I have really had a hard time staying focused on my sewing projects this month. I start one then decide that I’d better work on this other one. And then I jump over to a quilt that I’m trying to finish. And, oh wait, that drawer needs organized.

I did finish this beer bag that I at first thought was an unfinished project.

I forgot that I keep the outer shell of a bag or two in the closet and when I get invited to a party, I finish the inside and get a six-pack of beer for the host. I wait to make the interior because I want it to reflect the host or the event. Like, if I get invited to a music party, the interior will have “music” fabric.

For this bag, I was invited to a 50th birthday party and wanted to give it to my friend that is now five-decades-old. I pulled out my box of black and white scraps because my friend wears a lot of black and white.

Something I’m working on is testing and updating all of my tutorials. This could take awhile. Right now I’m updating the “Basic Shopping Bag” tutorial. I had a new person in our Sew Cool! Workshop that tried the pattern and found a few mistakes and couldn’t understand some of the steps. And she was right! Although I have had several friends make the bags, I don’t think they actually read the instructions. They are good enough sewists that they can look at the pics and just finish them. I’m making a couple of bags. Clarifying and proofing. Hopefully I’ll have that done by next month. (I have to have the bag done because it’s going into a charity auction!!!!)

Now I want to talk about blogs….first about SewMamaSew.com. This was one of my favorite sewing blogs. Full of great information. I was a “SewMamaSew Contributor” which today you can see on the side panel of this post. Well, today you can. Maybe not tomorrow. Cause it’s not significant anymore and I think I will be removing it. A few weeks ago I clicked on that “widget” which should take me to the website. Nope. It’s gone. Thought maybe they were offline for updates.

Then I got an email from a reader that really wanted the shark pattern that I made for SewMamaSew.com. She was sewing for a charity and wanted to make “boy” toys. Went back out, the website was still down. Now. When I made that pattern, I agreed to give the owner of sewmamasew.com the pattern in exchange for advertising. I think I got a month of free advertising. At that time I was sort of serious about making some money off of my blog. Then I changed my mind. Which is pretty typical of me. What I really like to do is write, sew, write, design, sew, write. You got it.

I emailed the person that I had dealt with at SewMamaSew.com asking about the pattern. No response. That was at least two weeks ago. Now. I would really like to re-publish that pattern. Here. Because it took me many many hours to write. When I made my agreement with her, the website was really a hot site and a lot of people were hitting it. But now the links from Pinterest are no longer going anywhere. (I HATE THAT!) Since the owner won’t respond, I’m assuming the website is down for good. I made an agreement but so did she. I am going to have to think on this for a while. And. I would love your opinion.

And next up about the blog subject….I have several that I follow. Or used to follow. Some closed down their blog, others kept it up but just quit posting. Many of them have moved over to Instagram. Which is 100% easier than maintaining a website. Take a snap. Upload and put a bunch of hashtags and keywords. Voila. Done.

But I was very pleased that over the past few months that at least five sites I still follow miss the creative process of blogging and are stepping back from Instagram. They want to write and post lots of pictures and have control. I was really happy to read that because that’s how I feel. Instagram is fun but not my main focus. I like to write, sew, write, design, sew, write …..oh I already mention that!

I’ll probably be keeping both blogs running. But I really need to update them. Eventually!