Salmon and Souvlaki

Last weekend, I was in charge of a craft-making party for the women at our church.  We made felt Christmas ornaments to sell at the Advent Bazaar in December, to benefit the mercy ministries at our church.  I searched the Internet, found these designs, sewed a sample of each, and then together, we all made 21 more.  So now we have 26 to sell.  We’re hoping to have more parties with more ornaments!

Aren’t they cute?  (And now that I know how to make them, I’m definitely making some for our own tree!)

Anne, Heather, and I decided to chose a much harder project for our Sewing Club Summer Edition 2010 adventure (at least harder than the one we chose for last summer).  So we chose the Tabitha Bag, a gorgeous bag that I’ve admired for a long time from the blog, Flossie Teacakes.  It turned out to be quite complicated but oh so satisfying to make in the end.  This was my first time sewing with linen.  And yes, it’s hard to sew with it.  But I love how the bag turned out and I even already had one offer to buy one should I decide to make them as a business!  (This coming from a Crate and Barrel employee!)

We were particularly attracted to this bag because of all the gorgeous details, such as the pleats and narrow fancy fabric on the outside and the additional fancy fabric strip on the inner pocket.

I am also a big fan of the polka dots that I chose for the lining!

We do need to take a picture of all three of us with our awesome Tabitha bags!

For some reason, I had crazily swollen feet yesterday.  So I needed a project to keep me busy while still sitting.  Enter the pinecone wreath.  Actually, the puff ball wreath or whatever these things are called.

I’ve loved them ever since I saw them for the first time during my freshman year at Houghton.  We don’t have these kind of trees in Alaska so I was fascinated by them.  I think I even saved some to give to Mom.  (Right, Mom?).  I decided to make a wreath out of them, based on this tutorial.  I started it last December but didn’t get far.  The only complication I didn’t anticipate?  Pinecones have flat bottoms.  These don’t.  Enter the hot glue gun and LOTS of glue!  A few hours later, here it is!  It’s not quite finished – I still have to pull off all the hot glue strings and add some ribbon.  But it’s done enough for me to be proud of it!