Tidying Up

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm always at my most creative when everything is neat and tidy. I just love for everything to have a home, especially if that home is arranged by color, hehe. During the frenzy of making Christmas orders and Christmas gifts, often my leftover scraps and bits get thrown in a pile once I'm done so I can start on the next project ASAP. I really hate doing that, and when I'm not in such a hurry I usually clean up in between projects, but I just didn't have time. So I was eager to get started on cleaning up my crafting room after the flurry of activity.

You've seen my fabric shelf before, I've done well keeping it nice and tidy. My next project, I decided, was going to be my crafting closet. I keep all my crafting supplies in here, but they had grown and it just looked like a mess. Here are some before pics:




So I went to Ikea and got some nice new drawers!


I separated everything by category and moved things around a bit, and here is my newly organized closet:





I love it! It makes me smile, AND seeing my room all neat and clean and my supplies all organized gives me that itch to create something. Can't wait to share whatever that ends up being with you. :-)

It's a New Year!

Hello all, wow December flew by without a single post, ha! I was SOOOO busy filling orders, and then of course making gifts right up to the very last minute. (I'm not kidding, Christmas morning I was still finishing a couple things up before heading over to see the family!)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, I'll be taking down my tree tomorrow, always a little bittersweet. (We keep ours up through Epiphany, after all that work I'm going to celebrate all 12 days of Christmas, thank you very much!) So any favorite gifts this year, whether handmade or not? I was so excited to finally get a Kitchenaid stand mixer this year! With a combination of points from our credit card, a great sale on cyber Monday (thanks Amazon!) and rebates, out of pocket I paid $35 for my new pro Kitchenaid, how cool is that? Here's my awesome setup for it!


I also got a great surprise gift from the hubs, a Kindle touch! I already had an older kindle version and LOVE it, but I love this one even more. Plus, I got a great hot pink cover for it, woohoo! :-)

As for gifts I made, for the nephews and nieces I went a little pillow crazy, ha. I was at Ikea and ended up getting 10 of those 99 cent pillows! I wasn't 100% sure what I was going to be doing with them, then I found some great ideas. I'd seen a pin on pinterest for a kind of pillow mattress for kids to lay on, and thought that was great. Then I found this tutorial, and ended up using it to make this:

Another pillow idea I'd seen was a travel pillow, which I thought would be perfect for my nieces who have an hour's drive to school and back with my sis every day! I used this tutorial as a jumping off point, but just made an envelope style pillowcase instead and made these for 2 of my nieces and one of my nephews. I added an initial on each one, and stuck a few goodies in the pockets, of course. :-)



Finally, for one of my sisters and my aunt, I made some of these fun ruffly scarves using this tutorial. I wanted a little bit of color contrast in mine, and I love how they turned out.


As for yummy goodies, DH and I had fun making some Peppermint cake pops and oreo pops, good stuff!


I've enjoyed a nice bit of time off from sewing, but I think I'm about ready to jump back in. I am usually at my most creative when everything is nice and tidy, so I bet you can guess what I've been up to in the interim, ha! I'll be posting about that soon, as well as an idea I have for a series this year.

I'll bid one last Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for this year, here's to 2012.

Ruffle Tissue Holder Tutorial

Wow, where did November go!?!? Ok, so I planned on 4 tutorials this month and only got around to doing 3, but I've just been swamped with Christmas orders. That's a good thing, I'm certainly not complaining!

So a while back I promised a tutorial for tissue holders with RUFFLES! I love these, anything with layers and ruffles playing peekaboo just makes me smile. So, let's get started, shall we? (Apologies in advance for fuzzy pics, it was a race against the setting sun, lol, so my light wasn't great.)

Here is what you'll need:

• 2 or 3 coordinatings fabrics


• Heat 'n Bond Lite (you'll be sewing through this) or some double sided fusible interfacing or adhesive, not too heavy


• Double Fold bias tape


• rotary cutter and cutting mat


• scissors for trimming


• iron

Alright, to start you're going to need to cut your exterior and interior fabrics, which will be 6" x 7". You need 2 of these per tissue holder. You could use the same fabric inside and out, but I just love to see a surprise fabric when I peek inside, so I always use two different fabrics!


Next, you'll cut out the fabric for the ruffle, which is going to be 2" x 9". This could be a 3rd coordinating fabric, or it can match the inside. You do want it to contrast against the exterior fabric for a nice pop of color, so keep that in mind when choosing.

I typically make tissue holders in batches, so usually I'll cut a long 2" strip...


fold it in half and press...


and then cut it into 9" strips.


Next, cut your adhesive or interfacing, you need one 6" x 7" piece per tissue holder.

Now you should have all the pieces read to go.


Next, press the pieces so they are wrinkle free, and then take your interior fabric and iron on the adhesive side to the WRONG side of the fabric.


Once it has cooled, peel off the paper...


and then place the exterior fabric on top of the adhesive side of the interior fabric, wrong sides facing. Fuse the two pieces together with your iron.


Now, you should have a double sided piece of fabric.


Next, cut two 6" pieces of bias tape, these will give a nice finish to the edges.


Take one of the pices of bias tape, and sew it onto one of the 6" edges.


To create the ruffle, run a gathering stitch along the long raw edge of the ruffle fabric, about a 1/4" from the edge.



Take your fused fabric pieces, exterior side up, and gather the ruffle until it fits exactly on the 6" side of the fabric that doesn't have bias tape. You may want to keep most of the ruffle towards the center, leaving the fabric flat on either end as you'll be stitching over it, like this.


You can pin the ruffle, or if you're lazy like me just kind of hold it as you go, making sure to line it all up well in the process. I did pin it here, mostly because I needed my free hand for the camera. ;-)


Next you'll sew the ruffle to the exterior side of the fused fabric. I usually stitch about half way in between the gathering stitch and the edge, just make sure to catch all your fabric in there!



Once you've done that, trim as close as you can to the stitches, and pull out the gathering threads.


Now you're going to sew on the other piece of bias tape onto the raw edge, over the ruffle and the fabric. It will be a little thick, just try to make sure to cover your stitches with the bias tape (that's why it was trimmed closely). You can pin the bias tape on if you'd like, but I find that more cumbersome than going without, personally.

Stitch the bias tape along the edge.

And you should have something like this!


We're almost done! :-) Now, take the edge WITHOUT the ruffle and fold it in about 1 3/4".


Then, take the edge WITH the ruffle and fold it on top, so that it overlaps about 1/4" - 1/2".


I usually take a peek inside to see if I have it lined up like I want.


I like the top edge to be as close to centered as possible. Feel free to do it differently, that's just my preference. Once you have it lined up how you want, again you can pin or not, I never do, you're just going to stitch over your whole fabric sandwhich on one side.


I typically go over the corners and center part (where you'll have a hump) 2 or 3 times just to make sure it doesn't come undone.


Since I usually do these in batches, most of the time I make a chain and just do one side of several at once, then start at the other end of the chain and do the other side. It goes much more quickly than doing one at a time!

Alright, once you've stitched both sides, trim the edges...



and then, my FAVORITE part!! You're going to turn it right side out, I usually do one side...


then poke the corners out a bit (but not too hard, you don't want to make a hole!)...


And then I flip the other side, do the same to the corners, et voila!


Stick a pack of tissues inside, and you're all done!


Admire your handiwork. Wasn't that fun? :-)


These make GREAT little gifts for secret santa exchanges, stocking stuffers, or just as a little something special for yourself. ;-)