Happy Independence Day!!

Hope you are enjoying your holiday if it is a holiday where you are. We are having a lazy and hot day around here. BBQ is already going - dinner is going to be delish!! Meanwhile, lazy for me means free time to sew - yaay!

I have been sewing up more multi-tasker totes. Love this pattern. These are going to be gifts.

More Garden party fabric matched with some Farmer's Market from Sandi Henderson. You might've noticed that I have used this particular print a lot lately - I do love that one and I have it in every colorway. Gotta figure out what to make with the gold version.

I tried a little something different with this version of the tote - I interfaced the lining with decor-bond (heavy weight interfacing) then used a fusible fleece on the front panel. This one can stand up on it's own pretty well even though it is sewn in quilting weight cottons. I cut the interfacing a bit short and left it off the top part of the bag where the handle is attached so that it can still gather up nicely.

The top picture is AMH's Drawing room fabric which is a home dec weight fabric and really works perfectly for this tote bag with minimal interfacing. I simply interfaced the front panel of that one with some fusible fleece. Works perfectly.

Enjoy the fireworks! Happy sewing!

Party on the Porch!

Here's my version of a garden party ~ the chair makeover is complete. Our new front porch complete with cheery, flowery box pillows for the chairs, and some fun throw-pillows for the swing. It needs an icy beverage don't you think?

The pillows were made using Anna Maria's Horner's Garden party fabric which came out last year. I love this colorway on the porch, it's so summery and makes me smile. Not sure how well the white flowers will hold up to 2 kids! or sometimes more - but they are easily removable and can be tossed in the wash.

I followed Beth's tute from Sew Mama Sew to make up the pillows. My chairs are a bit unusually shaped, so I used a paper template made from the chair measurements to start with. Once I knew it would fit, I used the template to cut out the 3" foam and all the fabric pieces. I made my own piping using bias strips cut from Valori Wells Olive Rose fabric which matched nicely. Then I encased some 6/32" cording to make the piping. See Beth's tute on how to do that too.

The throw pillows on the swing are a standard knife-edge pillow and another box pillow made with the leftovers.

I'm pretty happy with this front porch transformation. Now onto the back patio, that one has a few more chairs - 6 to be exact. That's going to be a big job.

Hope you are enjoying your summer!

Summer Project ~ sneak peek

One pillow down, seventeen zillion to go.... ok no, not really ~ more like 15 - but it feels like seventeen zillion

Anna Maria's garden party was selected from the stash - I love this large-scale floral print and who doesn't love using up something from the stash?! Piping was made from a bit of Valorie Wells' Olivia Rose as an accent. I followed this handy tute from Beth on SewMamaSew for construction.

I promise to show the final results when they are all done.

Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians!!