School Bag Makeover!

s you can see, here is the old school bag.  Notice the ripped seam, coffee stains, and random slogan.  It was left in my old house and I found it the day I moved in.  Why I adopted it as my daily stuff bag - I don't know.

No longer will I lug that bag around in shame of the coffee stains, or have it slip off of my arm with flimsy webbing straps.  Are you ready for the new replacement?  Drum roll.......

Taadaa!!  I designed and made this last night while Dan was in Richmond visiting friends.  I had a friend's Vera Bradley bag in mind as I designed this one, but I didn't look at any pictures and just made what I wanted to make.  I used a double-sided, quilted fabric that I got from Lib's Place in Rice (outside of FV).  One side is the main navy fabric you see, and the other side was this purple paisley you see as the contrasting straps.  The color is slightly off in the first picture; the colors are better represented in the lower picture here.  I love pockets, as I have mentioned before, so there is a big one on the front between the parallel "straps".  

I also put a pocket in the inside.  Of course, the possibilities are endless as to what I will put inside of it. 

You can see that the straps are very thick and will provide comfort as I lug 1989836268 papers home to grade, a laptop, lunch box, purse, coffee mug, water bottle, and keys. 

I am excited to have something sturdy, stylish, and 100% better than my previous bag.  The yard of material was $18.00, but if you compare that to the $78.00 bag version that Vera sells, then we can all agree it was a prudent purchase.  I am happy. :) Someone else was happy about it, too!  She saw I was taking pictures, and she wanted to help.  

Yep.  The bag passed her test. 

Danielle's Shower and Present

y friend Danielle is having a baby girl in about 5 weeks!  Jen, Kat, and I threw her a shower to celebrate!  It was fun to make one of the decorations for it.  In the picture below, you can notice the banner I made.  I wish I had taken a closer picture of it, but this is the best I have.  I made bunting out of 3 patterns of scrap booking paper, and cut out letters that said, "Baby Boyd."  I sewed the triangles on to the yellow ribbon.  

I also made some cupcakes and got to display them on my beautiful tree that I got for Christmas.  I thought that they looked really nice in the pyramid shape.

For Danielle's present, I made a little dress from a pattern I got at a big Joann's sale.  It is made from a moderate-stretch knit fabric and magenta bias tape.  Baby items are so quick to make, since they are about 1/10 the size of adult items.  I forgot to put in my personal tag, and I ran out of time to make the matching scrunching headband.  So, that will come later I suppose.  I'll post that when I finish it.  

Here is the front:

 Here is the back:

Another Laptop Slide

APTOP SLEEVE 


After my first laptop sleeve turned out so well, I decided I wanted to make another one for my old laptop.  I used some left-over heavy weight cloth for the outside, and some left-over pink cotton for the liner.  The white floral cloth was from a thank you gift for Lucy, and the pink cotton was from Leah's apron.  I think I could label this as a "stash buster" project. 


I used the same pattern as the previous laptop slide, but it is sized for my silver monster Dell from freshman year of college.  (As a side note, the computer still runs, and it is a good school or back-up option.) It was a quick project because I didn't spend a lot of time quilting the fabric together.