Fabrics for Purses

After a small shopping expedition to a local quilt shop with a friend, I came home with two sets of fabrics to make purses.  I have the Mini Bow Tucks Purse pattern that I've been wanting to make and finally found some lovely fabrics for it.  Here's the pattern:

It's gotten rave reviews from members of the local American Sewing Guild.  I also purchased a little extra fabric to make coordinating wallets.  My oldest daughter ran off with this particular pattern as soon as I brought it home and made 2 wallets!  And then 3 more, and one more, and then she had friends over and they all made more.  Obviously a bit hit!  It's the Wonder Wallet by Lazy Girl Designs.

 

I really liked both sets of fabric choices.  My daughter loved the ones on the left and almost ran off with those...I loved the fabrics on the right because they don't scream 'Christmas'! but are more subtle.  I think both sets will make pretty purses and matching wallets.

I still haven't taken pictures of the personalization of my son's shirt.  I washed it and it needs ironing.  I think getting the blue markings out of it makes it easier to see the ecru on ecru stitching I did on the back yoke.  Anyway, all the shirt needs is the buttons and buttonholes!  The hardest part of all I think.

Today, I cut out a muslin for my daughter's dress.  I hope it doesn't need many fit adjustments.  Seems awfully big despite matching up her measurements.  I need to post the fabric and pattern info, but will save that for another time!  Have a good weekend!

Children Sewing!

Well, already I've fallen into bad habits and haven't followed through on my next post!  I haven't taken detailed pictures of my son's shirt yet.  Life gets in the way, you know?  However, I have been working diligently on it and it's nearly done!  Finding buttons might be the biggest problem.  Our local big box sewing store didn't have a good selection.  sigh.

Onwards to other sewing though!  I have a budding sewist in the house and thought I'd share a pic of her finishing her project.  She made a fleece blanket for her baby doll.  We didn't measure the width of the fringes since I wanted her to concentrate on scissor use.  She really liked using the pins and the cutting and tying process. 

She's even been asking for her own sewing machine!  Maybe a birthday gift?  She's pretty young though, but already planning her next project--what to do with the rest of that pink fleece!

And here's one of the spots!  Kind of a strange camera perspective...

Who knew that trying to write about yourself and what you do would be so hard?  Anyone else have that problem with their first blog post?  I've really enjoyed reading other sewing blogs--they're sew inspirational!  I guess it moved me to try my hand at one.  I think it will help keep me on track for my sewing efforts, too.  More ideas than time and energy!

Without further ado, onto the sewing since that's the primary focus here!  My current project is a shirt for my son out of a piece of embroidered linen that I got from Joann's.  It's ecru and has circles randomly embroidered in a light khaki, dark gray, and brown.  I'm using Simplicity 3852 in a boys' size large.  It required some modifications since my son isn't quite a men's small so I adjusted the boys' large by adding some width to the shoulders and length to the hem and sleeves. 

He loved the aqua and white muslin that I made to test the fit:) haha!

The other modification that I did was to add a yoke lining piece.  Seemed odd to not have one and it definitely makes the inside of the shirt look more finished and RTW!  I looked at David Page Coffin's book, Shirtmaking, and decided to try his customizing suggestion at the end.  It was my first try at free motion embroidery--it doesn't look terrific, but doesn't look bad either and I'm pretty pleased at being able to do a quick and easy personalization on the yoke lining piece.

I think you can sorta see the personalization on the inside yoke...I'll see about taking a better picture tomorrow.  The aqua marker doens't help either, does it?

 I think that ends my first ever blog post!  I survived (and without any help from the kids except of the *very* annoying kind!  What was up with that anyway?)