A little something for myself

Have I mentioned lately how much I love to sew?  While quilting is my 1st passion I also just love to sew all kinds of different craft projects and clothing. Especially quick sew projects that I have all the materials and notions on hand for. Before I show you what I made I have to tell you about the past couple of weeks which were filled with county fair fun and building a better fence for our growing goat herd. My oldest earned some blue ribbons with his goats and we were all very proud of him. I mean how can you not love those little sweet goats all curled up together!

What can I say, proud mama moment. But back to the reason you're here...sewing. I am usually making things for other people and putting off my own stuff for when I have spare time. Which means that I rarely get around to making the things I want for myself. I have dabbled in designing patterns and usually keep a sketchbook of some kind with me at all times. My colored pencils have gotten out of control, when we moved the last time my pencil box somehow got cracked and was not doing the best job of containing my growing pencil collection! 

I searched Pinterest for a couple of minutes, ok it may have been an hour or so. I found the perfect tutorial for a zippered vinyl pouch, you can find the instructions here. I already knew exactly which fabric I was going to use. I have been saving it for the perfect project and this was it! Are you afraid to sew with vinyl? It can be a scary medium to sew with. Scroll to the bottom and I will share a couple of tips with you.

This pouch is the perfect size to hold my pencils, ruler, pencil sharpener and my notebook.

Here are a couple of tips for working with vinyl:

Pins are not vinyl friendly, they put holes in it that do not disappear. You probably have seen the plastic clips that many quilters use when they are binding a quilt...they are wonderful to use in place of pins. Another problem with vinyl is that it does not slide nicely through the machine. It can stick and pull and do all kinds of funny things. The best way to take care of that is to use a piece of the tissue that the vinyl comes rolled with to sew on. It glides right through the machine, no skips, no pulls and no puckers. And it easily rips off as the needle has perforated it nicely as you can see in the pictures below.

Happy little binder cips holding it all together

The tissue tears right off and leaves nothing behind!

 My finished bag had me smiling all day. It went together quick and turned out awesome. My favorite critics (my two boys) both exclaimed "That is so cool, I want one" and "You made that?!" They always know the perfect thing to say.

Time to break out the serger and work on some clothes this week and finish up quilting my oldest's new quilt. He wants to be surprised so I have to work on it after he goes to bed at night! Follow me on Instagram for random picture updates of projects I'm working on.

Happy Sewing!

-Amanda