Handmade Gift Exchange

I signed up for this summer's Handmade Gift Exchange, hosted by the lovely Linda over at Craftaholics Anonymous. 

I emailed back and forth with my amazing partner Kris and learned a bit about her.  She's a nurse and a mom.  She lives in Tennessee and loves to sew.  She has a couple of the patterns from Sew Liberated, but offered to make me anything I wanted!  I decided on a nice tote bag for bringing things to and from school.  Teachers can never have enough bags!  When it arrived this week, I couldn't believe it - it's so beautiful and so me!

 

Don't you just love the fabrics Kris used?  I love bright colors and love the patterns she chose for my bag.

Here is a close up of the darling flower pins she added to the bag.  I love that they coordinate, but I could also take them off and pin them on a jacket or scarf as a brooch.  So smart!

She also wrapped the bag up in adorable pink tissue and tied it with lime green tulle.  I wish I would have taken a picture, but I was just so excited to open it that the picture didn't happen.

Here is the gift I made for Kris, all wrapped up and ready to send off.  I made a little ribbon bow and hot glued the wooden martini tile to the center, just as some decoration.  I think it turned out cute.  I tied the gift with twine.

I made Kris two gifts, actually.  I was only planning on making her the oven mitt (see below), but as soon as I saw the bag she made me and the attention to detail she put into it, I had to give her something else as well.  She made the coordinating pins, sewed three pockets inside the bag, chose adorable fabric, and she is such an amazing seamstress.

Here is the oven mitt I made her.  The pattern is from The New Homemade, a sewing book that I love.  It's perfect for novices like me who want to learn about sewing.  It has tons of easy and useful projects - they are perfect for gifts. 

This side is the quilted side.  I now know terms such as "stitch in the ditch" and how to use a "walking foot" for my sewing machine.  I sound so smart and cool.

Here is the other side, with the patterned fabric.  I loved this fabric when I saw it at The Fabric Depot - a HUGE fabric store in SE Portland (it's amazing and overwhelming at the same time!)  I loved the graphic-ness of the polkadots, the cute pink, magenta, and teal colors (kinda retro, right??)  And there are even little forks and spoons on it.  So perfect for a kitchen item.  It was literally begging me to make an oven mitt out of it.

 

Here is the inside.  It shows the liner is one of the fabrics from the quilted side.  I even made my own binding out of coordinating fabric.  I bought a teal binding tape in case it didn't turn out.  I really need to work on binding things.  It's hard to sew it even and hard to finish it off at the end without it puckering.  Sorry Kris, it's not perfect.

 

Here is Kris' bonus gift.  I pulled out corks from Oregon wines and made her a cork picture frame.  It was actually my husband's idea to cut some of the wine stained ends off and glue those on.  What a crafty guy!  I think it turned out awesome.

I even made the little sign inside with a free downloaded font.  I wanted the picture to tie in the colors from the oven mitt.

 I hope my partner loves it as much as I loved making it for her!  I will for sure do this again in the future, it was so fun!

More handmade Christmas gifts!

Here are two more gifts I did this Christmas: a Wine Cork Trivet and a Re-usable Shopping Tote.

I had been wanting to make a wine trivet for quite some time - see the post from last spring about all things wine!  For this trivet, I started with a wooden tile frame that I bought at Georgie's Clay and Ceramics, a shop in Portland that I went to some free teacher clay classes.  Anywho, I saw these frames on sale for $6.99 each and thought they would be great for wine corks, too.  Good thing I have been drinking lots of wine collecting lots of corks! ;)

I had Ben measure and cut a thin piece of plywood for each frame as I grabbed my glue gun and a vase full of corks from my fireplace mantle.

I hot glued the plywood inside the trivet, so it sits on the lip.  I then arranged the corks how I wanted them, and started gluing.  I did have to cut some of them shorter and cut a small piece off of one to fit in the middle.  See?

I made one for my friend Kara (the same friend who got the silhouette ornament) with all Oregon wine corks.  One for my cousin who lives in San Diego got all California corks.  Another one was for Ben's brother and his fiance with all Washington corks.  They live in Kirkland.  The one above is for my brother, and he got a combo of Oregon and California, since he has lived in both states.  Another friend saw Kara's and has already requested one for her birthday.  Looks like I'll be going back to Georgies for the trivets, since Amazon sells them for much more!

My other project was a re-usable shopping tote.  The pattern is actually from Ikea.  I found it in the fabric section.

The first step is to cut 2 pieces of fabric for the handles.  I used a pink and white striped fabric from the Home Decor department of The Fabric Depot in SE Portland (if you live in the area and haven't been there, you need to go!).  The handles need to be 28" long and 3.5" wide.

You iron a small hem on both sides, then fold it again.  I folded the fabric in half first so I would see the center line as I ironed the hem.

Pin the hems down and zig zag stitch down the middle to secure.  I used white thread.

Next, you need to cut the fabric for the bag.  The dimensions are 18" x 36".

Iron down both sides,

 Then fold and iron again to make the hem.  Pin and straight stitch close to the left edge.

Attach the handles 2.5 or 3" from the edges.  Pin and make sure that both handles are placed in the same place.  To sew the handles to the bag, I sewed a box then an x in the middle to make the handles more secure.  Sometimes I stuff my shopping bags really full because I am lazy and don't want to carry too many bags out to the car.  I definitely don't want the handles to fall off!

 Then sew the sides of the bag closed, inside out.

 Turn it right side out, and top-stitch the sides again.  I had cut the raw edges close to the stitch before I flipped it right side out.  That way when I top-stitched, you wouldn't see the raw edges sticking out.

Here is the completed bag!  I gave it to my mom, and she loved it!

 I really like the idea of making these.  It doesn't take too much fabric and people can always use them.  You could make them out of nylon and make little bags to stuff them into.  Or, sew little straps on the bottom with snaps, like this one from Bath and Body Works, then you can roll it up and secure with the snaps.  I made one for my friend Pat when she was subbing this fall out of this fabric from Ikea in gray.  I stuffed it full of subbing supplies, such as a planner, stickers, colorful pens, thank you cards to leave for teachers, even a coffee thermos.  She loved it and uses it all the time!  I really want to try this pattern next, from Sew, Mama, Sew!  It is a bigger bag with a pocket on the outside.

So that's it.  Those are all the gifts I made this year.  With Audrey's birthday party, my birthday, tons of events with my class, finishing up my last class for my Reading Endorsement, Christmas, and New Years, I think I did pretty well with making some thoughtful, quality gifts for friends and family.  Did you make any gifts this year?  Tell me all about them!

Wine Tasting

Since my beautiful daughter was born three month ago (I can't believe it's been that long!), I've rekindled my love affair with wine. In February I went to Newport's Seafood and Wine festival with my husband and friends Pat and Tim. They are platonic friends and the plan was to tell anyone who asked that they were cousins! To mark this drunken-filled afternoon, I made wine charms for Pat and I. Our running joke is that whenever we do something fun together, we always have to be the cutest we've ever looked. So to play up that joke, I wanted our wine glasses to be the cutest they've ever looked, too. I've made two different types of wine charms in the past, ones that wind around the stem of the glass and ones that are a ring at the bottom of the stem. Each one incorporates beads and a charm. However, for our glasses to truly be the cutest they've ever been, I needed something new. I decided to buy a thin feather boa, cut off about 3 inches, wire it to a wine charm ring, add a dangling wire of beads and a fun girly charm. The boa proved to be the cutest and was also reminiscent of when Pat and I wore black feather boas to our Junior year homecoming dance. By the end of the dance, our arms, faces, and necks were black from the dye. As soon as the lights came on and we realized what happened, we screamed in unison and high tailed it to the ladies room! Oh, high school memories! Here is a picture of the three different types of charms that are now in my repertoire:

For my friend Katie's birthday, a group of 10 of us girls went to Oregon wine country for an afternoon of wine tasting. We went to three different wineries: Solena, Natalie's Estate, and Canas Feast. To help with the party planning, I offered to make wine charms and made each girl a feather boa with a wine related charm. There were two of each charm, all with different colored beads to tell them apart. I found at Michaels on clearance already made ring-style wine charms that I ended up taking apart to make the feather boa type. The charms included cheese, bottles, glasses, and a little dangly sign that read "vino". The boa charms were a hit and the birthday girl loved them.

After all this wine tasting, I've been thinking about what to do with the corks. I've been saving them for awhile, contemplating making cork boards or a trivet. I finally decided to make picture frames for the pictures from the wine events I've been attending. I cut each cork in half and hot glued them onto wooden picture frames purchased at the dollar store. I then changed the pictures to black and white. I think they turned out pretty cute! Here is a picture of Pat and me at the Seafood and Wine festival. This project lends itself to many variations. You could make a frame with corks from a specific area, like Napa, or in my case, Oregon wine country. Each frame could then hold a picture of you sampling wine from that particular region. You could also get sentimental and save corks of wine you've drank with a friend and then put a picture of you two together in the frame. Or if you have a favorite wine, use corks only from that winery. If you got a thicker wood frame, you could glue on multiple rows of corks. Whichever you choose, have fun with it!

If you'd like more detailed instructions of any of my projects, please leave a comment and I'll directly email you!