Birthday Gifts Part I: for mom

The birthday gifts have been given and well received, so now I can talk about them! I will post these this morning and later this afternoon the other gift I made since there are so many pieces to this one.

First up, my mom turned the big five-oh the other day! It was a big birthday, and I ended up making a 6 part gift to go along with it. One of the things she requested when I asked her if there was anything she'd like me to make was a set of make-up bags. Then she started explaining her problem. What it came down to was that she needed a brush roll to organize her brushes, a big bag to hold all her basic everyday stuff, and some small bags to hold each color scheme. Did I mention this is what she keeps in the car?? So with that, I set about plotting how to make it work. In my dream world, I would have made a set that somehow connected to keep it more together and organized, but in reality I was tired, sick and time crunched.



So what she got was a brush roll using this tutorial. Now here's the thing about me; I don't use makeup. At all. Chapstick is about as good as it gets, not even tinted. I didn't even wear any for my wedding. Point being, I had no real idea what I was doing as far as the make-up brushes went. I have a basic knowledge of these things, but I just kinda guessed on how big to make the brush spots so hopefully that works.



Bags, on the other hand, I get! I had no problem whipping those up. I made a big boxy bag using this tutorial. It is my second time using it and it came out pretty well. I added a layer of batting for structure and quilted it a bit, but it didn't seem to make much difference. I also messed up the corners, but it was my own fault for not following directions. It works though and it is super huge.


And then there are 4 smaller bags using this tutorial but with slightly smaller dimensions. My pieces were 6"x7" and I boxed the corners at 3/4". I did do a bit of quilting on each side of each bag so that they could theoretically be washed without the batting bunching, although I don't know that the laminate should be washed anyway. I decided to do some hand quilting on a couple of the bags, but I don't love it.





All of the bags are using scraps from the swoon blocks (which my mom picked out so I knew she'd like them) and some of my Amy Butler laminate for lining. It was so much fun to work with the scraps and make different little bags. I ordered a pack of 25 zippers from zipit on etsy and used those for the small bags. It all came together really nicely and she likes them a lot and can't wait to use them. I am not great at making bags, but I am getting better and zippers are so much less scary. Which is good since I have a few more in mind. I'll be back later with the post for the gift for my sister!