Palette Generator

Through another blog, I came across this interesting toy, the Color Palette Generator, here
You upload a photograph and it generates color chips from it. 
Why am I randomly surfing the net? because my sewing room is messy and I have too many projects on the go.  Aargh.  Time to do some slogging and heavy lifting so to speak. 
Hopefully I will have some progress to show on the Work in Progress Wednesday. 
By the way, the snow is pretty.

Block 5 Flagstones, and new Applique

Today, Saturday, is another Saturday Surprise Sampler Day!
This is the 5th pieced block, called Flagstones,

 and we have our third applique block, Oak Leaves and Cherries,

After this block, I am officially switching to fusible applique for both versions.  I didn't even add the cherries to the needleturn 1930's block.
but I did have a lot of fun auditioning where I wanted to put the red circles on the etchings version!

this is the list of the upcoming pick-up dates:

    November 5th– Block 5 (Pieced), 3rd Applique
    November 19 - Block 6
    December 3 -  Block 7 (Pieced), 4th  Applique
    December17 - Block 8
    December 31 -  Block 9 (Pieced), 5thApplique
    January 14 - Block 10
    January 28 -  Block 11 (Pieced), 6thApplique
    February 11 - Block 12
    February 25 -  Block 13 (Pieced), 7thApplique
    March 11 - Block 14
    March 25 Block 15 (Pieced), 8th Applique
    April 8 - Block 16
    April 27 -  Block 17 (Pieced), 9thApplique
    May 11 - Block 18
    May 25 -  Block 19 (Pieced), 10thApplique
    June 8 Block 20

Christmas Fabric Gift Bag Tutorial

fold-over top gift bag with button and string closure

Recently I was chatting with a friend who mentioned that she is making a real effort this year to prepare for and enjoy the Christmas season.  I have been thinking about this, and like this attitude.   I recall some years when Christmas was so magical, and I loved the tree decorating and wrapping gifts, and baking.  Other years it has seemed less magical, and some things that should have been enjoyable didn't seem exciting any more.  I think that to "enjoy the season" is a frame of mind that I will cultivate this year.
In keeping with this resolution, I spent a couple of hours this morning sewing some fabric gift bags.  For the last few years, I've purchased lots of paper gift bags as well as wrapping paper.  This creates a lot of paper waste on Christmas morning.  If we use fabric gift bags, they can just be stored with the decorations and be available to use again and again!!! This has the added benefit of not having to stand in line buying more paper products, tape and bows.....
I certainly have lots of fabric leftovers so this should be  pretty low-cost venture!
I have prepared a pictorial step by step on how I made a basic fabric gift bag:

1. cut some rectangles of festive fabric to use as the outside of the bag.  You  can piece them to make your scraps larger or to make the bag prettier.

 2. cut a lining rectangle the same size as the outer fabric.  The lining can be another patterned fabric, or you can just use muslin.

 3.  If you want a padded bag, cut an additional rectangle of batting.  If you just want it a bit thicker, you can use a piece of flannel.  Or, you might just want to stick with using the 2 fabric layers.

 4. If you want to use some of your festive embellishment ribbons, get them out to have close at hand.

 5.  If you want to decorate the outside of the bag, do it now.  In this example, I am using a piece of flannel as interior batting for the bag and some ribbon for trim.  I sewed the trim to the outside of the bag and the flannel batting to help stabilize these 2 layers.  If you want to do any other decoration, do it now.

 6.  Fold the rectangles of outside fabric and lining in half vertically and sew seams up the sides.  (At his point they are looking like little pillow cases!)
NB!  Leave an opening 3 or 4 inches,  in one side seam of the Lining fabric.  I forgot to do this in the lining photo here, and had to un-pick part of the seam later.

 7. If you want a flat bag, skip this step.
If you want a "boxed" bottom to your bag, pull the corner of the bag so that the side seam is perpendicular to the bottom, and sew a seam across the point.  The farther in that you sew the seam determines the width of the base of the bag.

 sew these seams on both the lining and the outside.  Make them the same size.  Back-stitch the seam ends.

 trim away the extra fabric

8. Turn the lining right side out.  (Now you can see the opening in the side seam!

 9. Tuck the lining into the outside of the bag, matching the side seams. Pin.

 10.  Sew a the bag outside to the lining all the way around the top edge.

 11. pull out the lining from the bag and then reach through the opening and turn the whole thing right side out.

 12.  Push the corners of the base out nicely.  Sew the gap in the lining closed.  I just do this by machine since it won't show.  I don't know where my photo of this step went to.

13. Top-stitch around the top edge of the bag to keep the lining in place.

 14.  This bag was the right size for a wine bottle, so I tacked on an extra bit of ribbon to use as a closure.

 15. The full bag!

 16.  My assortment of gift bags:  in addition to the one show above, I made a flat one, a tall one that can fold over to close, and 2 shorter ones with boxed bottoms. 

 this one has a velcro closure.  It is quite difficult to machine stitch through velcro.

 this one has a magnetic snap closure.  a bit deluxe, but I had it on hand.  I would have like to have used some regular sew-on snaps, but didn't have any.

 I sewed a felt decoration to the flap to cover where the snap is.  This bag also features a flap variation that I found in an Art to Heart book called "12 Days of Christmas"

There are all sorts of variations and decorative things that you could do!!! Just have fun and use your imagination!  And enjoy thinking about what to put in them!

New Fabrics

First of all, thank you for the kind comments on my previous post.  I appreciate knowing that you stopped by my site and took an interest in my little doings. 
I am working on how to make a workable link with the graphic for the link up.  Thank you to Grandma Coco who has taken the time to try to help me with this!

Yesterday I spent at the store, where Miriam and I spent the whole day, (in between helping customers), cutting fat quarters!  We got in a lot of new fabrics, including "Catkins" by In the Beginning fabrics for you cat-loving quilters, and also "Restoration" by Studio E Fabrics: you can see the swatches of the fabrics on their website, here, where they also give free instructions for a project using these fabrics, as shown above, in the dark colors, or as below, in the light colors. 

 Let me see if I can find the Catkins.....
hereis the link to the fabric swatch thumbnails. We only received 7 of the 12 fabrics we had ordered, so I phoned about when to expect the other 5 bolts, and was told that they would be a few weeks.. hmm. we shall see.  I'm pretty cynical about fabric companies sometimes.  The fabrics are pretty, but I'm disappointed that the main panel blocks aren't here yet.   

Another day spent Puttering

 This is a finish! Last night I hand-stitched the binding to this quilt.  I had started it some months ago, when I was trying to use up my "taupe" fabrics.  Later on, I used the pattern in the center to make a quilt pattern called "Tic-Tacs", for a store event.  If you have that pattern, this taupe version uses the small block, as opposed to the larger version that I sewed in flannels.
On this quilt, I alternated some pinwheels with plain bordered squares, and added another border of simple half-square triangles.   Sometimes I'm just amazed at how such a simple repeated shape can turn out to be so pretty.

 I spent today at home: tidying up my sewing room, doing some housework, reading, and.of course, stitching.  If you recall, I sewed a kit from Christmas fabrics called "Jovial", ( here) and had some quite large leftovers that I wondered what to with.  I've sewn 6 of them end to end into a long, narrow table runner, since we have a long narrow table.  I'm currently quilting it, using a variegated thread. 

and this shows how I'm getting the lines straight!  However, I notice that i'm also getting a bit of the fabric pulling as I quilt as well.  I wonder if that's because I didn't pin it a whole lot, or because I "enveloped" the table runner.  That is, I sewed the 3 layers together with the right sides of fabric facing each other, leaving an opening, then turned the whole thing inside out.  I did this to avoid having to add 16 feet of binding.

Also yesterday I finished this interesting project:  What is it, you might wonder,

It is a small area rug, crocheted in a "basket weave" stitch, using about 5 strands of yarn.  There is one strand of yellow linen that makes a nice texture.  I washed and dried it in the machines, to try to get it to felt up.  It did quite well, considering that it was crocheted, not knit.  It seems that knitting felts quite a lot more tightly than crocheting, in my experience. 

And finally, today, I did what I have been wanting to do for a little while now, which is to devote a bulletin board to my test swatches of yarn.  I'm hoping that this will help me find what I need when contemplating a new project.  I have sworn off of making sweaters, as they don't seem to fit very well when finished, let alone look very flattering.  I am more focused on small things such as scarves, (which my mother tells me are pointless to knit, because you can buy  a lot of nice ones for very little money), hats,(which up until now seem to turn out a bit larger than intended-- which is why my swatches will be helpful!), fingerless gloves (which on the whole have turned out rather well), and things like rugs, which are pretty experimental.  I'm mulling over the idea of a handbag, or computer bag.  I also have a basket where I put lone mittens, slippers and socks, which for one reason or another seem destined to remain single.  But what do I do with them? 

  press here for the link-up