Art Caddy Tote

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to win my pick of 3 Gingercake patterns.  I finally got around to using one of them: the Art Caddy Tote.

It turned out really cute and I think my little guy will love it.  However, I must admit, this was a lot of work.  A lot of pieces to cut and interface and assembly was tricky with so many layers.  I kept getting frustrated and putting it aside so it's actually been in the works for a couple of months.  I'm glad I finally finished it though  :)

As I tend to do with most patterns, I did make a few modifications:

1) I cut most of the pockets at about twice the height and sandwiched a layer of sew-in interfacing (aka scrap fabric) so I could avoid using more fusible interfacing and having to fold/iron/sew the top and bottom edges (i.e I just folded it in half, sewed into a tube and turned right side out instead).

2) I used home decor weight fabric as my main fabric, which allowed #3

3) I skipped the thick heavy double sided fusible interfacing altogether, which is not available at my fabric store so I just used more sew-in interfacing

4) I used webbing instead of ribbon for handles, because I wanted it to be more sturdy but was also too lazy to make handles from my fabric (which the pattern suggests as the alternative).

I found the pictures in the pattern very helpful.  I did wish that the steps were broken down a little more though, but maybe that is just 'cause I tend to skim and miss things when they are not in a short checklist-like form.  Overall, I'm really happy with it and I think it will get a lot of use!

I'm also happy that it was such a thrifty project!  

-I won the pattern = free

-main fabric was part of a piece of remnant that was $2 for a meter

-crayola accent fabric was a thrift store find - $3 for a couple of meters

-fusible interfacing used on the main body pieces I had on hand from when I bought some on sale for $1 a package.

-the webbing I also had on hand - I bought a huge roll of it from a garage sale last summer for $5.

So really, this thing only cost a couple of bucks to make and everything was from my stash, which makes it all the more satisfying!  :)

Lesson of the day: read instructions carefully

I'm pretty excited to be in my first bee, the Comfort Quilts Quilting Bee, where all the blocks will go into quilts that will be made for those facing health issues or death of a loved one.  It's a win-win: I get to try new blocks and improve my quilting skills (hopefully) while doing some good.

February is our first month and we are using this great tutorial by our queen bee.

I read over the instructions and it seemed pretty straight forward.  It took me a while to pull out enough different scraps (which was a bit of a challenge because I needed 16 darks and 16 lights so there are definitely some fugly fabrics in there) and cut all the pieces.  I spent quite a bit of time playing around with the layout of all the HSTs.  Here are the two blocks I made:

Not bad, I thought to myself.  I don't love all the fabrics I used, but everything seemed to line up pretty nicely so I was still pretty proud of myself.  So I go ahead and upload my pictures to flickr and drop them into my bee group.  It wasn't until I looked at the blocks the others had make that it clicked in my head...yikes I messed up the layout!  It was supposed to be light coloured fabrics in the middle, not the dark ones...*sigh*.  So now I am spending some quality time with my seam ripper...lesson learned!

Drumroll please...

Thank you to everyone who entered to win and for the birthday wishes  :)

And the winner of the fuglies as determined by Mr. random number generator is:

21 = Lee who said:

"new quilters - my daughter and I so we need some stash! thanks!"

Some new stash you and your daughter shall receive!  I am off to send you an email to get your mailing address  :)

Fugly Fabric Party!

Honestly, I've become terrible fabric hoarder.  I can't stop myself from picking up fabric if it is cheap...I justify it by telling myself that I can use them to make charity quilts.  While I have made a couple for Project Linus and I am in a charity bee, there is no way I would ever have enough time to ever make enough charity quilts to use up all of the fabrics I've accumulated.  As such, I have been considering doing some purging and it worked out perfectly when I read about this:  

Here are my fuglies:

Can't tell you much about these except that they are pretty drab and I believe some are vintage.  On the off chance you might actually want these, please leave me a comment telling me so (please make sure that I have a way to contact you).  On the even more off chance there is more than one person who is interested (HA), I will draw a name randomly.  

Edit: For second chance to win, it would be great if you could become a follower and tell me you have done so...my blog is new and it would be nice to know I am not just talking to myself  :)

Since a few people have shown interest I will be doing a draw, on Feb 13 (my b-day)  :)