Busy Little Bee

Oh my goodness! I have neglected my blog, but for good reason! I have so busy with projects, it has almost been unbelievable! On top of that, we are moving across the country in less than 10 days, and I still have a ton of packing to do! So here is what I have been up to! Enjoy!

The laundry hamper was a great project, and my sister loved it! The shirt quilt was good learning for me. I am not very good at binding! This project was a lady who recently lost her father and wanted to keep him close. The top part is his shirts and I backed it with a no-pill fleece.

 I love everything about the fold over clutch! It's great for out on the town or even everyday use. I am also loving the color combo experiments!

This is the reversible bag. Need I say more!?! This one is mine. I couldn't part with it once I made it. It's too cute and just perfect for me :)

Diaper bags galore! I have made 4 (maybe 5) bags since my first messenger bag. Did I mention that they were ALL made to order!? I couldn't love my job anymore than I already do. The last one that I made, she wanted a matching changing pad. Again, I am not very good at binding, so I did my best to cover that up ;)

My other sister asked me if I could make a backpack. When someone asks me if I can make something..."CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" This was not an east project. It took my all day. I found a great tutorial. Everything about it was very clear (except for the measurements!) I ended up having to take half of it apart to fix some things that I couldn't live with! After I made this one, she asked if I could one for her son, so that is on the books, but it may just have to wait til after our move.

This is the 6qt. kitchen aid cover. I searched and searched for a tutorial on how to make this, but came up short. After thinking about it, it was rather simple. So simple, that I should have been able to figure it out sooner than I did. My customer loved it :)

And curtains! Oh boy! My favorite, honestly! I love measurements and lines and pressing and getting things perfect, so I actually love doing curtains. 6 panels, 3 sets and all 3 sets different lengths. They wanted them to match up in the middle as much as possible, and I think that was achieved. I love the way they wanted the straps also. I just can't wait to get a picture of them actually hanging up!

So to say that I have been busy is quite a bit of an understatement. It's been extreme business, but I'm not stopping! I have more to share, but I have lots to do today!

Happy Hump Day :)

Projects! Projects! Projects!

I know it's been a while since I have posted anything new on here, but I have felt so blessed to be so busy that I haven't had time! After I made that diaper bag, 2 days later, I got a text from someone that loved it and wanted one exactly like it! Along with that, a lady asked me to make 2 shirt blankets out of her late fathers shirts. She was going to donate them to the goodwill, but then decided to keep his memory alive and make a blanket out of them. She said that it will be nice to be able to wrap herself up in his shirts and still be able to feel him. And then...Curtains! A friend of mine has been waiting on her curtains to be made by someone else but was having a hard time getting a time to do it. I took the job of course!

So lots of cutting...lots of sewing...and I will be posting pictures soon, so that's it for today. Just didn't want to be forgotten :) Happy Saturday!

The Diaper Bag

I got an email the other from a lady that was actually referred to me by one of my very good friends. She was looking for a medium sized diaper bag, but she wasn't really sure what exactly she was wanting as far as well...anything. We went back and forth for almost a full day sending pictures and descriptions and dimensions...etc...when she finally emailed me one last time with exactly what she wanted. So I went to joanns the next day and got all my supplies, or at least the supplies that I didn't already have. I love going to the fabric store, but it is way too tempting to buy everything I see that I believe is cute. I try to get in and get out before I make myself go broke! Anyway. I had recently done a messenger back put up by Crazy Little Projects. It turns out that it was the perfect size for what my customer was wanting. So we went with a grey chevron with a teal solid print accent color.

It turned out too cute! I love the color pop!

She also wanted one side pocket for a zippy cup. Now I have to admit that this was my first tapered/elastic job, but it turned out excellent!

It wasn't too hard. I did end up doing it twice though. My husband made me go to bed last night so as I laying in bed, all I could think about was measurements. What I originally planned to do was for sure not going to work. I had to make the pocket bigger. Well, as you can see, it worked!

The inside, she wanted 4 pockets. I did 2 tapered pockets and 2 sleeve pockets.

Perfect for diapers and wipes! Tapered pockets take time though! My goodness!

And lastly, she didn't want the flap which was perfectly fine with me. That made it a little easier for me, but she did want a snap shut. I always use the magnetic snaps just because they are easier to install and initially, they DO look classier.

I wanted the bag to be a little more open so I made a snap tab instead of just putting both sides of the snap in the lining.

Since the cotton I used for the lining is quilting fabric, I interfaced it with a fusible flex interfacing for durability and stability. As I was finishing today though, I almost forgot the fusible fleece interfacing for the body! Good thing I remembered. That would have been a major overhaul of a redo. I have a love/hate relationship with my seam ripper. 

Oh yeah...here is my first messenger bag with the flap!

It was a super fun project and really made a good diaper bag as well.

Have a happy Wednesday!

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The Messenger Bag

I'm in the middle of doing a diaper bag but waiting on some PUL fabric to come in the mail, so I decided to use my extra pretty diaper bag fabric to make a small messenger bag for my daughter. It turned to be bigger than I expected, but that's alright. She can grow into it :) I got the tutorial here.

It was super easy to follow and I got this bag done in an afternoon.

Please excuse the mess that is in the background in the pictures. When I get into my sewing, some things just get a little neglected.

Have a happy weekend!

Yeah for Car Seat Straps!

Who doesn't like cute baby items!? I know that I love them...at least when my kids were babies. I am trying my hardest to appeal to all kinds of people of kind of person wants the best for kids? MOMS!  Whether you have something for a day or keep it until it's falling apart, you get what you think is cute b/c babies don't have any say in the matter. This is the area where mommies get to be creative and shop around for newest, trendiest and cutest item that everyone else is going to go gah-gah over...

Oh you know it's true! I have been coming up with some really neat car accessories. The first was an adult seatbelt shoulder strap.

cute huh?? I can make all kinds of them with different patterns!

Then I started to look them up and found that there were more baby car seat neck/shoulder straps so then I went shopping!

So that's what I have so far, but there are a couple more patterns in my Etsy Store. Check it out! Lots of goodies and lots more to come!

Happy Thursday everyone!

Decluttering my Life

As I browse Pinterest, I seem to find a lot of links to other blogs that involve decluttering and/or organizing your closet, kitchen, bedroom, LIFE, etc...And they are always from these organizing gurus that have been at it for quite sometime and really know what they are doing. I love be organized and love to shed my crap, but really...sometimes it really just seems almost impossible b/c where the heck to you really start to declutter and take back your life. In the age that we live in, we just have stuff. We have stuff in drawers and stuff on our floors. Stuff here and stuff there. We just have a bunch of useless stuff, and if you are like me, you want to just throw it all away and start over. Doesn't that get expensive though? Don't you just end up sometimes buying the same thing that you just threw out!?! Decluttering is hard, time-consuming and not very practical for day to day living b/c you have better things to do than take time to just go through your crap.

We move a lot so I have found that we don't have just a bunch of useless stuff, but we have enough to be a little irritating. Our homes aren't always the biggest so there hasn't been a lot of room to put, well, anything. We have a few big pieces of furniture, but we aren't decked out. We have a couch, a dining room table and 3 beds. Everything else is just throw away crap/furniture that will go elsewhere when it comes time to move again. But as I really start to look around, I find that I have accumulated more than I thought. We still have full boxes out in the shed of things that I need, just not right now. When you don't know when or where you are going next, it's just pointless to unpack everything you own. Unpack the things that you use day to day and that will work.

I should have taken a before picture of the shed, but I was too anxious to get in there so here is the after!

Nice and neat right?? Trust me...It wasn't like that yesterday. Here is my get rid box(es)

No matter what, I am getting rid of the stuff in these boxes. I don't care if I have to donate them or just throw it all away. I don't NEED this stuff. 

So there you go. Day 1 of decluttering! Have a happy Tuesday :)

The Shower Curtain

Ok, so one more post for the night and then I am done. I have been putting off this particular for whatever reason, I don't really know, but here it goes. I am not an expert sewer, but I have learned in my craft how to do things and how to do them well. The more I practice, the better I get. My first project was an easter basket for my kids. Something small and easy. I am not one to tell others that they can't do something, but oh man! Did I witness a disaster of a sewing job that I did end up fixing. A lady had taken on the task of sewing a shower curtain that had a chevron pattern that hew customer wanted to match up perfect. That right there was a job! Here is the before...

Now, if you have an eye for mistakes, you should see where they are. The chevron isn't matching at all and the bottom is way uneven. That's not even the worse part because that could be fixed.

Whoever thought that this was an acceptable button hole was sadly mistaken.

I had to take the whole thing apart and start from scratch. Just taking it apart took a little over an hour. I got in a full episode of Supernatural so that will tell you that it takes time and effort and even more to fix something that should have been done right the first time. After I got the whole thing disassembled, I was a little nervous about the butchered holes on the corners and the uneven pattern. I was given an extra long piece of fabric that was cut off to finish off the hack job. If that gives you any kind of clues, the seam wasn't even in the middle of the curtain. Ugh!

(you have to know that I was doing this out of a favor to a very good friend of mine or I would have charged a lot more to do this job)

So the first thing that I had to do was pin, pin and more pinning.

Can you tell where my seam is? I sure hope not! I topstitched the seam just to make sure that I got it perfect. My edging foot is the bomb! Just sayin.

I did that to both sides along with cutting off the excess where the hacked button holes were. I was so happy that it turned out!

As you can see, I don't have a ton of room. I work with what I have. My friend wanted to see what I had done so that is why one of the pictures, one of the hems isn't finished. Chevron matched up! I was pretty proud of that. And here is the correct way to do a button hole!

Just to show off my cool new photofy app, I'm gonna recap the button hole!

And here is the shower curtain hanging up!

So there it is people! A custom shower curtain. It took me total about 6 hours to take apart and fix. Let me tell you though, if you want custom items, you had better be ready to pay for it! Like I said before, I did this as a favor to a friend. She did pay me, but not as much as I would have charged anyone else for the time. Don't get me wrong...I loved this project. I was so excited when I got the chevron to match up and the button holes to look like they did, but it took time!.

Ok, really now...have a happy day! Stay in touch for the next fun project :)