Church Mother's Day Gifts

If you remember from previous years, my church usually gives out gift cards for Mother's Day. We're a small church, so it works for us. I like to make a little something extra to go with the gift cards, since we all know that they're worth a lot more than they look like. Who wants to spend that kind of money and have it look cheap??

Well, this year I settled on wallets for the mothers. I took my sewing supplies (and all my thrifted zippers) along on vacation the week before Mother's Day and hoped to find some nice sheets or fabric in my thrifting adventures that week. I was not disappointed! I found a big bag of decorator fabric remnants, most likely from a professional's sample book, for just $2.



This is the style of wallet that I made. They look a lot harder than they actually are. The zipper is really easy to put in these - much easier than putting zippers in clothing. I ended up with 2 pockets (for cash, receipts or a checkbook), a zippered section for coins, and room for 6 credit cards.



These fabrics were all the same print, just different colorways.



And here they are from the back, lined up so you can see them better.



Then I took the bigger remnants and decided I wanted to make some bags. I had three fabrics, so I cut enough pieces from each one for an entire bag, then mixed and matched.



Whatever print went on the bottom also went into the straps and the lining.



These were a huge hit! I even liked them so well I wasn't sure I wanted to give them away ... but I did. :)

I also pulled out a few of my stashed rag quilt purses to get us up to the 14 gifts that we needed to house the gift cards.



But they were so popular on Mother's Day that I needed a few more gifts for the mothers who were sick. (Amazingly enough, we had just enough for the mothers that were present.) I also wanted to make something for the single ladies of our church who never get recognized since they're not mothers.

So I took another decorator fabric from the same stash of thrifted fabrics and made four of these wallets. It's a different design, with no zippered section. I ran out of zippers.

So there you have a Mother's Day gift idea, if you're inclined to sewing. The bags are quite simple, so you don't need a lot of sewing experience for them. I'm actually teaching my Sunday school girls how to sew them right now. There's a basic tutorial for this type of bag on the DIY Network here, if you're interested.

Update: For those who asked about wallet patterns, here are some great, simple ones:
a quilted wallet
a basic wallet with no zipper from Talin's Corner
a basic wallet with a zipper from Bluebird's Wing
and another basic wallet with no zipper from The Rubber Punkin

If you're not inclined to sewing, my friend made some beautiful gifts for her church ladies, too. They don't require any sewing. You can see her tea favors here.

So, what did your church give out for Mother's Day this year? Any ideas I could use for next year? :)

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Homemade Gift: Guest Book #3

Supplies: stamps (Inkadinkadoo Coffee House Alphabet); paper (ATD, unknown, image from recycled Karla Dornacher book); composition notebook.

Here is the third guest book in the series of guest books for fellow pastor's wives. This is the particular book that got me thinking specifically of my fellow pastor's wives, since it has the church on it.

Since it was a little smaller than the other images, I used some coordinating grosgrain ribbon to fill in the gap on the front ...



... and on the inside covers.

Enjoy!

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Homemade Gift: Guest Book #2

I'm pretty sure this published on Thursday like it was supposed to, but Blogger has been down all morning and suddenly this shows as "scheduled" instead of "posted". Just in case, I'm posting it again ...


Supplies: stamps (Inkadinkadoo Coffee House Alphabet); paper (ATD, Provo Craft, image from recycled Karla Dornacher book); ink (black StazOn); composition notebook.

Here is the second guest book in my series of guest books for fellow pastor's wives. This is the book that got me to thinking "guest books," since it has this cute house on it.



And here is the inside cover, decorated with the same papers as the outside.

Enjoy!

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God shows His care through a teddy bear

I mentioned yesterday that we were on vacation last week. We vacationed at Smugglers Notch in Vermont. All I can say is "WOW!" The accomodations were truly top-notch.

I also mentioned that we went to some thrift stores. Well, we also did some of the usual vacation things. We went to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory so our kids could see how teddy bears are made.

We got the brochure that mentioned kids making their own bear at the end of the factory tour. [They're called "Make a Friend for Life" bears. You can see information about them here, but the real bears look nothing at all like the ones in those pictures.] That sounded like something our kids would like, so we called and found out it was $20 each. That sounded pretty reasonable for as cute as Vermont Teddy Bears are ... until we got there and realized those bears looked nothing like a regular Vermont Teddy Bear.

My kids could sew a cuter bear as a first sewing project all by themselves - really. These bears looked like someone either punched their nose into their face or ran over them with an 18-wheeler. Maybe both. They were completely flat, even after being stuffed, with no snout. I can't find words to describe to you how truly awful they looked. I've seen bears at Dollar Tree that were cuter than those bears.

I'm not trying to be overly dramatic here, but I do want to warn anyone else who might visit and tell their kids about making these wonderful bears after the tour. Don't do it; you'll be terribly disappointed. Our kids were.

The tour, however, was absolutely fantastic. We all enjoyed it, even my husband.

The bears they make are also fantastic - but pricey. The smallest ones start at $36. A 15" bear is $60. Of course, my kids both wanted one of those 15" bears, but it just wasn't in the budget. If I'd had the money, believe me, I would have bought them both a $60 bear as a splurge because we were on vacation. I'm sure you're all familiar with a mother's heart.

Since I couldn't afford the bears from the factory, I promised my kids what I could do - I could sew them each their own customized bear that looks remarkably like these teddy bears. I've made jointed teddy bears before. I even found the pattern.

Then we got to talking about which fur was their favorite, and we hit on a problem. My son's favorite was the one with fur that's spotted like a cow. I've never seen that kind of fur in a fabric store, so I wasn't sure I could replicate that one. Oh well. I could certainly try.

Fast forward four days ... We were headed out of town on our way home. We were going past a Goodwill store that we had been in on Monday. We almost didn't stop, but decided at the last minute to take a quick run through to see if anything new came in.

We walked by the toys on the way to the linen section, and my son grabbed something and started getting terribly excited.

"Look, Mommy!! It's a Vermont Teddy Bear!!"

Do you want to take a guess what fur it had?



Yes, it was the cow fur, just like he had wanted. I nearly cried right there in Goodwill. I think my son almost did, too.

Since we had been on the factory tour, we knew everything to look for to make sure it was a genuine Vermont Teddy Bear.



We checked the tag and saw the price - $2.99! (This is the $60 bear.)



Sure enough, it was the real thing!



We outfitted him at another thrift store for $2.00, and we even found him a bear-sized cell phone (Build a Bear brand) at another thrift store for $0.75.

Can you guess whose little boy got a powerful lesson on God's care for His children? Of course, we made sure to tell him it wouldn't happen like this all the time. But God has done things like this for us over and over and over.

But wait! That means that my daughter didn't get one. Hmm, I'm all about fairness but my kids know that life isn't always fair. And I can't always make it fair. It's a basic life lesson that many parents are trying to shield their kids from. Not this parent.

My daughter was fine with me making her a bear to her specifications. She's generous like that. But my husband and I decided that we would be looking in the toy bins at thrift stores a little more closely from now on ... Would you guess what we found yesterday?



How about this guy (or girl, if you ask my daughter)?! Not only that, but we found him at our local Goodwill, the place that's notorious for taking anything remotely of value and putting it into a showcase for close to the same price you'd pay for it brand-new. Obviously someone has never heard of Vermont Teddy Bears, and I'm thrilled that they haven't. He was only $0.50!



The look on her face says it all, doesn't it? This was the exact bear color that she wanted! Are you overwhelmed yet? I certainly am. God is so good to our family. I hope "little" lessons like this stay with my kids for a lifetime. I hope my kids remember that God cares about children and the big "little" things that concern them.



It reminds me of the verse in the Bible, "Or what man of you, whom if his son asks bread, will he give him a stone? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Matthew 7:9,11, italics mine)

Another Vintage Sheets Quilt

I finished another vintage sheets quilt this weekend for a custom Etsy order!

This quilt is done in a blue theme. I've been pretty pleased at the color selection of vintage sheets I've been able to acquire over the last few months. At first, all I could find were yellows; then suddenly I began to find a bunch of different colors.



Here is a close-up of the squares. Again, it's simple patchwork, but I like the simplicity of it that lets the fabrics shine.



And here is a view of the scrappy binding. I used a blue stripe and blue dotted floral for this. I really like the look of the scrappy bindings, and I really like the fact that it can be made with the leftovers.

I'm linking to Fiber Arts Monday and

Homemade Gift: Guest Book

Supplies: stamps (Inkadinkadoo Coffee House Alphabet); paper (ATD, image from recycled Karla Dornacher book); ink (black StazOn).

I have been trying to keep up with pastor's wives from my conference this year, with a goal of contacting each of them at least once. Since we live so far from the rest of our conference churches, sometimes I feel a little disconnected from what's going on with the rest of our churches. However, I know that parsonage life can be stressful at times, whether I know the details or not. So I've been doing my own little "encouragement ministry". (Our conference isn't large, so 1-2 packages each week will cover everyone in one year's time.)

I enjoy making things, but I don't always have people to give them to. This is the perfect outlet for these type of projects. I've already sent out aprons and tea towels, but I hit on this idea the other day and I'm thoroughly excited about it. In fact, I'm so excited about it that I've turned out four of them each day for the last two days.

I have lots of composition notebooks from the back-to-school sales, and I love altering them into something pretty. This happens to be a guest book, something that every pastor's wife (at least the ones I know) has. If she doesn't need it for a guest book, she can use it to keep track of guests' food preferences, allergies, or diet restrictions ... or menus she has used in the past ... or any of the other details we keep track of in the parsonage. :)



And here's the inside cover. I decorated both the front and back inside covers the same.

I was able to make this using the recycled book image, two sheets of decorative 12x12" papers, and the composition notebook. The back cover is done in the stripe you see to the left.

I'm pretty excited about how these are turning out, so expect to see quite a few in the next few days/weeks! :)

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Homemade Gift: Journal

Supplies: stamps (Hampton Art); paper (GP, The Paper Company, wedding stationery); ink (black StazOn); Heidi Swapp fleur de lis sticker.

I happened to notice how well this sticker matched the stack of wedding stationery I recently picked up at Ollie's, and this journal was born.

Since the base of this journal is a composition notebook (I stock up at back-to-school time), I had to hide the class calendar and multiplication charts on the inside covers.



I used more of the wedding stationery to do that, and it looks so elegant!

I'm making a few of these for a friend to sell to help raise funds for a handicap-accessible van for her newly-disabled husband.

Enjoy!

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