Small Sewn Gifts - Taming the Mane Tamers

My friend Jen Eskridge is hosting a "Small Sewn Gifts" linkup party/sewing extravaganza here in blogland, and I decided to participate today, even though I'm not the best at 3D sewing and wasn't sure if I could come up with a project and tutorial. But a trip around the house on a recent Saturday morning was all the inspiration I needed. (Note: the linkup part isn't officially until December 12 - 19, but this project will be part of it.)

Join me as I take you on a tour of my home, littered with hair accessories due to three daughters who are slobs.

Ponytail holders on the kitchen counter. Angel Grandma is turning over in her grave.

No, that is not a small mouse on the mug rug. It is one of Paige's bun wraps.

Pile of crap on the stairs.

Powder room sink

Seriously? Hanging on the doorknob? To MY room?

While we all know who the culprit is when it comes to having left most of these treasures for me to find - Paige, who wears 5-6 ponytail holders at a time as she wants it "really tight" and then when she gets home the pain from having her hair stretching her face back all day in a poor woman's facelift causes her to remove them and drop them where she stands or sits or whatever - none of the children are innocent. I could show you photos of their bathroom really at any given time and it is knee deep in hair crap.

So I decided to whip up a hanging organizer for them which can be conveniently located in the bathroom. Will it magically fix the problem of Paige being a slovenly hair accessory owner? Of course not. But it was a cute quick project and is one more thing to wrap up under the tree, so I'll share it with you.

I give you the Mane Tamer Tamer

What you need:

3/4 yard fabric
**13.5" x 36" piece of fusible stabilizer (optional, but I'd use it next time)
1-2 yards ribbon (is it just me, or does ribbon never go as far as you expect it will in sewing projects?)
buttons for embellishment (optional)

What you do:

Prepare to cut fabric to 27" x 36" (Press out creases, even up edges, place on cutting mat, etc)

Realize your rotary cutter is missing. Find it under your fabric. (This step may be eliminated if you wish.)

Fold fabric right sides together, so that piece now measures 13.5" x 36"

**Special note: After I completed this project, I realized it would have benefited from a layer of fusible interfacing, but as I am lazy, I didn't redo it. You might want to add interfacing, and if so, fuse it to one wrong side of your fabric "envelope" now.

Sew around all three open sides using a 1/4" seam, and leave a small opening for turning at the bottom (one of the short sides).

Turn right side out and press along seams to make it flat and pretty. Admire the gunk left from numerous fusible web projects on my pressing area cover.

Pin ribbon to the bottom edge of the piece (the one containing the open seam). Be sure your opening edges are tucked in to make it look like it is shut.

Sew ribbon on, using a decorative stitch. The width of a decorative stitch will allow you to both sew on the ribbon and close the seam properly at the same time. I love being lazy and you will too.

Continue decorative stitch all the way around the piece. Be sure to use the same thread in the bobbin and the top as if you don't, in the next step it will be terribly obvious. Or don't. I really don't care and I am not judging you, nor will I likely ever see your project. I used a teal, lime, and yellow variegated that could not have been more perfect. Depending upon what stitch you have chosen, this might well be the part of the project that takes you the longest.

Fold up the bottom of the piece so that the ribbon is about 5" below the top of the piece. Pin in place. DO NOT SEW ANYTHING.

Mark a pencil line 6" down from the ribbon. Carefully cut JUST THE TOP LAYER OF THE PIECE along the line. I don't mean to be yelling at you with these all cap moments, but I don't want you to be yelling at me later, so it's the best way to get and hold your attention.

Pull the cut edges apart. Pin ribbon onto the cut edge that will form the lower pouch and sew it on JUST THAT EDGE, NOT THROUGH THE WHOLE PROJECT (again, sorry to yell) as you did before for the bottom edge the first time around. This is kind of like your new bottom edge when it is unfolded anyway, no?

Now fold the newly beribboned edge back up to about 3-4" below the raw edge of the top pocket. Pin in place.

Sew the bottom pouch along the edges, using the same decorative seam because it is just easier than switching the machine to straight stitch and it looks prettier. I do it about 1/2" in from the first decorative stitching.

Now head back up to that raw edge on the top pouch and turn that baby under a little. Pin.

Decorative stitch it down.

Decorative stitch along the sides, just like you did for the bottom pouch.

Split the top pouch into 1/3 and 2/3 width pouches. Or don't. I thought two smaller pouches on top would be great for different sized hair doodles.

Sew buttons on edges of pouches and a ribbon with buttons on the top for hanging. Collect hair doodles from all around the housel and put them in the pouches. Threaten children with dish duty on Thanksgiving if they don't use it properly.

I'll be sure to report on the success of the Mane Tamer Tamer actually keeping the hair doodles off the doorknobs.

Size Matters

The final moments of my frenzied Market Prep are upon us, and I've been giving much thought lately to the size of stuff.

• The size of boxes I am shipping as they pertain to how much money they are going to cost me to get them from my little corner of MA to the Pacific Northwest. USPS flat rate boxes have become my best buddies.

• The size of suitcase that will fit all of my quilts. Amazingly, I actually owned one that was going to work.

• The size of the conniption, heart attack, stroke, and mental breakdown combo I will have if my bag should get lost in transit. 

•  The size of the check I should write for this week's church collection, because I'm not above a little moral bribery so that God can see he should be good to me and not allow my bag to be lost.

• The size of container I needed to contain all of my binder clips. Who knew 4 bags of binder clips fit perfectly into an arborio rice container? Dumpster diving into the recycling bin rocks!

I'm guessing the nutritional info no longer applies.

And lastly, the size of my 1/4" seam. Allow me to admit that although I've been quilting for 18 years, my 1/4" seam STILL is not as consistent as I might like, but proof that it has improved drastically even over the last 5 years or so came in the form of an innocent comparison the other day. I was starting to pack my quilts up and couldn't decide which of my "Funky Tree Farm" samples to take with me, so I decided to let my followers on FB decide. I put them right next to each other on the floor to take a photo, and look what I saw.

If you can pull your eyes away from my beautifully teal toes and my cute and oh so comfy sandals for a sec, and I know it will be hard to do, but I have faith in you -  check out the flipping 3 1/2" (!) difference in length between the quilts.

Hotties, these two quilts were both made by me, from my own directions. Until that moment I had no idea I had not made them the exact same size. How the heck did THAT happen??? Well, size matters.

Since the side borders are made by piecing three strips together, attaching the whole thing to the sides and then trimming to fit, nothing about the construction had really been affected by whatever the heck I did wrong to make one so much longer, so no red flags had been thrown at the time. I first assumed I had added two extra strips to the background of the one on the left. So I counted them. Twice. Nope, that wasn't it. Then I figured I had cut the strips for the quilt on the left the wrong width. So I measured them. Interesting.

They were cut 2 1/2" wide for both quilts. However, the strips in the quilt on the left had finished at exactly (well, this is me, so maybe not EXACTLY, but pretty darn close) 2", but the ones in the quilt on the right were closer to 1 3/4" each, meaning that when I put that one together way back in the day, I used a seam allowance you could have driven a truck through.
 
Inaccurate Quilter Math - 16 strips x 1/4"ish extra seam allowance = a quilt 3 1/2 inches too short. Dang.

So there it is, proof positive that size matters, and that your seam allowance DOES make a difference. Fortunately for this quilt pattern, it wasn't a factor in being able to put the whole thing together, but for many pieced blocks, it can be a huge factor and even a huge disaster when they aren't done correctly. A product that has helped me immensely over the last few years has been the "Seamingly Accurate" by ReannaLily Designs. It was designed by Jen Eskridge, a friend of mine who has no idea I felt like spreading the love of this product today. However, if 1/4" seams are an issue for you, and clearly at some point they were an enormous issue for me, it might be worth checking out. I think the proof that it helped me is right in that photo!

I've decided to bring the longer quilt to Market. Just in case anyone decides to whip out their rulers and check out my seam allowances.