laundry gets fancy

Reality is starting to set in for us... our fabulous babysitter, Emma, is leaving on Saturday for college in California. Selfishly, I would love to see her stay in Seattle, but I am so proud of her and so excited that she is taking this opportunity to live on her own in a fabulous city to begin her college education. As a going-away gift, I decided to make her a little something to help out with the one thing I associate most with college living: coin-operated laundromat nights.

I used Noodlehead's Lil Cutie Pouch tutorial to whip up this little number. I added the band in the middle because I liked the look of it on Noodlehead's Gathered Clutch, but thought the Gathered Clutch would be a little bit too fancy to take on an outing to do loads of dirty laundry (but this one still turned out to be quite fancy!).

I'm impressed with my zipper installation - I kind of stink at installing zippers, so I've been trying to do more of them in an effort to improve my skills. By the way, don't you just love the fabric? Emma loves purple, and since I had no purple scraps anywhere in my stash, I went on a shopping trip (with my friend Amy - thank you Amy, for spending such an obnoxious amount of time in The Quilting Loft with me!) and picked up Brandon Mably Bones for the exterior of the pouch, a South Hampton print for the band and strap, and Kaffe Fassett Line Dance for the lining.

I was never a big fan of purple before this project - but now I am loving purple, yellow, and blue together! I may just have to make myself a headband out of the leftover fabric, especially the Line Dance fabric (I couldn't stop looking at that lining!).

I filled the pouch with $10 worth of quarters to cover Emma's first load of laundry in her new diggs. Sweet!

Charlie worked on a matching card while I finished sewing and tidying up the big mess I made racing to complete this project before Marcus woke up from his afternoon nap. I think his card may have trumped my pouch, even with my great zipper success! However, the biggest lesson I learned today was that a four year-old cutting up feathers can make a really big mess (but luckily a Dirt Devil can save the day!).

I am so excited about this project that I shared with these linky parties:

Sew Much Ado
Seven Thirty Three

Creations By Kara

Blue Cricket Designs