Pouches galore

ETD ~ The cell phone wristlet pattern is now available. Just click through the link on the top right-hand side of this page to purchase it. Thanks so much for your interest.

Where does the time go? March is always a crazy month for our family with spring break, birthdays and ski season. Here it's come and gone and I haven't even had a chance to tell you about the latest SWAPeroos I'm sewing for.

First up is the Pretty {little} Pouch swap (P{l}PS)which I have joined before. My pouches are all done and off in the mail to my partner. Hopefully they will arrive soon. Since my partner likes scrappy designs and pastel-ish colors I decided on this pink-inspired color palette. I just love this Domestic Bliss line from Liz Scott which is saying something because sewing is about as close to Domestic Bliss as i'll ever get. Other aspects of domesticity not withstanding.

This fabric is so vibrant and girly and seemed appropriate for my partner. I knew I wanted to do a scrappy star, so I made an 8-pointed paper pieced star out of selvages and then appliqued that to the linen pouch. The pouch needed some more interest so I added the wavy curve along the front, also scrappy-pieced. Add in some hand stitching and you have a finished pouch!

Well, hmmm, it seems to be missing something. Somehow that didn’t really seem like enough, so I added a little cell phone pouch to coordinate. I must confess I needed to make a cell phone pouch as a gift for a friend, so I used my P{l}PS partner’s extra as a prototype.

Needs some tweeking to get it just right for my friend, but it turned out pretty well for a first pass. The patterns are self-drafted and I do plan to make them available soon so stay tuned. I know I always say that and don't always deliver, so keep me honest peeps! Swap project A completed. Now onto the next one…

Happy Sewing!

Sew out Loud QAL progress

Block progress so far.... You can find the links to all the blocks here:

Hot spot

My ironing board needed a makeover. My old ironing board cover was boring, lifeless and humdrum – not to mention discolored, ripped and it may have had a wee bit of interfacing glued to it, accidentally of course. (I am going to spare you by not showing you its hideous-ness). Plus I don’t know why this is the case, but why do ironing board manufacturers no longer make decent covers? I didn’t even have the proper padding under the cover, just a thin piece of foam?!Foam! Well, I have rectified the whole mess. Enter Denyse, well ok her new release of Flea Market Fancy – I missed out on this fabric the first time around and I wasn’t going to repeat that process. I just love this gray floral print, so now I get to stare at it every day because let’s face it, my ironing board never gets put away. I’ll admit it might be a bit shameful to iron on her lovely fabric, but hey why not – at least I’ll enjoy the ironing process a bit more. The new cover has 2 layers of batting underneath plus a layer of heat resistant ironing board cloth (that silver stuff) right under the floral and the original foam layer that came w/ the board. Now there is enough padding so that I’m not ironing directly over the metal grating and hopefully the heat resistant fabric will help keep the steam from going right through the board to my floor – yup, that’s what was happening. I used the old cover as a pattern and scavenged the cording and the plastic cleat to tighten up the cover to the board. Presto change-o a new cover! If you would like to makeover your own board, you can follow many online tutes for that here: U handblog craftyteacherlady Artfully Caroline Happy Sewing!