Grandpa's birthday gift

So this is a pretty random gift, but my son is going to give this to my dad, a.k.a Grandpa Milt, a.k.a. Golf Coach for his birthday.
I made myself a sassy little golf towel a while ago and am loving it. I think the personalized idea is a lot of fun. My dad helped Kyle with some things this summer and called him his golf coach. I thought he would get a kick out of his new golf towel.

The letters are appliqued and then blanket stitched. I added a fancy grommet to make it feel a little more polished than just a simple button hole, and picked up the little caribbeaner from a local mountain sports store.


Like I said, it's a pretty random gift, buy my dad is the kind of guy that is impossible to buy for. If nothing else, he'll get a chuckle out of it!

Teachin' some craftin'!

What is more fun than crafting? Teaching a few adorable teenage girls how to do it on their own! I've been telling Kourtni and Kayleigh for a while now that I'd love to show them how to make some of the fun stuff that they have seen me make. Kayleigh finally took me up on my offer. It was spirit week at her high school last week. These are the fun shirts we came up with for her and a couple of her friends. I can't take credit for the saying, Kayleigh came up with that. I just taught them how do to freezer paper stencils to paint their shirts. We also added some much needed 'bling' to complete the look!What a fun project! I had a great time working on it with the girls.

Happy Birthday Mom!

So, it's nothing too original, but for my mom's birthday last week she got this in the mail...
The pattern does not call for a strip of velcro on the inside, that was my addition. Grandma S is kind of obsessed with being able to close her purses/bags up!
The colors are not usually a pallet I would choose for myself, but the bag was for my awesome mom, not for me! The patterns and colors scream Grandma S!

In case you are not familiar with it, this pattern is Amy Butler's Birdie Sling. I'm in love with the pattern and bag. Back when I had Baby C, one was given to me as a gift for a diaper bag. I'm still using it. I've now made a couple of them as gifts for some of my favorite people. If you've never sewn a purse or bag before, this would be a great place to start. It is pretty basic. (Side note, just because it is basic does not mean it is cheap to make...after getting all the nice fabric there is a ton of interfacing, etc. to buy. It is worth it though.)

And of course I didn't take pictures, but I also included about a dozen various hand-made cards along with the bag for her to add to her stash.

Happy Monday!

Fall Quilt

So my mother-in-law finished this quilt top last fall. She promptly sent it my way and asked me to quilt it.I put it on my to-do list...and there it sat. For almost a whole year. Oops! Now that fall is officially on its way, I knew there could be no more procrastinating. Just this last week I got it basted, quilted, bound and sent back to Utah!

I had a really tough time deciding how to quilt this, which is a great part of the procrastination. I LOVE free-motion quilting, but the inspiration on how to go about this quilt kept alluding me. I finally had to just jump in. Here's what I decided to do...

I 'traced' each of the pumpkins and leaves on the panel and stippled the dark brown 'background'. Then I decided to straight line quilt through the blocks bordering the panel, and then stipple the far outside edges. It's a little crazy, but I think I'm happy with how it turned out.

I'm excited to hear what my mother-in-law's reaction is to it. She didn't give me any direction on how she'd like it quilted, so I just hope she's happy with it.

Since she's family and all, and since I had the top in my possession for so long, I decided to bind it for her too, so she could get a finished quilt in the mail.

Brynn's Party Dress

My friend's daughter, Little Miss Brynn, turned 3 this week! Always looking for an excuse to sew something fru-fru, I made her a little party dress for her big day...She loved it! I was afraid that the boa around the bottom would be a little over the top, but she thought it was great. She kept telling everyone at her party how pretty she looked and then she would twist side to side to make the dress swish and twist. So cute!The dress was just a simple 'tube' style dress that I shirred on the top. The straps were a mini tube of material with thin elastic pulled through. Because I couldn't think of another way to add it, I hand-stitched the boa around the bottom. Simple, and cute, just how I like it!

For some great tutorials/tips & tricks using elastic thread to do shirring, check out these links...
1 - Your Fabric Place
2 - Pattern Review dot com
3 - About dot com thread

Diaper/Wipe Clutch - Baby Shower Gift

I'm going to a baby shower in a couple of weeks. I LOVE baby showers! I LOVE making things for people that I actually know. (I obviously love making things for people I don't know too, or else I wouldn't have a little business.) I'm not so much in love with baby showers that request unisex gifts because the gender of the baby is unknown. It takes the fun out of fru-fru ribbons and bows for a girl, or cute dinos and trucks for a boy, you know what I mean? Anywho, I did the best I could for a unisex gift, and this is what I came up with...I wish I could claim this cute Diaper/Changing Pad Clutch, but I made it from a pattern. (pattern by All My Bags & Quilts Too) The pattern comes with directions for the clutch and a changing pad.The covered travel wipes case is my addition.
The blues and browns lean towards boy, but with the orange and paisley print, I felt thought it could easily be a girls gift too. I'm a pretty firm believer that girls can get away with just about any color, but boys can't! I may not be fashion forward enough, but I just don't think pink is a color for boys.

'm giving the soon to be mommy this clutch and a box of size 1 diapers. Hopefully she'll like it. It's not super personalized, but without knowing the sex of the baby, I did the best I could.

my new messenger bag

I am constantly drawn to messenger bags. Doesn't matter whether they are in a store, catalog, or hanging from somebody's shoulder; I love them. I've wanted to make one for myself for a LONG time. Well...I finally got around to it!I'm not going to lie, I pretty much love how it turned out. So cute, and so functional!I didn't follow anybody's pattern, just kind of came up with it on my own. There are lots of tutorials out here in blog-land for messenger bags, but none of them were exactly what I had in mind, so I figured a way to make it exactly like what I had in mind! :)The exterior of the bag was made using one charm pack (Panache, by Moda), and I just used a khaki neutral for the interior. Even though there are a TON of tuts out in blog-land for messenger bags, I'm thinking of making one up for this bag too. It is just enough different that I think people might like it, and the fact that it uses just one charm pack + the fabric for the interior makes it inexpensive too! Would you be interested in learning to make one?