Another Bag!

So far, this is the only bag that doesn't yet have a home.  My step brother called and left me a message a few weeks ago about wanting to add my bags to his booth at my home town's farmer's market on the downtown square.  I felt so complimented that he thinks my bags are of a quality to potentially garner interest from buyers.  But as you know, I pretty much have a home for them before I am even finish making them.  So, I have been trying find time to complete a few - sending just one to him doesn't really seem right for him or his potential customers.  (My hubby likes this one best of all so far and is often hinting as to who I might consider giving it to - I'm afraid it may not last long enough for me to complete a couple more for the booth.)

Something for the granddaughter....

Knee deep in good ole Sparkie towels - but I do take a break on occassion to do something else.  For the past few weeks I have had a second machine - for sewing.  The Brother machine I gave me daughter was going unused at her house so I asked if I could take it back.  It's been rather nice starting  a longer segment of embroidery on one machine then sitting down to the other to sew.  So after I got all the appliques in place on this outfit, I took it to the sewing machine to piece together while ole Sparkie was stitching away on my Innov-is 900D.  But all good things come to an end and this weekend daughter asked for the machine back so she and hubby could make something or other for their classrooms (teachers).  

Anyway, the granddaughter likes buttons so I looked for appliques that would allow easy incorporation of buttons as embelishments  - buttons on the flipflops include bumble bees, shells, and flowers.

Closure.....

My daughter wants a longer strap.  My mother wants closures of some type.  Well, haven't gotten around to re-figuring the fabric requirement to make the straps a little longer, but with this attempt I did add two heavy duty snaps at the base of the straps.  It's the first time I've attached this types of snaps on anything.  The directions on the package were confusing - the illustrations less than adequate. My first attempt - ruined two snaps.  Second time around, I got the snap parts in the wrong places on the first snap, but got it right on the second snap.  The end result is - both snaps work, but they face two different ways (though the outside of the bag is correct. Kind of hard to explain......

Prototype

We are a very small school district.  The class of 1960 is planning their 50 year reunion.  We have this cute little sparkplug cartoon character as a mascot.  We are one of those unique schools with a one of a kind mascot.  Not another "Sparkplug" anywhere.  But in 1960 "Sparkie", the school mascot, was a plug - - a horse.  One of the class members aged ole Sparkie a bit - creating a more ...   mature Sparkie ... to use in conjunction with their 50 year reunion.  They had decided to have some kind of memorabilia created for the reunion but in researching so far have found businesses that will take the more mature Sparkie art work and reprint and embroider it only when buying somewhere in the hundreds.   So, I said I would take a stab at it. I created a blackline "master" of ole Sparkie and scanned it into my digitizing software to create an embroidery design - then stitched on a cheap Wal-mart hand towel.

Here is the first sample....

A Short Break from Bags!

Last week was my daughter's wedding.  I had started to simultaneously cut and piece three bags until the wedding was too close to continue and I had to take a break.  (It was a wonderful wedding.)  Now that I have returned I've extended that break a little to try out some fringe embroidery designs I purchased on www.emblibrary.com.  I read an article about fringe embroidery in an older issue of Designs in Machine Embroidery magazine and was anxious to give it a try.  I had picked up a couple of plain white microfiber kitchen towels at Wal-Mart some time ago and hadn't decided what exactly to do with them.  So I put them to use in this first try of fringe embroidery.  Added a little fabric embellishments and ta-da!  I think they turned out pretty cute.

"Spring Tote" from Quilter's World

Another of the "Spring Tote" from the April 2010 magazine Quilter's World (page 25-27).  This time I included the tab and button - but I did shorten the tab a little.  This is another one made from a bundle of Fat Quarters - I had only one bundle of fat quarters this time and the body uses enough of the quarters that I didn't have anything for the lining, so I did purchase a half yard of another fabric to complete the project.

What can you do with Fat Quarters?

I've been meaning to post this one for quite a while, but the quality of my pictures was so poor I was trying to get better ones first.  Failing to do so, I did enhance the pictures a little bit. 

I made this with a couple of fat quarter bundles I picked up.  I was intrigued by the use of the Prairie Points and when I found how simple they were to add and how great they looked, I just loved them.  I plan to try a bigger version of this one soon.