Secret Garden Laminates (aka Sandi crashes the blog)

Hello Michael Miller fans!  It's Sandi here, gate-crashing the Making it Fun blog!

I'm so happy to share with you my newest venture with Michael Miller Fabrics - laminated cottons.  I have wanted to do a group of these fabulous fabrics for awhile, and with Secret Garden - I was given the green light to pick out some of my favorite prints to be laminated.

When we started looking over the Secret Garden prints, the first obvious choice to me was the Garden Gate design in all of its mossy, rainy colored splendor.  When I designed this print, I wanted it to look like an ornate Garden Gate, with the remnants of past grown flowers still clinging to the iron.  What a perfect print for a drizzly day, don't you think?  I have a raincoat in the works.. in three different prints.

To accompany Garden Gate, my Lock & Key and Vintage Ironwork prints in those lovely tones of gray joined the lineup, and were soon followed with the Midnight Party Dress and accompanying Vintage Ironwork in Berry:

When I received my sample yardage to play with, I started thinking about the obvious uses for water-resistant fabrics.  Raincoats, lunch bags..  but I wanted to really push creativity with this unique fabric.

My first project was to recover an old, outdated sewing caddy that had great bones and construction.  Look at the before:

Please try not to be overly jealous of my gorgeous turquoise carpet.  We can't all be so lucky..

But do be jealous of what I found on the inside:  (and with a price tag of $9.99, I would have snapped it up even if it wasn't full of lovely vintage sewing goodies!)

So I got to work and stripped away the covering and gold foil trim and covered the lid with my Garden Gate laminate and covered the body with some mod podge and Garden Damask.  Working with the soft laminate was a dream.  It moves and drapes like a regular cotton, but obviously is laminated to make it water resistant.  The coating prevents cut edges from fraying, which makes projects like this particularly easy-peasy.

I think it is a definite improvement, and now I can put my feet up on it and just wipe it clean.  And now I want to sew everything in a laminate, just to be able to "wipe it clean.."  It's a really great feeling - if you will be attending Quilt Market in a few weeks, please stop by our booth to see fresh ideas using this new fabric!

I will be back after Quilt Market with some more tips and tricks to sewing with this fabric, a free quilt pattern for the laminates (yes!) and some care tips.

But in the meantime, enjoy!