ABC's

I mentioned earlier this month that I wanted to start to make a dent in my scrap fabric pile.  I saw a tutorial via pinterest for Happy Together's fabric alphabet and thought it would be a good way to use up some of those scraps.

Well, I don't think I made a dent, but I did use up some flannel for the backing.  I also used some saved batting that had been trimmed off of some quilts (quilt smegma?) and I put that in the middle, so I used up some of that, as well.

I ran out of blue flannel, so I had to make like five or six letters with some yellow calico flannel.  Oh well.  I still need to make one of these sets for my own kid.  She's playing with her cousin's birthday set.  

I tried to make a drawstring bag for their long term storage, but it was just a disaster.  First I mis-boxed the corners of the bag and then I tried to string it with rope, but the rope got all messed up.  And then one of the grommets popped off.  Blah!  I just gave up and used a holiday bag that they can either reuse for its original, intended purpose or they can keep the letters in it.  That's up to them.

Also, things that I learned during this project:

1.) Pinking shears are a bitch to work with.  I used them to cut through the three layers and it was miserable.  I really don't know why I bought them, but I thought they were what I'm supposed to have in my sewing box.  I rarely use them.

2.)  Fabric marking pens have disappearing ink.  I thought the ink disappeared with water, but apparently air will do it.  Useless.  I marked letters at the start of the month and most of the tracings vanished.  Grrrr.  The chalk tracings were intact, but the purple lines were gone.