Sewing: A skirt and a bag

I got the sewing itch a few weeks back so I wanted to share what I made! I really have to be in the mood to sew, and the itch doesn't come around too often. To me sewing takes ALOT of thought. I'm not spacial at all. Geometry was HARD for me. Monogramming and doing appliqués is totally brainless to me. So I do that much more.

Speaking of... my embroidery machine totally died. It desperately needs to go to the shop, but I really didn't feel like forking out $100 for it to be fixed when the sewing machine part works fine (I have a sewing/embroidering combo). So Josh agreed that the $100 should go toward a new machine- the machine I have totally been drooling over. In a month I've put over 200,000 stitches on it. Typical monograms are usually no more than 10,000 stitches and appliques range from 4,000-15,000. So that's alot of work!

I thought I would share my latest sewing  projects with you and give you direct links to the tutorials I used. I have ventured into the world of Etsy patterns, but I haven't finished a project yet, so I'll be back later with how that goes.

All these are free tutorials that use basic measuring and lots of color pictures. My kinda language.

First up is the library bag I made Luke. I've been wanting to get him a library bag to carry his books to and from and I was just going to try to find a cute reusable bag. But my mom found a fat quarter (that's a sewing/quilting term for a few scraps of coordinating fabric) at our local Tuesday Morning and this project instantly came to mind!

I quilted (haha hardly right?!) the scraps together to make larger panels.

.

and it's reversible. Think that's hard? Think again!

I found the tutorial here. The possibilities are literally endless. Beach bags. Big tote bags. Little doll bags. On and on. The tutorial was great, except I had a hard time figuring out how to attach the straps. It goes back to that spacial thing. I can't visualize anything. The tutorial was right, there was a little user error and I had assembled it wrong. It was an easy fix.

Next is this adorable skirt.

We had birthday pictures planned for our sweet girl and she needed the perfect party outfit. Her party (which was at the beginning of May) was "You are my sunshine" and this skirt fabric just screamed "sunshine" to me! I appliqued a sun (with various ribbon for the sunbeams) in coordinating fabric on a bib, and then I monogrammed her initials on a shirt. I actually didn't plan to add a contrasting band to the skirt originally, but I thought it would really pop in her pictures and match her shirt. I LOVE how it turned out! Here's a sneak peek at some birthday pictures:

Tutorial can be found here. By the way there are 2 other tutorials there and all are equally amazing! The hardest part was figuring out the measurements. I measured Emberly and then I used a pair of her pants as a guide (since I mainly sew when she's sleeping).

I have a few more skirts and bib projects waiting in the wings. Honestly I've been too wrapped up with my new machine that I haven't touched my sewing machine in weeks. Hoping to get the itch soon (cause I have some stinking cute fabric to bust out!).