A mini holiday

We went to the coast last weekend for a mini holiday and had an amazing four days. The Australian country side and coast are just beautiful.

And this is the holiday's contribution to my fabric stash. This selection is a mixture of Moda, Art Gallery and Robert Kaufman. They match with my fat quarter bundles beautifully. 

I got these beautiful fabrics from Steph's at Moruya. I found her shop a couple of months ago when we went to Moruya for a drive. Her shop is very nice, bright and full of beautiful, modern fabrics. As oppose to the service at Canberra fabric shops, Steph welcomes you with a warm smile and is always happy to help you if you need a hand.  It looks like I will go there often- it is only two hours away from Canberra- yayy!

Improvised quilt back

I haven't been able to do much sewing since I posted the laptop case. I have had a constant headache. I got my eyes checked two weeks ago because it is where the pain starts. It was confirmed that I needed a new pair of glasses. After waiting for a week for my glasses to be ready, I put them on at the optometrist and said to the girl that they didn't feel right. Of course I was told that my eyes needed some time to adjust to the new lenses; like a week or two. Since then I have been waiting, waiting...but no, they are definitely too strong for my eyes. I try to keep them on but they make me feel sick after the first minute. Until I pay another visit to the optometrist I have to keep taking pain killers...

In the mean time, I managed to sew an improvised quilt back for my baby bow ties quilt. I used these fabrics on the quilt as well. I feel like the more I try to use them up, the more they multiply. Needles to say I still have some leftovers but I hid them away...

Please excuse the bad quality photo. I took it with my phone after I finished it late at night.
 

I got quite confused when I first started to sew the pieces together but once I worked it out, it formed very quickly. I think it will look great once it is bound and finished.
I showed it to my husband and asked him very enthusiastically what he thought about it. He looked at it and said "are you happy with this?" I said "yes!" He said "ok then", and he continued ironing his shirt. The summary of this is: boys will never get it...

Do you like improvising? What things have you sewn with this technique? Please don't forget to leave a comment. For a blogger, there is nothing sweeter than finding a comment in her mailbox! :)
Happy sewing!

Quilted laptop case

My lovely husband bought me a MacBook last Christmas- it is oh so good! It also gave me an excuse to start another project, a quilted laptop case.

I started making this case last week and finished it yesterday. Let me tell you; every single thing went wrong while making it! I couldn't find iron-on fleece interfacing so I bought normal polar fleece instead and used utility fabric to make it a little sturdy, the back and front pieces didn't match in size although I cut them  carefully. Then came some zipper problems. Later I realised I didn't have enough fabric to make the handles wide enough, blah blah...I thought about throwing it out of the window a couple of times but I didn't :)

  
I used the backing fabric on the pocket as well. I love polka dots!
I love the pockets. They are deep enough to carry a notepad and the charger comfortably. 

I haven't followed any tutorials to make this case, maybe I should have... at least when sewing the zipper. See how there is excess fabric around the zipper on the left corner? Next time I will find a solution for this too. 

Generally, I am quite happy with the result even though it is not the best looking case :) The graphic design course I enrolled in is starting today- hurray!- so this will be pretty handy when carrying my laptop to and from the uni campus.

Please don't forget to leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Thank you!