Seeing Red

I've been making progress in dribs and drabs this past week - a quilty project is giving me frustrations and is now in a little heap in the corner - while I have moved on to other things.

Lazy Girl Designs just came out with a wonderful new bag pattern - Claire. You can read lots and lots about Claire on Joan's blog, including seeing the Claire that my Lazy Sister Sue posted, making her the first one to tell us about her Claire.

I was having difficulties picking my fabrics on this one - there are three different fabrics in the cover, and though I had a lot of pairs in my FQ stash that I would have liked to use together, I did not have any trios that did it for me - except for some I have set aside for a gifty project and so are off limits. Having seen pictures of all of Joan's samples as she shared them with her Yahoo Lazy Girl group, and actually having held a Claire in my hands prior to the pattern going to print - I was full of all these ideas and just could not decide.

Today - on my way through JoAnn's in search of children's scissors for the Munchkin, I noticed a cool red floral FQ - where the flowers looked almost like popcorn to me. And if you ask anyone - anyone in my family -they will tell you how much I LOVE popcorn!!! My life in Japan was frustratingly incomplete until I found a source of raw popcorn kernals and could make it the old fashioned way!!! Got me through many bouts of homesickness I'll tell ya!

(oh - and YES - the FQ's ARE on the way to the kids crafting supplies - really - trust me - they are!!)

In addition to being a fun print - this red combo really felt summery to me, and gets me geared up for our annual big Fourth of July picnic - I think our guest list this year is around 50 for fun and food in our backyard. This put me in the mood. Don't know if you can see it well in these photos - but the red on red has almost a starburst/fireworks motif.

Anyway - I found my trio -and got to sewing after the Munchkin went to bed. About 2 1/2 hours later - here she is - my finished Claire.

I opted for less variety in the inside -using a white on white yardage for my lining, and a second FQ of the polka-dots for the inner pockets. I have enough left over for a Wonder Wallet, too!

Oh -and over the weekend I finished up a pillowcase for my father-in-law for Father's Day. He's fixing up an old car, so this fabric was perfect for him. Now to figure out MY dad - who is coming to visit soon after Father's Day. Hmmmmm...... I got nuthin!

A Funny Thing Happened in Preparing for Leadership Institute

So last week I was AWOL from the blog because I was at our Lions Leadership Institute. This is an intensive 3 day leadership training retreat for Lions Club members in New York state. I was a participant in this retreat in 2003, and for the past 4 years have been on the coordinating staff, holding the position of Chair this year and last.

This year we had 17 participants, 4 mentors, 5 faculty members, 2 staff members and an additional 7 guests at the closing banquet. Coordinating this event means my assistant and I publicized it, recruited participants, processed applications and payments, made hotel arrangements, planned the meals, recruited faculty, built the schedule, purchased and prepared all the materials AND hosted a hospitality room. Oh, and we were present for every workshop and I was master of ceremonies for the banquet.

But that's the "work" part of this - the fun part is coming up with the annual theme and all the little things to go with that. Last year it was a Lion Safari, and this year we went on a Trip Around the World.

So the crafty side of me decided that buying things for props just was not good enough - last year I made Lazy Girl Wonder Wallets in safari fabric for all my faculty (instead of framed certificates) and carried around a Runaround Bag with the same fabric. This year I decided to make them Studio Kat AeroPacs.

My quest for the perfect fabric began last November, as we came up with the theme on our way home from last year's Institute. Map fabrics were usually pirate themed, and I was just having a hard time finding the right fabric...

Until February - when a trip to JoAnn fabrics showed me the debut of new fabric lines by M'Liss Rae Hawley - including a great travel fabric line.

So I bought a little. I kept forgetting to bring the pattern with me -nor did I know exactly how many I needed to make - so next time I was in the store I hedged my bets and bought a little more. And the next time I was in the store, knowing this was a JoAnn's exclusive fabric and might also be time limited - I hedged AGAIN and bought a little more, each time buying a bit of one of the other fabrics in the line. This happened more than a few times.

By the time I sat down to start making the AeroPacs, I realized I had WAAAYYY more fabric than I needed.

What's a girl/quilter to do with too much fabric for an intended project???

Expand the scope -that's what.

And that's exactly what I will tell you about - tomorrow - when I can load in the photos to go with the rest of the story.

Tutorial Tuesday - a product review

This is not so much a "how to do..." post but a "wow oh wow can this tool really make your life easier" post.

I confess that I am not a triangle quilter. The quilts I have done that do use triangles are few and far between, and I have usually struggled with them, or avoided them all together.

Some months ago I was gifted with a Lazy Angle Ruler and the accompanying book Lazy and Lovin' It by a very dear friend, and I set them aside - still finding the idea of triangles intimidating and frustrating.

Then this week my Prolific Online Quilt Guild members decided to make a friendship quilt for one of our members. The colors are red, white and blue -and right away a whole bunch of star blocks were proposed and produced. Stars were not a requirement - but that seemed to be the direction many members were headed.

Thinking I had to make a star block with it's requisite triangles (ever seen a square star???) I looked at some paper piecing options, and then turned to the Lazy and Lovin' It book for more ideas.

This tool and book just blew me away! What complicated looking designs - and yet once I started cutting and assembling, I had a block together in NO TIME AT ALL!!! And with the super efficient cutting, I was able to cut an incredible amount of pieces from a 44 inch strip, leaving only selvage bits for the trash bin.

The best part- once I squared up my strip, each triangle was cut with ONE cut!! Not 3, no twisting and turning to work around a triangle, no spinning and rearranging fabric, no fuss, no muss, no bother!!! LOVELY!

I cut out 3 blocks lickety split, and had 2 together before bedtime.

Forget "Lazy Angle" - Joan is my "Lazy Angel" -
Now pass me some more triangles, please!!!

...the wheels are turning - I am already plotting a quilt using some of the ideas in the book... Stay tuned!!!

The Sassy Saga

Much of the fun of making your own totes and handbags is in putting the fabrics and pattern together. Usually these bags are easily explained in a few words.

I made this because my son likes trains.
I made this because my husband is an Eagle Scout.
and I made this because I like turtles.

This is not one of those "few words" bags. This is a story of epic proportions.

So grab your coffee, get comfortable, and enjoy this Sassy Saga.

The Beginning:
This story begins not with the pattern, but with the fabric. Three fat quarters in crazy bright colors, purchased at a quilt show in Seneca, SC in the fall of 1999. Lazy Sister Sue was up from Aiken, SC, working a booth for the quilt shop she worked at. Mom and Terri (and Cindy?) and I went up to Seneca for the show - and the shopping.

I was just a fledgling quilter at the time, Lazy Girl patterns were not in my lexicon yet (not even sure if Joan was designing them yet?) and Fat Quarters were a new language to me.

"What are you going to do with THOSE???!!!" Lazy Sister Sue asked. She thought I was crazy for buying them - but something about them was fun and funky, and so they were purchased.

These FQ's were soon tucked away, as a short 2 months later I moved from SC to NY, and they bounced around in packing boxes until we purchased our house in the summer of 2001, when they were parked in storage in my attic studio.

The Middle:
Enter Lazy Girl - great patterns first introduced to me somewhere around 2002-ish when LSS made me a Wonder Wallet. I think she gave me the pattern for Christmas that year, or soon thereafter.

In 2006, LSS introduced me to the Summer Tote pattern, which was my 2nd Lazy Girl pattern. She also encouraged me to join the Lazy Girl Yahoo Group to share ideas and photos and other tips with other Lazy Girl fans. I got more and more interested in more of the patterns, and for Christmas 2006 I bought the Sassy pattern and some Tinkerbell FQ's to make a Sassy for my niece.

I decided to make the bag for myself first, before cutting into the Tink fabric, and when I opened the box of FQ's in my studio, these three long forgotten FQ's jumped out at me once again.

I cut the pattern out, and then for some reason I put it aside. Either something in the pattern spooked me (like the "optional quilting" for the front flap - I was afraid of machine quilting then) or I did not have all the components (velcro or the elastic?) or I just ran out of time before Christmas?! At any rate - my niece received a beautiful Tink Runaround for Christmas 2007, and my Sassy languished, unfinished, in a drawer in my studio.

The End: (or the new beginning?)
Fast forward 2 years - and I am now a moderator for the Lazy Girl Yahoo Group. One of the fun things I get to do as moderator is facilitating contests and challenges.

In June I ran a challenge for members to make something new - a Lazy Girl pattern they had never made before. I talked about my long lost Sassy, and how I needed to make it. Well, June came and went and Sassy stayed in the drawer, untouched.

Determined to get this albatross off my back, I promised all our Lazy Girls that I would have my own little July challenge to GET THIS DONE!

And I did!!!
In 2 hours!!!
Even with a cantankerous machine (does not like it when the thread gets looped around the needle) and some walking foot issues.

And now the new Sassy saga begins -that of deciding what fabrics to use next!!!

Watercolor Seahorse Runaround

I finally finished the Seahorse Runaround bag late Friday evening -and carried it to the shower on Saturday. The mommy to be LOVES the design - and can't wait to see the quilt - and the bag managed to stay on my shoulder the entire time.

I still need to add the zipper embellishment - but have not found a chance to sneak up to the attic and muck around in my beads and charms recently. The zipper was a "freecycle" find that was the PERFECT color!!! I could not have matched that better if I had tried!

This is a fun way to really embellish this pattern, but there are a couple of things to note if you want to try this yourself.

1. The watercolor technique really shrinks up the design, so be sure you take that into consideration when you cut your interfacing to start with. Measure a few times -then cut. You also need to take into consideration the bulk created by all those seam allowances and interfacing - it also takes away from the overall dimensions. This bag is about 2 inches narrower than a regular Runaround bag due to a measurement oops on my part- and it makes it much harder to get your hand to the bottom. It is also longer - which was intentional -but compounds the "bottom of the bag" issue. If I had to do it again, I would start out planning at least an extra inch in finished width over the original pattern.

2. Even with sewing on the grid lines, the whole project has a tendency to twist, so take it slow and easy and try to pin at least a bit to help keep things square.

3. Because of the twisting, DON'T run your main design too close to the edge rows - you will probably lose some of it... I did. The poor seahorse lost his tail a bit!

4. Also because of the bulk, DON'T plan on putting watercolor panel to watercolor panel and stitching. Your machine won't like you, and you won't like having to turn it. It's doable - but not something I would do again.

...that's all I can recall at this time.

Have a few more of these planned - so look for more to come.

Leftovers

Well the seahorse quilt is still a work in progress - I ran out of some of the blues to finish up the water, so need to visit the fabric store to restock before I can go any further (the store in Buffalo did not have the fabrics I needed)

So in the meantime, I decided to play with the scraps of interfacing, leftover orange pieces, and some of the extra blues. I am making a modified Lazy Girl Runaround Bag out of this piece, and will use all the other leftover orange bits to do the top front. This "seahorse" was done totally freehand, without looking back at my pattern. I think he turned out pretty good.

This block is approximately 8 inches wide and 10 inches long. It needs a bit of trimming and good pressing to square it back up a bit.

It was a good warm up for assembling the quilt panel and also gave me a good idea of how much bulk I will be dealing with behind the big seahorse so I can be figuring out how to finish it.

Boy those squares get REALLY tiny!!! Each little square you see here is 1/2 inch across!!!

Oh - and this bag is all for ME ME ME!!! This way I have something to keep after I give the quilt away.

Lifelong Habits

While doing some spring cleaning the other day, I realized how many tote bags I have - both those I have accumulated over the years, and those I have made recently from Lazy Girl patterns. I've always liked tote bags I guess - but never really thought about it much.

I have never been a purse carrier - for a while I did the "wallet on a string" type of purse, and I floored both my family and my co-workers about 5 years ago when I went through a little spurt of purse buying, but then I found I was just tucking the purse into the top of a tote, so now I just save those purses for occasions when the tote just is too much (although I am working on making some purses for those instances).

I was browsing through some old family slides this morning - I had actually intended to post about something entirely different and was looking for an incriminating photo of Lazy Sister Sue to illustrate the point - but instead came across these photos of me - with a tote bag!!!

The first is the summer of 1972 - somewhere on Long Island I think. That's me with the watermelon and the big purple tote. Dad and Lazy In Training Terri are in the back, and Sister Cindy is keeping an eye on me it looks like.

The second is my first day of school - kindergarten - waiting at the bus stop with most of my older siblings. Lazy Sister Sue had gradated from High School the previous spring, and was starting college.

Sister Cindy and I must have gotten matching totes that summer - because we both have them in both pictures. Interesting that mine is the purple one - since purple is definitely Cindy's favorite color now. Mine also looks bigger- or may be it was because I was smaller.

It's funny looking back through the slides - I remember some of the clothes and especially the Halloween costumes - I remember the jacket that my Big Brother Bill is wearing in this photo (he is the 4th in line) - but I don't remember this tote.

I wonder if the Munchkin will remember his totes? He's very possessive of them, and notices quickly when "Mommy has a new bag!"

Memory is a funny thing.

Almost back to "normal"

I was feeling MUCH better last night - able to breathe and not so doggone tired - so I spent some time sewing. I have a bunch of projects cut and ready to stitch in my "To-Do" box - plus I experimented a bit.

This was one of the experiments -
I need to practice my flying geese before I make too many of these blocks.

A "Get well Soon" pillowcase for a brother with a broken leg.

A Get Well Soon "A Door Able" for a Godmother having foot surgery.

A Chocolate "A Door Able" for Gramma,
who's watching the Munchkin this week for us.

Just need to add some finishing touches and make some deliveries.
Oh- I also managed to production line a dozen Wonder Wallets to near completion!

It feels good to feel good again!

Birth Month - Day 11 - Baby's Got a Brand New Bag

This is my first ever Miranda bag - another great Lazy Girl pattern. I already had the train fabric and since the Munchkin's day bag was getting a bit worn (it was a Harrods tote from Lazy By Proxy Sister Terri from her years in England) I thought I would make this for him. He also tends to be a creature of habit when it comes to his bags, coats, scarves and such - he does not like to change - so I thought perhaps the train theme of this might ease the transition.

It is hard to see in the picture - but there is actually quilting on this!!! Machine quilting! I did not go crazy and free form - I did diagonal "tracks" on the green bottom, and followed the railroad tracks on the train fabric. The inside is a fun and funky orange to match some of the train cars. I put in clips so we can cinch it in, or add the longer strap (to be made) if Mommy has to carry it for any length of time. The whole thing is short enough that the Munchkin can carry it on his own if he likes.

Now to make one for Mommy!!! - not with trains, though - I don't like them THAT much!

This is Birth Month day 11's gift - since I spent the bulk of day 11 making it!

Watching the Wallet

OK - true confession time - I am a wallet watcher.

Unfortunately this does not mean that I am exceptionally frugal and good with my money - although I try to be...

...it means that I watch wallets. Not everywhere, but in my job proctoring exams I have to ask people for their ID, and I get to watch what kind of wallet they are carrying. Eight people a day - eight different wallets - five days a week. So I am up to a 40 wallet a week habit - more or less, as some people just stick their ID in their pocket and leave the wallet at home.

I watch the women's wallets more than the mens. I have gone through various wallet phases in my life - the checkbook and big wallet all in one, the wallet/purse on a string, wallets with zippers and lots of pockets, and ID holders on keychains with the Clemson logo on them. So it is interesting to see what my testers - mostly college seniors or about that age - are carrying.

I see all of the above - as well as a few duct tape wallets. But today I actually saw my favorite - and the wallet I am currently carrying myself - a Lazy Girl Wonder Wallet. The owner is a budding Lazy Girl herself - and before she leaves here today I will be getting her the information on the Lazy Girl Yahoo Group - as well as showing her the new Miranda pattern!!

And I will get back to my wallet watching - and see what else walks through my door.

eCrafting

Unfortunately the day job means that I spend more time in front of my computer than in front of my sewing machine, and more time in the office than in my "studio"... but the side effect is that I have become a master of finding patterns and ideas online (free or otherwise), sharing ideas with others working on similar projects (Thanks Lazy Girls and Lazy Sister Sue), and shopping for supplies... and more supplies... and more supplies (can you sense a weakness here???)

One of the new resources is all the blogs that wonderful artists and crafters and pattern designers have out there. One that was just shared with me is Sew Mama Sew - and here is a crafter after my own heart. The theme for November is "Handmade Holidays, 30 Days of Gifts to Sew! Every day there will be tips, tutorials and free patterns!

For quilters out there - my Lazy Sister Sue just pointed me to Quiltville - which is a website of a member of her quilt guild. Wonderful patterns - and her accompanying blog is inspirational reading also.

These are just a couple of the crafting blogs among ones I follow on a regular basis - what do YOU read???