Something different - A Wine Bottle Bag

How left field is this, a wine bottle bag?  At least for me anyway.  Why?  I'm not a "big" alcohol drinker....it makes me soooo sleepy, and if you haven't caught the name of my blog sleeping doesn't need to be induced (now if it could keep me asleep that would be a different story.) So making a wine bottle bag is something not necessarily on my to do list, BUT since I've never made one that is the reason why I did.  Does that make sense?

Art Gallery Fabric has a sewing challenge each month, and as you might have guessed the challenge this month is a wine bottle bag. So on the very last day to enter I've managed to get an entry completed for it. Wow!  I've wanted to do some of the recent challenges, but who knows where my time goes. 

Their rules are usually pretty simple and leaves most of the creativity up to you, however the challenges do call for you to use only Art Gallery Fabrics, and I did so happen to have some (courtesy of Art Gallery Fabrics, thank you). 

A few months back Art Gallery Fabric's did a shout out on their Facebook page to de-stash their stash of scraps.  I hollered back with my contact info and a few days later I got a pretty fat envelope with lovely, fresh colored fabrics.  I was really please with this little bundle, because it's so not in the direction I usually go with fabrics.  So it's very nice to have something different from the norm.

For this challenge I used 5 different fabrics, and decided to incorporate my Acuquilt Go Baby! 2 1/2" strip die.  I cut out several different fabric strips, folded them length wise, and layered them slightly overlapping one another. 

I probably could of...should of gathered them a bit for a ruffle effect, however I have to say I am very pleased on how this turned out, and even more pleased that I got around to do something for a challenge...even if it was last minute. 

 

So whatcha think?

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Giveaway Winners!

Sorry for the delay in announcing the giveaway winners.  I had issues re-adding comment numbers to my blog, a few months ago they disappeared, and it took me forever to find a fix that worked for me.  

Wow!  What a week it was last week with the Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway Day.  I hosted two giveaways, and it was really interesting to see the difference in entries for a finished product, a Market Bag, and supplies, a vintage sheet fat quarter bundle.

Between the two giveaways there was a total of 628 entries, 495 for the vintage sheet fat quarters, and 133 for the Market bag.  Wow!

All those entries blew me away.  Not only that, but my blog followers doubled in one week.  Holy freaken cow!  I've been blogging for just about a year and a half now and during that time 86 lovely readers have been gained, but within one week that doubled +1 to 173 readers.  Welcome to all the newbies, and a huge thank to all who entered my giveaways.

So onto the goodies.  I've selected two winners via Random.org.  The first giveaway for the Market Bag of their choice from my Etsy shop, out of a 133 entries, entry number 54 was selected.  Congratulations RyanSarahN .

The second giveaway was for 10 vintage sheet fat quarters, out of 495 entries, entry number 141 was selected. Congratulation SunnySewing.

Thank you again to all who entered, and to all of you who follow.  Have a great rest of the week.

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Thrift Share Monday - May 28

Last thrift share for the month.  Was it me or has this month seemed really long?

Lets get to it. 

During the week I tended to be a hermit and didn't get out much, but did get to some garage and estate sales on Saturday and Sunday.

Saturdays garage sales landed me these items.

A red kitchen utility cart.  It's missing a wheel, but hey for $5 I'm sure to find a wheel somewhere.  In the mean time we'll go pirate style with a peg leg.  AND don't forget another find of mine a few weeks ago, it matches this red Cosco stool/chair.  Yay!

 An aqua Samsonite vintage suitcase.  The hardware has seen it's better days, but to be honest it adds to the character of it.  I know there is someone out there who'd love to use this as a display piece.

This wire rack.  A little elbow grease and this might make a good display piece for my pouches/wallets, when I do craft shows.


An old bird cage.  For who knows what.

 These two cute Sterling China Co coffee mugs.  There are really cute and chubby.  They kinda remind of the Maxwell House coffee commercials, "Good to the last drop".

 Random Fire King and Pyrex milk glass.

 This really cool vintage Polaroid land camera.  It's in fantastic condition, and sooo interesting.

Sunday's estate sales 
A super cute pink and black vanity stool.

An enamel pot with wire holder. 

Some vintage thread and buttons. 
 
At times do you wonder why you had to think so hard about buying something?  For example there was this large painting my mom was looking at at an estate sale.  It was $25, and it was 50% off day...so the painting was actually $12.50.  We stood and looked at it saying it was really nice, pretty, it was a great painting.  So why did it take us several minutes to pull it off the wall?  Really.  You can't get a little wall art piece at Target or Wal-mart for that price.  Plus she has a beach-y theme in her bedroom, whites and tans with some shells here and there.  So it should have been a no brainer.

 It's already mounted above her bed.  :-)

Oh and finally after a dry few weeks I'd finally scored some vintage sheets.  Yay! 

Any luck out thrifting? Include the link to your finds with your comment so we all can see. 

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Upcycled, Full, Circle Skirt

Last week my 12 year old daughter's middle school had spirit week.  Each day they had a different theme to dress to.  Aside from super hero day and 50's day she figured what she wanted to wear for the theme....or not.  For Monday's super hero day she asked me to buy her a shirt with super heroes and I got her one with Wonder Woman, Cat Woman, and Super Girl.  Boy, did I luck out on finding a girl super hero shirt at Wal-Mart.

50's day was a whole other situation.  She wanted a full skirt, something along the lines of what she has seen on Grease, and asked me to make her a skirt.  My first thought was "no, I have a Poodle skirt somewhere and you could use that".   Days later I found it, and it didn't fit her,  which was already known since she has....out grown my size.  So there went that idea, and I was still left with her wanting a skirt and giving me directions on what she wanted with three days 'til 50's day. 

She wanted a polka-dot skirt. Oh lord.  I really hadn't planned on making a skirt and I even told her I wasn't going to go out and buy $15-$22 worth of fabric on a skirt I've never made before.  The next best thing ...well of course $3 worth of sheet. 

I doubted I would find anything that would work, and polka-dot, yeah good luck with that, but I should know better than to doubt my favorite thrift store.  Monday I went to see if I could find a dress or a skirt I could possibly alter, but no such luck.  Then during my search for vintage sheets I found a polka-dot sheet.  This could work, but would she like the colors?  It's 100% cotton and extremely soft.

I choose not to show her the sheet, and the next day I worked on the skirt (after taking a quick waist measurement from her that morning before school).   I did have to do some Google searches to see how to cut out the waist.  I'd already had an idea after seeing many tutorials, but I wanted measurements.

I found this circle skirt tutorial on Made.  So I got my waist measurement formula from there.  Then it was time to start measuring and cutting up the sheet.  My daughter is just a few inches shorter than me so I figured the skirt length by measuring from my waist down to just below my knees. 

First I cut out the center/waist section, then measured 21" from that point all the way around the cut to create my dotted/cutting line for the length. 

See pink chalk marks.

Then took the scissors to it.  Yikes!


Ok, the scary part was out of the way.  I next serged the edge of the waist and bottom of the skirt. I really wanted to be lazy and not do this, but I figured I'd be kicking myself later if I skipped this step...even if she only wears it one time.

Since I serged the waist I was able to hem the waist with a single fold, where I could insert some elastic.  This was a bit challenging though.  The waist wasn't straight (it's curved) so folding 1" all around wasn't a clean flat fold, it tended to bunch up at places, but it's not noticeable since the skirt gathers from the elastic anyway, phew.

I also did a narrow single fold hem at the bottom of the skirt, just enough to fold the serged end in.  This was the longest part of the process....slow sewing.  At one point it seemed like I was working on this skirt forever, but it took me just over an hour to make.

And the end results?  My daughter loved it. 

It's not very 1950's-ish (I don't recall Sandy, from Grease, wearing Converse), but my daughter was happy with it, and that is all that matters.

Oh and what great timing, that I hadn't planned on.  It's Skirt Week (AKA Skirt Month) over at CrafterHours so I'm gonna go ahead and enter this skirt for SNG's.  Maybe I'll get off my bottom and attempt some skirts for myself.  I desperately need some new items added to my wardrobe.

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Thrift Share Tuesday - May 22

Sorry, I got behind on my Thrift Share Monday due to Sew,Mama,Sew! Giveaway Day.  See what I have for the giveaway in Part 1 & Part 2.

Let's dive right in with this weeks finds.

Early in the week I found this freaken awesome end table.

I posted about it last week asking for some help identifying it, since I'm extremely bad with dating/identifying furniture.  I got one reply from Julia over at A Living Space (a new to me blog).  This is Julia's response

"This looks very similar to the style of mid century slat benches. The legs definitely have that atomic / mid century look. I would definitely guess that it was made somewhere in the neighborhood of the 1960's." 

I'm glad I have more info on this table, but if anyone out there has something to ad please do.  :-)

At one of my regular stops I spotted this cute mushroom mug,

and as I scanned the shelf for some more I spot on a separate shelf a matching snack plate. Yay!

Friday me and my mom went to an estate sale that was being managed by a family (usually way cheaper than a company estate sale).  I almost missed this because it wasn't on the estate website I usually check out.  Good think I was looking at garage sale listings for Friday.

Me and my mom were there for over an hour, and I got soo dirty.  I spent $31 and she spent $42, and this is what we bought with that money.

My buys for $31

A couple of large jars.  One of these days I'll get a terrarium to live longer than one week.

Two Forest Fancies Pyrex casserole dishes in fab condition.

A Corning Ware Spice of Life pan (pot?, casserolle?).

Two large galvanized wash bins.

A very large 15" glazed pot. It's huge, and heavy.

This large old coffee pot.  Mom has already claimed it as decor for the kitchen.

Some office supplies.  I have no idea on when I'll need that much twine, but hey for $1 I'll do something with it. 

D-clamps.  You never know when you might need these...or never, but it's nice to have just in case.

This lovely vintage scarf.

And then this standing table lamp.  Its shade doesn't seem to go well with it.

Look at it.  It matches the lamp I just rewired last week.  How weird is it to fix up a garage sale find that I've had for months, then two days later find a matching table lamp?

They are not just similar, they match, looks to be part of a set, as in same color, same pattern on the glass, and same pattern on the base.   Freaky!  Who's found a matching set of lamps, at completely different times, with night light bases before?  Seriously, I don't think it happens frequently. 


Now on to what my mom bought for $42 (some stuff she gave to my sisters right away...so I didn't get to take photos of them)

An extremely heavy cement bear bench. 

  Aw, it resembles Honey (our family dog), whom we call Honey Bear. Well, their butts are the same. And I just looked it up online since there was a marking on it.  It's a Lomeli's bench that sells new for $395.   She bought it for $20.  Holy Cow!!!

See? Doesn't she have a bear-butt?

She wasn't too happy with this photo shoot.

A cement bird bath, about 2 1/2 feet tall.

A fish planter, succulent not included.


Some of the other items she got (not photoed) were office supplies, a double boiler pasta pot, a wooden owl sculpture, other small cement critters, and a large Navajo type sculpture.

At a separate garage sale I got these super old National Geographic magazines. The covers are aged, but the interior pages are crisp and bright.  It's almost like the covers are from another life and the interior pages are brand new. Very strange. 

I just love some of the ads in these. Who wants a 6-cyclendar Whippet Sedan for $770?  I do!

 And who needs coffee that keeps you awake?  How about some "Kaffee  Hag Coffee" that lets you sleep, and "doctors" even recommend it. 

How is "Hag" an appealing word or name for coffee?  If you're getting your sleep wouldn't something like "Beauty" sound better since you're getting your beauty sleep?

And I LOVE this refrigerator!

And that is all for my week.  I did attempt some garage sales on Saturday, but nothing did much for me so I didn't spend.  Where I did spend money was at the Renegade Craft Fair that was here this weekend.  I bought some jewelry, something I usually don't spend money on, but I'll go into that in another post.

Wow, that was a long post. 

 How was your week thrifting?

Don't forget to enter my giveaways if you're interested in a bundle of vintage sheet fat quarters, or a reversible vintage sheet market bag.

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