Quick, Little, and HIGHLY useful!

We are a three cat household.  Generally they are all well-behaved and lovely fur-babies.  However, Fender (our youngest cat) has a naughty streak and one of her most naughty habits is to chew wires.  Her favorite are thin wires like those of earbuds.
This has led to a number of destroyed pairs of earbuds in our family which has left more than one person upset with said cat at any given time.
Enter this quick little project that is HIGHLY useful to deter naughty Fender.

I'd seen it here originally and decided to give it a go.  Erin's Tutorial for this project is easy to follow - well written and I found I can whip one up in under an hour.  I do use a walking foot to sew through the multi-layers and that prevents any puckering problems for me.
I've made two so far - one for Steve and one for Jess.

Happy Sewing!

A Fun Little Bag

During the summer our church had a ladies day out event in Rockport, MA.  We had a dozen ladies from high school through retirement age that all drove down to the coast to enjoy a day of strolling, eating and chatting.  It was a lovely day!
While we were there one of the ladies (a new friend) asked me if I ever sew bags - which I promptly acknowledged - bags are fun to do generally and they tend to be quick projects that bring immediate satisfaction.  Which is sometimes a welcome relief and distraction from larger projects that seem to go on and on and on!  She showed me a small bag she'd purchased in Maine and asked if I might be able to make something similar (with a few tweaks) for her to give to her sister as a birthday gift.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity.  I found the exact match fabric to her bag on Fabric.com and ordered it right away.
But, I had a BIG project that had a hard deadline - so that had to be done first before I could work on the bag.
Last week I made a mock up pf a bag to work on the rusty skill of inserting zipper pockets.

But it didn't seem to be quite right, so I found something else to work from and this one looks to be perfect (prayerfully!).
I love the website So Sew Easy - her tutorials are awesome and I just love her accent!  I found a pattern for a Cosmetic Bag that was just the ticket once I'd added some zipper pockets inside and out.

Lobster Fabric - matches original bag

Yesterday I started cutting and today I put it all together!

Adding zipper pockets - inside and out

 The zipper pocket tutorial also came from So Sew Easy - HERE.

It stands by itself!

Showing dimension with the mat 

I will deliver this little cutie on Friday and hope it will be just what she wanted.  It was great fun to make and hopefully will bless her sister.

UPDATE: a facebook update post - it was a hit! Made my day!