What do you mean it's the end of March already?!

Holy guacemole! It's been a fair while since I've posted. Lame!
Anywho, let me tell you about the latest most greatest things that have been going on in my world.

I'll start with the boring non-creative stuff.

In late Febrary/early March my work life was crazy hectic, luckily in early Feb I decided I'd take the second week of March off. Totally glad I did it, otherwise I think I'd have gone cray-crazy!

Last weekend I went for a gallivant OS to see my parents. It was nice to hang out with my parental units. I just did some reading and lots of sleeping. My main read was a book that I've been working on for some time, I've been nursing this book along slowly because I devoured the first volume within a month.  I do like me a little Sherlock Holmes.

My holiday read - Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume II

Mum kept apologising that we weren't doing anything special, but I wasn't bothered. It was nice just being out of my usual environment.

The view from the room I was sleeping in. I love the colours, blues and greens. Yeah you're jealous :-P

I did manage to get creatively productive when I got back. On Friday I set up my sewing machine, my DVD viewing setup and I was ready to get my craft on. Oh yeah!

Aaages ago I started what I intend to be a bento box quilt and I thought if I was going to be sewing and watching a DVD at the same time straight sewing was going to be the best way to go so I worked on putting together more blocks. I put together 4 blocks at a time. Here are the fruits of my labour!

Please excuse the blurry photos. Shame!

That afternoon I went to Big W and bought some variegated yarn, some cheap fabric and a couple of other bits and bobs.

I got 4 balls of this Sean Sheep-Rockbank

The yarn is for a scarf I'm crocheting. The fabric was for a bag bag, the Mr requested on so we could wrangle our collection of plastic bags in the cupboard.

The Mr was out of town on Saturday and Sunday morning, which gave me some all-about-me time. Saturday morning I went to a Brisbane Northside Knitting and Crochet Group  meeting. I've only been to a few, but it was fun and I got started on my Clapochet. You can read about my Clapochet on Ravelry.

My Clapochet in progress.

My sister and I went out for lunch and she came over to my place afterwards. We watched Red Dog and we talked about her plans for her sewing patterns and her online presence.

When she left I watched The Help and made the bag bag requested by the Mr out of the fabric I bought from Big W. This is my creation complete and in use, tres neutral, tres useful.

While I was out and about Saturday morning I got a text from a friend that she was going to have a birthday brunch Sunday morning. She said no presents, but I ignored that part :) I pondered what I was going to make for her and I went to bed with a plan.

I woke up Sunday morning had a shower and got down to work on my friend's gift. I had some curtain fabric I had bought last year to make a different gift that I hadn't gotten around to making.

I cut two 12' by 18' pieces of the fabric. The fabric was shiny on one side and dull on the other, I used the shiny side of one of the pieces and the dull side of the other as the right side. The wrong side of the pieces were interfaced with adhesive interfacing. With right sides together, I sewed around the sides and left an opening in one of the short sides. The corners were clipped and it was turned right side out.

I zigzag stitched the side with the opening along the edge to close the opening. I stitched so that one side of the zigzag stitch missed the edge of the fabric while the other side of the stitch caught the fabric. This created a great over edge binding for the fabric. I should have done the whole side of the fabric, but I only did it to close the opening and to one end of the opening side. Silly. Oh well, you live and you learn. :)

Next was to sew the sides to create the pouchy bit. So I folded the short end with the zigzag edging up a third and zigzagged the sides together. Ta da!

My pouch is complete!

You might just be able to see that the outside is mostly shiny while the inside is mostly dull

Here's a close-up of the zigzag stitching.

I gave the pouch to my friend with a set of coasters that I had made before (you can read about them here).

The pouch and coasters. A doubley handmade gift!

That's about it from me my dear.
Until next time, do things you want to do, when you want to do it,
V xoxo