A Lavendar Knit Hat

A night or two ago I finished a knit hat.

Its more of a beany style .. I can't seem to knit long enough to make it more slouchy .. Ah well .

what do you think? It will probably go on Etsy.

Tara's Favorite Bag - binding on pocket pieces

Well, I will be showing you today how I am putting binding on my two 6x18" outside pockets. I took a few pictures and will be showing you how to put binding on, totally by machine.

On the smaller inside pockets, I am putting binding on all four sides, so I will treat those like I do my full size quilts, sew the binding on the right side of the quilt first, then turn it over and stitch the backside of the binding by hand. I find this is the easiest and neatest way to do it since I'll be turning corners and turning corners on the machine be tricky.

For the large pockets, we are putting binding only on the top and the bottom, and the sides will be covered in the seam of the bag so there is no need to bind the short sides.

To start with, I sew the binding on the right side of the pocket, with raw edges matching.


Then, I fold the binding over, and pin it from the right side. It might be seem more natural to pin from the back, but the purpose of pinning from the front is so that when you are stitching, you will be able to remove the pins easily as the needle comes close to them.

You can see both the front and back sides of the pinning in this picture.


I then stitch very closely in the ditch in the crease between the front of the pocket and the binding.

In this picture I had stopped just before a pin to take the picture, but before I started sewing again, I removed the pin.

So there you have it. At the end of this step, we'll have binding on the two long sides of the two large outside pockets. You'll also need binding on all four sides of the 3 smaller pockets.

Tara's Favorite Bag / Purse

Okay, so, are we ready for more about my favorite bag/purse?

The last few days I've been working on getting my quilted fabric quilted. As I mentioned/showed earlier. I finally finished! See !?!?


I had several thread breakage problems, but mostly in the beginning and end, surprisely, the middle section went fairly smooth.

After quilting, I cut off three 6" width strips for my pockets. Two of them 6"x18" will be outer pockets, and one of the 6" strips will be cut into smaller pieces for the inside pockets.

So first we trim the edges.


After we have the edges of the 6" pieces trimmed, then we move on and trim the edges of the larger piece which should be 18"x22" (or there about) I fold this piece in half so that I can use the fold as one of my ruler guides, and then trim the edges neatly square.


And here we are with the nice and neatly trimmed pieces for the purse.


Out of the quilted fabric we have:
1 - 18" x 22" piece for the base of the purse (if this is longer, it's ok!)
2 - 6" x 18" pieces for the outside pockets
2 - 6" x 7" pieces for inside pockets
1 - 6" x 4" piece for an inside pocket.

And there you go - quilted fabric ready :)

My Recent Accomplishments ...

The last two evenings I've been knitting and crocheting using up some scrap yarn that was sitting by my chair (or my "nest" as I've begun to think of it.)

I thought I would share with you what I've done.

This first picture is of a mile-a-minute doll afghan that I used up a couple of small balls of white-ish yarn, and added some green from a larger skein. Can you tell the difference between the two whites? One has a bit of "confetti" look to it.


These next two hats are from some Bernat Softee Chunky that I had. Three balls (pink, yellow, and green) were given to me, and I had a small ball of blue leftover from previous projects of my own. I still have some pink and yellow left, but the blue and green are basically gone.



These next two photos are of hats that have been finished for awhile, but I thought I'd share them with you. The green/white one is made with a very interesting yarn I picked up at Charity's in Altoona, IA. The yarn is made from cane sugar! I thought it was very unique and so I picked up a skein and knit this hat using part of it. I still have a bit less then half the skein left I think. I haven't weighed it, but that's my guess. The yarn is fine and very soft .. a nice lightweight hat.


This blue baby hat I can't remember what type of yarn it is, a fairly common acrylic I think.


Well, there you go. My show and tell for the afternoon.

The next post should be more about "Tara's Favorite Purse" :)

Meander Quilting - Video

I thought you might like to see how I meander quilt. I had my son help me record this video. It's only about a minute long, ... enjoy!

New Beginnings

I'm going to be sharing with you a project that I'm working on. I'm going to be sharing the pattern with a yahoo group called One Stitch At A Time. They are a great group of ladies, and I really enjoy being part of their group. A lot of the time I just sit back and watch. For now, I'm going to be actively leading in this pattern.

The pattern is called "Tara's Favorite Purse" and it is just what it sounds like, the purse that I make for myself to use every day. I use it every day, I don't make one every day .. lol.

I've chosen my fabric:


And I basted the base (1/2 yard of quilted fabric is the main requirements, along with some extra for binding and handles. Don't forget an 18" zipper!)

Here are the steps I used in basting.

I prefer to baste using binder clips when I can. Masking tape can be very temperamental, and come undone when you least want it to. I use the binding clips on the edge of the table, and then use masking tape for the remaining sides.


After I get the backing laid out and slightly stretched (not too much, just a little bit.) I lay the batting on top and smooth it out, then cut it to be the same size as the backing. You can wait and cut it just a bit bigger then the top if you'd like, I trimmed this one before I put the top on. For this project I found a small piece of bamboo batting that I had leftover from a previous project.


I then lay the top on, smooth it out, and start pin basting.


On a smaller piece like this, I do not close the safety pins, because they are a pain to open while you are machine quilting. If it's a larger piece, you will want to close them, because the risk of them falling out before you get to an area is greater then the pain of opening them.

I haven't quilted in years (2 or 3) so I was a little intimidated, but it's like riding a bike, comes back to you. Must be that "muscle memory" they talk about. Anyway, I chose to do a meandering pattern for this. Although I may rethink that, as my thread keeps breaking! I loosened the tension, I changed needles, and it's still breaking. So, I am going to take a break and get back to it later this afternoon or even tomorrow. I may just decide to do a mixture of straight line and meander quilting. It's my purse, so it doesn't matter, and it'll be artistic, right? :)

Here's how far I got . . . .


Will you join us in making this purse?

MIA .. sorry!

Well, it's been a crazy couple of months. I've finished the directing of the homeschool groups Christmas Play .. it was terrific, thanks for asking :)

We had a quiet Thanksgiving ... just the 4 of us .. the church's women's Christmas Brunch .. was beautiful .. great speech Tina! :) ... beautiful tables, great food .. I decorated two of those tables ...

Also went to a Christmas Music program for my niece and nephew ..

Hosted my parents on their short trip north for Christmas .. had Christmas dinner at my sisters .. and now am watching my niece and nephew today while she works since school is out for them, and they don't have daycare....

And I'm planning on trying to turn my motivation around next year. Hoping that I can get projects done, find a reason to make projects instead of staying in this slump I've been in .. and try to stay off facebook and get on with real life ..

Maybe you'll join me for the attempt .. what are your plans for next year?