Dining Room Window Curtains

 I've been trying to figure out whether I wanted to put dining room window curtains up. If there was a lot of greenery out there, I probably wouldn't, but instead it's the white of my very nice neighbor's house. I thank God for my wonderful neighbors! I decided to put up some curtains on the bottom half of the window and let those triple pane upper sashes show off.

This is the first project for my new sewing machine. So far so good! I used the same fabric that I used for curtains in the kitchen, which is actually some Ikea curtains that I've been cutting up and remaking to fit my windows. I love the print because it somehow seems to fit in my craftsman house...has an imperfect hand printed look to it, even though is, of course, mass produced for a big chain.  They are just hung on little tension rods from Walmart.

Lately, I've been mulling over whether to keep this blog. I like having it as a diary of my homes, and a way to share, but I also do much of that on Facebook these days. I dropped of the face of the blogging world when my computer broke and it took so long to buy a new one. Some things are just not easy to do from a phone, and blogging is one of them.

Route 66 Wristlets

 While I have my sewing machine out, I decided to make some wristlets out of Route 66 fabric. I've got several different prints, and tonight I started with this fun blue one. This fabric features the vintage signs I love. I boxed the bottom of these, for a little different shape.

The lining is cute. It has little Route 66 shields and also an occasional heart that says "I love Lucy." Sweet!

Sewing Wristlets

I made some bags for Colleen to give to her bride's maids. You can see those here. One of those bride's maids asked me to make some for her bride's maids as well. She is having a country wedding with lots of lace and burlap and sunflowers.

 I used some vintage lace, and some cute dotted  material to line the bags and make the handles.

Altogether I made 10 of them. Now another bride saw these and wants some for her wedding party, so I'll be making up some more!

Bags for the Bride's Maids

 Here are some more pics of the bags I made last week. These were part of the gifts for the bride's maids. Colleen gave them each an emergency kit for the wedding day...full of things like bobby pins, deodorant, mints, wipes to get out stains, etc. She also gave them each a a zippered bag containing their jewelry to wear for the wedding.

 Colleen picked out the fabric for each bag based on her friend's personality.

It was fun picking out the material and linings and zippers at the fabric store...thinking about each girl and what she likes. This one is for Tessa...our sunflowery, down to earth, country girl.

Again, the tutorial for these bags is at So Chick. I was very happy with how they turned out and the girls really seemed to like them.

More Boxie Bags

I made some of these bags a while ago, and last night I made a bunch more. Here are 3 of them.  I'll post some more pics later. These are made from the So Chick tutorial...it's a very well written and easy to follow tutorial. I sure am glad other people figure this stuff out, because without instructions, I would have never been able to make this simple box!

I made 2 more bags tonight. I'm starting to get this down so it's easier. Figuring out all the little tricks! I managed to match the patterns on the tops of these. The picky part of me loves that :D