fabric basket – tierneycreates

John and I are going in the near future to visit his childhood friend and his wife. We are staying their home and I never show up as a guest as someone’s home without a gift (nor does John); and with some Instagram snooping I discovered they love craft beers and so I made them a set of Lagom Storage Bins, pattern Sotak Handmade.

These are the same bins I made a couple months ago for some friends (see post Lagom Storage Bins). After I made them the first time I was not sure I was going to make them again as they use two different types of interfacing (SF 101 and Fusible Fleece) and they seemed sort of tedious to make (but the pattern is well written).

But on second round of making these bins they are growing on me. I did discover that with the larger sizes you would be better off making them with a cotton canvas/linen canvas for more strength. I used quilting weight fabric and the largest one I made seems slightly “floppy”.

The first time I made them I only made the smallest size “X-small”). Here are the sizes they come in per the pattern designer’s Etsy shop:

This time I made them in three sizes – X-Small, Small, and Medium.

I found some cool craft beer themed fabric that my late husband Terry had selected (he loved craft beer, dogs, and flannel fabric; and a lot of his fabric stash as a quilter was in these themes):

Here are photos of the bins (and I love how nicely they stack together!):

I hope they like them! I have no idea how their home is decorated as I am visiting them for the first time; but I thought using the theme of something that interests them might be safe…

John also made a host gift – a cutting board for them:

Rounded corners is a new thing he is trying on his cutting boards.

We are feeling pretty proud of ourselves as we didn’t wait until the last minute to make these gifts!

I wanted to share a follow up to my previous post (Dec 30) “Throwing Pottery” on the Sewing Machine .

There are additional details on the fabric basket I recently “threw” on my sewing machine: It was part of a wedding gift for a dear friend. Now that my friend has received her gift I can share the additional photos/story!

What began as this –

Became this once five (5) little scrappy batik heart pillows were added to make it the tierneycreates Basket of Love:

My friend has a modified “Brady Bunch” situation going on. When she wed her wonderful finance they joined their families and became a blended family of five.

So I made each family member a little scrappy fabric heart and on the back of each heart I added a pocket so they could use the hearts to share little notes of love and appreciation to each other.

For fun I even made up five generic “sample love notes” and placed them in the pocket of each heart.

Working on this piece and sewing in general was a nice bit of healing for me as I deal with the grief of the recent loss of my beloved mother-in-law and the loss of my Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer. As you all probably know, grief comes in waves and it seems better to be sewing than just sitting around when one of these waves hits.

My friend and her fiancé are wonderful loving parents and I know their joined family and new home is likely filled with lots of love, but it made me very happy to make a gift that does more than celebrates their marriage – it celebrates their new family!

Postscript

We had a couple days of warmth (up to 61 degrees F) in Central Oregon but now a deep chill has set in. Not as bad as parts of the US where a terrible Arctic freeze/chill is leading to record lows, so I will not complain.

We have quite a bit of “hoar frost” in Central Oregon. Every time I hear the words “hoar frost” I laugh to myself. I remember when I first moved to the Pacific NW in the late 1990s and heard the term “hoar frost” for the first time. I thought my friend was saying something else completely in regards to the frost (hint: sounds like wh___). And I thought: “Wow, in the Pacific NW they really hate frost!”

In case you have not heard of “hoar frost” before, according to the Google dictionary it is:

a grayish-white crystalline deposit of frozen water vapor formed in clear still weather on vegetation, fences, etc.

Here is a tree loaded with hoar frost from my morning walk:

I want to close this post by mentioning how much I have enjoyed reading “end-of-year” summaries by my blogging buddies. I might write up one myself when I feel ready.

Hope you all are having a Happy New Year so far!