Scraps

Bare walls drive me nuts. However, I am not really great with home decor. I tend to find all of our furniture from craigslist, family members, or the side of the road (seriously, drives my husband nuts). Everything hanging on our walls is either art from my kids, my very talented friends, or family photos. My house will never be in Better Homes and Gardens.

So we have a dining room. I love having a dining room, we found an guy through friends that makes tables and benches out of scrap wood leftover from building homes, a china cabinet for almost nothing, and chairs from Goodwill. It is big enough for our whole family even when extended family visits. It is also where my amazing Girl Scout troop meets, the kids do art projects and general mayhem happens. The walls in the dining room are still bare. Like totally neekid.

At first I thought I would put a dry erase board in there, or cork squares to change things up, but I didn't want it to be too classroom like. So a few months ago my friend Dorothy gave me a bunch of really cool vintage embroidery hoops. All sizes. I knew they had to be in my house somewhere.

So today the kids and I went through my fabric scraps and started loading up the hoops. To keep the edges down, we used Elmer's school glue, just in case we wanted to take the fabric out and use it in another project. If you want yours to be permanent, you can use a glue gun or staples.

This project took us about an hour from hooping to hanging!

I think it fits our dining room really well, and the fabrics remind us of past sewing projects! Bonus, it was FREE.

I know a lot of us don't have the hoops hanging around, but they can often be found in thrift stores or grandma's attic!

Mama's got a Brand New Bag!

OK, so when I create a pattern I usually end up making a few. I never design a pattern I am not going to use, so yes, my new purse is a Midtown. The beautiful pink one was made for someone else, but I could not get that fabric out of my head, so I ended up finding the citrus colorway on fabric.com and making this sweet one for summer for me!

I am a fabric fanatic. I will admit to being a fabricaholic. I get really excited when new fabric lines launch, and follow the blogs of my favorite designers and those that sew for them. I have favorite lines of fabric I keep fatquarters of for years because I know you can't buy them in a store anymore and I want to keep a piece just in case. 

This season, I am totally in love with Jenean Morrison's Lovelorn. Check it out at the link. She is a designer with FreeSpirit Fabrics (of course, they carry most of my favorites, Joel Dewberry, Denyse Schmidt and Anna Maria Horner among them). I have made a few things already using this collection, including the bag featured in The Midtown pattern photos. This is one of the few fabric collections I love every colorway equally! It was really hard for me to decide which colorway to use for my personal bag, and after receiving a gift certificate for Fabric.com which is carrying the whole collection, I settled on orange for summer. 

As a fabric line, this has everything a sewist desires. There are beautiful large prints that lend themselves to home dec, clothing and big bags. There is a small ovals print that reads as a solid for quilting. There is a fun modern floral, there are 2 small prints for balance and this great arch print that adds movement to any project. The variety of scale, bold use of colors, and graphic nature of this collection make it the need to have collection for all your projects this season! 

While the orange and pink colorway are exciting and happy, the blue colorway keeps things cool and subdued, which is why I chose it for a baby boy quilt. 

One of the blocks

Close up of the ovals used as background, the hexies used as a border, and the large scale paisley as binding. Longarm services provided by Quilts2aT Studio. 

Toddler Time made from the pink color way. I know I put the arches with the floral together on each bag so far, but I love the look!

Sew, what is your favorite fabric line this season?

Happy Sewing!