A purse for my little cousin

I saw the pattern for this purse on the Sew Mama Sew blog. I made a mental note that I needed to sew one, since it was so cute and simple. I even bought some fabric for it, 2 coordinating pink and green paisley prints. Then I totally forgot about it until a couple weeks ago.

My little cousin turned six. She's into Webkinz lately, but I knew she'd get a bunch. Then I realized the purse I'd wanted to make for myself would be even better for her! It's very girly, but a little grown up, too. Pretty much a perfect fit for Nina!



The instructions are very well written. I like the fact that it doesn't really use a pattern, more like just a shape and suggested sizes.

I made one pretty big change: I made the purse fully reversible. That's one of my pet peeves. Things that look reversible but aren't really. This way you see the lining more, too. I'll post instructions to do it that way after I make my bag, because I can't think of how to explain it without photos.



It was a pain to figure out how it should go together, but I made myself keep thinking about it and visualizing the steps until I was sure. The lamest craft mistake is sewing the last pieces together inside out!

I'm pretty sure she liked it. She was very hyped up when we gave it to her, but that was mostly from cake and webkinz. If anyone else is planning on making the pattern for a child, you might want to make it smaller.

A person-sized quilt!

I took a beginners quilt class at Patches and Stitches. It's a quilting store right near my house. It's pretty neat, in a little old house. The class was pretty fun and I learned a lot more about quilting than I thought I would.

I'm almost done with it now, I just need to quilt and bind it. It's pretty small, like a little throw.



I'm really happy with how it turned out! I meant for it to be bigger, but I didn't plan right with the fabric. It's ok though. I had a hard time trying to decide what to use for the backing. Everything looked too dull compared to the front, so I used the bits of the colors from the front to make a stripe on the back.


I'm going over to my aunt's house to quilt it in the next couple days. My sewing machine gets kinda pitiful and grindy sounding when I sew over too many layers ^_^ (maybe I need to oil it).
The binding's going to be the same black dragonfly fabric from the front borders.
I totally can't wait to use it!

Cute apron for my Awesome New Job

Until recently I worked at Publix. I decorated cakes in the bakery. Publix is a pretty good place to work, especially if you want to make a career working in a grocery store. I was getting very sick of it, though.

My friend told me that his friend was looking for an assistant for his bread business, Fred Bread. As soon as I could get hold of Fred Jeff, I got him to hire me. Pretty much it's a dream job. I get to make delicious bread for people without dealing with all the Publix bullshit.

He makes flavored loaves of bread to sell to people, and also breads and rolls for some local restaurants. There's not a storefront or anything. His kitchen is Downtown, in a building that has a couple unrelated offices in it. I'm pretty sure it used to be an old house.

A really silly thing I like about my new job is that I don't have to wear terrible pants and a hairnet (ew!) I get to look pretty cute now, if I want to. I put my hair in 2 ponytails and wear a bandanna so I don't have to wear a hat. I made a cute apron and bandanna to celebrate.


The apron itself is from when I worked at Books-A-Million. It's nice and short and has pockets at the bottom. The only problem was that it said "Books-A-Million" across the top. I wanted to put a cartoony loaf of bread over the words. I didn't have any good tan fabric for the crust, so I used this crazy floral print I got in a swap. I just ironed it on with fusible webbing.

When I finished the apron part I still had time before I had to be at work. I made a matching bandanna with most of the rest of the fabric. It's just a triangle, hemmed on the bias side for stability and zigzagged on the other sides to keep it from fraying.

It turned out really cute! I'm not sure how well the fusible webbing holds, but it's not peeling yet. I think I'm going to make a similar one with my old navy Publix apron, and maybe one for my boss :)

Goodies from fat quarter swaps!

I joined a couple fat quarter swaps last month. The one on Sew Mama Sew, and the one on Stitches and Scissors. They went great. I really hope people liked what I chose for them, because I really like all the fabrics I got!


One of the fabrics is hiding from me, but that's what I got. It's a great combo of fabrics that I probably wouldn't have picked out on my own but are really fantastic! The one with the purple-ish background, especially. It's large-scale flowers in crazy bright colors. I've already used most of it up making an apron and bandanna for my Awesome New Job.

Some very pink crafts

I'm taking a quilting class, so I thought I'd make myself a new pincushion. My old one is very lame, just part of the sleeve of a felted sweater sewn into a little pillow. Totally functional, but not cute at all. I followed these directions to make a much cuter one.
My aunt gave me some quilting fabric for my class. I used some charm squares for the pincushion. What are you supposed to do with charm squares? They seem too small to make any kind of quilt.


Then I made a zippered pouch. I'd made a lunch bag out of the puppy fabric to give to that aunt. I thought it looked so cute with the checkered fabric that I put them together again. I've started some appliqued pouches that are going to look much cooler.
The pixel bow barrette was supposed to be to sell on Etsy, but the glue looks really messy. That's alright, since I wanted to keep one anyway. I made it ages ago but I just got the clips for the back.

Cat pictures!

Do you like pictures of cats? If you don't, I'm sorry. I'm going to show them anyways.

My house has five cats. I think that's totally way too many, but it's not like we can get rid of them. They make things more exciting, anyway.
This one isn't one of our cats. It's one we're watching for a shelter. It's super cute! It has a brother who's more outgoing, but they're both very cute and playful.


Even though this one's orange, too, it's not related. This is my boyfriend's giant cat, Deimos. It's huge! Even though it's pretty fat, it's also just gigantic.

I normally brush my hair, I had just woken up in those pictures.

I quilted the doll quilt!

I wanted to quilt my doll quilt from the Sew Mama Sew sew-a-long, but I didn't have a darning foot. I tried to find one at Hobby Lobby, but they don't carry that kind of thing. I got some nice fabric to send out in a fat quarter swap, but I kind of wish I'd waited. There's a sewing and vacuum shop really close to my house, so I thought I'd try there. Turns out they carry fabric now, like really cool prints and for good prices.
Anyway, I got myself a darning foot. To do quilting, you're also supposed to "drop the feed dogs" on your sewing machine. Those are the things that pull the fabric from the underside. They don't retract on my sewing machine, so I had to unscrew them. I was so worried I'd screw up my machine but it worked out just fine.
So here are pictures! All I have to do now is put a binding on it.

Aquarium animation

The assignment was to use frame-by-frame animation to make some kind of short movie. The wiggliness of frame-by-frame animation reminded me of the wiggliness of underwater creatures. I'm very happy with my tiny little movie.

Doll quilt update: Now with leaves!

I ended up going with my idea of embroidering leaves on the blank squares of the doll quilt. I picked Oak and Maple since they're the most recognizable and interesting looking. It took a long time to do but it turned out awesome!



I did the leaves by printing out shrunken pictures of leaves and tracing them onto the fabric with a disappearing marker. I just backstitched the outlines.

Do you see where the side border pieces are a little too wide? I had a dream last night that I tried to even them up and accidentally cut off almost the whole border! That's a really weird thing to dream about, but I'm definitely going to be really careful cutting it.

My first quilt, in a Sew-A-Long

I've never finished a quilt before. I started one when I was a kid, but I was way too impatient to sew nine-patch squares by hand. I tried my hand at a postage stamp quilt with all different fabrics gathered from lots of people, but I only made an ugly 1 by 1.5 foot rectangle of crooked chaos.

I came across Sew, Mama, Sew!'s doll quilt sew-a-long. It was so cute and simple looking I just really wanted to try it. A lot of the comments are people saying "I've never made a quilt before but I'm going to try this!" I got all pumped up about it and made my front in one sitting. I like the combo of wood patterns and green I used; I wasn't sure it would turn out right but it totally did :D


I'm proud of the back. I only mis-pressed one seam.
In the background you can see the much more detailed quilt my grandpa's wife/step-grandma/Louise made me for high school graduation. She's the one who taught me to knit and tried to teach me to make a quilt when I was small.

The next step in the sew-a-long is to embellish the quilt and baste it together. I'm not sure how I'm going to decorate it. It would be really cute if I embroidered a leaf on the plain squares, but I'm trying to think of something simpler, too. This is going to be too little to use for real so I don't want to make it too fancy.

New Blog!

I just realized I had no place online to really share my crafts with other crafty people. Hopefully this will be a place where people can go to check them out.
I'm a little busy lately, but that just makes me want to do more crafts. I'm finishing up my last semester of my associate's degree in Computer Graphics (really it's graphic design). I'm also working as a grocery store cake decorator part-time. Both of those things constantly inspire me!

For the first post I'll give you some pictures of some magnets I've made out of perler beads. I've been thinking about doing pictures from video games out of these beads since I was little, but I didn't have the patience then. I saw some pictures of some really awesome video game bead sprites and it made me try them out.


The pictures are from Pokemon games and a Dragon Quest spin-off with the slimes. Stay tuned, I'm about to finish a really cute knit toy!