Friday, March 13, 2015

Zipper Pouch

I was roaming around youtube after watching another episode of The Great British Sewing Bee, and I ran across a Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial for a zipper pouch. I gave it a whirl and here's the result:




The lining is red and there's a layer of fleece sandwiched between the outside and the lining so the pouch is nice and soft. This one is 9 x 9 inches, but you can make them any size you want. I bought a dozen handbag zippers (assorted colors) from an eBay seller for less than $10 so I can make a few more pouches and use up more of the scraps I have stashed away. If you have any scraps you'd like to put to good use, take a look at the MSQC tutorial and see how easy these are to make. Happy sewing, everyone!


Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Getting Ready For Spring

The 2014-15 winter threw a lot at us here in the mid-Atlantic region. We had brutally cold temperatures. We had snow. And ice. And freezing rain and sleet. And more snow. And more cold temperatures. We sanded, shoveled, scraped, made lots of chili, and filled the bird feeders hundreds of times. Weeks ago, we ran the white flag up the frozen pole, but Mother Nature refused to accept our surrender. Tomorrow's forecast is for 8+ inches of snow followed by single-digit temperatures.




This morning, we decided to ignore winter and get ready for spring by starting some seeds. We have one of those little cube refrigerators and it's stuffed with seeds. There are flower seeds which my late grandmother gave us decades ago. The hottest of our hot pepper seeds are from my 90-year old aunt's garden. A friend gave me seeds from two varieties of tomatoes she's grown for many years. Some seeds we saved from plants we got at plant exchanges. There are a few packets of “store bought” seeds and some seeds whose origins are a mystery. We sifted through all of them today and decided to start twenty varieties of peppers and four varieties of tomatoes. After we finished tamping the seeds into containers of potting soil, we put the containers into trays, covered the trays with clear tops, put the covered trays on shelves in a little plastic greenhouse, and closed the two zippers in the front. (In the photo, the front is open, so you'll have to imagine it zipped closed.) 




The greenhouse sits in a corner of the dining room which will be sunny the next time we see the sun.  When spring arrives, we'll be ready!