Nothing spectacular for the last day of Thing-a-day. I made a vintage rose Morsbag for a forum tag and will have quite a few more Morsbags to sew within the next month.
Congrats to those of you who made a thing a day everyday this month! I am certainly envious! Thing-a-day was certainly flowing with creativity and inspiration 
Hope to keep up with everyone next time!
Posting this a couple days late because I forgot to photograph it on Sat. night when I made it. I wove two Weavette squares from my hand-spun, home-grown, naturally coloured, brown cotton. Then I sewed the squares into a bag. I messed up the weaving a bit because I was in a hurry on Friday when I was weaving the squares (Thing 22). I learned that brown cotton, loosely woven, bears a visual resemblance to burlap, so next time I’ll probably choose a different technique for this cotton.
Day 17 was more productive than day 18. Day 17 I made this Faeries & Butterflies bag. Similar to the Kitty Cat Bags. I absolutely love faeries and butterflies so I’m loving this bag. Still, I have more than enough bags and purses around, so I plan on posting this up on etsy sometime this week.
My son had today off of school for President’s Day. Last week he kept coming home with watercolor paintings from art class. I was impressed with some of his work and thought it might be fun if the two of us did some watercolors today. We picked up some paper and watercolor pencils (I thought I would be less gimpy with the pencils) from the craft store this morning. So for day 18, I present to you my first ever watercolor! I know you all are jealous of my mad art skills and only wish you could paint all kindergarten-ish like I do. Sad to say, this will not be going up in my future etsy shop as I have already promised this masterpiece to someone else. Yes, I know you all are disappointed…I can tell by your laughter.
My watercolor is of a dream I had where I was in a forest and I was surrounded by a field of happy singing daisies. They weren’t normal daisies though (as if them singing didn’t already tell you that) because rather than having stems, they had tree trunks. They also looked much cuter in the dream, and not quite as sloppy.
Today, I ‘felted’ the bag I finished knitting yesterday. I decided to do it by hand in hot soapy water - it’s about 3 inches wide.
Day 17. It is funny how much I do each day, baking is almost a constant. Every day I bake or cook something so I always have that to fall back on as my creation of the day. Yesterday I spent some time with a friend and made a bag for her daughter, one of the coolest girls I know. It came out lovely and exactly the way she wanted. It does have a few pockets inside, has about a 2 inch gusset, and will hold her treasures. Seems the bag she had was not big enough to hold everything she holds dear.
http://gentlegull.blogspot.com/2008/02/im-keeping-up.html
Well, I decided to go with the wrong linings matched to each bag.
My daughters love them, and I’m going to now take a break from my sewing machine for a little while.
Blogged at www.greetingarts.typepad.com.
I’m quite sure the learning log doesn’t count as a thing, but I had to do it so I did.
The purse that I started the other day is now finally complete.
Pieces, where you can see the pretty inner lining before I put it together.
Today I made a bag out of bags. I picked up the idea from Iggy Jingles Blog and she had a link to the instructions on Gooseflesh blog. Since I have an overabundance of those plastic grocery bags at home, just waiting for some useful purpose, this was perfect. You know I hate to throw these things away, there has to be something to do with piles and piles of plastic grocery bags. I know many people use fabric bags but I shop for a month at a time and have no where near the amount of fabric bags it would take to do that. LOL.
Anyway back to my thing a day. Making the strips of plastic was easy, crocheting with it a bit more difficult than yarn BUT certainly still easy. The bag is a bit stretchy because of the plastic but certianly durable. Thinking it would be great for the beach. May have to make a few more of these.
Well, here’s my partial project for today, a mess up.
I made these as Valentine’s gifts for my girls, but matched up the wrong linings to the wrong outer shells. BUMMER! Now I don’t know whether to rip it out and do it right, or just leave it and sew up the last seam and call them done. You can cast your vote at my blog, I’m too tired to think right now!
Today I let my older son play hooky from school so we could have a day to hang out. It’s only first grade, no big deal. Besides, we had to do his Valentine’s Day bag assignment. Yep, it was homework, a requirement. Way to suck the fun right out of the whole shebang, teacher! So we made it fun. Well, fun for him since he got to play with glue and sand his favorite character of all time. I do hope the teacher won’t have an issue since the assignment said ‘person’ and ours isn’t really a person.
I was sort of cringing at the glue and sand and general mess, but I think I kept myself reined in pretty well. We also got all the valentines in their envelopes, sealed and lollipops attached. While we were out getting the paper for the water portion, and a few other things, we stopped at Steak and Shake and I added about 10 lbs to my backside from guzzling a deeelicious vanilla shake. And burger and fries. Yum. It’s a good thing we don’t play hooky very often! I’m ready for a nap so I can dream away those calories.
So here is his valentine’s paper bag ‘person’.
OK this isn’t something new, I knitted the bag a while ago from the beautiful yarn my husband picked out for me for Christmas. I love the yarn, love him for picking it out especially for me. I have been hesitant to felt the bag, although I made it large because I wanted to try my hand at felting.
So that is my thing for today. The bag is felted. I am not sure that it is done though. I would like to find a fabulous piece of fabric from my stash for a lining. Find just the right closure for the bag and maybe felt the strap a bit more. It still has a bit more “stretch” to it than I would like. But here it is….my fabulous felted bag…..
I decided to sew today. I really wanted to make a tote out of some canvas that I bought a while ago, but I couldn’t find it. hurrumph. So I pulled out other fabric that I bought last week to make a sewn version of my knitted circular “berry” clutch. I figured sewing them would be faster than knitting, and I think it will be once I figure out my pattern. The progression has been frustrating, and I’ve had to rip out seams several times. It looks easy, but is actually more complicated than I thought. Or maybe I’m making it more complicated than it should be? We’ll see. My only successful sewing today was hemming a pair of jeans that were too long for me.
Title: Money bags
Description: Gift bags decorated on a Monopoly money theme
Inspiration: This day in history, the Monopoly board game goes on sale in stores (1935)
Today was the first day in about a month that I’ve had coffee. Woohoo! I was buzzing around like a hummingbird after that and managed to accomplish quite a bit. Below is my “thing” for today.
Monkeys!
I can’t even stand the lil guys, but I made this bag for someone in Swap-bot who loves them.
…my gym partner is a monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey…
Since I bought this tiny digital camera, I decided I need a pouch to keep it in. And I thought it’d be a good idea to make a pouch that I could carry both the camera and the USB cord, in case I want to be able to charge it or upload photos in the office or at my parents’. I thought of doing it in crochet, but decided to use fabric instead. I decided to make two separate pockets in it, one for the camera and the other for the cord.
The outer fabric is actually a very pretty turquoise color with the tiniest paler blue leaf print. It’s actually cotton quilting fabric. I used a navy blue wool felt for the inside so that the camera would be cushioned and inside something soft. The felt is leftover from making my son’s apron for his tribal regalia.
I used navy blue yarn to sew up the edges and to decorate the separation between the two pockets. The button is a fabric covered purple tie-dye button that’s left over from one of my favorite dresses. When I got the dress, it was missing a button on the cuffs so I ended up putting a completely different set on it and saved this one. Narrow navy ribbon is used to wrap around the button to hold the pouch closed.
Bad photo can be found here.
I love that where I am it’s still 11:45. Zing, win. Anyway.Just in the nick of time, I post my third thing-a-day! Huzzah! Now, this really was more of a challenge for me. Simple sewing? No. Why, you ask? Because until this very day, I didn’t know how to sew! It was an educational day. I had my mom show me, and there were various points where I went “F***. Fix it. Mommmmm make it work.” or something to that extent, haha. And even though it’s a bit lopsized and the stitches are a bit hazardous, I sewed something! Which I’ve never done before! And therefore, it is naturally exciting and an accomplishment for me. And now, background. I’ve had that bag for a year, I got it at Old Navy and it’s been fabulous. I found that Tree of Life patch at a artsy store in Northampton MA. Deciding both things would look really great together, I put off having someone else sew them together so that I could purposely learn how to sew using this as my inspiration/impetus. Another thing about the bag: the handles are dying. I’ve used it so much the leather is fraying on the parts I’ve grabbed often, so I decided to tape over them and preserve the handles a little longer - my cheap, crafty version of repairing my bag 
More pictures of the process here!
