My friend, Valerie, got married this weekend on the beautiful grounds of the Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg, VA. Helping her devise items for the wedding was quite a treat. This was one of our “concoctions” so to speak.

We found this amazing vintage washstand at Chartreuse & Co, a monthly vintage tag sale up in Fredrick, MD. There’ll be a post on that soon too.  Inside the upper bowl are little bottles of bubbles, and in the bottom, flowers floating in water.  The side pockets were designed to hold the programs using all materials I had on hand – linen from my old kitchen curtains, some embroidered linen upholstery samples that worked with the colors and floral designs on the invitations and brown grosgrain ribbon.  Pretty, no?

P.S. This is a To-Do list project.

Welcome to the first in my series of holiday gift posts! I handed these cute little pouches out last night to our daycare providers during their holiday party.  I wish I could take credit for the design, but I can’t – they came from Quilting Arts Magazine special Gifts issue (2009/2010).  The pattern was designed by Margarete Steinhauer and appears on page 132 of the mag (almost all the way at the back).  The pouches are circular, drawstring, lined with coordinating fabrics, and contain 8 small pockets to store pieces of jewelry; or anything else that you might want to store. They fit perfectly in a gift box for a standard-sized mug.

Drafting a pattern from instructions in a magazine is always a little fiddly. I needed to be able to draw 4 different circle sizes and I do not have a compass; even if I did, I doubt I would have had one that would make a large enough circle for this tote.  Instead, I opted for my measurements to be a teeny bit off and ended up using a dinner plate for the outer circle, a largish mixing bowl for the drawstring channel, a pasta bowl for the inner/pocket circle and finally, a tiny mis en plase bowl for the base circle.  The bowls I used for my inner circle and my base circle were exactly right, the outer circle and drawstring channel were slightly off.  Luckily, this did not cause any problems with the final outcome.

Jewelry Pouch – inside
Originally uploaded by alyson_olander

I made seven of these little pouches; the first two as a prototype – once those were done, and I understood how the pattern was supposed to fit together and work, it was easy enough to throw together the other five via the Assembly Line method. I had all of the awesome matching fabrics on hand in my stash, and even the little bits of heavy interfacing needed for the base. The only thing I DID have to buy was the rat tail for the drawstrings. I am absolutely positive that I have a large spool of rat tail somewhere in my sewing room, but it beats me where I put it.  I did not buy enough rat tail so that the pouches will lie flat when opened – I didn’t think it was necessary and I didn’t like the idea that the drawstrings would be so long when the pouches were closed up tight. Overall, I think I would be happy to get one of these as a gift…I really hope the teachers are too!