Mission Trip

Brian led a team from our church to Guatemala last month.  He asked me to sew water bottle holders for the ladies in the group.  I have wanted one of these for myself since we lived in Honduras.  I've had lots of time to think about what the ultimate water bottle bag would be like so when it was time to dive into this project I already had a good plan in mind. 

The inside is lined with a water-proof layer to prevent the entire bag becoming wet when the bottle sweats in the hot weather.  The outside has several small pockets to hold other essentials: hand sanitizer, bandaids, and of course a small pack of toilet paper.  The wild batik fabric made this a fun project!  I loved seeing each bag come together.

I also made several pairs of earrings for gifts for the workers at the school where the team worked on a retaining wall.

Baby Boots!

The next step in baby footwear... cowboy boots! The first pair came out nice, made out of cream 'pleather'. I made these as a Christmas gift from a piece of soft leather. The real deal is so much nicer than the fake stuff! And sewing with genuine leather was not as hard as I thought it might be. There's no going back to plastic now!

Baby Moccasins

I've been playing around with making baby shoes of different styles and I think I've found a winner!

Of course it helps to have a beautiful blue-eyed, though tubby, Indian to model them...

I have more time for thinking/planning than actually sewing now and these have been in my mind for some time now. I knew what I wanted them to look like, but I got hung up on the beading. Originally, I had thought to make blue or pink flowers, but I wanted them to be go with just about anything, and I wanted durability. I didn't think fragile seed beads would fit that bill. Wooden beads sewn on with a double strong thread add the charm I wanted, and seem like they will hold up well. The leather is an oh-so-soft remnant I found at a local hobby shop. I'm pleased with the results. An added blessing? Hope is all GIRL and loves to wear shoes so they will get plenty of wear! This design stays on well and will stretch to grow with her. So fun...and now all the siblings want a pair too!

Hair Donation

"Heirloom" Dress in a Day

This is the fourth...count them 1,2,3,and 4 dresses that I've sewn in the past few months for our new baby. I was hoping for a tiny dress that would just fit her when she was brand new. I guess I haven't been sewing baby clothes for to long because it took that many tries to get one small enough! And she's a big baby, 9lbs, 9oz! Seems I'm out of practice.

Anyway, I wanted an heirloom look, but didn't have the time for real smocking. I used the fancy stitches on my machine to do 'mock' smocking across the bodice and the detail around the collar. Adding in a few hand-worked lazy daisy stitches with bead centers give it the look I wanted in a much shorter time than traditional smocking. I completed the whole dress in a day and that was only working between nursing periods and schooling the kids.

What fun to have a new sweet one to sew for!

Colored Eggs