Sisters Sewing Day

*Sorry for the wordiness of this post. The story is one I'm so excited to share, but there's not a lot of pictures. Feel free to scroll down to the bottom of the post to see pictures of the Barbados Bag I made this weekend.

My little sister got jipped when it came to sewing lessons. I'm pretty sure that I was not the best of students (it's possible that I begged for lessons and my mom decided to teach me before I was really ready to learn and ended up breaking her sewing machine) and when my sister was old enough to learn she was battling with some pretty serious health problems. She's had the desire to learn and event knows a little about sewing. Not only that she has quite the stash of fabric from our grandmother and has the machine our mom got when she graduated from high school. I've been dragging her to quilt shops for a while and she's even started buying fabric for that future day when she's learned to sew/quilt.

This weekend we went shopping together and I needed to stop at the LQS to get some interfacing. As I was finding what I needed checking out the new fabrics she started poking around the sample bags that they have. She found the Barbados Bag by Pink Sands Design and asked if I could help her make it. Of course I agreed and we immediately started picking out our fabrics. I wanted to help her make the bag rather than doing it for her so I got fabric to make my own. 

I've tried teaching things to my sister in the past, but since our learning styles are very different it usually ended up in a half finished project and hurt feelings. This time I decided to work one step ahead of her and let her follow the pattern. It worked wonderfully because I had the time to figure out what we were doing. I also let her  follow the pattern and answered questions as she asked them. The only bad thing is that since she was a step behind me the whole time she didn't have her bag finished when it was time for me to leave.  She's got her strap sewn so I think she should be able to do the last steps on her own with phone support as needed.

As promised here's the pictures of my bag!

The back of the bag. (The full shot of the back turned out better than the front.) The blue fabric is divided into two pockets.

On the front of the bag there's a pocket behind the grey pebbly fabric and the blue fabric creates a zippered pocket. The top of the bag is also shut with a zipper. Zippers are still a little scary, especially when step 6 starts with the instructions "Don't be too afraid of this step!"

Thankfully the pattern is very well written with lots of pictures so it was easy to understand. The inside of the bag has two more pockets. I was so excited to find this purple flower fabric. It's the perfect lining and adds this touch of hidden color just for me.

Knothole Moebius Update

It's looking like a tangled mess right now, but it's growing.  (I love how the blue in thd yarn is the same as the blue on my quilt back. I hate that its May and one quilt is barely enough in the morning.)

It's a bit hard to tell, but there are all of these little loops or knotholes in the piece. I can't wait to block it and have those spaces really shine. 

Knothole Moebius

I've been enjoying working on my Knothole Moebius Cowl this week. It's a fairly simple pattern so it's easy for me to work on it at the end of the stressful work days that I've been experiencing. My one complaint is that every other row is purl. I don't know why, but purling is not nearly as fun as knitting.

Casting On and On and On

I debated whether or not I wanted to write this post since there isn't much to see. Since I'm trying to get back into regular blogging and I've committed to showing the truths of creating and not just the end result I give you my moebius scarf. When I fell in love with the pattern I thought I was making a mobius scarf where the piece is knit flat and then twisted at the end. Turns out it's knit with the thing twisted from the cast on. All I can say is thank goodness for YouTube. I think I watched Cat Bordhi's tutorial a dozen times and ripped it out three times before everything made sense. I'm still knitting the first round so I'm not completely out of the frogging stage, but it's starting to show some hope.

Kymberly's Knothole Moebius

EPP Travel Case

While working on my daffodil wall hanging I realized I enjoy having hand work that can travel with me. You'd think that with all the knitting I do travelling hand work should be pretty easy, but I don't tend to choose projects that are small and are easy to do a few stitches on when waiting places. I liked the applique, but even the small project was a bit big for my purse, and I haven't found very many applique patterns that inspire me to make them. Enter English Paper Piecing. I know this has been around for ages, but I've never felt drawn to it. I love that it's fairly small, I can just take a few pieces with me at a time, and the seams are short enough that it's easy to pack everything up when my turn is called or my break is over.

Since I want to travel with my EPP I decided my first project should be a case. I love this pattern from The Zen of Making. It has a front pocket for my thread, scissors, papers, and seam ripper. Inside is a divided pocket for my fabric and my completed flowers. When I was really young I found a quilting book at my grandmas and decided I wanted to give it a try. Knowing nothing about quilting and having the advise of two very skilled seamstresses who also knew next to nothing about quilting I decided my first quilt would be a Grandmother's Flower Garden. The quilt never made it past the planning stage, but the pattern has always had a special place in my heart. Since Grandmother's Flower Garden is a common EPP pattern I've decided to make flowers for that quilt. I sense this is going to be a project many years in the making, but that's okay. Sometimes slow stitching is exactly what the mind and heart need.