Fabric Envy

You ever look at someone else's fabric and say, "Wow! What great fabric. My fabric is boring compared to theirs!" Happens to me all the time. As someone who feels this way, I probably shouldn't agree to swap fabric, because then I am bestowing my "less fabulous" fabric on someone else.

V at Bumble Beans is looking for some fabric scraps with white in them. As scrap queen of the Shenandoah Valley, of course I wanted to help her out. But come to find out, I don't seem to have many scraps with white in them either. And when I laid out the ones I found, and compared them with the photo of her scraps on her website, my initial thought is, "Man, she's going to hate my fabric."

Maybe not. I'm sending it anyway. Hope you can find something of use in there, V.

I am proud of myself for making progress on some Christmas presents last night. I always WANT to give homemade gifts, but I always wait until the last minute and don't get them done. Well, this year, a tight budget is forcing me to give homemade gifts. Last night, I finished 5 of 6 Crayon Totes that I am making for my friends who have small children. (If you are a friend with small children and you are reading this, act surprised on December 25th.)

I am assuming that they are like me, and have a little bit of everything in their purse to entertain children in Doctor's offices, while waiting for food to be served, etc. The only problems are 1) the inside of my purses are always marked up from the crayons and 2) I spend much more time underneath yucky restaurant tables retrieving dropped crayons that I would like. I saw these Crayon Totes on another blog, and decided to modify it for my own purposes. (Don't go look at the photos on the other person's blog - again, her fabric is much cooler than mine!) My Crayon Totes hold just 8 crayons, enough to keep my kids entertained, but few enough so that it doesn't take up too much room in my purse.


If I were to make them again, I would hope I would be less lazy and would match my thread to my fabric. I told myself that using the thread in my machine would provide a nice contrast if it was visible, not thinking that all my mistakes would be that much more visible. Oh well - live and learn.


I'm not sure what I'm going to do for my kids this year for Christmas. Some of their favorite gifts in the past have been this kitchen that I gave Donald last year and that he uses to prepare meals (strawberry soup and lemonade) nearly every day,

this pedal-operated police car that is streaked with white where it has taken the paint off our doorways (while it leaves black streaks on the hardwood floor - sigh),

and of course, Thomas the Train.

I want to come up with something else that they will use almost daily as these cherished toys are used, instead of something that is loved for a week, and then forgotten for the next year. Any ideas?