I took my sewing machine and went to Melanie’s yesterday for a sewing party.  We had a really good time!  The idea was to sew together, but for the most part, she just helped me figure out what I was doing while I navigated my first project in more than 15 years.  I am so grateful to have had her help.  Though we had a few technical glitches, like a bobbin that wouldn’t behave (pet named “ill luck bobbin”), everything went very smoothly.  I made a bag, a simple project that actually took me about 7 hours to finish.  It’s a long time, but the final product came out really good!  So good, in fact, I wanted to share the pics with y’all.

(Please click the images to see them larger!!)

I hope you enjoyed seeing the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them! I had a really great time working on this bag and will likely make several more of them in different fabrics and colors. I have Melanie to thank for finding the brown fabric with the teal circles, we were looking for fabric when she pointed it out and I loved it the second I saw it. I have enough extra that I’m going to make dice bags out of it.

My next project, as you can imagine, will be dice bags — going to work on it next Saturday. I got some fabric last night so I could make some, one of which will be for Matt, who chose a gray fabric with skulls on it. I should have known he’d pick something like that. I don’t think there are patterns for dice bags, but they’re fairly simple, so I’m not concerned. Might hunt around the net for instructions, I don’t know yet.

Today, I feel like I got a workout yesterday. It’s funny how exhausting sewing is. It’s very rewarding, but it’s exhausting, too. I’m looking forward to sewing next weekend!!

My new sewing machine is here!!

It’s kind of a misnomer to call it “my new sewing machine” since I never had an old sewing machine, but it’s new and it’s mine, so it works. It came on Thursday night. I was gone all day Thursday with training and orientations at the school, so Matt agreed to stay up and wait for it to be delivered.  The poor guy had only had about 2 hours of sleep but still said he’d stay awake until it came.  He waited and waited, but it never did come. When I got in about 7:30 p.m. to find a very sleep, not terribly happy hubby telling me that it didn’t come, I checked the tracking which said it was out for delivery.  Poor guy seemed genuinely concerned that I’d be upset, which I was. Then, not ten minutes after I walked through the door, here comes a knock. It’s FedEx delivering my package from Amazon.  Matt like to pull his hair out, but we were both glad it got here.

So, I unpackaged it, but I’ve not had a chance to use it yet. I only paid about $100 and I got the machine, a plastic hard case, and a pack of 10 plastic bobbins, which aren’t here yet.  I want to make something, but I also want to do it right, so I’m waiting until I have time.  It’s not been easy, let me tell you!  So here it is…

Isn’t it pretty?! I had more meetings on Friday, so afterward I headed over to Melanie’s and we went to Wal-Mart. I got scissors and all of the stuff I’ll need to get started.  I also got these three patterns…

I’m going to attempt the bag first! Not the messenger bag, but the other one (bottom left/top right).  I think in the long run, it’ll be the more simple of the two because it doesn’t require quilted fabrics.  With my experience being limited, I’m going to start with something a bit simpler. I got this really amazing fabric to make the bag…

The brown fabric with teal circles is going to be the outside of the bag, while the teal fabric will be the lining.  I considered brown lining, but I just love the way the teal looks!!  The brown fabric is actually a light corduroy, so I got some heavier weight needles because I’ve been assured that this fabric is hefty and will break the regular needles.

Unfortunately, though I have everything I need to get started, I can’t actually start until next weekend. School’s starting back tomorrow (August 30th) and I have both my classes and my the basic writing for my assistantship to attend during the week.  I have to get text books, order a new stove, go to work and study. So, sewing will have to wait until I have a free moment, which won’t come until the weekend. Melanie and I are going to get together and have a sewing party, wherein she holds my hand *ehh hmm* offers me guidance through the process. She’ll probably get a heck of a lot more sewing done than I will, but I’m glad I have here here to help me when I get stuck.  I’m really looking forward to it.

In the mean time, I’ve been hunting down apron patterns online because I really want to make some vintage aprons. Turns out you can get upwards of 50 different apron patterns on the web, for free.  Many of them aren’t actually patterns, but rather are just instructions and measurements, but I think I could follow simple instructions… maybe.

More pictures coming when that fabric is actually a bag, and not just fabric.  By the time I get good at sewing, y’all are going to be so tired of hearing about sewing and my sewing projects.

I wanted to share these pics I took on the way home from Plainview. We were on Texas Highway 6, between Carbon and Gorman when I spotted a rainbow.  There had been a summer storm in Central Texas just before we’d made it there and  Matt said he had been able to see the rainbow from the Interstate, but I’d been asleep.  I took some while the car was moving, but none of them came out well. So, because Matt had driven the entire drive home and was tired, we stopped to switch drivers at the side of the highway and I took these pics before moving on. We were only about an hour and a half from home.

As always, you can click the images to see them larger if you like. I thought they were pretty and honestly, I felt very encouraged seeing that rainbow given that we had just attended my grandmother’s funeral. When I downloaded the pics from my camera today, I felt fairly encouraged again.  So, I wanted to share. I used photoshop to balance the photo’s levels so it would be more crisp, but overall my camera takes pretty good pics!