Sense and Centsability: Some Christmas Sewing...

Probably my favorite tradition that we have as a family is our Homemade Gift Exchange. We started doing an exchange about 8 years ago, but about 4 years ago, we decided to make it only homemade things. We draw names and then exchange the gifts on Christmas Eve...which means that the gift won't be overshadowed by all the other cool things a child might be getting.

This year, I actually drew my son's name, but then I saw the most adorable Fish Purse on Make It and Love It...so I asked my husband if he would switch with me so that I could have my 8 year old daughter.

I went to the store and picked out all the fabrics (a very long and painful experience with my 4 year old in tow!). We were there for over 1 1/2 hours...the sale and my coupon were so great that I wanted to buy for all of my projects at the same time.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to sew and create something so cute and adorable. I cut out all the pieces one night while I watched a movie...then the sewing part took me about 2 hours.

Luckily, my sister got around to making her fish purse a few days before me, so she gave me her tips!

I am not going to copy all the instructions from Make It and Love It---if you want to make it, definitely click on that link and read it all through. It looks and sounds harder than it is!

The first tip is to CHAIN SEW all your scales. That means just feed them in one after the other...DON'T stop the machine, backstitch, and cut your threads. It goes so fast this way!!

So here's what it looks like when you have chained them all together. Then snip them apart, trim a little of the seam allowance on the curves and then turn them right side out. Also, DON'T bother having a different fabric for what she calls the "scale lining"....I just cut the top and bottom of each scale out of the same fabric. It is way quicker and also makes it so you don't have to worry about ironing them SO perfectly so the under fabric doesn't show.

This is what mine looked like once they were all sewn on their sections...

And now when it is all sewn together. I just kept getting more and more excited as I went along!!

This is probably the trickiest part of the instructions...just read them carefully so that your strap is in the right place when you try and turn it right side out after sewing on the inner lining.