Penny Patch: A Finish!

I did it. I free motion quilted a whole quilt. A pretty big quilt at that. And . . .  IT'S AWESOME!

I don't really know what else to say about it. I am over the moon proud of myself on this one. Plus, I said most of it here.

I will make one confession though. When I very first sat down and was quilting my first row, I was having a heck of a time. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I knew it would take a bit to get back in the groove I was in when I finished my drawstring bag, but this felt like more than that. Not sure exactly what finally made it click, but I realized that I hadn't lowered the feed dogs. DOH! Me, myself and I had a pretty good laugh about that, and now you can too.

It has taken me a lot longer to share than finish than I intended but alas, the short and often rainy days here in the Pacific Northwest make is difficult to get good, well any, outdoor photos. Thanks to our current lovely false spring, I was able to get to my mom's house and take some pictures! We were still a limited on what we could do with the very damp ground and lack of greenery, but still, pictures to share!

I love how the back came out. There wasn't enough of the purple print to do the whole thing so I supplemented with some giant squares of coordinating fabrics.

I almost didn't manage to leave my mom's house with this with the quilt, she has been trying to claim it for her own each and every time she sees it, despite the fact that I made her a quilt all her own, in fabrics she picked out! More on that later!

Playing with Leather

Leather

I love leather. I have lots of leather things.  Frye Boots are probably my most favorite leather thing.  In addition to that, I love leather purses and leather details on purses.  So of course it is something that I am interested in being able to do for myself.  I got very excited a while back about getting into leather working. Then, I realized that it was a wholly different world with a steep learning curve and I had no idea where to start.  I decided that it would be best to hold off on leather and focus instead on furthering my sewing and quilting skills.  Enter My Friend Elma. 

The Teacher Arrives

After a very long break, The Husband and I reconnected with some friends of ours.  During our lengthy catch-up discussion Elma shared that she had started leather working.  My ears perked up, picture this:

Graciously, Elma agreed to show me the ropes of working with leather.  This made me excited for two reasons: One, yay!, leather and Two, more time with Elma, double yay!

My First Project and Then Some

We ran off to the leather store and got lots of supplies and fun stuff to play with.  After Elma went home I was left to play with all my new toys, which involved the family joining in and hammering away at some leather scraps.



This is what that looked like:

Elma came over the following week and walked me through the process of stamping, dying, finishing and riveting the leather.  While we were doing all this, I had the awesome idea of creating custom zipper pulls for my make-up bags.  I immediately created a little sample with some scraps:

I think it's terribly cute and I can't wait to make some with a little bird stamp and my shop initials!

The other thing I worked on was a a key chain.  I finished that a few days ago, and here it is:

During all of this, I was plotting my next move.  Something that I have always wanted to be able to do with my bags is add leather handles.  I just needed a bag to add a handle to, so I made this cute little bag from the One Yard Wonders book.  The outside with Essex Linen in Black and the lining is from Anna Maria Horner's Field Study line.

Now it just needs a handle!  Here is my little mock-up of my handle design:

Then I added some dye options:

After this was the agonizing decision making part.  This part can take a really long time and is usually only aided by my intense desire to finish the project.  In this case, only at the very last minute, and against all my natural color loving tendencies, I chose black.  Here it is all finished and put together!