Zippered Wonder Wallet

So today I finished the girls little purses and wallets for Disney! Yes, they are Lazy Girl Design's Runaround bag and wonder wallet. I have to profess my love for LGD patterns, especially these two, which I make often for gifts. I do add something to the wonder wallet, a zipper in the back!

So I thought I would write out step by step how to do this. THIS IS NOT A WALLET PATTERN, just how to add a zipper. I recommend the wonder wallet pattern to everyone, if your local quilt shop does not carry LGD patterns, beg them to, or check online. I have gotten a few from ebay with free ship. You need a 7 inch zipper.

cut out as instructed, but instead of a six inch long piece for the outside or a 12 inch piece folded, you need two that are at least 7 inches long, fold in half and press right sides together. (plus a 6 inch long one for the lining)

Take the bottom piece (here purple) and sandwich the zipper in the fold, sew.

Flip and press, sewing your top stitch

Take the top fabric and sandwich the zipper, sew

This time, the front is pressed up and the lining piece is pulled down, so when you open the zipper you see the right side of the fabric.

Topstich.

This is how it should be.

Then take your lining piece (6 inch long one) and mark as directed in the pattern. Pin it to the right side of what you just did, keeping the marks just above the zipper.

Pin, and you can cut off the excess fabric.

From here on out, just follow the pattern. Super easy! Just remember to stitch over the zipper a few times to reinforce it.

soccer!

It has been a busy past few days. Yesterday Evie had her first playdate, which went wonderfully. Not only did the girls have fun, but her mom rocked, so I feel like I made a mom friend in the area! Yeah! It's nice to meet cool moms. Now I just hope that Rena can meet some friends to have playdates with. I have reached out to some of the kids in her preschool but so far no dice. Oh well.

Today was Evie's first soccer game, and she loved it! Even though it was exhausting. She actually played Celia's team, the girl she had a playdate with on Friday. I got to meet another one of her school friends, who is on our team.

He is really sweet, all the girls call him their boyfriend.

Evie and a friend from school.

The team!

Now how cute is this????  He wanted to wear it to play in.

Now if we get them all star wars helmets to wear for games...

This week's projects!

Sew I did get a bit of quilting done this week! Here are 3 baby quilts from this pattern. They are just charm packs on point, easy and quick, my favorite for charity quilts (no project linus in my area, but the guild does donate to a few places, including Care Pregnancy Center).  I always grab a few charm packs when they are on sale, and have found a few great deals on ebay, where I think two of them came from, the other one was from either Quilting Squares in Franklin, TN or a show.

I also did these bags for a birthday party Rena has this Saturday

The little wallet and purse are from Lazy Girl Designs. I have made so many of these over the past few years, little girls love the wonder wallet and runaround bag! I love these patterns, I have to say I am a big fan of LGD patterns because they are easy to follow and come out so cute!

Happy Sewing!

another purse...

I am trying to get started with another larger quilt, but have a civil war repro picked for my next project and am just in the mood for quick little projects right now, since we are getting ready for Disney and I do need to get my machine serviced. So I got this pattern from etsy...

It's a cute little bag. The only thing I will alter next time is darting the bottom to make it roomier and maybe making it a little longer. I finished it yesterday and am taking it for a spin today. I made the wallet from the same material, so of course I need to have 3 or 4 purse choices to go with the wallet....

Swap!

Sew.... a group of ladies from the mommy board I am part of get together every few months and do a swap, where we send another person fabric from our stash and they make something out of it and send it back to us. I can't post what I made yet, but here is what I got in the mail today!

A really pretty journal cover! The dot fabric is one of my favorites of all time.

and a very pretty black and white table runner. I love this! Very Modern, and used the last of the Ikea bird fabric I adored.

I LOVE swaps.

Today I finished another hipster for myself.

complete with wallet, makeup bag, tissue cover and key fob. The fabric I found at Joanns, I love pinks and browns. This time around I made the strap adjustable and interfaced it.

Yesterday the girls and I headed into Memphis to visit the Children's Museum. We met my Uncle Joe for a minute, he was passing through on his way to Kentucky.

Rena kind of freaked out at first because she thought it was Papou, and when she realized it wasn't she didn't know what to do! The musuem was great, but packed because of Spring Break. They had a mini town, with a bank, Kroger, auto store, dentists, etc. It was fun. They even have a fed ex plane you can explore, and a River exhibit. The girls favorite was the Disco. Yup, in the town they had a disco...

That was my first time driving in Memphis, I still need to find the zoo now that the weather is warmer. Uncle Joe gave me a box of fabric scraps from all around, and I spent this morning sorting through it. It looks like it is all in great shape, and some of the prints are fantastic. They look like sugar/flour sack fabric!

Now I wonder why we package everything today in disposable packaging. Why not in fabric bags so we can reuse them?

Tunica, MS

So this week is Spring break, and I have two little girls home and bouncing off the walls! my Sister in Law was here with her puppies this weekend, so Monday we stayed home and hung out. The girls had a blast with their aunt and the puppies ( a golden and a boxer, sweeties)

So yesterday we decided to try to find the indoor pool in Tunica, just south of us. A few moms have told me about it. Tunica is a delta town, which means there is not much there. But they started building casinos in the area, so there are some really nice casino funded things down there. There is also a great outlet mall. For some reason Casinos and Outlets go hand in hand.

To get to Tunica you take all highways. It takes about 35 minutes from Hernando. There is not much in that area besides swamp and casinos. Someone said that the casinos float on the water because that is the law, but I don't know for sure. I do know that if you got lost in the marsh, you would become a bog mummy. Scary to think that if you took a wrong turn or walked away from your car you could go missing now only to be found a thousand years from now preserved, a window for the future into our time. I thought a lot about Vegas, the city in the Desert. Tunica is the Vegas of the south, the city in the swamp. The signs for the casinos are bright and obnixious. One has a Paula Deen restaurant advertised. The rest advertise easy slots. Everyone else on the road is over 70 at least, heading to the casinos. Where there isn't a Casino, there is agriculture. Some fields are being prepped for the growing season, some are abandoned. A few houses that dot the road are abandoned, being eaten by the kudzu that is roaming all over the south. Some are still lived in. There are apartment complexed by the casinos, maybe for the workers. The small towns have names like Dundee, which is not only the town name but the last name of 99% of the residents.

After all the casinos is the actual town of Tunica. You can tell money has been infused recently, they build a huge Ag Hall in the last decade, a Tunica Musuem, and the Community Heath and Fitness Center. This is where the indoor pool is.

For a town as small as Tunica and as Remote, the Heath Center was amazing. The indoor pool had an olympic size swimming pool

See the nice digital display? This pool was just nice. It was also fairly empty. I paid $8 for all 3 of us for a day pass, which is unbelievably cheap. The best part, at least for my girls, was the kiddie area

When it was open it was fun, but after about 2 hours there, someone took a dump in the baby pool, so it closed for cleaning.

Today we are going to try the Memphis Childrens Museum, but the girls said they can't wait to go swimming there again!

This weeks Projects

Well, most of what I worked on this week I can't post, because it was for a swap. :(

I did make my purse for our upcoming trip to Disney. It's a hipster bag, has a zippered top and zippered side compartment, and the back has a solid pocket. I have made a few of these, they sew up really quick and are great roomy bags. Here is the free pattern from craftster!

This Wednsday I was at Evie's school to be THE QUEEN OF QUILTS. Last year I did a little book and presentation for her preschool class on Q day, and this year her super wonderful Kindergarden teacher let me come in. This week they are studying Q, so I brought my book, along with the shirt I made to wear as Q ambassador

It was just an iron on applique, I used the heavy duty wonder under. I read the book to them, told them why Q was my favorite letter, then gave the class 2 things I made, the first being the super reader cape

It's hard to see, but I embroidered SUPER READER on the back. They each have to read in front of the class each week, so I thought the cape would be cute. They totally loved it. I also made a small quilt for the reading area of their classroom.

I only had time to do a rag quilt, Rena picked out the fabric. Visiting Evie's classroom made me really miss teaching. The kids were wonderful, after we talked about shapes and what makes a quilt, I gave them some materials and let them design their own quilts. It was a blast! Of course, I forgot my camera at home...

Hosptial Gift

I have a lot of projects in my workroom, but this is what I have been working on for the past few days.

It's a gift for a little boy at Evie's school who is going through cancer treatment. I wanted to give him something to make trips to the hospital easier. The first item I made was the take along tote, which I posted to tutorial to make yesterday.

I love this bag, It is great for kids and traveling.

Then I made a superhero cape from this tutorial. I have an embroidery machine I never use, so I was excited to use it here and for the bag. :)

Evie was my model for the Hospital gown.

This was a really easy project, and thanks to Lazy Girl Designs for posting this free pattern.

Of course, I had to make a quilt :) They had spiderman flannel, and after getting instructions from a fellow guild member at the sew in on Saturday, I had to give making a rag quilt a try. It is so soft and warm! The sewing part didn't take long at all, but the snipping took forever. Oh, and a tip, take to the laundromat to wash and dry. I thought my washer could handle it, but no, stopped during the rinse cycle and gave me an error message. Hade to look online how to fix it, then cup the water out of the machine (3 buckets worth), then find the hidden button trap and empty it. I got water all over the floor, and this came out..

That is all lint from the quilt! It was as big as a baby head, after the water was squeezed out it was the size of a fist.

I hope this little boy likes it, Evie is taking it to school tomorrow to give to him.

Take along tote

I'll love these bags! I have made them for my daughters for when we travel (above), it is big enough for coloring books, crayons, and small toys for inside the car. This one is for a little boy going through cancer treatment, so he can take a few things with him during hospital visits.

I have now published a pattern for this bag! Find it at my etsy shop as the Children's Travel Tote!