Bags bags bags!

My apologies for being MIA for a couple of weeks, I've been busy! Cody and I both had birthdays, and then the in-laws from Oooooooooklahoma were staying with us for four days. Ergo, the blog was definitely on the back burner. As a consolation, here's a picture of the world's cutest zebra.

But dudes! Check out the spoils from my birthday!

First of all, I woke up to this:

Good job, my man.

Then I was surprised with a visit to the Oakland Zoo, then dinner at P.F. Chang's while my sister watched Ava. What a lovely day!

All of my gifts were sewing related, woohoo! Check it out:

This ArtBin holds so much! My sister, Erin, got this for me. Mom and Dad got me most of the toys and tools you see in it, including some elastic, velcro, pins, a tape measure, a fabric marker, some tracing paper, and a tracing tool.

Cody got me One Yard Wonders, which, I want to make everything in it. SOOooo many cute things. Erin got me Sewing 101. This book looks like it's going to help me a lot with technical terms and doing things correctly. Heh.

Mom and Dad also got me this cute pincushion from China Town in San Francisco.

Okay, and these Gingher dressmaker's shears and embroidery scissors. I mean, I don't know what planet these things are from, but they cut through fabric and thread like a hot knife through butter. And they're so pretty. And sharp. So sharp, that they come with sheaths! I'm a little bit afraid of them. But I know what I'm grabbing if someone breaks into my house!

So before the in-laws arrived, I was able to crack out a few bags. When I went to JoAnn, I found two other patterns in this crazy weird fabric that's perfect for grocery bags. So of course, I had to buy two yards of each. Plus two more yards of the original pattern. (Sorry Cody.) This fabric, by the way, is called olefin. From what I gathered from Wikipedia, it's a polymer that's used to make wallpaper, rope, and vehicle interiors. You can put it in the washer and line dry it, apparently, but I haven't tried that yet. It's also supposed to be recyclable, bonus!

Anyhow, look how cute this little zebra print tote is! It's currently holding some of Ava's toys, but I also used it to carry my Bible study stuff last week. Perfect!

The next two bags were made for my very first customer! (Thanks monkey mamma!) They're both about twice as wide as my previous grocery bags. I made the handles a bit wider, and on the brown one, I put some velcro tabs on the top corners of the side panels to help tame the extra fabric. Overall, I'm getting pretty good at making these bags, I think. I think I'd like to get some different material for the handles, though. Some flat rope of some sort, maybe. I'm thinking white would work best with all of these patterns, BUT, who wants white handles on a bag to get all grubby? Hm...

In other news, I registered on Etsy. I haven't posted a listing yet, though. There are still a few things I need to figure out. Like how to rotate the picture of the item. And what picture to put as my banner. And how elaborate a description of me I want on there. Things like that. But hopefully I'll have some thing listed in the next week or two. I need to make some more things, too, so I don't have just one thing in my store. Right? Or can I have just one thing in my store? I dunno.