Dress-up Case

When I saw this idea on A Girl and a Glue Gun last spring I decided I must make one. I thought it was such a clever idea and created a way to put a cap on the number of dress-up items to have. (Well, ours might not all quite fit in it!)

I found an old suitcase at the thrift store. It was in pretty decent shape as far as the exterior and the latches were concerned. Plus, it was only $3 or something like that.

The inside was falling apart, but that didn't matter since it would be torn out anyway.

I covered up the shiny parts of the suitcase with tape and then went to town with some red spray paint. 

As you can see it didn't cover perfectly even, but I like it. (Maybe I needed more coats or else I am just not a good spray painter). And you can see in the picture below that the handle is black. I just used a permanent marker for that.

I didn't photograph the process of adding new lining, but the original tutorial does a great job. My glue gun broke in the middle of the process, so mine is have hot glue and half some kind of tacky fabric glue. It wasn't hard to do though.

I love having this as a place for my boys to put their play clothes. There are a few Halloween costumes in there that are WAY too small for them, but they still try to wear them and play with them. 

And if you are looking for something more ambitious and really cute that also displays the dress-ups, you have to see this storage set up.

My Sewing Space

I always like looking at pictures online of where people accomplish their sewing or other similar projects. I wouldn't call my work area a craft or sewing room. It's more of, well, a sewing space and not a pretty one.

It is in our unfinished basement. The "walls" are made of book shelves and the "door" is a piece of Masonite to keep our cats out. The concrete walls are an ugly green that the former owner painted (the ironing board cover matching is purely incidental). In fact, they painted ALL of the concrete walls in the basement green. I'd paint over them to make them look nicer, but we actually need to find a way to get the paint OFF the walls entirely so we can seal them and get working on finishing the basement. But that is another subject entirely.
I have pretty much all the supplies and lighting I need. A sturdier table would be awesome, as the bounciness of the card table can get annoying. If I have a big project I will move upstairs to the kitchen table. Plus, then I can work during the day when the kids are awake.

I am certainly not lacking in my fabric stash. Sadly, it's more of an unfinished project stash. I bought all of this with the intention of making a bunch of blankets to sell and have stashed away for baby gifts. I have dozens of excuses or not working on them - I don't like sharing my sewing space with the place I have to do my work from home job at, it's too cold, my ruler for cutting binding is lost (true story until yesterday), don't have times, etc. The truth is that I just get so excited about the idea of a project that the actual working on it is a bit of a disappointment. But I am pleased about 95% of the time when I am all done and wonder why I don't sew more.
So, I've got some goals and am currently working on a time sensitive project. I have a few things I made for the kids for Christmas, that if I could get them to pose in I could get a post written up. And there are a few other projects I haven't posted either that I am hoping to get to relatively soon.

Marie's Material

My neighbor across the street is a very sweet 91 year old lady whom I just don't visit often enough. Marie crochets and tried to teach me. I failed. My fingers just don't work like that. (I also failed around age 10 when my mom tried to teach me.) She has made pretty things for my boys and even crocheted us all matching hats! She knows that I sew, and since she no longer can see well, she offered me her fabric. I only took about half of the stash she got out for me, and apparently there is more.
She mostly quilted and I don't. However, I still thought that I could find something to make out of this fabric - whether for me or to sell. If you have any ideas (not that you can actually see the fabric that well), pass them along. I am thinking maybe table runners out of the Christmas stuff. Marie requested that I show her something I used the fabric for and I don't want to disappoint her!