I'm Back!

Hello my blogging friends. Oh, how I have missed you. I didn't intentionally want to take such a long break from the blogosphere, but somehow it 'just' happened.

This morning I checked in on all my friends. Wow! I have missed a lot. My friend Katie just adopted a new baby and recently found out she's expecting. Far Side of Fifty is in the hospital. Allison and Meredith are taking a break. Julie is not on her way to Ethiopia yet. Kimmie's little one is as beautiful as ever...and I feel so bad that I didn't make any skirts for her daughter to take on her mission trip. Chris, Sheri, and Jodi I can keep up on through facebook, but it's still fun to go to their blogs. Weaver Mom--are you still out there :-)? Did I miss anyone?

I'm still trying to learn the SEO business. I got a little overwhelmed with the idea of work, homeschooling, family, etc. and nearly threw in the towel. But I am over that and diving in head first this week. I am ready to optimize my first website. Tomorrow is the big day of making my initial changes to the site I've been working on. I am a little nervous and apprehensive. What if I am not good enough? I have a perfectionist attitude and would rather do nothing at all (in all areas of my life) than to try and fail. Anyone else like that? I suppose I need counseling, but paying someone $125/hour really messes with the 'perfect' balance I like to see in our bank account. I know. I have a problem. Enough of my emotional issues. Let's talk about fun stuff.

I want to show you what I made for my niece before we went to Colorado. I had made some HUGE bibs for Prince Charming out of hand towels and decided my sister needed some for her little one.

Here is Prince Charming modeling one of his. These bibs are great. They lay over the lap and keep the pants clean.

Since I had to make them for a little girl, I decided to embellish them and make them a little more feminine.

The "M" stands for me. Just kidding. Her name starts with an M too. I used the blanket stitch on my machine to applique the fabric onto the towels.

I love this lavender color with the green. But my all time favorite is this one:

My friend Rapunzel has an embroidery machine and we got together to make this personalized one. Scribe's (age 11) comment when he saw it was, "Don't you think that could be vanity, mom?" I suppose it is a little vane, but she's my niece, and my goddaughter, and I like to think she looks like me.

What do you think? I'm pretty sure she loves her vanity bib as much as I do!

Place Mat Purses

Now that Christmas is over and all my gifts have been delivered, I can share with you what I made for some of my family members and close friends.

I had seen a place mat purse in a quilt shop and thought I was smart enough to make one without having to buy the pattern.  Instead of spending $14.00 on the pattern, I spent about 8 hours on my first one sewing, ripping out, sewing, ripping out, putting the handles on, taking them off, putting them on, taking them off....until I finally figured it out.  After the blood sweat and tears invested that first one, I decided that spending $14.00 on the pattern may not have been such a bad deal after all.

I found place mats on clearance for $.74 each at Target and a few sets of handles on clearance for $.97 at JoAnns, so a couple of them were pretty economical.  I added contrasting fabric, a magnetic snap, inside pockets, and some type of embellishment to each purse.

I made some red ones too but did not get photos of them.  Each purse I made was unique, but two were sprinkled with a little extra love.

Like this one  I made for my sister.  It may not look like much but it has a lot of meaning.  I used pieces of denim from a pair of my mom's old blue jeans for the contrasting fabric.  My mom has been gone for over four years now.  I did not know what I'd ever use her jeans for, but thought I may incorporate pieces of them into quilts for my kids.  I was so excited when I remembered I had them stored away and thought to use them for my sister's purse.  I can't tell you how many times I choked up and started to cry while making this one.  I felt like mom was standing over my shoulder watching me as I created my masterpiece.  I think she'd approve of my destroying a perfectly good pair of jeans.

Then I took these photos of us as children and printed them onto an iron on transfer.  I'm the big sister (the cute one).

I put it onto a pocket inside the purse.

I used this photo and 'pursonalized' it for her.

It was used for a second pocket in the purse.  She told me she cried when she opened it.  (I was kind of hoping it would have that effect on her.)

This purse was made for my dear friend, Rapunzel, (I call her that because she has a ton of hair.) I decided hers would be 'pursonalized' too.  

I used a collage of pictures taken of us on her 40th birthday.  These four were just a sample of the photo shoot we sat through.  I had her hubby take them for us.  Thank goodness for digital cameras and being able to view them immediately.  I bossed him around by telling him to kindly asked him to zoom in,  zoom out, not to take from that angle, could he take another that didn't make us look fat, and next time try to leave the dog out....We were laughing pretty hard by the time he finally got a good one of us.  Look how red my nose is in the last picture, what you can't see is my watery eyes from laughing so hard I cried.  It was a fun night (and I was glad she was finally as old as me).

Here it is on the pocket inside the purse.  The iron ons did not turn out at vibrant as I'd hoped they'd be, but they were okay and served their pur(se)pose.  I had so much fun making homemade gifts, I think I'd like to do it again.  Do any of you have ideas to share for next Christmas?