A Few Projects

I have not been very busy on the sewing machine since finishing that quilt back in March. But recently, I have done a little of this & a little of that, so to speak. Here are some projects that have helped fill the time over the last couple of months....
(all these are camera pics, so sorry for the sometimes dark, grainy quality!)

If you remember the pics of the boys from Easter, you might remember their bow ties. Well, I made them the day before with some scrap fabric. They were pretty easy, so I see more of these in my future!

Now, this next project has nothing to do with sewing, but it will lead to it... so just follow along with me for a moment! I saw some simple plaques made from 1 x 6's in an etsy shop & immediately knew I had enough materials in the garage to duplicate it. So, I worked on 3 of these over a few days for teacher appreciation week:

They were soooo easy! And the shop was selling them for $40! (Gasp!!) Well, a couple of days before sending them into the school, I realized that I made one using last years teacher assistant's name (Bennett!), instead of this years. Seriously, my brain was fried that week. I couldn't make another one because a friend had borrowed my Cricut machine (which I used for the lettering).

Hmmm, what was I going to do? I had already sent in a little something each day that week & these were for Fridays gift. I couldn't just drop the ball on the last day. (Well, I could've.... but I wouldn't!)

So, I got online & started searching for something to inspire me! I had some apple print fabric leftover from my kitchen curtains that I could use & between this tutorial, some borrowed velcro & interfacing from Rebecca, I made these!

I used the apple print as a liner on the inside...
They are supposed to be just big enough to hold keys, cell phone, wallet, etc for a teachers bag, pool bag, beach bag, etc. You know how you hate to dig around for that stuff in the bottom of a big bag- voila! This solves that problem. I added some hershey kisses & a note from myself in each one.
I liked it so much that I made one out of some shark material for our pool bag this summer. I used a zipper for mine though!

A few days after all this, I got an urge at about 9pm to recover my ironing board. I HATED the fabric that covered it before & so I used the existing drawstring & velcro from underneath & traced the ironing board onto my fabric. In a little over an hour from idea to finish.... I had this:
Excuse the nasty iron & messy room. I needed to clean the room & i REALLY need to clean the iron!!

One last project to share that we made for teacher appreciation week as well... notepads from the kids art. This was a simple project that I took to the FedEx Copy store & they worked their magic. I used this tutorial from Brown Paper Packages & the teachers LOVED these the best, judging from their responses!
I will be making more of these I am sure! So that's what projects I have been up to lately! I have a few more posts with some fun pictures coming up.... So check back soon!