigger. I love this fabric soooooo darn much too! It also matches my little planner nicely too, so I like that too :o)

Here it is, and as you can see, I found my lost pink pen:

Here is the other one I made.. I really do love it, but I just really screwed it up by not using any batting. It will be redone eventually. Ignore the marks on the fabric- I use a glue stick to hold my fabrics together when I sew, instead of pins… I like it better. All the glue comes off in the wash afterward, and I was planning on washing this after making it.. but I didn’t because I wasn’t going to use it.

This was fun! Hopefully I will get to sew again soon. I will have another update next week when I finally get to post the gift I made my mom for her birthday (which is the 23rd). So that will be up once I give it to her!

Ok, I know, I know, this is a total Grandma project, but whatever. I have a ton of other projects to get to but I’m waiting for myself to get motivated to leave my parking spot to buy new fabrics and other things I need, but that is tough because it takes me an hour to find parking by my apartment.

I have promised a lot of people that I will make them this, that, or the other thing, and I apologize for the delay. In the meantime, I’m playing around with the fabrics I still have and just trying out new stupid things.

I hadn’t really sat down to sew for a few days (sorry for the 4 posts in one day, btw) but since I wanted to, I decided to try something that would allow me to use some of the old fabric I’ve been ignoring and to help me practice sewing a cube shape, for when I want to make bags. It’s actually not very easy because there seems to be a lot of guessing going on (like- “I can’t see what I’m sewing but let’s just have Coco cross her paws for me that it works out”) and I hate guessing, because then I can’t easily re-create anything. For some reason, I tend to get lucky when I guess things like that though- but that’s why I’m only good at things on the first try and then never again.

This cover is fine, I kind of hate it, but its better than a stupid box. I tried ironing the fabric like a hundred times, but the wrinkles weren’t coming out because it is a canvas-like fabric. However, Coco definitely seemed to enjoy it more than I did. At one point she was actually sticking her paw into the sewing machine (It was not running at the time) to try and play with the string that was running through the needle. Of course I immediately removed her, lowered the needle into the machine, and turned it off… you can never be too careful with a kitty like her- she will get into everything! Crazy cat.