Sweat Shop

I've been hard at work lately between gifts and finishing up custom orders!  One of my favorite go-to gifts are these voile/velveteen infinity scarves!  Anna Maria Horner has a great tutorial on her blog, though I use different measurements since I find hers a bit bulky.  For mine, I use one yard of voile and one yard of velveteen to get TWO scarves.  I cut two pieces of velveteen 13"x36" then sew together along the 13" end to get a 13"x72"ish piece.  Repeat with the voile.  Then follow Anna Maria Horner's instructions!  Well, I also sort of cheat and machine stitch everything closed with invisible thread.  Shhhhhh!  Don't tell anyone I'm too lazy to hand stitch!








Then I put all the scarves in some totes I got on clearance at Old Navy.  Voila!  Teacher gifts!


I also finished this quilt, which has been partially quilted for months, and gave it to my friend, Ryan, because he's cool and I just felt like giving it away.  :)


Jessie made me this mini dresden forever ago and I finally found the perfect frame for it……after I painted the matting that awesome color!  Can't wait to hang this up!


A few more boxy bags for gifts!


Some Liberty Christmas trees as gifts for special ladies!

Handmade Christmas 2012 is Done!

I made 16 mug rugs for a Christmas cookie exchange party my super talented friend, Amber Housley, threw.  It was so much fun!  Lots of sweet ladies and lots of yummy cookies (and cocktails!) 

I made a few gifts for my youngest son's preschool teachers and my eldest son's Tae Kwon Do teacher.

Made a some voile/velveteen scarves for my cousin and another cousin's girlfriend.

I was in the home stretch sewing the binding on my last handmade item.

I knew my father in law would appreciate this label.  I really want to stamp this on everything I make!

Ta-da!  Handmade Christmas 2012 is O-V-E-R!!!!  This is for my father in law (who is a hunter).  Hopefully he'll love it even though it's modern--really, the deer need to save my design choices on this one.  

I managed to tidy up my sewing space too!  I'm not sure the last time it was this clean!

What? Don't you have a closet of shame?

A New Scarf!

(please don't judge me from these pictures! My hair is in a ponytail since I haven't showered and the only makeup I have on is mascara.  YIPES!)

During a recent failure on my fabric diet, I ordered some Anna Maria Horner velveteen and voile from fabric.com (on MAJOR sale!).  I decided to make the Figure 8 scarf that AMH has as a free tutorial on her website.  I didn't have the full 72" in length, only 36", so I just cut and paste--i.e. just sewed two 36" pieces together before proceeding with the instructions.  Also, I didn't make it as wide as the directions call for, I made it 13.5" instead of 18" because 18 just seemed HUGE......and if I didn't cut it 18", I can get two scarfs from 1 yard of voile and 1 yard of velveteen.  :)  I don't really have much need for a scarf here in Florida, but I like it all the same!  Now I just have to decide who to make the other one for!