by Nancy
Here’s a rather crackpotty gift bag I made for my nephew’s birthday present. The theme of the fabric is also the theme of the present inside. 🙂 The bag turned out bigger than I intended somehow, but I guess that’s better than it being too small. Now I just need to get it in the mail!
By Ann
Like Rebecca, I have been remiss in my blogging, but unlike Rebecca, I have also been remiss in my quilting/crafting/sewing activities. When the Crackpots Converged in July, I decided that that had to change. There are just too many projects I want to work on – Jim’s quilt, last summer’s Crackpot rainbow quilt, working on improving my piecing accuracy, playing with placemats and pillowcases…. But of higher priority than all of that was Aprons. Â The ones I had acquired when we remodeled the kitchen 10+ years ago were – ummm – wearing thin. Two had been discarded and the third had ties that were down to a few hardy threads. A crisis was imminent! So, I got to work, and here are the results:
The one on the left is the old apron with the almost-gone ties, which I replaced. With the original fabric. If you look closely, you can see that the ties are significantly less faded than the skirt. The middle one is made using the pattern for the Arrowhead Block from Quiltmaker Nov/Dec 2010 (http://www.quiltmaker.com/patterns/details.html?idx=12909). It’s a very cool block to piece and I had fun making it. The third apron is made from a lovely pear fabric that I found at Fields while shopping with Marty a while ago.
As Crackpots know, my aprons are all enhanced with a button-on hand towel (sold commercially as a wash cloth) so that I don’t have to commit the unpardonable sin of wiping my hands on my apron. (My mother bright me up right.) Unfortunately, that means making buttonholes. Eeeeep! I have alway found buttonholes to be very scary. And I had to make a lot, liked 16!! But at least I got lots of practice, Â and I think I have now, not exactly mastered them, but at least I don’t find them to be quite so scary. Here’s the whole blessed lot of them and even a close up of one showing that some of them were not too bad.
And finally, here are the aprons with their attached hand towels.
