What I've been up to...

Here's a few things I've been up to lately:

I helped make a Super-Frog cape! With red eyes... which is a bit creepy-deep, but I'm always open to special requests! The munchkin said today he wants to be Super Frog for Halloween and wear his frog costume (yes - he already has one. Don't you?) and the cape. Of course he is 4 and there's 2 months until Halloween, so there's a high possibility he'll end up as something completely different.

A jewelry travel bag that has a big enough bottom to have bracelets inside. I hadn't even thought about bracelets, but it was easy to make it just a little bigger and the bracelets give it a bit of a base!

An "M" bag for my cousin's daughter! I need to send it on up to Tennessee!

This was a commissioned bag! A lady I know knows the mom of Matt Eller who plays for the University of Illinois (Go Fighting Illini!) and she wanted me to make a bag that she can take to games. This was a fun bag to make and I love the way the embroidery turned out! Since it would be going to football games and everything, there's a zipper closure on top. And the sides are triangular, just to be fun and different. I hadn't planned on it, but there's a washable base inside so that the shape keeps pretty well. I'm giving it to her tomorrow and I hope she loves it!

Then I made a bag for myself! I got the pattern from a blog called U-Handblog.com. I've learned a lot of stuff from her site - my favorite of which is to do zippers in the sides of bags. Her tutorial makes it SO Easy! I saw the pattern for this bag a while ago when she first put it on the site and I liked it, but just couldn't decide to buy it. Then I kept thinking about it. Then I finally just gave in and bought it!

It was a pretty easy pattern to follow. I feel like every step was described perfectly. There wasn't any part where I was really confused. I had already done the zipper in the side of the bag before, so it might have been a little harder if I hadn't done it before. And I used grommets for the first time, which turned out to be pretty easy. And the handles - she had a cool idea which was to put some tubing in the handle. There was a place to order it from her, I guess a special purse kind. But I just went to the pet store and got some tubing that goes in fish tanks!

I knew it would be big (the drawstrings can be untied and it expands out), so I didn't know how often I would get to use it... but this morning as I was looking for something to carry stuff to the Post Office, I was so glad I had the bag!

And I also made two hooded towels (a hippo and a monkey) which are on their way down South to sweet little Sophie (the daughter of a friend of mine from high school)! They're pretty darn cute, and I'll try to get some pictures of them up pretty soon!

Meanwhile - I got 5 really cute fat quarters and I'm going to try and write up a tutorial for my Five Fat Quarter Reversible Bag! I want to take pictures as I go along to try and make it a little easier to understand. So hopefully I'll get that up pretty soon...