The Nifty Foodie's Life

As you can tell from this blog, my crafting happens in spurts. I’m not a consistent crafter/sew-er (I hate typing sewer…makes me think of Mutant Ninja Turtles or something lol), but when the craft bug strikes, it strikes hard! I don’t like to force myself to get behind the sewing machine or to grab a pair of needles, so when inspiration strikes, I just go in the craft room and simply make things. I once tried make a business out of my love for crafting/sewing, but I found that I started to see that as a job, rather than a hobby. So, whenever people ask me why I don’t sell the things that I make, this is exactly why. I just don’t need extra stress in my life, especially for something I consider a stress relief!

It all started with my dining table. I thought it needed a cute vase to have as a good centerpiece, and well, I remembered this yarn wrapped wine bottle that I saw on Pinterest. I’ve had an empty wine bottle sitting for a while in our kitchen, and I used some leftover yarn from making these scarves. It took me about 30 minutes to wrap/glue the yarn, and I just stuck a fake hydrangea in it. It couldn’t have been easier (I swear), and it was FREE! I love using craft leftovers!

Then, my husband’s coworker became a grandfather, so of course, I had to sew a quick taggie for him to give to his granddaughter. These are always a quick, but very cute project for me to make. Although I always shake my fists at the minky fabric a few times, (because it just stretches like crazy on me) in the end, it’s worth it to gift something as cute as this!

And most recently, I took on the challenge of making my first purse. I’ve always been intimidated by lining, interfacing, darts, pleats, etc., and now that I made the purse, I really have no idea why! All of these things were no big deal, but then again, I used a very thorough pattern made by Beki of Artsy Crafty Babe. By the way, if you love craft blogs and you aren’t following Beki’s blog, definitely give it a read. She uses the most amazing fabric combinations in her sewing, and I kind of want to have her craft studio.

Back to the bag–Currently, this pattern isn’t in her Etsy shop yet (I was SUPER lucky to be chosen as a pattern tester for this bag!), but keep your eyes peeled; I’m sure it will be on there fairly soon! If you’re a beginner at bags (like me), you should definitely check out her patterns. They’re nothing like the patterns that you buy at a craft store (don’t you just HATE how poorly those patterns are written??!) They’re actually written to where you can completely understand how to make the bag step-by-step. She has a few free ones on her blog, too. Y’all know how I feel about free stuff!

And, here’s how the bag looks on the inside. Don’t you just love these colors?

I decided to make this bag with my favorite print…I should totally buy a bolt of this, because the color combination and print is just so awesome! I combined it with this print for the lining and this print for the accents.

I didn’t waste any time at all to switch purses, by the way. I didn’t even want to iron out the wrinkles…I just wanted to carry this bag around! It’s such a fun bag!

I don’t see the craft bug bites going away anytime soon either. I have so much inspiration in my head right now, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a good chunk of free time to work on things in the next few months, too. So excited!

A while ago, I was told that my friend’s sister was having a baby! I was super stoked for my friend and her sister, so I decided to throw together a quilt for the baby. This was going to be a unisex quilt, but since I took my darn time (ha!), I found out the sex of the baby since he was born, well a couple of months ago! (oof, crafter fail!)

The craft bug has been really biting lately, so I took this past weekend to finish this quilt. Whew!

I decided to go with a simple strip quilt, because I really wanted the fabrics to shine here. The main fabric was Giraffe Garden by Michael Miller, and I just purchased some fabrics using the colors in that particular print.

This was my first strip quilt, and I have to say, it comes together rather quickly. It only took me a while to finish this quilt, because we had the big house move, had to unpack everything, the holidays happened, etc. Now that things are slowing down, I can safely say I’m going to be busy in my craft room.

Here’s another view of the fabrics I used. I just love how colorful and bright this quilt is! I hope the baby loves this quilt!

It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been sewing for 2 years. I remember when I got my first machine in Christmas of 2008. It was sitting pretty in a box for a while, until my Mom majorly helped me out with the machine on Thanksgiving of 2009. I learned how to thread the sucker and practiced some stitches on an old dish cloth. (Thanks Mom!)

Since then, I’ve been slowly purchasing fabrics. Pretty fabrics. I would end up buying fabric, because it was cute with no project in mind. So of course, I started to see a small stash grow. I had a decent sized IKEA basket where I was storing the fabrics, but unfortunately, that wasn’t enough space. Not nearly enough. It just never looked organized, so I had to do something different.

So, I looked on the Internet to see what others were doing with their fabric, because I know people have MUCH more fabric than I do. That’s where I stumbled on this idea where you wrap fabric around comic book boards. Genius!

How simple is that? When it’s stacked side-by-side, it sort of looks like a little fabric library. I love it!

For the 1/2 yard cuts, I ended up cutting a board in half, to give the fabric something better to wrap around. Then, I ended up placing them in a smaller basket to keep them all together since the shelves on my bookcase are too deep for the 1/2 yard cuts.

I just love that I can easily see all of the fabric that I have and just as easily pull only what I need now!

How do you organize your fabrics?

This quilt has been a work in progress since December of last year. It was a project where I ended up cutting the fabric, stashed the blocks away and forgot about it. I have so many projects like this just lying around in my craft room. However, I told myself I can’t tackle anything new until I actually finish some of these sewing projects that have already been cut. We’ll see how that goes.

I also told myself I can’t buy anymore fabric. Ha!

A few months before all of this packing and moving stuff happened, I sat down and got to work on these wonky blocks for this quilt pattern. Stupid me thought I totally memorized ALL of the instructions. Cut a third of the fabric in a wonky, slanted line, move one piece of the stack from the top to the bottom, and then sew back together.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I tried to cut 27 pieces of fabric all at once with my rotary cutter. What a mess. Don’t do it…trust me. I’m surprised I didn’t slice a finger off!

After I cut/resewed the pieces back together, I referred to the instructions thinking that there’s gotta be a better way. Well, yeah…the instructions said to do this in 3 groups of 9. Dangit!

So, of course this ruined every idea I had of having perfect blocks with 9 different fabrics in them. Oh well.

For the next four cuts, I grouped them in 3 groups of nine and tried my best to make sure that the squares had varying fabrics in them. I don’t think I got one block right. Lesson learned…I really should read instructions better. Ugh..I’m such a rebel!

The more I look at these blocks, though, the more I like them.

They’re much more random looking this way, and I think they came together quite beautifully in this quilt top!

Now, all that’s left is to sandwich the quilt, quilt it all together and sew the binding on! Time to dust off the sewing machine and get this project going again!

When I first started sewing, I quickly became friends with my local Hobby Lobby. Fabric was adorable, fairly cheap and good quality. I remember walking into Hobby Lobby, asking the lady what bias tape was. I fully expected a roll of tape for fabric. I was that new to sewing,  y’all. The lady was very friendly, helpful and eager to help me find some fun fabrics to make my first projects with. In fact, my first quilt top was nothing but Hobby Lobby fabrics!

I actually avoiding Hobby Lobby for a while, because I’ve quickly found that my fabric stash is pouring out of the basket that I have. While I’d love to have a huge fabric stash, I have to remember that my craft room is also our guest bedroom. I can easily tuck away my fabric basket, but I can’t really tuck away a shelf of fabrics.

However, my birthday was last week. And, well, I got a gift card to Hobby Lobby (thank you BIL’s family) and of course, I had to check out Hobby Lobby to see what they have! Oops…

Well, I spent my gift card way too quickly, but came out with this!

See that fabric on top? Doesn’t that remind you a LOT of Liberty of London?! I know y’all remember when Target had that fantastic line. I couldn’t help but grab up a couple yards of this, which was on sale for about $6/yard! If you like this fabric, it’s part of Hobby Lobby’s Spring line. And yes, I have a project in mind for this fabric. Wahoo!

The fabric below it is in their regular Calico prints, which was also on sale. It looks like it was meant to match the floral print above, no? LOVE these colors! I also bought the bottom two fabrics, because I can hardly find purple fabrics that I like. I love the modern-y prints on both of them, but have no clue what to do with them yet. Typical sewing dilemma.

I also bought my first quilting/sewing magazine.

I’m super stoked about this quilt in the issue. I just love the argyle. LOVE it.

Are y’all addicted to Hobby Lobby like me? What do you love to shop for there?