Happy (belated) Mother's Day!

For obvious reasons I had to wait to publish this blog post as I didn't want to spoil the surprise I had made for the lovely ladies in my life.

I am a procrastinator.  There I said it.  I am one of those people who puts off doing the laundry until I have nothing to wear then I'll put a load in the washing machine right before I get into bed and then set the alarm for sometime in the middle of the night to put it in the dryer.  Have you ever done this??  Drives my husband crazy and I think that's why he does so much laundry around here.  I think he likes clean socks :)  Love you babe!  Anyway, my procrastination seems to affect me during holiday times too.  Sometimes I just can't come up with a "good enough" gift idea and other times I think it just kinda sneaks up on me.  (I swear time speeds up after you have kids)  For Mother's Day this year I needed an idea that I could procure in oh... 4 days and would either be individualized for each of the 4 people I needed gifts for or would be the same thing for all four.  My gift also had to be budget friendly because, well, we all love that don't we?  I came across this gathered clutch tutorial by Noodlehead a while back and I thought it was a super cute idea and I figured these little purses/clutches would be perfect and useful for all four ladies on my list.  The only problem was that I didn't have the time nor the budget to go buy fabric for them (I'd just spent 3 months worth of my fabric allowance at Joann on Tuesday, I came up with this idea on Wednesday).  I've saved some of my favorite outfits and dresses of Allies to sew into a quilt someday and I figured out that this would be a perfect way to get the fabric I needed for these clutches and to make them super special.
Here are the clothes that I used:

I only stole the frog off of the purple onesie.

The hardest part of the project was cutting up the clothes.  I have this weird emotional attachment to Allie's baby clothes, but I just took the scissors and did it, I mean they're never going to fit her again right?  I just used coordinating fabric from my stash to fill in where there wasn't enough from the clothes.

and the finished product:

My mother in law loves frogs so I stole this little guy off an old onesie an just stitched him on.

This little strip of fabric is hiding an oops.  Be very careful when you're fusing your interfacing not to get too close to the edge and pull the fabric back on itself.

Only two of the four ended up with the intended D-ring.  I just kept forgetting to put it in there.

Just a note about the tutorial.  I used heavy weight interfacing for the divider pocket.  Only do this if you wish to torture yourself.  It's just what I had on hand.  It did make them more substantial though (for lack of a better term).  I found the heavier interfacing made it impossible to turn the thing right side out if the bottom of the liner was sewn at all so I just ended up leaving it opened and finished the bottom of it with a zig-zag stitch.  If you have questions about it email me.  Also, don't take the paper off of your interfacing that's on the sides until AFTER you sew up the sides and the bottom of the outside, otherwise it makes a big sticky goupy mess out of your sewing machine.  Alcohol wipes work really well for getting the stickies off, not that I would know...  I also had problems with my zipper foot so I just used my regular one and it was fine.  The only difference I think is that more of the zipper shows which for me was fine because my zippers were in very cute colors.  I really hope that these little clutches get lots of use and the ladies love them!