Sunday Stash Report- a mixed report

This week there has been some in and some out!
In - I received my order from MassDrop of a Fat Quarter Bundle - 18 fat quarters from the Andover Chambray collection. Its a luscious collection of beautifully textured fabrics, some shot with gold or silver, in a range of colours - creams and whites, gold, purples, greens, aqua and black. just gorgeous. 18 fat quarters. That was a total of 4.37m of fabric

Out

Our dear friend Bek loves Minions and for her birthday (which was Sunday) I made her 2 small minion wall hanging. They are paper pieced, measured 32cm x 40cm and are gorgeous. She loves them.

I completed The TARDIS Tree, a Christmas wall hanging. Its all labelled and ready to get tucked away with my other Christmas stuff... some of which is still piled up in the office waiting to be put away. No matter how careful I try to be in putting stuff away I always find various stray bits of Christmas decorations after I have heaved the boxes I have packed the Christmas stuff into up into their high storage cupboards. The TARDIS Tree has 1400 1" finished squares in it and 72 HST of the same dimensions in it. The usual formula I use to calculate fabric usage didn't accurately reflect the fabric that went into this quilt so I added an extra metre of usage to my calculations to more accurately record the fabric. 3.68m of usage in all

Its been a Doctor Who themed week. Fangirl turns 30 next weekend and is having a party with the theme "Adventures in Time and Space" She had bought herself a TARDIS dress to wear but it was very tight across her thighs. She asked me to adjust it for her. The easiest thing to do was to undo the side seams, remove the side zip and insert 2 black panels that would hang loose. I hemmed the side seams and it has worked very well. The side panels used some black fabric I have had left over from a dress I had made for a ball back in 1986 I think! (when Fangirl was 18 months old) The panels used up half a metre of fabric.

My last bit of sewing for the week has been 2 bags made from the top part of a pair of jeans. I have several containers with leftovers from the jeans I cut up to make Jean's Jean Quilt last year - pockets, the top parts and other bits and pieces. I came across them whilst sorting out and listing all my UFO's, WIPS, and planned projects. 

I googled Jeans Bags and came across one fairly simple pattern here on Paging Fun Mum's blog. I found it quite helpful although it glossed over a few tricky bits. The biggest hassle I had was cutting off the jeans to make them straight. The blog said to cut off at the crotch but I was interested in keeping the back pockets in tact so had to go a little lower and that meant there was a bit of shaping to negotiate around. 

 

I trimmed it back and made it as neat as I could. I made the first one flat across the bottom but the second one was a little bigger instead of having it flat I shaped it a little by lining up the side seam with the base seam and sewing across to make the bag have some width. 

I was going to take photos as I went but I forgot so no tutorial from me. I also changed the pattern by sewing some of the many pockets cut off the jeans to the right side of the lining before I sewed it together. 

   

I am still tweaking the design and have about 5 more tops of jeans that I can make into bags so should be good by the end. I made the strap from a lenght of denim cut for the leg of a pair of jeans, folded right sides together and stitched along the length, turned the right way around, pressed with the seam in the middle, stitched down again and then sewn onto the bag. I am no good at studs etc and don't have any anyway. I used velcro as closures for the bag. My kids are very impressed with the results! I plan to give them to the Our Rainbow House craft ladies to sell to raise money for our school in Zambia

It looks like its crooked but I cut it straight so I think its the photo... that is going to be my excuse anyway

They didn't use much fabric though... just the lining. Since I didn't count the jeans as fabric in I don't think I should count that part of the project as fabric out (although I did for the jeans quilt.) There was a total of .25 m used in the lining for the two bags (I used some tan paisley patterned left over backing. It has that retro feeling that will go well with the bags

So 

This Week

Fabric Used                               5.21m

Fabric Added                            4.37m

Year to Date

Fabric Used                               13.01m

Fabric Added                             10.35m

Net Fabric used                            2.66m

So how has your fabric usage gone this week?