A Sewing Project

At last, a few minutes to work on a project sitting behind my favorite machine (when she is working properly).  From a book called 108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt by Megan Nicolay, I made a little backpack to take to my friend Willem in the Netherlands this summer.  I have tried to document the steps so you can see about making one yourself - they're pretty easy.

Instead of a T-shirt I used an old sweatshirt.  Mine came from the Goodwill but you could find one at home or from a friend or perhaps the church rummage sale. :-)

Cut the shirt apart and throw away all the seam allowances.  But save the bottom ribbing for your straps.

Fold the ribbing into thirds and stitch.  Remember as the straps, it has to stretch, so pull them as your stitch them,

Cut two pieces of the main body of the shirt (T or sweat).  Mine were cut at 13" by 18"

Join these, right sides together, on three sides.  I chose to use my serger but you could easily just use an ordinary sewing machine.  I would probably do some sort of a edge stitch and a second seam inside that - just to be sure.

Fold down approximately 1 inch to become the casing for your straps.  I stitched mine twice, again just to be sure.

Make a hole in the outside layer of the casing and using a bodkin thread your straps through - one running left to right and one the reverse so that it will close up.

Cut a hole on each side of the body of the bag (through both layers), very near the bottom and thread your straps through and tie a big knot.

And viola (I wish I knew how to spell that word correctly!) you have just the cutest, easy backpack.  You can add pockets, and/or decorate and embellish to your heart's content.  I will bring some letters and sports balls for Willem to add as he wishes to this one.

Superfluous - more than is wanted, needed or necessary

Each year some of the women of our church organize a sale of superfluous things called "Superfluity".  It is quite amazing and seems to continue to grow in size and scope.  Goods are collected starting right after the first of the year and the sale itself is right around Easter.  Folks are organized into teams, responsible for various items, such as linens, household, decor, jewelry, sporting goods, special treasures and BOOKS!  (can you guess where I work?)  We have been working at the church for the past 2+months sorting to prepare for the big day(s).  Tomorrow evening is the pre-sale and you must have a ticket to attend.  Folks begin to line up around 4pm and we open the doors at 7pm.  We seem to get quite a few dealers, such that last year on the pre-sale night alone, the books department raised over $1000 - at $1 per book that's a lot of books.  Friday will be full sales day, 9:30-4pm (no admission fee) and Saturday morning.  Last year we raised over $30,000 all of which was given to worthy organizations in the community.  There are 3 pre-schools in the church and they get to do private shopping, along with special time for church staff to visit our amazing extravaganza.

Books:

Sporting goods

Housewares

Jewelry

Hope we do well.  We sure have enough stuff!

Helping a quilting friend

Sometime we just have to say "wait" and get ourselves a bit more organized.  Tuesday was that day.  Ronda had a day off work and asked if she could bribe me with a lunch and come to help her to organize her stash.  And we did just that.

Only a very small part of what was there!

I think the hardest decisions are HOW to organize your fabrics.  Do you sort by color?  pattern?  type of fabric - i.e. batik vs homespun or ????   We did spend some time pondering those heady questions and finally decided to separate out fabrics larger than 1/2 yard by color.  We made a collection of fat quarters, too.

Ronda is a great Goodwill shopper and has 4 racks of baskets in which to keep her fabrics in the closet out of the light.

A large collection of backs go on the shelf above, projects in process in the rack in the corner and quite a number of bits and pieces to be made into strips and squares for leaders and enders - thank you Bonnie Hunter.

Very nice and most productive.  Colby supervised, sort of. . . . . . .

 

CTA Gift Exchange

You may recall that I started a little gift exchange [a la Crazy Exchange] with my CTA group.  Today I received two gifts - one from before and one for this month.  You saw the applique Morning Glory that I did this month.  These are the gifts I got,

Rita said I could do lots and lots of shopping with this really large bag.  [her husband found the lining at a yard sale and bought it for her - almost 10 yards.  Ah, stashbusting!]

Diane made a charming cover and a photo book.  A lovely paper-pieced dove, all outline stitched with decortive stitching on the wing.  Isn't this sweet?  Lucky me!

Stuff and Things

Everyone survived Nana duty.  The kids were just great and considering this is their first adventure with mom out of town for a week, they were truly amazing.  The easy little project I brought along was some hand work.  I really need some new dishtowels, thus

We got a funny little parcel in the mail this week.  It was a belated Christmas gift.  It included a little device to pick up coffee filters -

And a riotous hot pad (you know, to pick up something hot)

Don't you just love it?  My very own Kermit frog.

My last accomplishment this week, was I got this little piece I had stitched completed with borders and a frame.  This is for my CTA gift exchange.  I hope Rebecca is pleased with it on Monday.

Today was my turn to be the CTA volunteer at a local fabric store.  Twice a month we volunteer to be in the store and just be available to answer questions and try to help out customers with questions.  It is quite fun and today was no exception.  We were quite busy and it made our 4 hour shift go by very quickly.  And they are kind enough to give us a discount card to use during the next month.  Nice, huh?

We're progressing with preparing for our adventures in the Netherlands.  Just about 5 weeks to go.

Other duties as assigned

I'm on Grandma duty.  DD is at a class/conference at a Benedictine Monastery in southern California, so I have 3 charges for the next few days.  Another Grandma will swap me out on Wednesday until DD returns on Saturday.  We are having fun and everyone is doing their very best (me included).  Even the picky eater tried really hard to manage some "un-preferred" foods [ah ketchup].

I don't have the camera so you'll just have to take my word that I'm working on some stitching on a few flour sack dish towels.  Adventures aplenty.

Thanks Guys

That's the generic "guys".  As I promised, I made up little slips of paper,

And we drew out a name - and it is

Miss Laura.  We'll chat about what you might think was an appropriate momento of my big day.  Thanks for each comment.  It is nice to know that someone is actually reading what's here.

On Wednesday Owen and I worked on a couple more projects.  With a little bit of help (i.e. I did the pinning - mostly he sews without pins) he did the half square triangles and made the "mug rug" for his Mama.

Not bad points, considering this was his very first try at this.  And then he was sure that his stuffie (a new word for Nana - it means a stuffed animal that he sleeps with) needed a sleeping bag out of the yellow striped fabric that he liked.  So thanks to Shirley, I had a general idea and off we went.  I helped with the quilting, but he did the "lion's" share [ or in this case, the tiger's share]

We packed books for the church rummage sale and then it was time to head home.  A busy few days.

Today I downloaded the latest Jacqueline Winspear novel, onto my iPod.   I love her Maisie Dobbs books, so am quite excited to head to my sewing room and listen.  I am enamoured with Bird Brain Designs stitcheries.  I bought two patterns at the Sew Expo, so it's time for some work with the light box and get them transferred to some muslin.  Have a great week-end, all.