Something new

Well, the look of my blog, for one thing, and also a really sweet bath mat. I haven't even turned my sewing machine on for about 2 weeks or so...too busy and frankly, out of inspiration and oomph to make anything new. But, my son got me hooked up, due to his mad photoshop and illustrator skills, with an artsy new blog banner that I love soooo much and seeing it completed made me excited about this whole sewing and blogging and teaching thing! I also figured out a little more of the html code riddle and let me tell you, THAT was inspiring...I CAN learn something new! So, after that looong intro, the point of my story is this:

A new bathmat, made from some leftover Anna Maria Horner "Good Folks" fabric. I was inspired by Sew Liberated's Recycled Bathmat Tutorial, but I have to admit, I am far too lazy to do all that cutting and sewing of little squares. I am definitely NOT a quilter. The idea of the bathmat is awesome though and I altered it to be more in tune with my 1/2 hour window of sewing time lifestyle (an almost 2 year old will do that to you!). Here is a little photoshop montage of my very lazy process:

Clockwise:

I laid out and old towel on my work table and positioned the scraps of fabric that I had on top to determine layout...then I trimmed the fabric to be somewhat even. I can't give you exact measurements because I just kind of wung it but my center panel was about 20" and the side panels were around 10" each.

I sewed the side panels to the center panel, right sides together, ironed the seams toward the sides and then laid it on top of the towel and trimmed the towel to be the same size as the now sewn together fabric, approx. 39"x 26" .

I pinned the fabric to the towel, right sides together and sewed all around the edge leaving a 5" opening somewhere along the edge so that I could turn it right sides out. After turning, I ironed
it all down and then topstitched around the whole thing, about 1/4 inch away from the edge.

I sewed down along the seams through the fabric and the towel where I joined the two fabrics together, to keep the whole mat looking neat after it has been washed.

and that's it! Super easy and very satisfying since it didn't cost a dime!

I've got a bunch of other new things getting ready to hatch here at Little Birds Fly, a calendar of my upcoming sewing classes, some patterns and a giveaway, all very soon! So stay tuned!

My best wishes for a very happy, peaceful and prosperous 2010!!

xo Jennifer