The good news is, my hand is finally mostly healed. Still a bit tender, and no where near as strong as it was (cutting veggies for a tart wiped out all the strength I had that day), so there is still some work to be done there. But it no longer hurts to use scissors or my rotary cutter, so I’m trying to catch up on all the projects I started way back in August!
Part of my therapy was to try to do a bit of sewing without cutting, so in late September or early October I started piecing these 3″ squares I had cut out years ago for a kids project. Halloween fabrics were on top, so I made the beginning of a table runner with them. At some point I realized it was too wide for a table runner, but I could divide it up and make a set of four place mats instead. Good thing my seam ripper is fairly ergonomic, as I made heavy use of it, but here’s the end result:
Set of four place mats, machine quilted.
And a view of the back:
Set showing the back of one of the mats. Lots of little spiders with big eyes!
It felt good to put the last stitch into the binding of the fourth mat, before Halloween actually shows up on the calendar, but it’s probably too late to try to sell them on my Etsy store. So unless someone contacts me to purchase them, they will go into storage and I’ll put them up for sale next September or so. Still, it was very therapeutic to work on them while my hand was healing, and they were a lot of fun. The machine quilting kind of creates a spider web effect, using dark grey Aurifil cotton thread.
I also started making some tote bags, prompted by a need for a tote bag for a baby shower gift. I found this great owl fabric at the store in the remnant pile, and after I finished cutting it up for the main tote bag I realized I had just enough for a second one. So, today I finished this mother-daughter set of tote bags. The owl fabric has a wonderful dark purple background, and the teal of some of the owls almost perfectly matches the accent fabric inside. The teal accent fabric looks a bit like feathers to me, which is why I went with it, but I think it’s supposed to have a knitted look instead.
This photo shows the inside of the large tote bag, and the outside of the small one.
Both the large and the small tote bags have the owl fabric on the outside, with smaller pieces inside forming the pockets. The small tote has the same two pockets shown on the larger one above. The large tote also has a much larger pocket, big enough to hold a Kindle or similar small tablet/ereader (about 6″ wide by 8.5″ high). I didn’t have enough of the teal fabric to make the handles for the small tote, hence the black handles, but I think they go well with the owls’ eyes.
Next project is to start making things that I might be able to sell at a Christmas holiday market the week after Thanksgiving. I have a few ideas, and will post as I have interesting things to share. 🙂
Happy Halloween, y’all!!
