Summer Has Me In Stitches

As the summer sun beckons and creativity blossoms, most folks love to head outdoors. I do love the warm sun, enjoying beach days, and gathering with friends for a picnic! But my biggest love is about exploring how to infuse my sunny days with inspiring and fulfilling creative projects in hopes of reducing my various stashes of beautiful papers, fabrics, and even saved materials I had hoped to find new uses for. 

Throughout the recent weeks, I have enjoyed beginning to whittle my fabric stacks. Yea!! My sweet friend Melanie Diane brought her serger over along with a few bags of scrap fabric and some rolls of waffle shelf liner. We had in mind a useful gripping tool for opening containers. I had seen many clever names for these handy devices...Good Grip, Robotwist, GetAGrip, Magic Twist, Rubber Husband, MightyGrip. There are some very clever and humorous people, HaHa! My favorite so far, is Rubber Husband!

MY HOW TO:

Using scraps of fabric and Dollar Store shelf liner we churned out a stack of these handy dandy tools pretty quickly. I tried it in square, rectangle, and square format eventually deciding on a 6-inch square as my favorite. 

The waffle shelf liner I mentioned was a Dollar Store purchase. You can find it at other places like Walmart, Target etc.  

Our fabric choices were varied. I had some scrap left over from my table runner project. (I still have more of that scrap so after sewing these grippers up decided to make some coasters similarly). 

Let me share with you how we made these! 

The process was simple. Cut 1 piece of fabric and 1 piece of shelf liner 6 inches square (or your preferred size.) 

If you are using a serger put your fabric right side up and your shelf liner grippy side up facing the wrong side of your fabric. I stitched my laters with the grippy shelf liner on top. It did drag a bit under the sewing foot. (A suggestion to minimize drag is to put painter's tape on the underside of your sewing foot.) Just stitch around the edge.

If you are using a standard sewing machine put the right sides of the grippy material and fabric together and sew around the edge but leave a few inches open to allow for turning the fabric. Turn fabric. Tuck the seam edge in and finger press at the opening. To finish each gripper top stitch along the edge all the way around back stitching at the beginning and end to reinforce stitches. (The sewing machine method will be used when I make the coasters to match my table runner since the runner was top-stitched.) Sewing these grippers had me inspired and I've been a busy bee. Check-in with me to see what's next 😁!

Sewing With My Grandkids

Hanging out with my grandkids is a most delightful time!

Every time we go to visit our grandchildren the time with them is super special. I really never knew having grandchildren was going to be this amazing! Each visit I make I find it to be a surprise-- I never know what will be the project of the day or the play of the night but in the end we had great fun. 

When we head over for a visit the car is packed with items relating to the last visit. One time when we arrived my granddaughter Fiona has an armful of "injured" stuffed animals that she and Luke told me desperately needed help--could I ple--eeze sew them! That night we worked with the supplies they had but when I got home I put together an "animal hospital" sewing kit. My"animal hospital" sewing kit has a variety of thread colors in it, a small pair of scissors, a needle threader and such. Now in the past when we visit this had become an absolute "must pack" item! Fo the longest time in fact I packed the car with this at the top of the list. 

Once when my darling granddaughter called me on Skype she had a "special request". Could I possibly make a special doll she had in mind? This child has some amazing character traits. Her story telling capabilities are very in depth, details are her forte. I worked on Christina for a long time.(I'm going to save that story for another day).

Christmas was just days away when we arrived. With it being just 4 days before Christmas our thoughts were on many things... 

• Did I send out of town gifts, give local gifts and remember to pack the gifts for family we are visiting?
• Did I bring extra wrapping paper, bags, ribbon and tape?
• Did I pack our Christmas Cards and the list, stamps etc?
• Did I bring the address and phone info for theAirBnB hosts?
• Did I clear out the refrigerator?
• Is our dog, his cage, toys, food, supplements info for dog sitters etc packed?
• Did I remember our supplements, first aid kit...oh and MY pillow?
• Did I bring written contact info (sometimes there is no wifi)?
• Did we pre-contact and set appointments for business partners and friends?

I wish we could say I forgot nothing but unfortunately that was not the case. Every visit we learn  of another "staple" not to be forgotten item.   Some items that were needed have now been replaced with other items. The kids now had there own sewing kits, they had developed an interest in creating sewn items. Last year the oldest sewed pillows as gifts for friends, her brother helped. My contribution...I brought my sewing machine and basic knowledge. The gifts were a great success.  This year as we unloaded the big blue truck the first question out of grandson Luke's mouth...Did you bring your sewing machine? What?! H-mmm. Oh dear!  

Apparently Luke had ideas and it included creating stuff on the sewing machine! So-ooo we now needed to design an alternate plan. It turned out to be a great plan. 

I had suggested we make things from fabric around the home, things no longer being used for the original purpose- like socks. I showed him a Pinterest board that repurposed socks in various ways. That was inspiration enough.

I had suggested we follow directions from one of the projects but Luke had a better idea...Excitedly he declared "I want to make a toy for Chip." Chip is our now 1 year old Border Collie. We got this guy last year right after Christmas. In fact we were just driving home from visiting this family when I saw the ad. One call, a quick early morning drive and we brought Chip home right then.

Backstory: We had a beautiful Border Collie, "Oreo" for 15 years. We got him right after moving to Utah. Oreo had been named by our oldest grandson Tyler. He had died in 2017 and it took us a while before we were ready for another pet but when we decided, granddaughter Fiona had asked to be able to name him. 

Ok, back to Lukes sock "stuffie"... Luke wanted the toy to be for Chip and also he wanted it to look like Chip. Here is Luke working on it, his finished results with Chip and his toy.