Sew-topia

For Christmas this year, Pete got me a wonderful sewing machine. Admittedly, I picked it out... something about a row of sewing machine models is overwhelming for my macho man husband. And it was kind of fair that way since his Christmas gift was a new pistol and I definitely didn't have the slightest clue about picking one of those out!
I had done a few projects on it around my days off and had many plans for future projects. Unfortunately, many of those project ideas were small... you know infant sized. So, last week when Pete set up my sewing machine and asked for some improvements to his work uniform, I had a little outburst. "I didn't want a sewing machine to fix your uniform!" I told him. "I wanted it to sew baby things!!!!"
So, we were off to Michaels arts and crafts to redirect my attention elsewhere. And I found this cool project book.

I was a little skeptical about how many projects I would be interested in doing with only one yard of fabric. But after quickly flipping through, realized I wouldn't mind making MOST of the projects in this book. I focused my creative engergies by asking the moms what they would like made. They both picked the same apron. The project had a few techniques I'd never tried before (as most of my sewing knowledge comes from 6th grade home economics and what I remember from that is limited). So the first time around involved a little seam ripping, a couple extra seams and snips, but it turned out pretty great none the less.

I gifted this one away to my mother in law Heidi, and started on number 2. It went a little quicker as I had mostly figured out what I was doing.

Its a little bit harder to see the detail since the colors are all so similar, but this one has purple trim and ribbons but other than that, is quite the same as the other. This one went off to mom's, I'm sure she will be all sorts of stylin' in her wilton cake decorating classes now.
I'm enjoying sewing because it requires enough focus to keep me from thinking about everything else too much. But there is a rhythm and monotonous-ness about it. So, next up is a project for me...

This is the picture from the book. A cute little handbag. I walked through the whole fabric store trying to find the perfect springy fabric. Here is the what I found.

A cute little black and white print with bright pink straps. I've got some light colored fabric for the inside so I will even have half a yard left over for another project! So for now, its back to the sewing machine for some more cutting, pinning, and putting back together.  I will let you know how it all comes together, but I'm feeling increasingly confident with my skills...