Repair & Repurpose (ing)

I have a thing about sewing drawers, you know the ones that once belonged to sewing machine cabinets from days long past?  They are a great decorative way to store small items in my sewing space. I found this poor lonely thing in need of attention.  Not only was it missing it's top, but one of  drawer pulls as well.

It was a fairly simple fix. To create a new top, a piece of MDF board was wrapped with batting and fabric

stitched neatly in place

a few screws holds the top on firmly

New hardware and its ready to be filled. This set of drawers will live beside my computer to hold flash drives, chargers, cords and all that sort of thing......an attractive way to keep clutter at a minimum.

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On the subject of re purposing, a friend showed me mittens she made from old sweaters which we thought would make an excellent contribution for an upcoming church bazaar ( each year we donate hand crafted items as this church allows the use of their facilities for our sewing group)
When I came across this sweater....it was game on. So many possibilities!

my first mitten.

led to many more....I used 3 different sweaters, mixing and matching bits, no two are the same. They are lined with  thick, double sided polar fleece.....super soft and warm.

Wanna make some too? A quick You Tube search will lead you to several excellent tutorials.

Selecting Fabrics

Have you ever found yourself at a workshop, class or simply a sewing day with friends when you realized that the fabric you brought, is not right for the project you are working on?
Obviously we cant travel with our entire stash....so these situations require a little bit of planning.

A few of us are to meeting up soon to spend a day putting together some blocks for CQA's Big Quilt Bee. Here is how I decided what I would take.
1st up, fabrics that were created to celebrate Canada's 150th Birthday ( a required element in each block)

These fabrics have blacks, beige/yellows, greys, browns, & reds.  So, next I looked to see if I had a print that had all or most of those colours and dug out this floral.

then, I began pulling fabric scraps containing similar colours with a variety of texture and different sized prints. (many of these fabrics are oddly shaped, leftover bits from previous projects)

it is hard to see from this pile, but I have pulled from fairly light to fairly dark in each grouping.. Below, you can get the idea of how they look when they are sent off to play with each other

Since the blocks are created using a free pieced, sort of liberated technique, I figure if all the fabrics play nice together in the pile......the finished block should be cohesive and have eye appeal.....at least...that is my hope   :-)

A short video of how to make these "slab" blocks can be viewed here

Bookmark design

In August, I came across a call for entries into a bookmark design competition. The competition would see 5 favorite entries chosen and another 60 shortlisted to be voted on (for another 5) to determine the top ten "winners"

well......I did not even crack the top 65...oh well...that is how it goes.

But....actually, I am not all that disappointed, because I really, REALLY like my design. Now, I am considering various ways I might use it. I had originally left it fairly "uncluttered" as it was to be a bookmark aimed at the adult colouring book market....my plan is to develop the design a little further and add those extra details that are more "me"