What can I say...my dog is spoiled

A few months ago while visiting my Mom in Lousiana, we found my old doll bed from when I was a child. I took it home and the dog has since adopted it as his bed when we're working down in our basement/computer room. I gave him a pillow as a "matress", but he needed a cover.

Last Christmas, I found this blue plaid flannel for $1.00/yd in Wal-Mart. I made a pillow cover for his pillow on his new bed. I was surprised how soft the fabric was once I washed it. It's perfect for a soft, comfy cover or bed.

Here's a picture of him chilling out, enjoying his new, soft pillowcover.

I have some leftover fabric that I will use to make a portable dog bed to take with us while camping as well as a small quilt. He likes to have his own blanket wherever we go. Yeah, I know - he's spoiled!

Cell Phone Holder

I recieved this pattern last fall for "Sewing Awareness Day" - our ASG chapter was doing demos in all local Hancock stores to promote the art (and skill) of sewing. This was the project that we demonstrated - a cell phone holder with a small pocket for money or credit cards.

I finally got around to making one of these up to see what it's like. I was disappointed when the store-bought one I had broke after less than a week of using it. That should teach me not to buy crap in the stores if I can make it myself!

I like this phone holder. Now that I have an idea of how it goes together, I'm going to whip up a few of these. Toss in some embroidery and it will be fabulous!

Nursing Pillow ("Boppy")

These nursing pillows are a great gift to new moms. The pattern is a McCall's (I think the # is 2824) and the pattern is a little bit better than the ones you can buy ready-made. The back of the pillow has 3 pockets with elastic casings where the nursing mother can safely store pacifiers, a phone or a TV remote control.

In the past few years, I've made countless nursing pillows for friends. This one came out the best of all of them - I think it's because I used a rotary cutter to cut out the pattern pieces vs. using sewing scissors. I've been told that using a rotary cutter gives you more exact cuts because there is no need to lift the fabric in order to cut and there is less room for error when cutting. It will take me a little while to get used to the rotary cutter, but after this project, I'm convinced that it's the way to go!

Here are the pictures of the nursing pillow - I used red raggedy ann & andy fabric that I found in my stash (gotta love decreasing my stash - it was starting to get out of control!)

Embellished Cloth Diapers: a quick & easy shower gift!
A friend of mine in my ASG Neighbhorhood group (Rena) gave me this idea for a quick & easy shower or baby gift. Pick up a package of cloth diapers and embellish them with simple ribbon - what a great idea!

I use fusible web to fuse the ribbon to the diaper and then I topstitch it on my machine. Each diaper takes less than 10 minutes. Group them into a bundle of 3 and you have a great gift! Rena told me that she's seen these same diapers sold at craft fairs for $39 for a set of 3 -- highway robbery!

Christmas Stockings: An unusual wedding gift -
I had an unusual idea for a wedding present for my cousin and his new wife. I wanted to make them Christmas stockings as a wedding gift. My thinking was that little personal touches like this would help them make a house into a "home".

The fabric that I chose was hunter green with gold metallic flecks woven into the fabric. Just like the window treatment, it was hard to photograph because of the mettalic properties of the fabric. The embroidery was done with gold metallic guttermann thread (wonderful stuff, let me tell ya!) on a solid red cuff. I used a gold trim to make the loop that will be used to hang the stockings. I may also post some of the "less fancy" stockings I've made as well. In my opinion, the ones for my cousin were the best ones I've made yet...

My First Window Treament -

This is one of the pictures of the window valance I made for our neighborhood clubhouse. The fabric is metallic, so it's incredibly difficult to photograph. The middle piece was a remnant that the interior designer found. It's acetate, but it looks like silk. The embroidered design on it makes it look like very high end fabric. I think it retailed for $40/yd. She got a remnant of about 1yd of it for $10. She just couldn't pass it up.

We were originally thinking of piecing the valance together to make it 60 inches wide - the fabric had only about 58 inches of "usable" fabric once you trimmed the selvadges off. The piecing idea didn't work - we didn't have 2 pieces that were equally wide enough with the entire embroidered design to piece together, so I was off to Hancock's to find something for a border. I found this wonderful gold metallic fabric for $11/yd, which is pretty inexpensive in terms of home-dec fabrics. I think it turned out really well. Too bad the pictures didn't come out better than this :(

Welcome to Desi's sewing blog. I will post reviews and pictures of sewing projects as I complete them. The next project that I have slated is a baby sling for my best friend, Mel.

Hope you enjoy reading my blog post entries.