July Studio of the Month - Jayne's Studio

This month we bring you a look into one of our member's home sewing studio - Jayne welcomed us to her home and studio this past weekend and what a great studio space she has, not to mention a beautiful home. Her wonderfully talented husband is a wonderful carpenter and crafted all the cabinetry in their home, including the wonderful studio cart/ironing station you see in the below photo. This is a great storage solution for any space - look at all those wonderful project cases all full of Jayne's projects! Love that her ironing station is on wheels!

Note the cute little wooden spool used as a draw pull!

Below you see a wonderful old bedroom dresser that Jayne had her husband attach a solid wood top to and make it slightly larger and she uses this as her cutting and serging table. Love it!

And this is above and to the right of the window - wonderful applique wall hanging!

Jayne's fabric stash - sorted by color!

More fabric stash on the other side of the room to the left of her sewing table.

Jayne's cute thread catcher!

What's on Jayne's design wall? See below!

And for some finished quilts that decorate her lovely home!

Fun Fun Fun Fat Quarter Game

During our Christmas in July Celebration, we played a fun fat quarter game using a special set of dice you can get at Spencers Gifts - the dice have dots, a letter C, letter R and letter L -- for Center, Right, Left - the dot represents pass. We started off with 5 fat quarters each and we played with three die - each person rolled and if you got a dot, a C and an R - you put one fat quarter in the center and passed one fat quarter to your right --- if you rolled three C's - you put three fat quarters in the center pot. This was a fun game - it went fairly quickly and the pot grew quickly as did some individual stashes but soon enough, only one person was left with any fabric at all and that was Mary Ellen -- Lucky gal - she got that big pile of fat quarters to add to her stash!

Mary Ellen's wonderful little business card case

You too can make this wonderful little treasure Mary Ellen is showcasing here -- it fits business cards, credit cards, wallet photos or whatever you would like to stuff into these wonderful little pockets. This is an easy to stitch project, you only need your serger and few scraps of fabric.

Start off with three 5" charm squares, lay one right side up and then fold two squares in half right sides out and serge at top and bottom.

This is what it will look like once serged and then opened.

Then lay another 5" charm square wrong side facing up and serge along the top and bottom - note you are serging the sides that have no stitching on them at this point.

Once serged, you can now turn your wallet inside out the first time- below.

Turn your wallet inside out once again and pop the corners of the pockets and your done.

Pop the pockets and corners out and give your wallet a pressing.

July Show and Tell

Our show and tell at today's meeting included many wonderful creations - Here Cindy is showing everyone here Dr. Seuss pillowcase - love the red stripes; and a wonderful new gift of pink-poka-dot fabric!

Here we have Dawn showcasing some of here recent rag quilt creations. The below rag quilt is backed with a brown fabric and that worked great and created a wonderful shadow detail in the rags of each square on the front. Hope you can see that in the photo!

Dawn's wonderful black and white rag quilt creation, front and back!

Another awesome bag created by Paula -- Love the embroidery!

And one of Paula's recent completed quilts - so wonderful!

Janet showcasing one of her recent bag creations - this one is so cute and everyone in the room wants one now!

Here Donelle is modeling a cute cell phone bag Mary Ellen stitched up - it's so cute and the velcro closure works great.

Jayne created a great bag out of a very colorful and get this, rubber backed carpet mat she found at the dollar store - isn't it just wonderful!

Rick started off with a new tote bag created from 5" squares. Gigi showed a new crochet bag she has been working on.

Donelle showed a new tote using 5" squares as well.

Mary-Ellen demoed a great and simple credit card or business card holder (there will be another post with the demo photos).

Christmas in July Gift Exchange

Our Christmas in July party and gift exchange was a blast today! So much fun, so many laughs it was like we were all about to go out and fa la la on the streets but not likely in this July Louisiana heat! Our gift exchange was so much fun and thanks Jayne for her hospitality today - her home is so beautiful and we all enjoyed our celebration today. Here are some photos of our gift exhange as each of us enjoyed picking numbers and selecting a wrapped gift from the pile - the only rule was that the gift be in the $10 range and be something you'd want to purchase/use for yourself. There were so many wonderful gifts - everything from threads and patterns and fabrics to storage solutions and organizers to coasters and mugs to a Jim Shore ornament to a Joanns gift card to a wonderful quilting book to a ruler organizer and a slew of wonderful notepads and pens! Merry Christmas Sistas!