Abbey Bags: A Fix and A Finish

Sewing: A creative mess is better than tidy idleness. -Unknown

I made my first Abbey Bag as a gift for my cute friend, Iris. The instructions were a little bit hard to follow in a couple of places, so I interpreted them the best I could and the pincushion/bag turned out reasonably well. The only problem with it was that the bag sort of stood at attention instead of being all puffy and open and cute. When I went back to make a couple more, I had a few der moments, when I realized where I'd gone wrong. The pattern calls for fusible fleece, which I had difficulty translating in my head to mean fusible batting. I used Pellon Peltex 71F, which worked really well for the flower, but was too stiff for the bag. When I decided to make a few more of these cute little pincushion/bags, I just used some Warm & Natural I had on hand to line the bags, using my walking foot to sew that part. The result was much better.

Iris mentioned in passing that she'd had kind of a hard time getting really good use out of the bag part of this pincushion/bag combo. Later, after I realized my mistake with her bag, I asked her to send it back so that I could fix it for her. I pulled the bag apart and then ran an iron over the fabric that was fused to the Peltex and it easily came apart. I put it back together with some batting and was so glad that I could fix her bag so that it is all puffy and cute. It sits open like it is supposed to, so hopefully she'll have no trouble at all using it.

I'm kind of fixated on these little pincushions. I get that way sometimes. It is really fun to come up with different fabric combinations and make the same thing over and over in different ways. But since I don't really need more than one pincushion {although the jury may just still be out on that one . . . two couldn't really hurt, could it?}, it is fun to make them as little gifts in fabric combinations that I think will suit the recipient.

Around Easter time, I made a new blog friend. Her blog is called Pink Suede Shoe. How could I not investigate? In her post that day, Pink said she loved black jelly beans and I commented that she could have mine. We were fast friends from that moment. Today we met for the first time. We were all set to go to the Quilt Show at the Springville Art Museum. She brought pie {and let me tell you, it was delicious . It will be gone before dinner} and I had a little something for her too.

I did a few aprons using this adorable Apple and Pears fabric and have since decided that I'm going to make an ironing board cover for my big ironing board out of this fabric. When I went back to get some more, however, I couldn't find it. I went several times, and mentioned that I wasn't having any luck finding more. Pink told me that she'd been in to JoAnn's recently and they did, in fact, have some {it turns out that they just moved it and I wasn't looking in the right place} or that she had some in her stash {because she has a thing for pears} that I could have. A little light turned on . I pulled my apples and pears aprons scraps as well as the left-over ruffle fabrics in green and pink and added in the striped fabric {which seems totally made for the apples and pears}, and voilá. An Abbey Bag for Pink. And a finish for August .

As it turns out, the Museum is closed on Mondays , so we'll have to schedule another play date. I wonder what I could trade for some more of that pie ?