Blog

Several years ago I came across a super cute pattern for this apple or orange-shaped sewing kit. I started the apple immediately but it wasn’t turning out as I wanted so I abandoned it. Fast-forward to this year and I decided to give it another try, though this time I thought I’d do the orange instead of the apple.

So I decided to make another doctor-style bag. This one is by the same designer as The Cube bag that I made earlier; it is a much larger version. The idea was that it would hold a lot of my misc. stuff for retreats and sew days as it looked pretty big!

Before I left on my big trip, I had a request from my middle son and my husband to make very simple, plain pencil pouches. I know that getting the size for these “just right” can be tricky based on previous attempts at such things–there is a pretty narrow margin of good sizes for pencil pouches!

Last year I finished the small size of Noodlehead’s Maker’s Tote and I totally loved it. I wanted to make one in the large size as well, for times when I needed to carry even more things!

If you're new to my 52 zippers project, you can read the backstory, see all the zipper pouches, and download basic zipper pouch instructions here. For retreats and such, I wanted to organize my lesser-used little tools and notions that I didn't want mixed in with my...

So I’ve already made the Creative Maker case by Sew Sweetness in “small” and “medium” sizes. It was time to make the large! I made one large case for each of my three kids for travel.

For this zipper bag, I was hoping to make a new toiletries bag for traveling. The Double zip gear bag by Annie’s looked perfect and I was super excited to make it!

So in the Spring and Summer, I like having a small purse that holds only my phone, wallet, keys, and a couple other small things when I need to run out for errands and such. I had a bag like this a few years ago (a Goodwill find), but it disintegrated and I hadn’t managed to find one I like since.

In the past year or so, I have spent a lot of time browsing different zip pouches and have seen so many creative ideas. When I came across this series of photos, I absolutely had to make it as a coin pouch for my youngest son, who is cat-crazy.

So this week I made the Brigitte needles & notions pouch using the free tutorial by Very Shannon. It’s a very cute little bag that I thought would be perfect to hold my two Addi-click interchangeable circular knitting needle sets. The cases that the sets come with are super bulky and I don’t really like them. They definitely are too big to travel with.

So this week I made a zipper pouch for my youngest son to hold his colored pencils. I wanted something that would open wide enough to expose all of the pencils so he could see and choose colors easily instead of rooting around in a dark pouch.

So I’m about to start another quilt with Quilter’s grid interfacing, but before I start I wanted to do a test run of the two different brands of gridded interfacing–Pellon and Bosal. Quilter’s grid interfacing is a fantastic product that is a lightweight fusible interfacing with a very light grid pre-printed on it.

So I thought I’d try the Rounded Reno makeup bag. it looked super small and cute in the photo! When I made it, it came out bigger than I was expecting, but I think the bigger size is probably more useful anyway.

So this week I came across this cute little zipped bowl that is meant to hold Wonder clips. Yes, please! This is perfect for taking with me to retreat and for sitting on my sewing table and as a bonus is ridiculously cute. It has a circle bottom so it stands up and opens into a bowl, with super easy access to the contents.

I’ve been wanting a larger tote to carry around my larger knitting or other projects. I’m testing a few different ones to see which is going to be the perfect one, though the reality is that I always have multiple projects on the go so this will let me have one bag for each.

This pouch is my second run through a Creative Maker case, a pattern by Sew Sweetness. Last time I made three of the Small size for teacher’s gifts. This time I made one of the Medium size for myself!

I have a Quilting retreat coming up and I thought, what better time than to make these Scissors cozies that I’ve been eyeing over at Sotak handmade… Only problem was that I have different scissors, so her templates didn’t work for mine. I decided to just wing it…

So this week I made the “Set to go” cosmetic case I found on Craftsy by Uniquely Michelle. I thought it had a super cute shape and I’ve been wanting to make more boxy bags.

One of my favorite blocks is the Raspberry kiss block by Wooden Spoon quilts. Of course, the original size is way too big to make more than a few for a zip pouch, so I googled and found Michael Ann Made had made some much smaller ones, but they still weren’t quite small enough. I had to minify them even more… These tiny blocks finish at 1.25″—the width of the Xs are only 0.25″.

So I decided to make a little pouch to hold my in-progress Sashiko embroidery project. I bought a pre-printed Sashiko panel years ago but never got to it and then this year at QuiltCon they had so many lovely ones in one booth that I was inspired to try again (and it helped that the friends I went with all got at least one too!).