I love EVERYTHING personalized

Since 2012 was the year of the homemade Christmas gifts I made my nephew matching pillowcases for  him and his dad.  They are big University of Kentucky fans so I ordered UK fabric from Hancock fabrics online and used my (new) Silhouette to cut letters out of the fabric.  To cut the fabric using the Silhouette, I first cut a 12 x 12 piece of fabric and 12 x 12 piece of double sided fusible interfacing that I got from Wal-mart.  (I used this size to fit my cutting mat.)  I ironed the interfacing to the underside of the fabric and placed on the cutting mat.  Then, I cut the fabric with the Silhouette by picking the setting for fabric and changing my blade to what the design studio told me to-I think it was 8.

Once the machine had cut out the letters, I ironed them on to pillowcases that I had found at Dollar Tree for $1.00 each-I 'heart' the Dollar Tree.  I then used Pellon fusible sheer weight interfacing on the inside of the pillow cases (cut to cover the letters on the reverse side of the pillow cases) before I stitched the letters.  Being a new 'sewist' my stitching is crooked here and there but I think it turned out pretty good.

 

Teaching Myself to Sew

I have been trying to teach myself to sew.  I love fabrics and all the wonderful things that sewers can create.  Plus, I have always wanted to learn to sew!!

It took me about two months to open my sewing machine box after I order it and another two months to look at the different accessories.

The machine I ordered came with 17 different feet...whew!  I finally set down tonight to figure out what all of those feet can do.   The first step was labeling the feet.  If you are like me you aren't even sure of the names of all these different little contraptions.  Using the singer website and googling 'images' I think I correctly labeled the feet.

Click HERE for a downloadable document from Google Docs

Christmas 2012-'Semi-homemade'

I decided that 2012 would be the year of the homemade gifts.  In typical 'me' fashion, I hadn't really starting making my gifts until the week before Christmas.  I had all these grand plans for gifts and was able to pull off most of them.  My children and husband didn't get their homemade gifts but that's ok because they had plenty of other gifts to open on Christmas morning.

I just started sewing about two months ago, but I have been crafting for a long time.

I like to work with fleece and these are the blankets and pillows I made, the Minnie Mouse for my niece and the UVA blanket and pillow for my nephew.