Sewing Circle

Last week while doing FaceTime with my older brother and his family, I felt like I had reverted back to my childhood.  I mentioned that I was going to have some friends over for a sewing circle.  And like so many times when I was a little girl, Doug poked fun at me.  We all had a good laugh (I can laugh at myself a lot better now then I could as a child), and while maybe it sounds like a dorky thing to do, I had a blast.  I love sewing circle.  I can't wait to do it again.  (And like Doug should make fun of me, his own wife, Sarah aka Blue Susan, would have come to my sewing night if only we didn't live on opposite coasts!  Have you seen the cute little earbud/coin pouches she recently made?  I totally need to make one for my iPod shuffle. I lose it all the time, and I think it would help me keep track of it.  The darn thing is currently lost.  Boo hoo.)

First, and probably the most important part of sewing circle are the treats!  Ladies (and any gents that happen to follow MoM), you will want to try this.  I think I'm going to make it again tomorrow for Grace's teacher for teacher appreciation week.  If this treat ended up in your hand as a gift, you'd feel VERY appreciated.  You'll appreciate me for passing along the hot tip of a recipe.  Go HERE to get all the deets.  Oh, and if you live close by me, Safeway doesn't sell Chocolate Chex.  Go to Target!

Next up were my lady friends who came to sew, but sadly I didn't get one single shot of my sewing circle friends.  Next time!

Okay, so my first project of the night was to take a scrap from the chevron bags that I made, use fabric paint to monogram it, and then once the fabric paint was dry I was going to sew it into a throw pillow.  Everything was going sew well until I peeled off my freezer paper and discovered that my ironing skills were lacking and my paint bled.  Totally tragic.

Sadly, I didn't have enough scrap left to try it again.  Maybe I'll order some more chevron fabric, or maybe I'll just use another fabric.  Anyway, my medium is definitely fabric not fabric paint!  I still need some practice in that area.

Turtles are slow and sew were making my scrappy circle placemats!

While I was waiting for my letter B to dry, I worked on what I'm starting to feel like was the slowest moving project I've every done...my round scrappy placemats.

I was inspired by these round scrappy placemats, and looking at her placemats I should have a) used bigger squares, and b) made my circles bigger.

However, I have to say, even though my circle placemats are a bit small, I really love them.  They are colorful and bright.  I never intended for them to be used with my formal china, but rather I thought it would be fun to use them more as my everyday placemats.

 Grace and George used them for breakfast the morning after I finished them.  And, yes, George eats pasta for breakfast.  It's more nutritious then lots of things he asks to have for breakfast, so I go with it.

All of the scrappy circle placemats are made with primarily Anna Maria Horner fabrics.  Except for two that I used two different Amy Butler prints I had and then matched other fabrics to them.

The hardest part of these circular sweeties was the binding.  Most of the time when I finish and bind a quilt, if I'm making my own bias tape, I don't cut it on the bias.  When you cut fabric on the bias it takes up A LOT of fabric and you end up cutting down the diagonal center of your fabric making future projects with the fabric tricky (or nearly impossible).  Sew, normally when I make my own bias tape, I cheat, and I just cut 2 inch strips from selvedged edge to selvedged edge.  I tried that with the scrappy circle placemats.  Let me save you an enormous amount of time, should you decide to make these yourself, and let you in on a little secret: You should NOT do that!!  Use REAL BIAS TAPE!  If you don't want to make any, or if you are lazy like I was last week, then JoAnn's sells some.  I got really lucky when I went to JoAnn's that they actually had their bias tape well stocked.  Truly a surprise for them!

My binding might not be the most inspiring or aesthetically appealing, but at least my circles lay flat which is important.  With out the real bias tape they were rolling into themselves.  It was terrible.

As for the backs, I also used a variety of fabrics making these truly scrappy.

I chose to quilt these with a concentric circle, but if I had to do all over again I might just do straight lines.  I feel like you can see so many flaws in my quilting skills because the circles are so wonky.  Oh well.  Since the fine china won't be resting their precious selves on these, I'll be okay with them being slightly imperfect.

That wrapped up sewing circle.  I had every intention of making baby Hank some new Quick Change Trousers, but it didn't happen at sewing circle.  And darn, they still haven't been sewn.  Maybe I got this blog post done soon enough that I'll still have some energy to go and sit up at the sewing machine and work.  Maybe.

Have you joined a sewing circle or attended a sewing soiree (for all those out there that speak french like my co-blogger does. BTW, Annee, what's the french rooster called again?)?  If sew, do you all try to make the same thing or do you like to have a variety of projects going on??  I've done both, and I can't decide which is better.  Maybe people get more done if they are all working on the same thing?  Just something I was thinking about as I started thinking about when to host my next sewing circle.

No matter what way is best, I think we can, and should, all agree that the most important part to any party is the food.  Have you made your shopping list for the chocolate chex mix yet?!?!