my adventures in sewing

Hello everyone!  Hope you were able to grab your own set of Sister Stamps June release today. 

Today I wanted to share about my newest hobby, sewing!  I was spending a lot of time learning how to sew and just trying to get used to my sewing machine that I think I forgot how to color with Copics and how to make cards.  Card making does require some practice!  But so does sewing.

Anyway, I've always wanted to sew but I guess I was a bit lazy and maybe a bit scared to try.  What it really took was making something that looked not so great that got my perfectionist side to learn to sew.  I bought those Papertrey Ink Coin Purse Dies because in theory it looked simple and cute too but in actuality I couldn't stand how the stitching looked around the zipper.  It drove me kind of crazy and I tried to figure out a way to hide the ugly stitching on the inside.

This is the coin purse I made using the PTI dies.  The fabric is cute right?  And the outside stitching I guess is okay but the zipper stitching bugs me.

Here's the inside and you can see all the ugly stitching from the zipper.  I guess someone had suggested adding fabric tape over it?  Anyway, my hubby saw it and he didn't think it looked too great either so he set up my sewing machine and read the directions!  So then I was off sewing.  I think these PTI dies are okay for making coin purses for children but definitely not for adults.  Plus it was hard to cut the fabric even with multiple passes through my Big Shot.  It would cut the holes on the long side but not the short side.  Kind of frustrating.

My first sewing attempt was making some keychains.  I made these for some teachers using fabric instead of ribbon. 

Here is my first coin purse I made with my sewing machine.  This was my practice one and my zipper is a little too short since I had bought all these short zippers to go with the PTI dies!

This is my second coin purse and matching material with the keychain.  I used a bit longer zipper and just trimmed it to fit the coin purse.  This is large enough to fit a gift card so I put one in there for one of the teachers.

And look, it's lined!  And the zipper part doesn't look too bad, does it?  I was pretty proud of this one.  Hehe.

So I made another matching set!  I put gift cards in here too. 

And again, it's lined!  I really love that the lining covers the zipper and looks pretty.  I followed a tutorial from The Crafty Gemini HERE.  I just followed the basic steps to make a smaller coin purse.

So now I don't know what I should do with the PTI dies.  I guess I could use them in making cards but seems like a waste of money.  At least I can sew a little now so that makes me happy.

I had a lot to say in this post!  Thanks for reading!

Teacher Cards & Gifts

Hi everyone!  Yay!  Sister Stamps previews will be starting soon!  Did you see how cute the stamps are for the June release?  I'll be back later to share my Sister Stamps creations.

Today, I have some cards to share that I made for the teachers.  These are all very simple since I made about 12.  Then I realized that I usually don't make special school themed cards.  Most of the time I give the cards I've been making through out the year.  Otherwise my stash of cards is just out of control.

See, simple right?  I used MFT's apple die and cut the apples with some red felt.  The sentiment is from Lawn Fawn.

A couple of other Thank you cards with different sentiments, also from Lawn Fawn.  I really liked how the felt apple turned out.

Then I made some washi paper apples for the Japanese language teachers.  I made 5 of these.  These apples turned out so pretty!

And more sewing!  These are longer than the ones I made for the children and also more complicated!  Instead of ribbon, I cut strips of Japanese fabric which is so time consuming!  Plus you have to fold over the edges and iron them down so they are nice and straight.  Well, sometimes it's not always straight so hopefully the teachers aren't eyeing the stitching too closely.  Ribbon usually has a ridge near the edge so I used that as a guide to sew straight but the fabric doesn't so I really had to concentrate.  But I really do love the look of this key chain.

And this is for all the Hello Kitty lovers!  This one was even more complicated than the above because the fabric is mostly white so you could see through the material when you folded over the edges.  So I ended up using some fusible webbing and a strip of white fabric under it.  But of course that made it bulkier and sewing was a bit trickier.  I have a couple that I ended up tossing to the side.  And yeah, sewing straight and near the edges was difficult on this one as well.  I need lots more practice!  But I think these turned out super cute!

If you're wondering how to make these, there are tons of tutorials, just Google it and etsy has lots of supplies.  Just search for the hardware on etsy and you'll get lots of stores. 

Hope you're enjoying the weekend!  Thanks for visiting!