Happy 4th ~ a little late

... If it's July 6th, I kind of a blew right by the Independence day celebrations. We were a little under the weather this year with some sort of weird dizzy viral bug at our house. I managed to escape so far, so instead I cleaned out my daughters room - really cleaned it out as in, purged it big time. Well, it's done now and while it probably wasn't the most exciting thing for the 4th, I'm very happy that it's finished and all the random clutter is gone. You know how kids rooms just manage to accumulate - ummm - stuff? It's all gone - many many bags worth. Her room actually looks bigger now, although it's not. She loves it to! Hopefully this will be incentive for her to keep it clean for awhile – yeah right, I know that’s not going to really happen, but a girl can dream right?

Aside from getting a peace/love tote bag done this weekend, I did manage to finish off my July 4th hexie napkins. The first version was a little bland,

so I spiced them up a bit with red rickrack (instead of blue), and used a coordinating print fabric for the backs - much better this way.

The Hexies were made from a Red, White and Bold charm pack (Sandy Gervais, Moda) and the backs are assorted fabrics from my stash including Amy Butlers Love.


Much better this way.

Hope you had a great 4th! Happy Sewing!

Have bag ~ will travel!

Or at least I should say, I can travel - somewhere? - nice maybe? Ok I gotta fess up here, I really needed this bag - to travel. Need being a relative term here. We travel a lot and I was tired of carrying around my old hideous black duffel bag into which the contents of my wardrobe (also often black) would disappear as though through gravitational pull. Yes it's true ~ black holes do exist and right here on earth! Fishing around in poorly lit rooms looking for my stuff in a hurry is not fun. Plus how cool would it be to carry around a stylin' Amy Butler bag instead? So it was time for a change and here it is, my version of the weekender bag

all done up in Spruce french wallpaper print from Amy Butler and matching paisley print with some Michael Miller mirror ball dots on the piping. I'm loving how this turned out - yes tooting my own horn again. But I haven't been this pleased with the outcome of a project in a while.

Now if someone would kindly explain to me why purse zippers only come in navy, black and taupe? Where is the sense in that? Clearly a fashionista had no say in that decision.