Staycation Time!

Going on "staycation" starting today! I'm hopping in my car and heading up the road...a whole 20 miles...to Beautiful Downtown Lakewood, Washington for a week. Holing up in an extended stay and sewing my brains out. It's close enough that I can run back home if I really need to, but far enough away that I can't come home to make breakfast, lunch, or dinner, haha.

I just asked my son, Ben, to haul my "fabric suitcase" out to the car. Ugh. It's a LOT bigger and heavier than my "clothes suitcase!"

I have lots of projects, including a quilt I've been working on (or not) for more than a year for Ben and his lovely wife, Autumn. Some table runners, a lot of Shoop-Shoop Bags, some little girl chalkboard fabric placemats, and lots of other stuff. How much will I get to? I have no idea...I guess it depends on how much wine I drink ;-)

I also have a list from the Western Washington Shop Hop with the name and address of ALL the surrounding LQSs! Of course, with that huge "fabric suitcase" I shouldn't NEED to visit any LQSs, right? Well, I'm sure there will be a few things I will need to pick up, and also there's a JoAnn's just a few miles away as well.

So no blogging until I get back because I'm not taking my little netbook - my smartphone is so much faster, but I don't think I want to try to blog using it, but who knows? So I'll see you all soon...Happy Sewing in the meantime!

More Grocery Bag Dispensers

Here are six grocery bag dispensers I made. They are based on the Moda Bake Shop pattern, and at first, I made them just like the instructions. But of course, I just HAVE to make things a bit more complicated, and I decided I wanted some white lattice between the squares. Which of course meant I had to do MATH...ugh. But I managed, and I like the looks of the ones with the lattice. These are 4 1/2" squares, with 1" lattice in between, rather than the 5" charm squares with no lattice. For left-to-right, I put lattice/square/lattice/square/lattice/square/lattice/square...stop and do not put lattice on the right side. Repeat for top to bottom, although do include the lattice on both ends. Add the folded pieces for the elastic casings and proceed as normal.

Now, I have to point out...my family had a few things to say about these bags. My hubby, in particular, used the "vintage" word yesterday. Huh? What's vintage about them? He smirked and said vintage, antique, outdated...and these bags are outdated because more and more cities are instituting bans on plastic grocery bags. Yup. He's right. We live about 45 minutes south of Seattle, the most recent Washington city to ban the bags.

I use my own cloth bags for grocery (and other) shopping almost exclusively. But still, a few plastic bags do manage to find their way home with me. And even in the cities where bags are banned, there are some exclusions, so plastic bags are not going away completely. People definitely have strong feelings on both sides of the bag bans, and I won't get into that here...I love to use my cloth bags, but realize there will always be a few of them roaming around.

So here are six more that I've made recently...those of you who commented on my previous post will receive an email from me tomorrow morning and you'll have a chance to choose one, if you so desire.

Brights!

Crabtastic! UPDATE: The giveaway winner has chosen this bag :-)

Lavendar, Green, Blue

Red Raspberries, Blue Blueberries, and White

Pink, Blue

Kitchen, Pink, Aqua, Red, and White

Giveaway Winner(s)

Denise is the 1st place winner of the giveaway, and gets the 60+ piece charm pack and bag holder. BUT...in the meantime, I've been driving everyone crazy around here making MORE bag holders! Why? I have no idea! Like I said before, sometimes when I find something I like to make, I just can't stop!

Soooo...if any of the rest of you would like to have a bag holder, I'll put pictures up tomorrow, and also send them to you via email since you may not be checking back here every 5 minutes in anticipation, haha...  I might even have a few charm packs to include with the other bags. I'll let you choose which bag holder you want according to the Random Generator numbers I came up with. Denise gets first choice (and the large charm pack), Jody gets 2nd choice of the remaining bag holders, etc.

1.  Denise
2.  Jody
3.  Amy
4.  Regina
5.  CJ
6.  Sue

Grocery Bag Dispenser and GIVEAWAY!

See Giveaway below!



I had a lot of the fabrics left from the Ruffled Apron Swap, and a friend had asked me to make a grocery bag dispenser for her daughter. I love the bright, cheery colors of the fabrics I'd used, and they were handy, so I zipped on over to Moda Bake Shop because I remembered they had a very pretty patchwork, quilted grocery bag dispenser recipe there some time ago. I easily found the recipe, and whipped one up. Then I quickly made three more - sometimes when I make something I like, I just can't stop making more of it! My DIL, Autumn, was laughing at me because I showed her the first one I made - ok, actually, I MADE her look at it...I tell my kids they HAVE to look at my sewing stuff as part of the "rent" haha (since they don't actually pay any). She said "Is that going out the door?" I said yes...and she giggled and said "Umm...so YOU are going to keep using the grocery bag dispenser you have? THE PLASTIC BAG FULL OF PLASTIC BAGS, hanging on the pantry doorknob???"

My...ahem...grocery bag dispenser...

Red face, here....I guess maybe I should designate one of the other three to keep for myself...  At any rate, I LOVE the way these turn out! Years ago, I made the "regular" ones - one fabric, one layer...but these quilted ones have so much more form, and of course, being able to use more than one fabric is a quilter's bonus :-)

 Start with a stash of fabrics OR a Charm Pack...

Create a quilted, patchwork/batting/backing sandwich...

Add strips for elastic casings, and a hanging loop...

Easy-Peasy and Oh-So-Cute!!!

Now, here's the Giveaway - I cut WAY more 5" charm squares than I really needed for this project, even for FOUR of them! So I am giving away a 60+ pack of coordinating 5" squares from more than 30 different fabrics, PLUS a finished grocery bag dispenser!

Interested? Just leave me a Comment here...please make sure that you either have an email-enabled profile or provide your email in your Comment. I'll take Comments until 6:00 p.m. PST on July 10 and randomly select a winner!