It's the little things

Hey, look! I can sew something other than pillows! Like I said, last week was a good week for sewing. In addition to the new green pillows, I wrapped up several small projects.

First up, I made a few little coasters for the nightstands in the downstairs guest area. These were actually salvaged from some coasters I started and abandoned a couple of years ago when I attempted (and failed miserably) to make coasters with piping around the edges.

The original project was going to be a gift, but I just couldn't get the piping to work, so I set them aside and kind of forgot about them. When I came across them the other night while working on the green pillows, it occurred to me that they'd look really fun with the other green fabrics in the guest area, so I trimmed off the edges and re-sewed them together sans piping.

One thing I always loved about them was the stamping: "his" and "hers" on one side and "yours" and "mine" on the other.

A few months ago, I joined the wonderful St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild, and I've been meaning to make a name tag for our meetings but kept putting it off. This past weekend, I participated in my first sew-in with the guild, so I decided that was my new deadline to finally finish the name tag.

I whipped this little guy up on Wednesday before my parents arrived for their weekend visit. It's nothing fancy, and I suspect I'll replace it at some point down the road, but it'll get the job done for now.

It even has a hidden magnetic snap so I don't have to pin it to my shirt. Cute, huh?

Another project that's been on my list since Christmas (when I bought these jeans) was to finally hem them, and I did it!

I followed this great tutorial on Sew Much Ado, and it was so ridiculously easy that I was (a) really irritated that it took me three months to do it and (b) appalled that I had never hemmed any of my other jeans before.

Doesn't it look great? You can't even tell!

It's always great to finish a big project, but there's something really rewarding about just getting a lot of things crossed off your to do list. I'm not sure yet what kind of week this one is shaping up to be.