Aurifil Bag

I would like to Thank Everyone who has voted for my Sew Many Colors Rainbow Mini, and just in case you haven't and would like to you can hit this LINK and it will take you to the voting page.  Only 1 vote per person and I am number 12, just tap the heart.

Vote Here!

I took my Mini and turned it into a Bag, made a little tutorial for you if you would like to make one as well.

Warm colored side.

Cool colored side

You can get the free Sew Many Colors Mini pattern here.

To make your own bag, make the mini, I used Fat Quarter Shop's easy tutorial for using the backing fabric as your binding.  And now let's make the zipper closure.
2- 14" Separating Zippers (in Greece they call them Jacket zippers)
4- 2" x 15" pieces of fabric

 We are going to take the fabric and fold them like we would when making binding, first fold the short ends in by 1/4", then fold lengthwise in half (press with an iron) and then open out and fold it into the middle, you will end up with a thing strip of fabric like the one on the right.

I found it easier to unzip the zippers and then opened the fabric strip up aligning one edge and sewing as close as I could to the zipper.  Folding the fabric back around the edge of the zipper and then sewing it down again, getting the back side.

Be careful when sewing around zippers, I always change my needle to an old one, and leave a long tail of thread at the end so I can go back and hand sew a few extra stitches for where I tucked in the head of the zipper.

Start at the seam of where the Paper Pieced A is.

Wrap it around the sides, you can put a handle in if you like, mine is the selvedge (2) 2.5" x 9"

Place handles 1" from the seam created by piecing C and D together.

Hand sew the zipper to the binding just like you would when sewing on binding by hand.

If you have any questions let me know, it's a pretty easy adaption to the pattern and can open up fully and you can even put it back up on the wall, this picture was taken after adding the zipper and you can't even tell it's there.

And from the backside

It fits my box of Aurifil perfectly and I will be making a little fabric tray to go next to it, perfect for taking along on sewing retreats.
Would you like to have an Aurifil Bag? What colors would you use?

Selvedge Binding Tutorial

Rainbow Selvedge Flange Binding for the Undercover Maker Mat

I recently made flange binding out of my selvedges, and I love it!  I thought I would share here how I made it.  The style of flange binding is nothing new, I love doing this type of binding because then I don't have to hand sew the binding on, hehe, yes I'm lazy.
You can find the Flange binding tutorial here and several other places on the internet.  There is a very detailed blog post that can be found here, with lots and lots of photos, I just don't like the 1" 7/16 fabric cutting to squirrelly.  Okay onto my little tip today, making the binding Selvedge Style!

Make your selvedge fabric

 First Make your selvedge fabric, if I had know I was going to be using selvedges I would have cut them more uniformly but most of these I had already cut, the larger chunk ones are freshly cut from Fat Quarters, they are 1 1/2" by 18" long.  I think cutting selvedges at 1 1/4" is a good size.
The top selvedge piece should have extra fabric and the bottom piece is better to not be a selvedge but instead just regular fabric, since when sewing end to end, the selvedge would be covered up on the bottom.
Place a piece of Fusible Interfacing down with sticky side up, I used Pellon SF101. Arrange your selvedges in a pleasing manner, don't overlap them to much this makes things bulky, but you also don't want any of the Interfacing to show otherwise it will stick to your iron, once the interfacing is completely covered, slowly iron the selvedges down, one strip at a time. 
Next sew the selvedges down to the interfacing for security, I switched between a straight stitch and a zigzag stitch.

Cut your selvedge fabric at 1 1/2"
You can tell here that my bottom strip IS NOT a selvedge fabric because when you sew the strips end to end if it was a selvedge it would be covered up.
I also had the bottom and top fabric hanging OFF of the interfacing by half an inch on both sides, in order to prevent lots of bulk, when sewing end to end.
Cut your Accent fabric at 1 3/4", and follow either one or the other tutorial's listed here (links will take you to a new page) Susie's Magic Binding  or Mitered and Flanged Machine Binding

Rainbow Selvedge Binding, All Alison Glass fabrics

 What did I make with my pretty Selvedge binding.

Sew, Eat, Sleep, Repeat Sewing Machine Cover with Selvedge Binding

hand quilting around each letter

 This quote is from a recent Elm Street Quilts QAL (quilt a long) I have reduced the pattern by 50% and changed the original word Quilt to Sew (I'm not a big quilter). You can find the original pattern on Craftsy and she has also made a alphabet pattern so you can make any word you want.

Under Cover Maker Mat with Selvedge binding

 This free pattern from Lillyella can be found here, along with her 3 different butterfly shapes, this is Pepper.
I made this to enter in her #undercovermakermatsal 
And after finishing it I was like hey I should enter this in the Selvedge Challenge going on with Stash Builder Box so here I go in entering it there as well. #selvagechallenge2016

 What will you make with your selvedge binding, it's so fun! #selvedgebinding

The Curvy Clutch Hack

The Curvy Clutch is a Pink Door Fabrics Free Pattern, you can pick it up at their store, The Curvy Clutch Sewing Pattern. 
Everyone loves making it on IG, there are so many inspirational photos, just check out the hashtag #TheCurvyClutch

I wanted to just add a small twist a cute ruffled pocket for the front, to quickly put your phone in and a wristlet handle.

So I bring you The Curvy Clutch Hack Tutorial :)

Read through the instructions first and be sure to grab the instructions for The Curvy Clutch from Pink Door fabrics as well as print the 2 pages with the pattern.

Cutting Instructions:

Main Fabric - (1) 10.5" x 6.5"   (1) 10.5" x 5" for the ruffled pocket

Lining Fabric - (2) 10.5" x 6.5"

Ruffle Fabric and Binding - (3) 2 1/4" x 10"  

White Fabric -  (1) 10.5" x 6.5" goes behind the ruffled pocket (1) 10.5" x 5" the lining of the ruffled pocket (2) 2" x 9" the interior of the curved accent piece

(I used white fabric for the clutch pictured above, but use whatever you like)

Accent Panel - (2) 2 x 2" for the zipper tabs (2) 2" x 9" , cutting these and the 2 plain or white pieces above as the accent panel following the dark line on the bottom NOT the dash line from the pattern piece given in the Curvy Clutch pattern, page 8

Wristlet Strap - (1) 1 3/4" X 2 1/4" D-ring tab, (1) 1 3/4" X 10" (for a child) or 15" (for an adult)

Hardware: 1/2" D-ring and 1/2" Swivel Snap Hook , I get my hardware supplies from Emmaline Bags.

Interfacing (the pattern calls for 6 pieces of SF101, that's a lot for me, it is so hard to find here, so I have substituted it with Pellon TP971 Fusible Thermolam) (2) 10.5" x 6.5"

Fist Step:  Sew the Accent Panels together, following the directions from the Curvy Clutch Pattern, Step #3, remember you have cut yours on the solid line and not the dash line

Ironing:

1.  Iron the 2 Accent Panels you just sewed above.
2.  Iron the Fusible fleece to the 2 fabric pieces that are 10.5" x 6.5" (one Main fabric and one White fabric)
3.  Iron your zipper pull fabric and the 1 3/4" wristlet strap fabrics like she shows you in the Curvy Clutch Pattern Step #7
4. Iron the (3) 2 1/4" x 10" strips in half lengthwise, (making your pocket ruffle and binding)

Making the Wrist Strap:

1. In the Ironing Section Step #3 you ironed a 1 3/4" x 10" (or 15")  piece into 4, now follow this easy tutorial on how to make your strap.

Triming and Cutting:

1.  Trim the Fabrics you ironed above in step 2 using the Curvy Clutch Pattern Piece Main Panel, also trim your Two Lining Fabric cuts.
2. Cut (1) Ruffle Fabric that you ironed in step #4 above in half to make (2) 2 1/4" (but now ironed in half) x 5" pieces (this will be your ruffle pocket binding) 
3.  Place your 10.5" X 5" Main Fabric and White Fabric wrong sides together, Mark a line 3" from the top and 3" down,  Cut a diagonal line. 

Making the pocket is as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4! 

Sewing it All together:

1. Let's make the ruffles first, set your sewing machine to the longest stitch and sew 1/8" away from the raw cut edge, on both ruffle pieces, make sure to leave long tails at the beginning and end of each piece.  Then sew again 1/4" away from the raw edge, Pull the top thread to create your ruffle.
   
2.  Reset your stitch to it's normal setting and sew a 1/8" seam at the top of your pocket pieces (one piece main fabric and one piece white fabric) wrong sides together. (this is to keep them from wiggling around while sewing on the ruffles and binding)
3. Sew the ruffle to the pocket opening raw edges together a tad less than a 1/4", leave some of the ruffle hanging off both ends so you can trim down and have them in the seam allowance.
4. Take your binding piece and using wonderclips align the raw edge with the raw edge of the ruffle you just sewed on, flip it over and on the back side you should see the stitching from when you sewed down your ruffle, now sew just outside of that line it should be 1/4" to 3/8" 
5. Flip the binding over and to the back and sew down from the front just under the binding to catch the folded edge on the back side.
6. Now you have your ruffled pocket align the bottom raw edge of it to your 10.5" x 6.5" White Fabric and edge stitch 1/8" on the bottom. 
   
   
7. Take one of your Curved Accent Panel Pieces and align it with the top of the Main Panel, be sure to cover the top of the ruffle pocket and follow the directions from the Curvy Clutch Pattern, Step #6, 
8. Flip over your pocket piece and trim the ruffle and triangles to match the White Main Panel.
   
9. Do the same thing with the other Main Fabric Panel Piece and Curved Accent Panel, following the directions from the Curvy Clutch Pattern, Step #6 this is your back piece.
10. Attach your folded 1 3/4" D-ring tab to the the panel piece.
11.  You already ironed your zipper tabs above in the ironing section step #3 now follow the directions in the Curvy Clutch Pattern Step #7 to attach them to your 7.5" trimmed zipper.
12. Follow the steps 8 through 14 of the Curvy Clutch Pattern add your wrist strap that you made above and TaDa you know have a Ruffled Curvy Clutch!

If you make one be sure to use the hashtag #thecurvyclutchhack would love to see what you make.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Fabric used for this Curvy Clutch Hack are all Michael Miller Fabrics:

Lining and Accent: Out to Sea by Sarah Jane

Main Print: Color Me, Princess Paisley by Haley Crouse

Ruffle and Binding : Cotton Couture in color Peta

Linking to Bag it event over at Elm Street Quilts

          

Printing On Fabric, A Tutorial and Giveaway!

I recently sent a fabric post card to Nesta of "Ella and Nesta's Little Room", she wrote a whole blog post about it :), and I am so glad she enjoyed it.  She was especially excited about how I made the "stamp" for the card.  Now I didn't tell her, but I was actually doing a little "Purging", you see I made this stamp way back in January 2013 for the "In Your Words" blog hop. You can click on any of my links and they will take you to a new page, so that way you can click away and still continue to read this blog post. you have to get to the end for the giveaway!

This is super easy,

1. Find your stamp on line, I just looked up Greek Stamps, make sure you aren't breaking any copyright laws.  I found a new one here.
2. Copy your image and then go to Pic Monkey, (It's a free photo correction site), if you want the faded background, go to the wand Effects, and scroll down to Dark Edges and mess around with it to get the effect you want.
3. This time around, I went to Collage, picked my picture,
   
   Layout, Cards, 4x8, the last one with 3 small boxes on top and one long box on the bottom, placed my stamp picture in the right hand corner.
4. I adjusted the Background (4th icon down), I made the spacing larger (67), and the background transparent.
5. Save your Postcard Image, then go back to the the beginning of PicMonkey,
6.  Now you will Edit the Picture. Grab the Layout card you just created, mine looks like this
   
7. I'm going to write Greece over the top of the picture, Tt (text), I like Eraser Dust or Downcome for this, this time I used Downcome, faded it by 23% and I also adjusted the color to make it not so black.  While in Text I decided this time to type in my name and address as well (hope you don't mind if I don't show you that, but I put it in the left hand corner, again not so close to the edges).
   
   Now it looks blank because I have done that "transparent background", I want this so I don't have my printer printing out white ink ;0 on white fabric, lol.
8. Now to get your fabric ready, you can purchase a Bottle of Bubble Jet Set 2000, I don't have any on hand so I cut my fabric to the size of the paper that will go through the printer, Iron your fabric real nice and tape it to the paper, you can also iron it onto freezer paper (they have sheets that can go through a printer, again I don't have any of these on hand) 
9. Here is one of the important parts, how to tape the fabric to the paper (if you don't use freezer paper)

   

   Go out and buy double sided tape if you don't have any.
   
   

   

   

   
   Tape all the way across the bottom of the paper page and the top, also place tape like a large X in the middle of the paper, then place your ironed fabric on top.  Stick in the paper tray of your printer and Print. 
   

   

    I love how this stamp turned out, it looks so old school
   

   

   Now when I get ready to mail my fabric postcard for the birthday girls I will just need to embroider a circle, some wavy lines and write in their birthday.  Like I did for Nesta's birthday present.
   

   

   ohh almost forgot, you should iron it, I put a paper towel over the image and give it a good DRY Iron, to kind of set the ink.  
   I also printed this like a million years ago and just sent it to a new home after re-doing the binding, it was one of the first things I did binding on and I didn't know that you fold the binding, so I had an inch of binding in the back, I couldn't understand how people did it.
   

   

    The embroidered hand prints are my sons, he has grown so much in the over a year since I made this., the reverse applique says Hope and Love.
   

   

    You can see where I previously stitched the binding down,
   

   

   But the back looks fantastic!  I did hand stitch the binding down, definitely will not be doing that with a quilt, took forever.  The sentence on the back says, "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."
   This went to my step mom who is a Professor at William Jessup University.
   
   Now for the giveaway!!
   It's my first ever SPONSORED Giveaway!  So Excited to Introduce you to my friend Elita, she is an American living in Switzerland (see so much in common already) she is my crack Aurifil and Batting supplier it is so nice to have a European seller and definitely saves on the shipping cost.  She carries all of the colors of Aurifil and at a really good price!  The next time I need to pick up some Aurifil I am also going to get a Bottle of Jet Set 2000, this will make printing on fabric better.  Today she is giving away a Bottle to one of you, my dear readers.  You wash the fabric you want to use for printing in this solution and let it dry and then print as I wrote on my tutorial above.
   
   Since this is a sponsored giveaway, I thought I would let you check out her shop, tell me your favorite thing that she carries in the Rafflecopter prompt.
   
   

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Elita is on vacation at this time, but she will be back when this giveaway ends and can fill any orders placed when she gets back, just in case you decide to go shopping.

How I cut my Fat Eights of Fabric!

I have already done a tutorial on how I like to cut my brick charm squares (5"x10"), now I want to show you how I like to cut my Fat Eights also.

1 yard or 1 metre of fabric will yield 8 Fat Eights.

First you need a yard of fabric, or if purchasing through a non-USA fabric store then get a meter of fabric.  A meter of fabric is about 3" more (or 8cm), I will leave it up to you if you trim the 3" off and keep for yourself or if you want to spread the joy of  a larger piece, then I know I will be happy as I am sure other swappers will too!

• Do Not Pre-Wash
• Do Iron
• Trim the selvage on both sides

I trim my selvage by folding the fabric in half right sides facing, so your fabric looks like a 1/2 yard, make the edges/selvages even, now you might see your top look like this.

See the selvage edge is straight and even, but the cut sides of the fabric are not, this uneven cutting will be different with each piece of fabric, it depends on how the shop cuts it, or even the person of the day, so this top side is a little smaller than the bottom portion of fabric, I took my ruler to make sure that it at least measured 18".

measuring the short cut top down to the folded edge.

Okay we are alright, this shortened cut side is still at 18.5" so let's trim that selvage off.

This one was wonky cut on the sides and in the middle, but measured over 18"

Make sure to cut any little holes off, like the above picture, or cut all of the white off if the print doesn't start right away like the below picture.

• Now with both sides of the selvage off, let's fold the fabric in half again, so fold "selvage" to "selvage" (your recently cutted (new word) edges together).

This would be the size of a FQ (Fat Quarter) but since we are making F8ths (Fat Eights) we will take the number (above picture) of 21.25" and divide that by 2, this is the measurement we will be cutting the Fat Eights, unfold the fold you just made.

• Cut that fabric at 10 5/8, making 3 cuts.  

Then you unfold (the cut fabric should be somewhere around 10-11" x 36") and measure the length, mine were all more than 36", one was 38" so I divided that in half and cut the crossword fabric at 19".

• Measure and cut the "long" yard side, stacking all 4 strips on top of each other to make 1 cut and creating 8 Fat Eight pieces.

All 4 10.5" rows cut and stacked, now I measure and cut it in the middle once, creating 8 pieces.

 The crosswords ended up being cut at 10.5"x 19" and the Winterfall light blue words was cut at 10 5/8" x 18.5".  Neither of my fabrics came out to 11" but they are bigger than 18".  You see shops know that they cut wonky and so they normally give you .5 - 1" in extra fabric, I just left that on and you can square it up if you want to, otherwise, every piece ended up being about the same size.

Will you join me for the 8² Text Fabric Swap, Read the Rules and sign up here.