Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Simple Halloween Wall Hanging


I made a simple Halloween wall hanging for my sister. I used Fairy Frost in a cream color for the background so it would have just a little shimmer.  The fabric is so pretty in person and I my picture doesn't do it any justice! The binding fabric is a scrap of black with gold stars. I was lucky and had enough of it to bind it and use it for the backing. 

I didn't miter the corners when I did the binding. I put on the two sides first and then cut the binding to be level with the top and bottom. For the top and bottom I cut two pieces of binding and then hemmed the raw edges under. That way when I sewed it on I could slide in ribbon to use as a hanger. Since the ribbon goes through the binding and is tied when it hangs it tends to make the top corners "curl" into the middle. A wooden kitchen skewer cut just a little smaller then the finished edge and slid into the binding give the piece stability and weight so the ribbon doesn't pull the edges. (That was my fun tip of the day! ;) )

I made this for my sister who doesn't do much Halloween decorating and has a small apartment. A little something to hang on the wall.  The design, which came from Embroidery Library, is so her as well. She loved it.


Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Milk Money Bag

One of my friends recently introduced me to Embroidery Library.  I quickly fell in love with alot of their designs and what good deals you can get. I've since become addicted to their site and have put my machine through its paces doing machine embroidery.

Every Tuesday my Mom picks up fresh raw milk from a dairy farm in South Carolina for herself, me and some family friends. While cruising through Embroidery Library I found a vintage milk sign that made me think of my Mom's milk trips. Since everyone gives her money to pay for the milk I thought it would be nice to create a little something for her to put it in- a zippered pouch. First zippered pouch I ever made! I think it turned out great!


The front of the pouch. The back is the same fabric, but no design.



The inside lining of the pouch.


I followed the lined zippered pouch tutorial by Skip to My Lou. It was easy to follow, although it took me a minute to make sure I was sewing the "zipper sandwiches" correctly.

I did make a change to the directions. I wanted it to be stiffer, but didn't have any interfacing. Since I had used an iron on stabilizer when I embroidered it, I left that on and ironed a piece onto the back fabric. Then I used fusible webbing to fuse a piece of warm and natural cotton batting to the stabilizer. I fused it since I didn't want to quilt it. Next time I think I will quilt the fabric and cotton batting first then do my embroidery design. I left the lining as it is. It turned out great. It is still soft, but stands up better in a purse.

This is a great project. So quick! After the machine did its thing embroidering it took me about under 30 minutes to put together.

p.s. The Quilting Cats were banned from the room during this project, which is why it probably went so quickly. Mr. Helpful decided that he couldn't live without laying on the ironing board and kept jumping on it no matter how many times I put him back on the floor. Normally this wouldn't have been a thrown out of the room offense but the iron was on and hot and he would NOT leave it alone! So he and the other one sat outside the door and reminded me of their displeasure by howling and pawing at the door, which they eventually got open, but by then the project was complete.