Done!

I finished 11 of these cuties. I wanted to take a picture of all of them together but that seems to be harder than I expected. Maybe it's just to windy or maybe I need to chop down some trees first or mabe I simply need a studio?! I'll have to try again later. Right now I need to clean up the mess in the kitchen and the living room. Why can't I seem to sew without leaving nothing but chaos behind?

Nice weekend!

Sunday turned out to be especially nice! The humming of lots of bumble-bees in our yard was just as sweet as watching them fly from blossom to blossom.We were invited by Hanni and Sofia in the afternoon and had some delicious cake: I only snatched a picture of the chocolate strawberry muffins (and the chocolate cake in the back) but there was also pastry filled with marzipan and currents. Yum!Since we also got to meet Hanni's friend for the first time since she had given birth to a little boy I brought along a little diaper bag to match her granny bag.
And I also sewed a little drawstring pouch for Sofia filled with a few little gifts.Can you tell how much I love the Lecien rose fabric?! It's kind of embarrassing. You could think this is the only kind of fabric I have and that is so not true! Oh well, I can't help it right now...

Fabric covered buttons and a swap!

I love fabric covered buttons and I love swapping, so when I saw the announcement for the fabric button swap I knew I had to join. It really felt good to get creative and do a little sewing (and a tiny bit of embroidery) again. I guess I need a little pressure once in a while.I'm not even sure what the little something I made for my partner Katie would be called. Basically you can keep a little notebook inside or maybe a couple of postcards. It also came in handy to store the buttons some place safe before their journey...Okay, making something is nice but receiving something really cute in the mail is even nicer! Katie's part of the swap reached me on Saturday and I couldn't believe my luck when I saw she had chosen little red riding hood fabric for her projects and the buttons (insert squeal here). Cute!So I got super cute buttons, a wrist warmer AND a pouch in a super nicely wrapped little package which I unfortunately couldn't take a picture of because I was way too nosey.Thank you sooo much, Katie!!!

Time flies!

It's been almost a month since my last post. Something rather sad happened over here and I didn't feel like sewing or blogging much. We decided rather quickly that we'll go on a vacation now soon. C and me.I finished as many projects, chores and tasks as I could and still there is quite a bit of stuff for me to do. I don't mind it though. I'm really looking forward to our road trip.

I believe I'll be back with tons of pictures and hopefully with a lot more crafting energy too.

I'll leave you with a pic of a bag. Finished just in time so Johanna can take it along as a birthday present. I waited until that last minute to make this one... just because.

See ya all!

Party time!

Yesterday I finally got to meet with my friends and celebrated the end of my time at the university. We had dinner at my place first and then went bowling.
I decided that we needed prizes and I knew very early what they should be, but as usual waited to the last minute to sew the little pouches. I made different ones because I wanted to try and meet everybody's preferences. I think it worked out pretty well. At least I hope everybody was happy with what they ended up with.I always spend a lot of time with making up my mind and when I found somebody to help me with that, I figured my friends would appreciate a little decision maker as well: Unazukins were put into the bags along with a few treats.I had so much fun yesterday! Thank you, J., J., K. and P. for being such awesome friends!

Stash is a good thing!

We all knew it. It's good to buy lots of fabrics, even with no concrete project in mind. Because someday you will need something and be thrilled to find it already there... in your stash!

I wanted to use part of my new Urban Chicks fabric for a bag and was looking for some uni-colored fabric that would go with it and there it was: some linen in exactly the same blueish colorway. I bought this fabric online, thinking of making it into another skirt for myself, but when it arrived the color looked very different to what I had imagined. With no more hot summer days in sight anyway, I put it away.

Now, here is its comeback!

Finally: Some fabric and a doggy bag!

Okay, the title is all wrong. It's not some fabric, it's a lot! We spend actually about two hours in the store and I could have stayed even longer, but it got really crowded in the end and I already had bought too much.

First up are some fabrics I bought for a baby blanket:

I love the snail fabric. When I saw it I knew I wanted to use it for the blanket. All the other fabrics were chosen afterwards. And the little bird fabric was actually not supposed to be part of it. I just really wanted it too and when I came home and folded up all the fabrics I noticed that it would probably look quite good with the rest. What do you think?
I am not sure what kind of pattern I'll be using. Any suggestions? I don't think I want plain squares, but I don't want anything too complicated either.

Next up:


I want to use these to make a Note Taker. Yes, you heard me right. I finally bought the pattern at Pink Chalk Studio. I've been eyeing it for months and now it's mine!

I believe I'll have to make some changes to it since our paper writing pads are not the same size, but I guess it will work out fine. Also I can't get Timtex around here so I have to use something else. Kathy and two of her friends gave me some very useful advice on what to look for (thank you again!), but of course I would also like to hear what you would suggest.

Then I also had to have some of these. Just because...


Oh, and the one with the red and white stripes is actually Johanna's (to be used for hearts), just like these two which will become a nice big pillow case someday.

I told you we bought a lot! (Yes Johanna, you didn't, it was just me.)

Guess what! I already sewed something. And guess what else! I didn't use any of the new fabrics.


This here was long overdue. My friend's daughter was supposed to get a bag for a long time. She chose the fabrics for it way back. I sewed it this morning and gave it to her already. I think she likes it.

Perfect Timing!

So I got my sewing machine back on Wednesday (she's fine, thanks for asking!) and started on the nappy bag for my friend yesterday morning. When I was almost done with it, I got a call from my friends husband telling me that the little girl had just arrived. Wow! She was ten days early. I was really exited after the phone call, but somehow mangaged to finish the bag.
About two months ago my friend (the baby's mother) and I had been at the fabric store together and she had chosen the fabrics and the trim and she also had the idea for the shape of the bag. I think it came out perfectly.
It has three inside pockets and a magnetic closure. I had some difficulties taking pictures of these details. The lining is a very cute fabric from Lecien, the outer fabric is from Westfalenstoffe and of a nice heavy quality.

This morning I decided to sew a little heat pad, filled with grape seeds, that will match the bag and hopefully be the right size for a tiny baby tummy. I'll fill the bag with a couple of other things and then it's ready to go. Congratulations to you, J+M and welcome to you, Helena! I can't wait to meet you!

Being busy... with other stuff!

I don't find much time for sewing these days, so therefore I decided to show another bag I made a while ago (and haven't posted yet!). It's a fairly small one - I think the smallest I've made so far, but big enough to hold the essentials. Lacking a nice string at that time, I used a shoe lace instead. A couple of weeks ago I finally found what I was looking for and so by now it got replaced.
This weekend I will definately spend some time sewing... and I don't think it's going to be clothes!

New bag... for me!

I saw a bag similar to this in Linen & Cotton vol. 2 (ISBN 4529042618), one of my favorite Japanese magazines. There is obviously nothing complicated or even special to the pattern, but that was exactly what appealed to me. I decided to use some of my precious Lecien fabric (that's not so easy to get around here!) and added a fabric flower (the instructions for it are also in that Linen & Cotton issue).I made this bag a couple of weeks ago and when it was finished I found it a bit too small. I usually would have wanted to be able to put in a folder and a couple of books. So for a while I put it in my closet. But now my last term at the university is over and for a while I won't have to carry around folders and books, so I got it back out and now it's my brand new summer bag!

Nothing new!

I think this week I will definately not be able to do any sewing, so I decided to show you something "old", that I haven't blogged yet. It's a patchwork bag I made after I found this tutorial. It's a great tutorial and so easy to follow. I liked this example of the Japanese craft book Machine Made Patchwork so much that I bought the book and I'm glad I did: Lots of nice ideas! Thanks for sharing creative little daisy!

Quite big!

That's what this bag is.
I really like the combination of colors for this bag. It looks so much like summer and while I was sewing it it surly brightened up the cloudy day. I will keep looking at it until I'll hand it over to it's new owner...

(Now I can cross out the first thing on my list. Tomorrow I'll get started on the baby boy pants.)

More Granny Bags!

I'm not sure if these are my final pictures of the granny bags. I had something else in mind. We'll see.

The blue bag was the first one I made. (It's modeled by my sweet friend - who is the owner of that bag now by the way.) As I said before, I made three more with the same pattern. For the green/brown one I chose a different way of gathering the fabric. I think it looks maybe a bit more difficult to make, but in fact it was easier and way faster than the other way.

When I finished the three bags I thought: "That's it. I'm through with this pattern!" By now I'm thinking differently. Variations maybe?

Lady bugs!

A simple bag I made with lovely linen fabric. I added a fabric flower made out of cotton. I put it on with a safety pin so it can be taken of, when the bag needs to be cleaned. Of course that way the flower can also be used for multiple purposes. I wonder how long it will last, because the fabric can happily fray away...

Close up!

I keep finding it much simpler to add a new post by using flickr. Unfortunately I don't know how to add more than one photo at a time. Suggestions?!
Anyway, here is a close up of that first granny bag. I thought one couldn't really see the fabric details.

(That's it for today then. Really! I'll go and try to figure out how to blog a couple of photos at once (using flickr that is) - because I really don't think anybody will tell me here.)

Tough one!

Why didn't anybody tell me how hard it is to take nice pictures of granny bags? I'm not really happy with the results! And it ain't just the weather (which still is not perfect for a photo session). I need to improve the overall look of the picture. For now I'll show just one of the three bags, because it will change hands soon.
It's quite big and offers lots of room for everything you need during the day. It is very comfortably to wear and best of all: it is reversible!