Purse mania

Hi, all!

Well, I was brave enough to do Show and Tell at Sew Fun this month... for those of you who don't know what that is (and care), it's a monthly seminar with demos of products and techniques relative to sewing, quilting, and machine embroidery. Anyway, we have Show and Tell every time, and this was my first S&T in the year and a half that I've been attending. Partly because all my projects are LARGE (like queen size) and I don't want to haul that to Sew Fun and back, and partly because I rarely finish anything. So I showed off (ha) my backpack purse, my purse organizers, and a purse I made out of Thimbleberries fabric. I've since made another purse (yesterday) that I don't know that I'll make another of. It needs a higher caliber of sewing prowess and patience than I have to make it well enough to give away or to sell, my purse organizer doesn't fit in it, and it doesn't have a closure. But it's a cute style and I'm sure I'll get some use out of it. I may make a second one because I have some fabric DYING to be used and I don't know that I have enough to make a strapped purse. It'll be close - I'll have to check that out.

Here are some links to the pictures of my creations (except the backpack purse - I don't have pictures of that because I'm not thrilled on how it turned out. I'm planning on taking pictures of the second one that's in progress now, just waiting for machine embroidery).

Purse organizer (pattern my The Crochet Diva) and Thimbleberries purse (pattern by Keyka Lou)
Dewdrop Purse (pattern by Keyka Lou)

I found a wallet pattern on Etsy that I really like, but I have a couple reservations. First reservation is that the pattern writer is not a native English speaker. Her English is decent, but I can tell from her product writeups that English is her second language. Second reservation is that there are 48 pages of instructions! This could be good or bad. ;-) I'm still thinking about it. I like the wallet and I think I would use it even though it's a smidge bigger than I would like, but it's got a lot more compartments and is smaller than other wallet patterns out there. I'll probably go for it, but I'm still thinking. :-)

Last weekend Bill and I went up to the Tulip Festival with our friend Kelli, her two boys, and her mother and mother in law. I took over 150 pictures and I don't know how many she got. We usually trade CDs of the pictures we took, too. I took quite a few of her boys because they were entertaining playing in the mud. :-) Here are a few pictures that were taken of the tulips and of us.

Do any of you go to JoAnn Fabrics? If you do, you know that this week was Daffodil Dash - lots of sales and some 50% off coupons! I went on Tuesday before I got my temporary crown put in (that's another story - ugh) and I found some fabric I really liked, but not enough! WHAA! They were also out of the magnetic snaps I wanted for my purses. So yesterday I violated a stay-at-home day and we went to a different JoAnn's and it was SO worth the trip!! Four packages of the snaps I wanted, three yards of the fabric I wanted, plus some fabric for other projects that was all either on sale or I used a 50% off coupon for! YAY! And Bill and I went to Applebee's for dinner. It was an anniversary of sorts - 2 years and 5 months. I wonder when we'll grow out of counting the months? ;-) You may gag now. ;-)

I mentioned a temporary crown... I went for my dental checkup a couple weeks ago and they found some cracks in one of my molars. So I have my first temporary crown, and I asked if getting a crown means I'm a princess now. They got a kick out of that. They tried to tell me that once I get the permanent crown I get to be queen, but I don't want to be queen. Princess is fine. Queens have too much responsibility. ;-) So I go in a week and a half for my permanent crown, and hopefully that will be the last one for a while. Or ever.

Today before our church activities this afternoon and evening, I'm planning on trying to get my old laptop (XP) to talk to my sewing machine and transfer some embroidery designs. I'm guessing that my Janome is a Vista snob since I couldn't get my new laptop to talk to it, no matter what patches I installed or what things I tried. I have an email out to Tech Support - we'll see if they have any other ideas that the forum didn't address. Hopefully XP will do the trick - we shall see! It'll be slow, but it might just work. If that goes well, I might do some sewing today, too. If it doesn't go well, I'll probably go in a corner and pout. ;-) Nah, I'll probably sew anyway. I've got a few hours before I have to think about getting ready, and I might be able to whip up a purse in that amount of time.

Thanks, everybody, for reading my ramblings! Let me know if you like the links to the pictures or if you'd rather see pictures in the blog itself. I was being lazy this time, but I am able to share more pictures this way. I'm just curious how it works out for the readers.

Have a great day / week / month until I blog again! :-)

Blessings,
Kristin