Craft-o-rama

Sewing

2008-04-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

My sewing machine is broken. I haven't taken it anywhere because I keep thinking that if I just sit down with it long enough, I can fix it myself. That was about 10 sit-down-with-its ago. In the mean time, I'm playing with my new camera and have been doing more digital scrapbooking.

Caroline

2008-04-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

Cheque-mate

2008-03-05T06:14:00.000-08:00

Do you ever have disappointments in life? Little, small ones. Not the big ones. The ones where you roll your eyes and get on with life very quickly? I guess disappointment is too strong a word. I don’t want to be a heavy today. I know most of you don't really care about my two cents on how I feel about my minor disappointments, but you're still reading, so...anyway.

Just little things, like you thought the washing machine would get the ketchup stain out of your 2 year old’s shirt and it didn’t. Or you thought that this would be the month that you’d finally be able to zip your skinny jeans and the button doesn’t quite meet the hole. Or you wake up smiling, just knowing Clean-Up Fairy made a visit overnight and you open your eyes to find she skipped your house that evening.

I feel this way about the finished product from my wallet. I made so many wrong choices and wrong stitches. I used too heavy an interfacing. It was pretty much white cardboard. I didn’t totally love the fabric combination. I think if I’d used a walking foot, it wouldn’t be so puckered and pulled in places. But, I am looking forward to my next attempt. I think it will go much more smoothly. You can bet your bottom dollar.

However, I am pleased with my first attempt at putting in a zipper! And I didn’t even get the zipper foot out. I have no pictures because I finished it at, like, 11 last night and it was so awful that I didn’t want to bare it for all to see. The seams look terrible, there’s fabric showing that should be tucked neatly inside stitching, there are pieces and parts that are catawampus, it’s just a mess. I haven’t even taken a wet cloth to my markings, yet. Here’s the fabric I used, though. You can dream about what it should look like…

Money, Money, Money

2008-03-04T06:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't even looked at the sewing machine in weeks. I have, however, finished smocking all the white on Caroline's Easter dress. I have a few flowers left to go, hemming, then she's done. I'll post pictures of it with her in it. I'm sort of pleased with the result. It's pretty uneven in sections, but it'll do. It's gone much smoother than I anticipated, so I'm hoping that I can start smocking more. They make great baby gifts, too.

In the mean time, I have purchased four new patterns. McCall's was having their 99 cents sale at Hancocks a while back. After a sweet little chat with an 80-year-old lady about how clothing today has gotten completely out of control and how she has been searching and searching for a skirt pattern that would hit mid-calf and how she guessed she could just lengthen the one pattern that she actually liked, I left the store with a kids' jumper/overall set, a four-purse set, and a baby set (bib, car seat cover, splat mat, etc). Then, the other day, I found what I've been looking for for a while. A wallet pattern. I've always wanted my wallets to match my purses, so now I can just tack on an extra 1/2 yard to whatever I'm buying and I can be totally cool and hip. In a handmade sort of way. I think once I can make them presentable, they'll make great little stocking stuffers. They take very little materials, and so far, has been easy to put together. I even put a zipper in it! Gasp!

Click on the picture for an inside peek.

Joel Dewberry!

2008-02-15T08:08:00.001-08:00

Joel Dewberry is coming out with new fabrics in May. Here are some of the ones I'm really looking forward to getting...

Whew.

2008-02-14T12:10:00.000-08:00

I've found that my crafting (or puttering, which seems to better describe what I do) comes in spurts. I can't get enough for about a week or so. I mean, the sewing machine is flying, glue and paper everywhere. Then, for about the same amount of time, I can't even think about making anything.

I'm cooling off from the two-week high, so I thought I'd update on what I've been up to. Also, I need to pour my crafting (er, puttering) energy into smocking Caroline's Easter dress. I actually have a deadline with that! One thing that I try to do, particularly when it's a project that I've done before and know the routine of, I pray for whomever I'm making it for while I'm putting it together. Caro's going to be getting a lot of prayers over that dress!

Oh, and please excuse my shoddy photography in the next few posts.

Jennifer Mixon--Do Not Read Further

2008-02-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

I found a tutorial online for making these little blocks. Sew in some ribbon at the seams and a bell in the batting and it makes a sweet little baby gift. This is another baby gift you can make in under 30 minutes.

Stationery

2008-02-14T11:55:00.000-08:00

This post is mostly for posterity and to hopefully motivate me the next time I need to send a note to a loved one.

I love handmade things. I love knowing that Amy made Parker's hospital sign. I love looking in Caroline's closet and seeing clothes made by Ginnie and others that I wore made by my grandmother. I love that my dad made a picnic table for Caro's birthday.

One of my things on my list was make Valentine's cards. I made birthday cards, too. I think they loved them, I hope they did!

It looks like a pumpkin, Mommy

2008-02-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

That's what Caroline keeps saying about this little pincushion.

I have been accumlating lots of scraps lately, so little projects (which are what I like anyway) have been high on my agenda lately. And anything that takes 30 minutes is a dream.

These are my list, but these little pincushions feel like little treasure balls in a sewer's hand. Great gifts for sewing friends, too. Fairly easy to make. You kind of have to stop a few times to close your eyes and figure out where you are in the steps, but I think you could make about a 100 of these things and still not get tired of them. The most fun part is figuring out which order the fabric is going in.

Stained glass meets fabric

2008-01-30T10:58:00.000-08:00

I stopped by Quilt Arts today and ran into an old friend! Linda Jackson of SunCatchers in Vicksburg.

Back when Brad and I were engaged, I knew I wanted to make Brad's wedding gift. I was also looking for story ideas, so I stopped in her studio one afternoon. I asked if she could make a panel for Brad. She said, "If you have a few weeks before the date, I can teach you and you can make it yourself." I was totally there.

I made a panel and went on to make crosses for all my bridesmaids. I went further and collected the tools myself and sold different sized crosses to help pay for groceries and stuff while Brad was in medical school. After I got pregnant with Caroline, I stopped because the fumes weren't good for the baby. Then the shards weren't good for the baby, so I never really picked it up again.

It was really weird to have two hobbies collide in one place. She quilts and was checking out the new store.

Creative Licensing

2008-01-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

Our little February budget looks so pititful. We had to slash and burn since Brad has $2,000 in licensure and board test stuff we have to pay for. Mad money, which is how I feed my craft habit, was one of the victims. But this is good. It will force me to get creative. Just following a pattern doesn't leave room for much creativity, unless you embelish or purposely change it in some way. So embelishments, here I come.

Funny how no money coincides with all the unfinished projects I have. I've made a list, so hopefully, I can get parts of this list done in the next 29 days.

1. Blue jean purse. A few weeks ago, Brad donated a pair of his ratty old jeans to my cause, so I decided to make a purse out of them. More for Caroline, since I would feel kind of dopey carrying it around. I have the legs sewn together, and the lining pinned, but I need to make straps before I put it together. I have some ideas for some embelishments, so we'll see how it turns out.

2. Cookies. I made some craft felt cookies a while back and have the materials to make 5 or 6 more. They are for Caro's kitchen at Nana's.

3. That purse. Ugh, I've been working on this thing since June. I'm so ready to actually use it. This one will actually take a little bit of money (and probably all that I have budgeted for myself! Doh!) since I don't have interfacing or fabric for the lining. I can't wait to actually get it out of my system, though.

4. Caroline's Easter shirt. My mom would always buy us little trinkets for each holiday. I carried on the tradition and try to have a shirt for Caroline for each little holiday that comes up. You may remember her Love shirt a while back. I found a cheap-o white t-shirt (with little puffing at the sleeves, so cute) at Wal-Mart and have a ton of sweet Eastery colors. Wal-Mart is no longer selling DMC floss, so they were selling their stash for $.10 a skein. I bought about $8 worth of floss. We'll see what comes out of that.

5. Doll clothes for Caro. I'm kind of iffy about this one. She loses things so easily in the abyss that is her nylon tent and wicker trunk where she stores her toys. But, she also has about three naked baby dolls hanging around the house.

6. Bedding for her doll cradle. Someone in my life passed on to me a tiny cradle for my dolls. Caro uses it for her newborn Cabbage Patch. It just has a large blanket in it at the moment. I really want to make a pillow and a blanket for it. I'd love to make a pillow for a "mattress" for it, but we'll see.

7. Burp cloths. I have several burp cloths I need to make for friends of mine. I have some fabric, but I can get enough for what I need in fat quarters at Quilt Arts.

8. Valentine's cards. I really want to make my loved ones' cards this year. I totally need to get a move on that one if it's gonna happen.

9. Another koozie. I need to make one with a bottom and with no velcro.

Lunch Break

2008-01-26T07:06:00.000-08:00

Since I bring my lunch just about every day, I've been itching to make a lunch bag for myself for a while. If you remember, I made one a month or so ago, but it didn't turn out so well. This is the first time I've ever made a pattern the second time and it's very nice knowing where you're headed and what the problem areas are!

Here's the pattern. Here's the fabric (rose and sunburst, in the pink). I went into Quilt Arts thinking it was going to be orange, but I came out with pink. This is what I used the insulated batting for. I ended up making both pocket tall. What do I need a three-inch pocket for?

Pretty Cool

2008-01-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

Since I like my diet cokes icy cold and straight out of the can, I like having a koozie to keep my fingers from freezing. I had some leftover Insul-Bright (insulated batting) from another project (that I'll post about later), so I thought I'd play a little. This is so incredibly easy. Literally, like a 10-minute project.

First, I got a can. I measured and cut batting to 3 1/2 inches wide by 10 inches long. I measured and cut fabric to 12 by 10. You probably won't need that much, but once you get going, you can cut to fit, more like 8, 8 1/2. You can see in the second picture that I had to fold over a bunch, which I should have just cut off, but I didn't.

Next, I laid the batting strip in the middle of the fabric...where I could fold the sides over to meet in the middle. Once I figured out where I wanted the middle to be, I ironed it. The creases served as my guides once I unfolded it. Now, I think if I hadn't had all that extra material, I wouldn't have needed all that folding and unfolding. I could have just met the ends, right sides together and turned it. The tricky part is making sure it fits snugly around the batting and is not loose. But it was my first time, so there.

I turned the fabric right sides together and sewed into a tube. Then, I turned it right side out. I slid the batting through the tube. I then tucked the ends of the fabric back into tube and sewed the ends closed. I got some Velcro and cut a thin, like 1/4 inch sliver of it and taped it at one end of the koozie. I took the tape off the top piece of Velcro and wrapped the rest of the piece around the can until the end met the Velcro and attached it to the exposed tape. Make sure if you just put the Velcro on that you put it on the opposing side.

Posts to come

2008-01-23T11:18:00.001-08:00

I've taken a short break from crafts to get my house a little better organized. Brad and I have busted through the house the past week cleaning and re-doing and cleaning some more. It needed a little TLC.

But, I have a sweet little treat for anyone who actually may look at this site. I've made a few already, but they are already being used by a Little Someone. I have some more material for them, and I'm hoping to get them done tonight or tomorrow.

I also keep meaning to get to Quilt Arts to get some more fabric for a new lunch bag. That may be my February project. I'm also trying to convince Emily to have a pattern swap with me, so I need to go ahead and get my Amy Butler Covington Bag done.