Bagging a Few Fall Crafts

Okay, I am on creativity overload and spinning myself into a craft/sewing vortex! Maybe I just need to get a real job…maybe. Let’s not go crazy yet, just threw it out there. If I did that though, how would I run the sweet mom-taxi? I can’t possibly deprive the kids of the daily joy of hearing mom rock the “80’s on 8”.

Since the kids went back to school, I’ve tried to be productive (read, I spent some time drinking coffee, reading, watching old awesome movies and ignoring the laundry monster).

I did plant some plants, pull some weeds, make a chore/food plan and scrub the kitchen floor. On my hands and knees. For real. Who knew that floor wasn’t a faux stone finish? It’s actually a fairly uniform light beige, Huh! If that grosses you out, probably don’t look at my carpet.

The one thing that fall brings to the table (along with school and pumpkin spice lattes) is the desire to craft. Why? Why is it so tempting? It is certainly not the weather, since we’ve been simmering near or above 100 for the last millennia. It is just something that pulls me to the craft room and the sewing machine.

Maybe it’s that Christmas gift giving is around the corner, tempting us with the illusion of cooler weather. Maybe it’s the need for Halloween costumes. Or that my kids really need some new cute stuff for football season. I mean, we really haven’t been utilizing chevron to it’s fullest extent-we are so behind. I may get kicked off of Pinterest.

Whatever the reason behind the autumnal craft urge, I’m fully immersed in it. I have just found a super cute shorts pattern. New shorts in September? Please see above note on temperatures. I also got a new sewing book with a pretty easy zipper-bag pattern, and Hancock Fabrics had a sale on zippers the same day. Kismet! I have been a little busy the last week or so.

The middle child was invited to a birthday party for her good friend and I guess she was bitten by the craft bug too, because she decided that she wanted to make some zipper-pouches herself as a gift. Excellent! Simple pattern, straight lines, we’re golden, right? Oh, but there is that pesky zipper. No worries! If she’s never tried to put in a zipper or been told it’s hard, how would she know? She didn’t, and so it went very well.

She combed through the fabric stash and found her favorites for the project-yep, chevron. Look at us spreading the trend! She opted to do one bag with denim on the outside and chevron inside and the other bag reversed. I showed her the wide range of zipper colors and she said, “I think we should just use white so that we don’t add too many colors to the scheme.”

“The scheme.”

She actually said it.

I was taking some pictures of the project and she looked up at me, in all seriousness, and said, “It’s okay if you blog about this but please don’t do it until after I give her the gifts. It should be a surprise and I don’t want her mom to read your blog and tell her.”

Like we have a super-secret, mom-plot designed to spoil all fun. Sheesh!

Anyway, she continued to make the pouches, rotary-cutting the fabric (with close supervision), pinning the fabric to the zipper and getting ready to sew. 

We hit a small snag when she realized she couldn’t reach the sewing machine foot pedal.

“I’ll just add a box, no problem!”

She set up the box and started to stitch.

“I love this zipper-foot! It’s so cute and little.”

Slowly but surely she stitched her way around both pouches. At each pin she stopped, rolled the needle down into the fabric, removed each pin and then started again. She turned them right side out and ironed them flat. Actually she didn’t want to iron so I did that.

She was so proud of the pouches and plans to make more and then some purses. Stay-tuned!

Well, I have to go-probably should clean up the craft room so I can make some more things… I probably need a pumpkin latte first.