glasses cases

Good evening ladies!  First of all, a very happy Christmas / Channukah / Saturday to you all!

It's 6pm on Christmas eve here, I finally finished Christmas at 4, then went to visit my aunty before coming home for a quick blog catch up then some baked camembert in front of the TV with Mr CA.  The relief to have everything finished!  I few items got removed from my list, but I got most things done.

This morning I finished sewing up the glasses cases I'd been working on. I started this weeks ago.  One for my mum, one for the aunty I visited today, one for my dad and one for my FIL.  Here's the fabrics I started with.  Nope, sorry, can't find the photo.  It was here, but guess what?  Blogger stole my post!  I'd copied and pasted it into Word before trying to publish it, but Word stole the photos!!

I started embroidering the pink one.

But it wasn't working so I scrapped it and started again.  This is the red one - taken from a Grace layer cake.  I cut the first panel funny, out of the centre of the fabric (?!) so had to make the other side different.  I hand quilted around the flowers in a gold thread that made me want to scream, but I love the effect! This is my first time hand quilting, so there's another LANT!

I did the same on two green panels from the Grace layer cake.  I'd fused fusible fleece to the rear before starting and I love the effect.

I think I showed you the embroidered one the other day and I apparently didn't take a photo of the fourth, so here they are all sewn up.

This is for my FIL and is cross stitched using soluble canvas (another LANT!), I used a pattern from Cross Stitch Cards & Keepsakes.

My aunty's all sewn up.  I'd accidentally cut one of the panels too small - you can see it on the picture above, and no way was I starting again after I'd done all that hand quilting, but it meant it was really hard to sew up as the foot has to go over the front, back, lining and the two sleeves. I ended up hand sewing it.

My mum's didn't present any problems!

And I'm still not happy with the speech bubble on this one, but it's Christmas Eve so I'm not going to sweat it!

I finished a load of presents off yesterday but I don't have photos.  I did 18 sets of cookies in jar mixes, including patterned paper labels and lids, also a set of 6 candles in glass tumblers.  I also made two sets of Reinbeer, found via Pinterest here.

But only took one, really crap photo!  FIL's are random beers, my dad's are special beers from a local micro brewery.  My dad is Chairman of Nottingham CAMRA and real ale is very important to him!

I made a load of air-drying clay tags (LANT 3!), stamped with the names of the recipients, and once again took a really shoddy photo.

And finally I crocheted my brother a bath scrubby alien from this free pattern.  Yes, my brother is 36, not 6, but he'll love it!  I was going to make them for the dads too, but that can wait until father's day.  love the base:

Oh, you can see my hand in the window!  What you can't see is that my eczema has found a whole new lease of life and cracks have formed on my hands.  They bleed.  It's very painful. Damn you eczema. 

Anyway, that's Christmas done.  I don't know when I'll be back, but I suspect it will be pretty soon, for blog reading, if not posting as I'm not sure I'll have anything to post about!  Merry Christmas!

FSNI - December

Last night I joined in with the Friday Night Sew In. 



I signed up for the last one which was last Friday, then spent the evening snoozing on the sofa.  This week I actually did something, but not much more to be honest!  I'm now on day 8 of a continuous headache that is making me feel sick and dizzy and is not very conductive to Christmas present producing.  Which is unfortunate with there now being just one week left til Christmas!  I'm up early today, headache and all, and after I've had another coffee and done a bit of blog browsing (I'm still days and days behind!), I'm going to get on with it before I have to go to the work's Christmas do this evening. 

All this waffling is covering up the fact I've only got one photo to show you!  It was hastily taken this morning as I fed the buns...

FFS!  I just wrote this post, published it, then went to have a look and Blogger had stolen the second half of it.  What is going on with Blogger??

Right, can I remember what I just wrote?  I was telling you that these are the front panels for glasses cases for my dad and FIL.  The one at the front is for my dad as he's well-known for cursing very loudly at his computer.  It's based on this pattern from the Split Stitch, I was going to cross stitch it as per the pattern, but it turned out my panel wasn't large enough so I just free hand embroidered it.  I'm not happy with the shape of the speech bubble, but as I'd fused the fleece to the back of the panel in advance, the holes left from unpicking were really visible so it's staying like that.

The second one, unfinished, is for my FIL and will be his initials.  I've cross stitched it using soluble canvas so I'll show you how that works out (or not) in a post later in the week.

I think I then went on to waffle a bit more, possibly about how time is running out and I shouldn't be sat here on my arse when I have Christmas present making to do...  I think I mentioned I'm going to the work's Christmas do tonight, don't think I mentioned that I'm dreading it.  Want to know a little secret?  I hate parties.  Yep, I'm a weirdo but we knew that anyway.

I think that was it!  I should be back often this week with lots of finishes to show you...  or my family isn't get presents this year!!

Quick makes

Last weekend, after battling with my quilt block, I wanted some quick finishes.  I wanted to make some glasses cases as they'll be idal Christmas presents for my glasses-wearing family and family-in-law.  Crafty Ady has the best tutorial for making glasses cases with an internal flex frame.  I've used it before and this time it was super quick and simple.

The exterior fabric was sent to me as a lovely surprise from Nancy.  I'm not sure which line it's from but it's by Fig Tree Designs, beautiful.  It happened to go perfectly with the Breakfast at Tiffany's spot print I had to hand.

It's very hard to take a photo of the inside of a flex frame case!  Note how horrible my hand looks and the blue marker pen all over my pen.  I'm one of those messy people that ends up with pen all over their hands no matter how careful I am. 

The glasses case came together within about half an hour so I needed another "fix".  I turned to the prize I won on the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day.  Green Bag Lady generously offered 100 prizes and I was one of the lucky winners.  I received a ready made fabric shopping bag and the fabric to make another on the condition I give it away.  Reusable shopping bags is something I believe in and I have the extra strong plastic bags, though I do want to slowly swap them over to fabric bags. So far I have about 5 but I need a lot more. 

Above is the bag I received, a very pretty pink cotton bag.  Below is the bag I made which was from a very sturdy canvas.

The instructions provided on the blog told me not to bother turning the handles, but to just serge them.  I decided I was going to turn them.  Bad idea, really bad idea.  This would have taken me 10 minutes to make, but turning the handles took another 40 minutes!

Now I just have to decide who to give it to.

In other news, Susan at Canadian Abroad challenged me to conquer my fear of binding.  In return, she's going to conquer her fear of zippers.  I'm sitting at the sewing machine right now (well, clearly at the computer, but the sewing machine is just a swivel of my chair away) and I'm going to finish piecing the rainbow placemats.  Then I just have to quilt them and it will be challenge time.... arghhh!

Christmas 2011 - February

This is my February Christmas through the year post.  If you want to join in, you've got until the end of the day on the 28th to hop over to Allie's blog and link up.

In January I only managed 1 present, but I've done a lot better this month.

1, 2 and 3 - zippered pouches:

4 - Lavender sachet:

5 - wire knit bracelet:

6 - crochet wash cloth:

7 - Buttercup bag:

8 - embroidered bookmark:

9 - glasses case:

Oh yes, that's a grand total of 11 for February!!  A total of 12 overall.  Roll on Christmas, I'm ready for you... well not quite!

10 - crochet washcloth 2

11 - crochet washcloth 3

Hold on to your hats, another exciting blog post title - Glasses Case!

It really is so hard to think of interesting blog post titles!  90% of the time I just use the item that I'm showing you, but it's not really very exciting is it? 

So, no prizes for guessing what I'm blogging about today!

I wanted to make glasses cases as Christmas presents, particularly for my dad who has about 6 pairs and is forever losing them.  Scoring blogland, I came across Crafty Ady's blog on which she was showing her readers a glasses case she'd made.  A little bit of begging later (I have no shame nor dignity!) and she very kindly posted a tutorial!  It's a brilliant tutorial, really easy to follow and you can find it here.

The tutorial uses internal flex frames, which I think are brilliant for glasses cases, and the lovely Crafty Ady also pointed me in the direction of an online shop which sells really cheap flex frames (along with purse and bag making accessories galore).

I used some more of the Hushabye fat quarters of bargain fame (see Buttercup bag post if you want to know more) and the tutorial uses such a tiny amount of fabric, you could make loads just from a fat quarter. 

One problem I had was that the sleeve that the flex frame sits in is too short.  This is NOT Ady's fault, it was mine.  I read the seam allowance, saw it said 1/4 inch and translated that in my brain to 4/8 inch... 

(See my amazing gravity-defying spools in the background?).  I used the same fabric as the sleeve cover for the lining.  I'm really chuffed with it and will be making a whole loads more.  Most of my family and my husband's family are blind as bats so these will be coming out of my ears come Christmas.  I will, of course, use more masculine fabric for the men's cases!