The Purple Pouches

Getting close to the holidays, I still needed a few small Christmas presents, and made 3 small purple pouches from oil cloth.

Just a scrap of striped oil cloth from the remnant table and some zippers, an hour or so of work, and there you go.

Two of them got red appliquéd hears,

the third already had a lovely flower.

More pouches to follow..

The Gym Bag

So you’re walking around in a store looking for something and a curtain catches your eyes. It’s a roller blind so it’s not like you can use it in a quilt, but it has the logo of your precious grandchild's favourite soccer team all over it.

Of course you purchase it, because there is only one left and you get it really cheap as the hanging hardware thingies are long gone. You carry it home and look at it.

Ah. Can you see it? It’s a gym bag/soccer practice bag in the making. Of course!

You remove everything non-fabric, cut it apart, add a little cotton fabric as the material is too stiff to be drawn together, and voila

 

 

 

you have an awesome drawstring gym bag that will make a little boy the envy of his soccer mates. I can't wait to see him opening this on Christmas Eve.

 

I have more curtain material left, so there might be a couple of best mate gym bags in my future - or maybe something totally different. We’ll see, but I’m sure I’ll have fun figuring it out.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hoot Sisters

So I was sitting here like a month ago or so, admiring the YumYum Cousins from yesterday’s post, just doing a little bending and folding and thinking what would happen if I made them 3D. Well, want to see what happened?

Let me introduce you to the Hoot Sisters, suitably named after three Moen sisters.

 

 

 

Aren’t they the cutest.

Two of them were immediately added to the young ones’ gift drawer, but I had to keep one for myself. I just had to.

This one.

I’ll be making a tutorial for the owl pouch too; hang in there!

YumYum Cousins

December is flying by and so I am, working my way through my Christmas-want-to-list. I am quite happy with the progress so far, but, as it happens way too often, I keep adding want-to's to my list.

Anyway, here are the 6 YumYum Cousins that were finished a few weeks ago.

Remember my whining about boring zippers? Well, these made perfectly fine YumYum mouths.

Some of them have been given new homes already while others are anxiously waiting for Christmas.

 

Looking at the pictures I think some of the noses are too small, so I’m going to remember that the next time I make them.

Grandson was also invited to a girl’s birthday party, and she, of course, had to have a girlie pencil case.

The colour is light purple although it looks more greyish here. I first added pieces of the zipper off-cuts as eyebrows, but they bothered me.

They were removed the next morning and two buttons were added to the ears instead.

Much better.

She’s still here though as grandson got sick, and instead of going to a birthday party, we stayed home playing UNO which happens to be one of my favourite games. Lots of fun.

I keep thinking that I want to make a YumYum tutorial, but I never seem to find time while it’s still daylight. Oh well, only a few days until we are heading in the other direction light-wise.

Thanks for stopping by!

100 zippers

Back in early 2009, I decided that it was time for me to face my fear of zippers and ordered an assortment of 100 zippers from one of those “Buy now” stores on EBay. The online picture showed a rainbow of colours, so imagine my surprise when I opened the package and the colours were totally off. No oranges, hardly anything qualifying as red or proper blues or greens, just very, very light or very, very muddy colours, but hey, at least I had loads of them.

The zippers were shoved into a shelf to be forgotten, and a couple of years later I purchased another batch from an Etsy shop. This time I could pick and choose the colours myself and they were just glorious (old post here). Now I had 150 zippers.

The recent wish to make zippered mouth pencil cases for the grandboys (YumYum Brothers post here), set of a totally unexpected zipper obsession. I have been stitching zippers morning, noon and midnight, transforming waxy cloth into pencil cases, pouches and toilet bags aplenty. Making pillows for daughter and for grandbaby with – wait for it – zippered closures. It has been so much fun, both the making stuff part and supplying our young ones with loads of gifts to give away for Christmas and birthdays.

This was the first lot of big pouches/toilet bags that I made.

My zipper technique has been improving a lot.

One of the reasons I am enjoying this material so much, is that it does not unravel, so all edges can be left unfinished and there’s no need for lining or fancy finishing techniques.

Around 40 zippers later and I’m still not bored. Wow.

So how about you; zippers, friends or foe?

The YumYum Brothers

Happy Monday everyone! I had the most brilliant weekend – no disruptions, no cooking, just fabric and fiber and fun for me and my sewing machine. No matter how much I adore my family, a few days alone every now and then is like a vitamin injection to my mojo.

I played my way through new samples for the Funky Fowl class, for the Kvist class, for the Playing with yarn class, I put a little snowy idea into life, I mended pants, I added rows and rows of stitches to my knitting projects, and I know I should be totally pleased with the amount of work I did, and yet I thought I would finish even more. Silly me.

One of the things that had to wait until this morning was making pencil cases for the grandboys. I had seen them in different variations and thought the idea was so much fun. Armed with yards of waxy table cloths in different colours and my new best friend, the Teflon foot,

these two came to life.

 

 

Aren’t they fun!

I’m thinking I could make up a few for upcoming birthday parties. Perhaps I should ask grandson to design a few; that would be even more fun!

Wishing you a great week!