Done. Finished. The end.

Wow! Where do the years go?! It blows my mind to think it’s been nearly 18 years since I wrote my first post! So many memories are recorded here. It also blows my mind to think that my only grandchild has grown up through those 18 years, has now graduated from high school, and will be starting college in less than 2 weeks!!

As I’ve maybe mentioned a time or two, I’ve considered ending my blogging journey. Somewhere in the last year or so, I decided that Courtney’s graduating from high school would be an appropriate time to call it quits here, since so many of my posts have included her. As is my usual style, I’ve procrastinated at that, too, but now it’s really going to happen. This is my final post to the ol’ A Photo’s Worth blog. I’ll try to keep it ‘short and sweet’, but that might be hard.

To begin the end, here’s Courtney right after the graduation ceremony. To say I’m super proud of her and all her accomplishments would be an understatement. I love her so much!!

Of course, what kind of a celebration would it be without a handsewn gift from Grandma G? I made a couple of little Dog Under My Desk pouches to hold little gifts, one for Courtney and one for their exchange student from Italy. Courtney’s is the one on the left.

In Courtney’s pouch I tucked a little metal card I’d found online. I hope she pulls it out and gets some encouragement sometimes.

Ask me if I got teary when searching for the perfect gift items! 

I was happy to find a card that said just what I wanted to say to her.

So graduation happened and was celebrated with a perfect weather day and a lovely outdoor party at their house. 

A few weeks later, Courtney asked me if I’d make her a little purse. I was delighted that she asked, and of course I said yes! She chose a pattern she liked and fabrics from my stash, and I went to work. In keeping this short, I’ll just show you a collage of some progress photos I took along the way. You can click on it to enlarge and see details better if you wish.

The pattern was from the Pisces Pack add-on to the Aries Crossbody bag by Knotted Threads Co. I have to say, Shannon’s patterns can’t be beat! She has all the details and tips to make a bag a success, as well as a video tutorial. The purse came together very well, with the biggest challenge being getting the top edge of the bag under my presser foot to get started on the final topstitching. 

Here is the purse I made for Courtney. We were both pretty pleased with how it turned out.

(Hey, I remembered my label!)

The coolest part of the bag was the quilting on the front and back. The pattern included the how-to to make it come out just right.

Here’s the purse on its first major trip - to Universal Studios in Orlando! Courtney, her mom, and Auntie Jess went on a girls’ trip to celebrate graduating and just to have some fun together, which they did. (Ignore the fact that Jess is NOT carrying a Grandma G-made purse. I don’t know how that happened!!)

So that’s it, folks. My last post. The blog will remain online as long as Blogger doesn’t shut down, so feel free to browse through any old posts. I bid you all a fond farewell, and you can still find me on Instagram - @grandma_g415. Bye-bye! ❤️

Crafting with Courtney - NEWS!

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a “Crafting with Courtney” post! Like ten years?!?! How can that be??? She was just a baby when I started this blog, and now she’s 18 and a high school senior, and that blows my mind!

Even though I haven’t posted about her crafts lately, she’s still been busy. She has been crocheting for several years. I’ve been the lucky recipient of some of the things she’s made, one for each of the last three Christmases. I got this adorable caterpillar first:

The next year I got a sea turtle:

This past Christmas I received a panda:

I love them all! They snuggle together on my bed every day.

The “NEWS” part of this post is that Courtney has opened an Etsy shop to sell her crocheted creations! 

It’s called ByCourtneyCrochets, and you can check it out here. I think her little animals are all so adorable - I’d like one of each! She’s working on more, building up her inventory; now she just needs buyers. They’d make awfully nice gifts, so if you know someone who’d love one (or like me would just like one for yourself), how about grabbing one of these handmade cuties? 

Courtney is a very talented entrepreneur, and I’m so proud of her! Please help spread the word about her little shop! You can also follow her on Instagram - @bycourtneycrochets.

And I am a great procrastinator (okay, you already knew that)! I’m rather behind on posting my latest sewing makes. They’re on Instagram, and I will probably eventually stop blogging and just stick with that, but for now… I’ll keep hangin’ in here and hopefully catch up. Soon. Hopefully. 

Monarch Mini Crossbody Bag #2

 How’s this for a different look to start my post?

So adorable, right?! 💕  This is Waffles, and she belongs to Courtney and her boyfriend. I took that photo on the day they brought her home, because I was lucky enough that they stopped by our place on the way (at my request). She’s just the sweetest little thing! She’s a Cavapoo - a cross between a Cavalier Spaniel and a Poodle. She seems to have gotten more of the cava part and not so much poo, because it appears her hair isn’t going to be very curly. 

Then I got the idea that her “parents” (their word, not mine!🥴) need a dog-walking bag to carry all the necessities. Since I’d made a Monarch Mini Crossbody Bag before (see it here) and enjoyed that, I decided to make another. Courtney chose the fabrics, and here is the completed bag:

I think she made great choices, and I love how it turned out! It can be used as a crossbody bag or, as shown below, the strap can be attached to the triangle rings on the back to be made into a waist bag.

The mesh pocket holds a small water bottle, and the pocket on the other end holds a roll of poop bags that can be fed through to access one at a time.

I happened to have zippers that matched perfectly…

… and even the lining fabric from Jess’s Typography fabric line matched nicely. (And I remembered my label - yay!)

Here’s Miss C and the “baby”, modeling the bag. I wonder if she gets carried more or walks more. Ha! She’s not very heavy to carry. She’d almost fit inside the bag! ☺️

The pattern, by Dog Under My Desk, can be purchased here.

Just the Ticket Luggage Tags #2

Over eight(!) years ago, I wrote this post about some Just the Ticket Luggage Tags I’d sewn from the pattern by Uniquely Michelle. I had occasion to make some more recently, so here they are.

I started out by making that center one out of waterproof canvas, thinking it’d be nice if the tags were waterproof in case of being out in the rain. However, that fabric was a little too thick which made turning them right side out extremely hard, so I knew I didn’t want to make four more of those! I then remembered some laminated cotton fabrics I was given by a friend who was cleaning out her stash, so I decided to try one of those, and that worked much better. The remaining four are made from those fabrics, making them still pretty waterproof.

I once again used the printable PDF file Jess made for the ID cards, and it is still available here.

I enjoyed making these, and I may have done a bit of print matching… because that’s how I roll.

These were still a little more challenging to turn than quilting cotton would’ve been, but still doable.

So these pieces…

… became these:

They ended up going with Courtney and her mom (as chaperone) on a school Culture Club trip to Europe in June… Italy, Greece, and a cruise to the Greek Isles! Here is one of the many pics she sent.

Yeah… where have the years gone?! She’s officially a senior now! She’s still a kitty-lover, though, and she said cats were plentiful over there.

What a great traveling experience they had!

In going back to the post about the first luggage tags I made and reading through the comments, I realized I forgot two things. First, I forgot to add my little label to these new ones. It’s not the first time I’ve forgotten that! Ha! The second thing is that I totally forgot about the request for a couple of luggage tags. That was a long time ago, but if you see this, Kristin, and still want them, I’d be happy to make them. Just contact me.

Now I’m about to get back to a sewing project I’ve already put on hold twice, once for the luggage tags and once for a pattern test that for now has to remain a secret… until October!! I sure wish I could show you now, because it turned out very cool, and I love it. But I’m sure there will be several other projects in the meantime that I will be able to show you.

Courtney’s creations

I promised I wouldn’t wait five months before posting again, and I didn’t, but the time has sure been flying by and I’m so good at procrastinating! 

Soooo… Courtney did some Christmas sewing. She wanted to make a few zipper pouches. Here’s her very-first-ever zipper pouch! She did a fine job!

That fabric was some she chose from my stash. For the rest of the pouches, I happened to have three already cut out for a project I was supposed to sew for Cloud9 Fabrics at one point, with the fabrics being chosen and sent by them. But then they changed their minds and wanted something else, so these fabrics have been sitting for several years, with me thinking I’d still sew them up someday. I didn’t, but it turned out to be a good thing for Courtney. It saved her a lot of time, which was scarce as it was, so all she had to do was the sewing part. So she made 3 more pouches in short order!

Great job again!

Next up was a Christmas gift for her dad. Months ago I’d gotten a tiny ratcheting screwdriver set for myself, mainly for getting at some of those awkward screws on my Sailrite sewing machine. It’s been a great help, and when I showed it to Nate at one point, he said he might need to borrow it sometime. I mentioned it to Courtney, thinking it would be something she could get him for his own, and she liked that idea. 

Then I thought it’d be handy if it had a case to store those little things in. So I made this prototype for my tools so I could get the size down and help Courtney make one.

I’d made it out of waxed canvas. She chose another color of waxed canvas for the one she made, and here it is. She even got the new experience of installing a metal snap.

She sewed that on my Kenmore, so since I needed something to do so I’d be close by in case she had questions while she was sewing, I decided to make another Tiny Bin on the Sailrite machine. I used both those waxed canvas fabrics, and since those are Alex's colors, I gave it to him. Hopefully he found a use for it.

Here it is with my original Tiny Bin. Cute, huh?

Courtney has also taken up crocheting! She’s made so many cute things… I wish I had pics of them all. Here’s what she gave me for this past Christmas - a sea turtle! I think it’s super cute!

The Christmas before, she’d given me a caterpillar, so here are the two friends together. So fun!

She’s also made a walrus, several hedgehogs, a toucan, and a few other things she’s mentioned but I haven’t seen. My favorite of all her crocheted things is a huge lion. It’s so awesome, and she took it to the State Fair last summer and received a blue ribbon! She’s a girl of many talents, and I’m soooo proud of her!

Andrew Trifold Wallet

Whoops! I guess it’s been a while since I posted anything (again). Let’s remedy that right now!

This is the only thing I’ve sewn since the last post. (Christmas and other things got in the way.) It was another pattern test for Linds Handmade Designs. Want to guess what it is?

Maybe this folded-up version of the above will help.

If you guessed a wallet, you were correct. Of course the title of the post might have helped you out a bit, too. Ha.

Here’s what it looks like on the inside.

Loaded up it looks like this.

It has a zippered pocket for cash, a zippered coin pocket, two card slots, and a clear vinyl ID pocket. Linds designed this with her young boys in mind, so the important things ($$) are secured, including the entire wallet which snaps closed. (There is also a velcro closure option in the pattern.)

The pattern is designed for non-fraying fabrics like waterproof canvas (which I used in mine), cork or leather, as there are raw edges inside.

Linds suggested that a D-ring could be added so that it could hang from a wristlet strap or lanyard. I gave this wallet to Courtney (to hold her newly-acquired DRIVER’S LICENSE!!), and she chose to have a lanyard for it. I managed to get a quick photo of her wearing it when we were over celebrating her 16th BIRTHDAY last night! (The years keep going by faster all the time!😅)

The Andrew Trifold Wallet is a quick, easy sew, and it’s domestic machine friendly using waterproof canvas. The pattern can be found here. Try one… it’s fun! You may find you need to make more than one. 😁