Bagluettes

I know everyone has moved on to 2013, but I'm still pulling out the last of 2012!  Now that the gifts have been given I get to record them here.   Advertised as cosmetic cases, at this stage in life I'd probably use them for anything but, because lip balm is as fancy as I get these days.  I got the pattern from blush bunny (pattern for $4.95 here) off etsy - and I have to say I still like her fabric choices best:

I did two, for the ladies that care for little J, because if anyone has earned a homemade gift this year, they have.  Not because J is so hard, but because for me, sleep and morning breaks from baby can be the difference between bearing motherhood and enjoying it.

The instructions were very straight forward, and I followed them to the letter on the first one, with fabric I totally love that I had just 1/4 yard of from Purl Soho:

I ended up tucking the end of the zipper in and tacking it to the inside because i liked it better that way.  Unfortunately Joann's only had white plastic snaps instead of the mother-of-pearl ones, and I think they look a lot cheaper.

For the second one, I shortened the zipper so it ends at the end of the bag part, and tacked in the end again, and I managed to find pearl buttons.  Sorry Sam, but Maureen totally got the better deal (although her fabric meant NOTHING to me!):

Here you can see the zipper difference:

All in all, I was pretty happy with the outcome - I'm a pretty slow sewer and I did them both in about 5 hours.  Definitely a good and easy girl gift! I couldn't figure out how to use the zipper foot effectively which resulted in some pretty sloppy lines - very frustrating when everything looks perfect up until then, but as I just kept muttering "that's how they know it's homemade" which is becoming my mantra.