Happy Little Pouch Hop

Today is my stop on the Happy Little Pouch Hop organized by Elaine from Dashasel Sews and Emily from Mommy's Nap Time.  

Pouches are definitely one of my favorite things to make.  Here are some I've made this year.

As the mother of 3 little girls, my house is filled with hair accessories (well, my one year old doesn't use any - - yet!)  My older two (who are old enough to do their own hair) have some simple zip pouches to hold their hairbrushes, combs, elastics, barrettes, and headbands but every morning they empty out the entire contents to find what they want for the day and then - surprise, surprise - the unused accessories don't usually find their way back to the pouch.  So, I decided to try to make them a pouch with multiple compartments in the hopes that the new pouch would keep everything more neat and organized!

This is more of a "how I made it" as opposed to an actual tutorial but here is what I did.  If you have any questions/clarifications, please leave a comment or send me an email.

1.  Prepare your zippers.  I like to get rid of the metal parts of the zippers before I start my projects.  I just clip them off and sew a few stitches at each end of the zipper so that it doesn't come apart during my project.

2.  Prepare your fabrics.

For the inside of the pouch (pocket pieces), you'll need 6 exterior pieces and 6 lining pieces.  They all need to be the same width but you can vary the lengths if you want your pockets to be different sizes and you need to cut one exterior and one lining piece of each.  My pieces measured:  9.5 x 4.5", 9.5 x 6", and 9.5 x 8".  For the pouch in this how-to, I also used small pieces of fabric to separate the pockets - these were all 9.5 x 2.25".  You also need another piece of lining fabric (back lining) the same width and long enough to fit all the above pieces (mine was approximately 9.5 x 25".)

For the exterior of the pouch, you'll need a piece of fabric about 10x 26" and piece of batting about 12 x 28".  You'll also need two strips of fabric 2.5 x 20" for the straps.

3. Place one exterior piece right side up, the zipper right side down, and the lining right side down as shown and sew along the top edge - using your zipper foot. 

4.  Pull back the fabrics so that the wrong sides are together and topstitch.  Place one of the small strips of fabrics right side up, the zipper with the fabrics attached right side down and one of the small lining strips right side down and sew along the top.  Flip so the small strips are wrong sides together and top stitch.

5.  Repeat steps 3 and 4 with the other two sets of fabrics.  

6.  You can either now sew all of your pocket pieces together or you can do what I did for this pouch and attach them to the back lining piece one at a time (I did this by mistake while making this pouch (my 3rd) but I actually like it better this way.)   Put your pocket piece on the back lining piece as shown and stitch once along the bottom edge and a few times across the top strip. (Note:  I know this photo shows stitches along all four sides of the pocket piece but ignore that!)

 7.  Move the back lining piece out of the way and place the right side of the top strip of the attached pocket and the bottom edge of the next pocket together and sew with a 1/4" seam.  Put the back lining piece back in place and stitch a few lines along the bottom of the second pocket piece (make sure you enclosed the raw edge) and a few lines along the top.  Repeat with the third pocket.

8.  IMPORTANT:  Move your zip pulls to the center!!!  Did you move the pulls?  Okay, now we can continue.

I cut a piece of ribbon and a piece of crochet trim a little wider than my pockets (about 10") and placed them over two of the small strips of fabric.  Using a 1/4" seam, stitch both long sides as shown.

9.  Make the straps.  Take the strip of fabric and fold it in half lengthwise.  Press.  Unfold.  Fold each edge in toward the center and press.  Fold in half again and press.  Stitch closed.  Or make the straps however you prefer.  Or use ribbon or webbing.

10.  Quilt the large exterior piece to the batting.  I just used wavy lines about 3/4" apart.  Trim.

11.  Make sure your zipper pulls are still in the center.  Put the interior and exterior right sides together.  Insert the straps at the top edge so that most of the strap is between the two pieces.  Leaving a 5 inch gap on the bottom for turning, stitch around the perimeter right inside the stitching lines that are already there so that you enclose all the raw edges.  When you get to the straps, you can stitch over them a few times to reinforce.  IMPORTANT:  another zipper warning - make sure you avoid stitching over the top zipper pull when you are at the top edge - you should actually be at least an inch away but make sure you can feel it and that it is not anywhere near your needle!  

Clip the corners and turn.  Hand stitch the closing.

The inside:

The outside:

Be sure to visit the rest of the stops and upload your pouches to the Flickr group for a chance to win some prizes at the end of the week.

Monday 11/26: Emily from Mommy's Naptime and Elaine from Dashasel Sews

Tuesday, 11/27: Courtney from Mon Petit Lyons and Lucy from Charm About You

Wednesday, 11/28: Hollie from Undercover Crafter and Katie from Katie's Korner

Thursday, 11/29: Lindsay from Lindsay Sews and Michelle from I Like Orange

Friday, 11/30: Sara from Sew Sweetness, Cindy from Adventures of the Singing Quilter, and Jennifer from Ellison Lane Quilts

Monday, 12/3: Holly from Bijou Lovely and Heidi from Fabric Mutt

Tuedsay, 12/4: Elizabeth from Don't Call Me Betsy and Emily from Mle BB

Wednesday, 12/5: Shruti from 13 Woodhouse Road and Liz from Dandelion Daydreams

Thursday, 12/6: Beth from Plum and June and Kaelin from The Plaid Scottie
Friday, 12/7: Emily from Mommy's Naptime and Elaine from Dashasel Sews

****And if you are interested, I posted a tutorial for some mini quilts/photo frames using fun novelty fabrics earlier this week and there is a fabric giveaway post here for the Sew Mama Sew giveaway week.

Photo Corners Scrapbook Pages Mini Quilt Tutorial

There is an updated version of my Photo Corner Frame Blocks tutorial over at the Stash Books blog today.  My daughters still love making these with me and we decided that instead of making a wall hanging that can fit several pictures that we would make several wall hangings with one photo each.  And each wall hanging would have a theme like school pictures, pen pals, and sisters.  

We also decided to use fun fabrics in the place where the picture is to go so that the mini looks nice without or without a photo/drawing.

And then we updated the update!  The girls used fabric markers to create the center "fabric."  I think this might be my favorite version - it still has the photo corners so that you can insert interchangeable photos or artwork but it also permanently preserves some of their drawings (I have to remember to add their names and the date next time.)  

Click here to see the tutorial!

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day

It is the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!  If you are new to Plum and June - welcome!!!

This giveaway is from Tactile Fabrics - have you visited this shop?  They stock such a fun variety of fabrics including Bella and Chicopee as well as some organic fabrics from Birch and Cloud 9 and many beautiful custom bundles.  And I was excited to see that they have some Chicopee corduroy too!

One lucky person will win the pictured bundle of 9 fat quarters which includes my favorite Bella print as well as some Velocity and Monaluna.  You have 3 chances to win!

1.  To enter, simply leave a comment on this post.  Any comment will do but if you'd like a topic, how about recommending a good book - an exciting novel you just couldn't put down, a fun book for kids, a quilting book, or even a cookbook? (one entry)

Bonus Entries
2.  Plum and June followers - old and new - get a second entry.  Leave a comment indicating how you are following. (one entry)

3.  Tactile Fabrics followers -old and new- get a third entry.  You can follow them on Facebook here or Twitter here.  And if you are not on Facebook or Twitter, you can get this third entry by visiting Tactile Fabrics and coming back here to leave a comment about your favorite thing from their shop.  Leave a comment indicating which one of these you did and/or your favorite thing from Tactile Fabrics. (one entry)

So you can enter up to 3 times!  This giveaway will remain open until December 7, 2012 at 5pm PST and a winner will be picked at random and will be notified by email by December 9, 2012.  This post will also be updated with the winner's name by December 9, 2012.

The giveaway is now closed.  The winner is Carla who wrote:  Want something fun to read? Try . The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by A.N. Roquelaure aka Anne Rice.  Carla - I've sent you an email - Congrats!

****And unless you are sure that you are NOT a no-reply comment, please leave your email address in your comment.****

**Tactile Fabrics is offering a coupon code for all readers good for 15% off - use code PLUMJUNE15

And visit Sew Mama Sew to find more fun giveaways to enter!

Sewing Room Paper Piecing and the Monday Link Up

I always love using Kristy's paper pieced patterns (see here and here.)  She has such creative ideas for patterns and includes such fun details.  So when I saw her new sewing room pattern on her blog, I quickly volunteered to test it for her!

If you follow along with me on Instagram (plumandjune), you might have seen that I redid the bottom right corner AFTER attaching the binding to the front of the mini.  I had inadvertantly used the "wall" fabric instead of the "floor" fabric around the bucket.  As you can probably tell from looking at the seams on any of my quilts, I'm not much of a perfectionist but for some reason that little mistake bothered me.  So I unpicked the binding in that corner and redid the little square.  Of course, I now see that I gave the bucket a floating handle when I reattached it - oh, well!  

Now it is your turn - what have you been up to? Link up a sewing/quilting post, visit each other (at the very least, please visit the two people on the list before you), promote the link up with a text link or the button on my sidebar, and when the link tool asks for your name, write the name of your favorite holiday song.

November Fresh Sewing

Linking to Fresh Sewing Day at  Lily's Quilts.

The Small Version of a Big Quilt

I'm sure it will come to no surprise to anyone who reads my blog but I absolutely adore novelty fabrics!

My youngest daughter just turned one and my plan is to continue to collect cute fabrics and use them to make her a quilt for when she moves into a bed.  As I have some time before she is out of the crib, I used some of the blocks to make a doll quilt (which my daughters are giving to their cousin later this month.)

Now that I've finished the little quilt, I am so excited about making the large version - oh, and have I mentioned that I have never made anything larger than a lap size quilt???

And I'm still practicing FMQ - this time with a bright pink variegated thread (it is Aurifil 3660.)

I love how the typewriters fit right in with the mermaids and princesses!

I also took a few of the blocks and made some gift tags/ornaments.

And since I had the cute prints out, I figured I'd sneak a few into a paper piecing pattern that I am testing for a friend.

Linking to Freshly Pieced, Crazy Mom Quilts and Quilt Story.

Fabric Sales

Time to replenish your stash?  Looks like there are some great sales today!

Tactile Fabrics:  Everything is 20% off and it looks like many items are already marked down making it a total of 25% off.

Contemporary Cloth:  Everything is 20% off (25% for newsletter readers) and free U.S. shipping for orders over $35 (50% off shipping for international orders.)

Fat Quarter Shop:  Everything is 25% off.

Marmalade Fabrics:  Spend $50 on fabrics or patterns and receive $5 off your order.

I got all this information from the shop's websites and/or newsletters.  Click on the links for more details and the coupon codes.