Green Floral Purse

I love this fabric - it's semi-heavy upholstery fabric. I had lunch with one of our clients on Friday, and she is going to try to help me find a shop to sell my purses. She asked if I had another one at home, which I did. But when I got home and looked at it, I wasn't very happy with it. One of the corners is kind of wonky, so I decided to use this fabric to make another one. This one turned out really pretty! I've been making my "Samantha" design a lot, because, well, just cuz I like it the best.

Here are the pictures - I just finished it 30 minutes ago.
Front:




Back:





Inside:


Todd's grandma is still in a nursing home, but she wants me to make her another purse, so I'll start on that sometime soon. This one will be a made from a spring-y fabric. I did already start on my laptop bag, but there's no hurry for that. I think Todd's mom wants a purse, too, so I need to find out if she picked out a certain fabric. She was at Todd's grandma's house and saw the swatches I sent of the fabrics I have.

Anyway, I can't believe tomorrow is JUNE already! I have another quilt class, so that will be my entire evening tomorrow night. Next Monday(the 8th) is our 11th wedding anniversary. I'd REALLY like to go away for the weekend, but Todd doesn't want to, so we'll just go eat somewhere nice.

Have a great weekend, everyone!!!!!!!!!

I whipped up a couple more potato bags

today. I'm taking another day of vacation and have a lunch date with one of our clients. She always brings me stuff, so one of them will be a gift for her.

Here is a picture of one (they are both the same):

I'm splitting my blog

into two separate ones - this one I'll keep for my sewing projects, things I have made and things I have for sale on my etsy account. The other things - personal stuff, grandkids, etc, will be posted here: http://jylpers.blogspot.com/

I'll be working on both blogs this weekend to get everything straightened out, so please be patient with me as I'm not very web-saavy.

Hope everyone has a WONDERFUL MEMORIAL DAY!!!!

Good Morning, America had a great

segment about etsy.com today. Take a look: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/MakeMoney/story?id=7650005&page=1

Blocks for Tablerunner are FINALLY DONE!

After deciding to change to the dark blue fabric, and making 6 of the blocks that I later decided were WRONG, I finally finished all the blocks last night. Today I squared all of them up, so after the next class on June 1, I'll start sewing them together. After that the boarders will be added, then decide what to use for batting and then quilt it and it will be DONE!

Here are the pictures of the finished blocks:
The Nine Patch:


The Friendship Star:


This is how they will be put together:


Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to finish a few projects that are started and have been sitting around for a while. Then I want to make a laptop case for my computer. I found a leather one (American Tourist brand) at the Caring Place (Thrift Store) for $3 last weekend, so that will give me an idea of how to make mine.

I'm taking my last day of vacation on May 29 (I guess I'll celebrate my brother's birthday by myself - lol). Not sure what I'll do, but I'm sure I'll find something.

A couple more potato baker bags

These are the other two potato baker bags that I made. They were both remnants, so really cheap. I'm not positive the blue one is 100% cotton, so I need to use it before I send it off.

Etsy Feedback

From Anne in NJ who bought the "Funky Flowers" purse - dated 5/16/09 :

"Got the purse today and I love it! Nice bright summer colors and it's very well made....thanks so much for shipping it so quickly! I will definitely be adding you to my favorite sellers... :)"

Sweeeeeettttt!!!!!

Potato Baker Bags

While my parents were here last weekend, they had a craft show thing in downtown Georgetown. Mom and I found a lady who makes bags you can use in the microwave to make baked potatos - and they taste like they came out of the oven! COOL! Especially since I've never liked baked potatos in the microwave - they just don't taste the same to me.



So Mom did what I usually do at craft shows, ask a few questions and look at it really good and we ran home to make a few. :D We found a tutorial online, bought some remnants at WalMart and off we went! We made three that day, one for Mom, one for Me and one for Mom to take home to my sister. I forgot to take pictures of Moms, and my sister's looks just like mine:



Except my sister's has the John Deere logo right side up on the top. Mom also found some John Deere fabric - she liked it since they live on a farm and they used to have a very old John Deere tractor - I liked it the fabric I picked out because my hubby works at a John Deere dealership as a mechanic.





Anyway, I whipped another one up this week. Just worked on it a few minutes while I was home at lunch. It's bigger than the others I made, but I have someone in mind to send it to. I also have a few more fabric remnants to make a few more.



Front: (it hasn't been washed yet)





Back:





Showing flap:





The bags are made out of 100% cotton fabric and thread and totally washable. We washed ours last weekend and had to try one out before Mom and Dad left. You just wash and dry the potatos (don't prick them or anything), put them in the bag, and microwave them. We did a large regular potato and a large sweet potato. It took a while, probably 12 minutes total, by they were PERFECT!!



I did a small potato earlier this week and it only took four minutes and it was just like it came out of the oven!



My boss gave me a gift certificate for a pedicure for my birthday last week. I decided to use it Monday since I wasn't going to work. It was nice, but I'm VERY tickelish, so parts of it was hard for me to sit still. I brought my own nail polish so that I could do my nails to match later. Here are my fancy toes:





Feet are one of those things that other people's just look odd, aren't they? Alyssa told me last weekend that I have really long 2nd toes.... If you look really close, you can still see the scars on my right foot from when I broke my left leg when I was 14 months old. Just a few years ago.... ha ha ha!



On my agenda for today: do a little laundry, there is a new Goodwill store opening in the shopping center where I work, so I want to go there this morning, then off to Sam's to watch Tyler for a couple hours while she goes to a baby shower and her hubby has a meeting for work, then it's off to get groceries and come home to get the rest of laundry done and a little cleaning.

Happy WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!!!!

An ETSY Sale, FINALLY!!!!!

I was so happy to get a sale on my etsy shop! Anne in New Jersey purchased my "Funky Flowers" purse that came with matching wristlet. I put it in the mail on Monday. Here's the purse and wristlet:


And while I'm at it, here are a few more pictures I took this weekend while Mom and Dad were visiting:
Todd put the water mister out so Alyssa and Angel decided to get wet


Angel & Tyler messing around on the swing


Alyssa had fun with the sidewalk chalk


And finally - My parents with their Great Grandchildren


The few days they were here really went fast! I must admit, it was nice to get back to work yesterday and to get back into a normal routine.

Outside with the grandkids

Having fun outside with the grandkids!!!!

Birthday Presents

So today's my birthday. Not working and I'm supposed to be cleaning, but Todd gave me my birthday present this morning (firepit). I couldn't wait for him to get home and put it together, so took it upon myself to assemble it. It was pretty easy! All the years Todd was gone (over-the-road truck driver), I put everything together anyway, so I'm sure he won't be surprised I did this, too.

Last weekend we gave the sandbox to our next door neighbors, so we had room by the grill and I told Todd I wanted a small bistro set for out there. Mom and dad sent me some money for my birthday, so I decided to use that for the furniture!!!!


The tag on the chairs said they cost $30, but when she rang them up, they were only $20!! SWEET!!!!! So the total for all three pieces was $55. And the fold up, so won't take too much room for storage during the winter. LOVE THEM!!!!!

I'm not getting much cleaning done today, so better hit it hard this afternoon.

Thanks for the phone calls and e-mails (and posts) wishing me a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Jyl

What do you think?

So while organizing more fabric yesterday, I found some more dark blue fabric that I used for our quilt. Since it matches what I'm using for the tablerunner, I thought I'd make a few star blocks with it to see what I like better for the tablerunner.

Here are the first ones with the light blue fabric:


Here are the ones with the dark blue fabric:



Todd likes it with the lighter fabric, but I like it with the darker fabric. So please tell me what you think! Leave a comment and we'll see what everyone thinks - tell me light or dark blue!

BTW, here are the new shelves Todd put up for more fabric stash...... :D
 

I spent the weekend cleaning. Really accomplished a lot, but still have a lot to do. I'm really glad I'm only working Monday and Tuesday. I have my lists (yes, if I don't write everything down, I'll forget) of what needs to be done. I shouldn't have a problem getting everything done and still have some time to relax - hopefully on my birthday on Wed.

Todd is mowing the yard, and found some footings left from a privacy fence that was apparently up when our house was first built. He and the neighbor used the pickup and a chain to get them out. Luckily we had almost three inches of rain last week, so the dirt was soft.

I'm still working on laundry. I did really good on it yesterday, but today I slacked, so need to finish two loads tonight.

Anyway, please vote for the fabric! It will be fun to see comments on my blog!

Have a great week!!!!!!

Here are the blocks for my tablerunner

It was nice to sit down and sew for a while last night. I have a bunch of my blocks done. I also have the pieces for 6 more star blocks that need to be sewn together.

My pile of pieces:


This is how they go together:


And sewn:


This is the completed 9-patch (I didn't take pictures before it was completed - I used the strip piecing method, so that went pretty quickly):


And because I couldn't resist, I put two of the rows together to see what it looks like (we're just supposed to have the blocks done for the next quilt class on June 1):


I think for borders, I'm going to do a small border of the blue, then use the red for a larger border and probably the binding. I need to see if I have enough fabric. I may have to use the off-white for the binding, I know I have plenty of that.


Todd's grandmother was put in a Nursing Home last night. She was not happy - was really looking forward to going home, but hopefully that will be an incentive for her to get well soon so she can go home.

My parents are coming NEXT FRIDAY!!! I can't wait! Still need to do a lot of cleaning, but I decided I'm taking Wednesday (my birthday) off and will be off until the next Tuesday. (I really wanted to take Tuesday off, but my boss said it would be a lot better for him if I work on Tuesday. I'm hardly ever gone and it's been a long time since I've taken that many days off in a row, so it's going to be hard for him to actually WORK on those days!) He'll still owe me one more day of vacation before June 1st, so I may take it on the 26th, the day after Labor Day and I'd have a four day weekend then.

Well, better get going for the morning. I skipped the gym the last couple days - can I use the "Swine Flu" as an excuse??????