Saturday, December 26, 2009

Christmas part 2

In addition to the huge puppet theater project, I made a few more things for Christmas this year. I made lots more fabric bags for wrapping, although I need to make more, since we totally ran out before we were done wrapping.

I made a bunch of birdie ornaments like this:
They were my version of this pattern from the Purl Bee. I stuffed the body with stuffing, rather than a layer of batting, and it worked way better to use heavy interfacing on the wings and then just sew them together from the outside, rather than trying to turn them. Obviously I made them a little smaller as well. Oh, and I used upholstery thread for my hanger, rather than ribbons. I preferred the look, which I discovered after I forgot to put in the ribbons after the first set! I made a bunch of birds - teacher gifts, stocking stuffers, and gifts for random people I wasn't expecting to give presents to! I especially like the fact that they take such a little bit of fabric, because it's a good use for some of my favorite fabric scraps.

I made everyone lip balm as a stocking stuffer, too, which was a hit. I have enough left over that I'm going to make myself some more sometime, although I may do a higher beeswax concentration so it's a little more like chapstick - the recipe I used was more lip gloss than lip balm.

My last major Christmas project was an outfit for each of the girls, and I'm quite thrilled with them. Although they make A in particular look really big! I think it's the jeans.
I had the shirt with hood pattern from Burda, appliquéd a flower on the shirt, then added them to jeans as well. (Which was actually rather a pain - I ironed them on, but then I did hand stitching to secure it, because the location on the jeans made using my machine impossible, and boy, am I BAD at making nice, neat, even hand stitches! It's a good thing no one will be looking too closely at that stitching, lol!) But they look awfully cute. And A has already requested more of the shirts (not a surprise, really; she loves those shirts with hoods.)

Our Christmas itself was very nice - busy, but it's always good to see everyone. And now that the Christmas crafting is done for this year, I can make myself something - I have a few projects in mind, but I may take a short break first! I hope everyone has a happy holiday season!

I finished! Christmas part 1

Happily, I finished everything in time for Christmas. :)

A while back, I posted about some finger puppets that I made. After I finished them, I was inspired to make my big Christmas project for this year - a puppet theater and puppets for my kids:

I used (more or less) this pattern from Don't Look Now, and I really liked it. I made a few changes - no backdrop fabric, only one clown, and I renamed it to a + m theater, which took some creative lettering. Christmas Eve night we almost had a total disaster, because it turned out that we had the wrong dowels, but thankfully Iestyn had things in the garage we could use to make do. Anyway, I love the way it turned out (which is good, since it was hours and hours of work!), and the kids seem to like it pretty well. It's a little hard to tell, since they have so very many new presents to play with right now! But I'm sure it'll get use over time.

I took the ideas from the original puppets and made many more, as well as a bag for storage:
(The little birdies from the theater are so stinking cute, I'm going to have to use them on something else!)

The gingerbread man and the fox:
The Little Red Hen and her "friends":
An unpictured polar bear and monkey, and then my personal favorites, Tacky the Penguin, and his companions, Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly and Perfect:
If you've never read Tacky, you really should. He's hilarious. And my kids like to play Tacky anyway ("What's Happening?"), so I figured they'd have fun with the puppets.

I also made a few more doggies for my nieces and nephew, but I took no pictures of those.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Crazy Christmas Craft

Normally every year I create something known as the Crazy Christmas Craft - some crafty goodness that I make for just about everyone that I know, and often something that takes up quite a lot of time. Like the hand-made, stenciled t-shirts last year. Or the polymer clay animal ornaments. There have been many. This year, I'm apparently not doing that. I've made crafts for people (and have more to make!), but there is less of an overarching theme. Or at least a little less stress. Although actually, I don't really find them stressful normally - sometimes a little nuts, but not stressful.

However, I *am* making my kids something that I suspect will end up in the Crazy Craft realm, because it's taking a lot of time. Not bad time, but LOTS of it. Here's a little sneaky peek - it involves this guy:

(who will have a face at some point). And I'm super excited about it!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

I heart my husband

Iestyn spent last week in Japan on business. Before he left, we were talking about how I'd like to go shopping in Japan because they have such great crafts and fabric. And he is such a sweet man that he offered to buy me fabric while he was there!

So I found him a branch of Yuzawaya to visit near his hotel, and some, well, honestly, totally vague guidance about what sorts of fabric I like, and he went and got me this fun haul:
2 yards of the yellow one, which is frogs (adorable, and A loves it already), 4 yards of the pink with daisies, and a yard of the other three - ballerinas, dinosaurs, and some Kokka Trefle fabric(!) - look how cute:
He has a pretty good eye for things I'd like, especially for someone who's a little afraid of the fabric store, lol!

Plus he got a sample package of a bunch of different quilting fabrics - like a selection of fat quarter blenders, except they're not fat quarters. Maybe fat 1/8ths? Anyway, there are a bunch of different things in there. And he also got this great kit:
Stuffed chickens! Hee-hee.

I haven't had time to make the chickens yet, but I did use some of my new fabric this afternoon to make this needlecase for all the hand-sewing I've been doing lately:
(The button looks better in person, although I may ultimately decide to switch it for another one.)

The inside has felt for the needles, and two pockets - one for my embroidery scissors, and one for whatever else I need:
I basically read the Tiny Happy housewife tutorial and then made my own version. I totally love it. Now I need to get back to my lengthy list of things to make for the holidays, I suppose, but I'm glad to have a fun pincushion (see next post) and needlecase to use for all those projects. And I already have plans for quite a lot of the fabric Iestyn got me. :)

Gosh, I'm whiny lately....

I have yet another project that I thought was a big pain, even if it turned out really cute. I made the Portobello Pixie cupcake pincushion pattern, and it took me about four tries before I had one that I'll be able to actually use. First I made the "high calorie" version. It actually went together fairly easily, and I really liked my fabrics, but the thing was HUGE. I think the top - just the top - was 6-7 inches across. Much too big for the space I have available for a pincushion! (I couldn't really get a grasp of the size from the pictures, but it' svery big.) So, then I thought I'd just make the smaller one. And that one is much harder to put together. Plus I made my life difficult by deciding to do two colors for the "wrapper" part (why do I do these things to myself??). Only then I realized it needed an additional ruffle to tie the colors together, and then I realized with an additional ruffle, the bottom was just too small. So, I took it apart, made the bottom wrapper part a half inch taller, and sewed it all together again. But because of the way I'd done it, I had to attach the wrapper to the top by hand. It took forever. I feel like there was another version in there, too, but maybe not. Anyway, I *do* really like the final result, but it wasn't the easiest project I've ever done:

But hey, at least I have a cute pincushion now!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

This is cute, too, but....

Wow, what a pain to make!

Sew Mama Sew had a month of tutorials for using your scraps, and I came across this tutorial for a fabric colors book for babies, and I thought it was adorable. I have a niece with an upcoming birthday, so I thought it would be a good project to make for her. It didn't go as well as I'd hoped. Now, I'd like to point out that my problems weren't actually the fault of the tutorial. It would have been easier if I'd followed the tutorial a little closer. In that version, you do the iron on transfers onto a piece of white fabric, and that's one of the squares used. *I* thought it would be cooler to have 4 colored squares, and so I ended up appliquéing the color names to the middle. That was a huge pain. I also didn't square up my blocks well enough, which was just laziness. Oh, and the cover page looked awful at first - something went very wrong with the appliqué, and it was completely crooked. So I had to salvage that without starting over (also laziness). And I added a layer of batting to each page so they would be a little thicker, which was actually fine, but did add a step and some thickness.

Anyway, here's a terrible picture of the cover (and one of my favorite of the inside pages):

Sorry about the picture quality - I never get good pictures at night, but I wanted to go ahead and get the post up. (The jacket post is still coming. The only picture I have is really unflattering, so I'm going to be vain and wait until I can get a better one!)

So I do quite like my final product, but it was a lot of work. And I caused myself problems. I hate that. Oh, well, hopefully the recipient will enjoy it! :)

Thursday, November 5, 2009

So cute!!

A while back I found a link to these fairy tale finger puppets from somewhere. I thought they were adorable, and M has a thing for pigs, so I bookmarked it to make them for the girls for Christmas. I finished them yesterday, and they are SO DARN CUTE. I really want to give them to the girls NOW, but I guess I'll probably wait until Christmas. Actually, I have ideas about my own variations (other animals I could make), so there may be quite a collection by the time Christmas gets here! The funniest part is that even though the pigs were my inspiration, I don't like mine all that much. The others are much cuter. Ah well.

The three little pigs:

The Big Bad Wolf:
Goldilocks:
Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. (They're my personal favorites.)
They required quite a bit of hand sewing, but apparently that's what I'm in the mood for these days, because I quite enjoyed it. Plus I can carry it with me and bring it along when I'm waiting around for various activities to be done, so that's nice.

I'm also going to have another post soon about a jacket success (to make up for the huge fail of the last one!) I actually finished it last weekend, but I haven't had a chance to get pictures yet. I'm very happy, though. :)

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Ribbit!

I finished this a while ago, but I was waiting for Halloween to have a good action shot. This year A wanted to be a frog for Halloween. (I'm a little surprised she hasn't done it before, honestly - it's long been her favorite animal.) So, here's what I came up with for her:


I made a green shirt and pants, then modified a hood from a pattern that I had. Then I made gloves and spats (with attached feet). I made approximately a million stuffed yoyos (okay, maybe more like 22) for the little balls on the hands and feet and then also for the eyes. We were both quite happy with how it turned out, although the hands and feet didn't make it very long in the trick or treating process. But at least I got some pictures. ;)

I like this mid-jump shot. And the adorable monkey. (Although she forbade me from making her costume this year. I don't think she's over last year's ghost costume disaster yet, lol.)
Happy belated Halloween!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Bah!

For the record, Simplicity 3628 is not a fun pattern to make. Not only did I have a LOT of trouble with sewing the panels together (I don't know if I did something wrong while cutting, or if they're just really hard, but the fabric just didn't fit evenly together), but I could not for the life of me get the sleeve caps in flat. Not that I'm very good at easing the sleeves anyway, but usually I can manage it more or less. Not with this one. And to top it all off, when I tried it on (before lining and all that, but after most of it was together), it doesn't even look good! Argh! It's very cute on the models, but it looked rotten on me. So, I'm abandoning it, and I'll use a different pattern to make my intended jacket. It's a good thing the corduroy only cost $4 a yard! Now I have to get some more.

I also put together some shirts for the girls (no pictures, I'm afraid) which went awry. I'm not sure what I did, but M's shirt was absolutely enormous. I had to serge it smaller for it to even go on her body. But A's fits fine and it doesn't look like it's small enough to have mixed up the bodices, so I really am not clear what happened. Oh well, they like them, and after re-sewing, M's isn't too bad.

And I did finish these dresses, which I absolutely love:

(A's is the same except the flower applique is a different flower.) This was some super sale clearance fabric from Hobby Lobby, and I really hope the colors don't fade too much, because I love them! I do think I'm going to take a break from the twirly dresses, though - I'm a little weary of all that gathering!

And the next project that I have to complete is a frog costume for A, anyway. Halloween's coming soon - I gotta get going on that!

Monday, October 12, 2009

Fall Fun

Well, today, for the last day of fall break, we mostly have heavy rain and sick kiddos, unfortunately. But we did have lots of fun over the weekend!

Friday, the girls and I went to the Botanical Gardens to see the scarecrows, which is always neat - people make these very elaborate "scarecrow" sculptures, and they set them up all over the gardens.
The girls really liked all the lollipops in this one!

Saturday we managed to fit in our second annual fall fun day in the mountains. The weather forecast wasn't very good, but our current all soccer, all the time* schedule makes weekend planning kind of tricky, and Saturday was basically the only possible day. As it turned out, despite the threatening skies, the weather was fine for us all day.

We and some friends went up to North Georgia to:

visit a corn maze:
pan for gemstones:
(such an intent look... You have to make sure you get all the pretty rocks!)

and visit Burt's Pumpkin Farm. I love Burt's.
(note the Halloween dress)

We went on the hayride at Burt's this year, for the first time ever, and I gotta say that it was totally worth it! Plus we bought a bunch of pumpkins, of course, and a piece of pie. It was really a lovely day.

Now it's a rainy Monday, and that's way less fun! Although I think I'll get another dress finished for each girl today, and that's a good thing. I have many more projects planned, so I need to finish the ones that are already cut out!


*Not only is A playing on a team (which I'm coaching), I'm playing on a women's team. Old lady soccer, woot! :) But it does mean that there's a soccer game almost every Saturday and Sunday for a couple of months. And M wants to play in the spring - I don't know what we'll do then!

Thursday, October 8, 2009

I really do have crafting ADD

It's a little ridiculous, really. :) A month ago, I was completely obsessed with quilting. Buying quilting magazines, reading quilting books, buying fabric for quilts, planning to make a quilt for my bed, etc. And then in the last couple of weeks, I haven't considered quilting once. Instead, I've been making clothes. I don't know what prompted the switch - change in the weather, maybe? - but it's been all clothes, all the time. Since my last post, I've made the girls each another dress (for Halloween) and each a cute little corduroy skort. I made myself two shirts (although I don't like the one I just finished at all) and a skirt that involved a great deal more swearing and seam ripping than it ought to have required. I also have another dress cut out for each girl, fabric for shirts waiting to be cut, and plans to make myself a jacket. Or maybe two, if you count the brown cord that I bought last year to replace my lost jacket.

Ah well, I suppose the thing about the ADD is that I'll eventually work my way around to the quilting again. Hopefully in time to make the new advent calendar I was planning on....

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Flower Garden

Despite the lack of posting on the blog, I've been slowly working lately. I have a number of things cut out, although this past week I was greatly slowed down by the two unexpected days off school due to flooding. But I'm working on winter clothes for the girls. I've even done some hand sewing. I don't usually, because it makes my wrists hurt after a while, but sometimes you have to hand sew to complete the vision! ;)

Anyway, I ran into a bit of difficulty with clear elastic, but I finally finished the first two winter dresses, and I'm quite happy with them. M picked out the pink fabric for her dress in the clearance section of the "pretty fabric store", and I got A the blue and green version of the same fabric, since those are her favorite colors. And this way they can coordinate without directly matching. (I'm not sure if that'll count in their eyes, but I'm hoping it does.)

Close-ups:

M's is more of a bouquet, and A's is more of a garden, but I like them both. No action shots as yet, since it hasn't actually gotten cold yet. Although it might be cool enough to wear them one day this week, so maybe soon.

I have 4 more similar dresses cut out and ready to make, plus some other stuff in process. I had a disaster with a skirt for myself - I got it almost entirely cut out, only to realize I didn't have quite enough fabric. Which I bought at Joann's sometime last spring, and they no longer have. Grr. (It's just denim, but none of the current denim *quite* matches, so it'd look weird in a panel skirt.) So I got more today to start over. Hopefully there won't be any more unexpected "inclement weather" days, and I'll get more done this week!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Sweet

My model wouldn't smile, but look how cute this turned out!


I saw this tutorial for a baker's hat the other day, and thought it was very cute. I was inspired to make a baker set for a birthday gift for a little girl we know. M is modeling for me since she's closest in size (although the hat's about to fall off. I hope it fits the birthday girl!) I'm very pleased with how it came out! I only had a fat quarter of the pink to do the binding etc, and I just barely managed to squeak out enough. I had some issues with the hat but I like it well enough. (My first try went into our own dress-ups. It has some problems, but the girls will play with it.) And the apron is basically like the ones I made a while back, except I used velcro for the back fastener rather than ties. I think the little oven mitt is my favorite part, though - it's quilted and everything! I traced one from our play kitchen to get the right size. I ran out of batting, though, so I have to buy more before I can make another mitt. Or I might make a potholder instead. I haven't decided yet. Today, though, I have my first official soccer game in the league I just joined, so I'm going to be a little busy! :)

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The second day of school

didn't go as well as the first day, unfortunately. Apparently my poor baby was exhausted (and hungry, I think), and so she was laying on the floor half-asleep during free play time. :( They were worried that she was sick, so I went and picked her up. She came home, downed her lunch, and took a two hour nap. I'd say she was tired! This is a child who stopped napping when she was 2. And she's never ASKED to nap in her entire life! The whole "sharing a room" thing is really not my favorite in terms of the children actually getting enough sleep..... However, changing it would be very difficult at this point, so I'm just going to have to come up with a new sleep plan or something.

However, since she had naptime and then was cheerful, I actually managed to do some more sewing. I finished the new dolly quilt, and I'm really quite pleased.


I appliqued the star shape on top of the dots. Then when I quilted it, I stitched around the star and then did some lines. I don't think you can see them in the picture, but they look kind of neat, if I do say so myself.

The backing is the same letter fabric I used in the other dolly quilt:
It's not a spectacular match to the front, but it looks nice with the binding. I used my last little bits (I think) of my Park Slope birdies - I only had a tiny bit, so I had to do a really narrow binding. I machine stitched it. I realize that's not the official way to do it, but honestly, hand stitching is just too hard on my wrists - it's not going to happen on anything bigger than a doll quilt, so I might as well practice my machine binding now!

All in all, it went a lot better than the first one - although Mistakes Were (probably) Made, they're way less obvious than in the first, so that's progress. :) And M told me that it was a very pretty quilt (for A), so it's got at least one child stamp of approval. Now onto my next project... just have to pick one of the many!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

1st day of Pre-K

Today was the first day of pre-k, so both girls are back to school now. Despite the pictures below, M was very happy to go back to school. She just won't smile for the camera anymore, so you have to trick her to get anything remotely like her actual face. Here she is with her giant backpack:
(And that was the smaller one!)

Here's a better shot of her first day of school dress (although possibly the most ridiculous face):
I spent a few hours yesterday whipping up a "puffy sleeve" dress for the first day. For some reason, both girls are very fond of puffy sleeves. Well, particularly A, actually, but M was expecting it for this dress. The fabric was the one she picked out a month or so ago. It's SO not my taste, but she looks cute in it. I didn't really do anything exciting with my time - but I exercised and went to Barnes and Noble with no one complaining! Come to think of it, that actually is pretty exciting, lol!

I made more progress on my next attempt at a star since my last post:

I'm actually quite pleased with it - the center is still a little funky, but it's a lot better than the first try. (I found a good tip about making the seam allowance a little more than 1/4 at the center points so they wouldn't be bumpy.) I think I'm going to applique this onto something for a dolly blanket. I'm feeling too lazy to figure out the angles on the outer triangles. ;)

So in theory I should have lots of sewing time now that both girls are in school. Let's see if it actually works out that way!

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Playing Catch Up

I've written a ton of blog posts in my head in the last few weeks, but somehow none of them actually made it onto the computer. So, this is going to be a catch up kind of post.

First (and most important):

My baby is 4! (Okay, she's been 4 for a couple of weeks now. Like I said, catch up! ;) )

The birthday girl and the birthday doll in their birthday dresses:
She's such a big girl now - four seems to be the age where they really just don't seem to be babies anymore. She's funny and smart and goofy as all get out. She's often a little parrot of her sister, but she certainly knows her own mind, too. If A wants to do something that M doesn't, she definitely won't do it! She's starting to read, which kind of blows my mind - I always joked that she was going to teach herself to read, but I didn't really think she actually would. (The Leappad helped with the letter sounds, I think, and A sometimes likes to play teacher, but she's doing a surprising amount of it on her own.) She's a total ham - if something makes you laugh once, depend on hearing it again! ;) She's also very sweet - she loves kisses and rubbing noses. (And squishing her dad's face, but I'm not sure I'd call that sweet.) She likes to color (fascinating shapes and color combos) and can play ponies forever. She's my lovely, wonderful girl, and she's growing up so fast.

Let's see. Oh, A has settled into first grade now, thankfully, and she seems to be enjoying it. She gets very upset when she has no homework, which cracks me up. (Especially since she really only has papers to do a couple of times a week.) But I'm glad she likes her class, and I think she's going to learn a lot.

In more crafty news, I've definitely been bitten by the quilting bug. I'm having some trouble with my wonderland quilt for the guest room - my intended layout is just not working for me. I've cut up approximately a million charm squares (give or take ;) ), but I'm not getting anywhere with it. So for the time being, I'm working on other stuff. I made a dresden plate dolly quilt. There are so many flaws in it that I can't even list them all, but luckily my children won't care, and it's pretty cute:
With the backing:

I learned that the blades on the Dresden plates are quite easy to make, but the center circles are kind of a pain. I haven't quite worked out a way that they really look nice. I also learned that satin stitching didn't work AT ALL, because the blades were way too thick for my machine to be neat. So, I still suspect that I'll do a big Dresden plate quilt at some point - I really do love them - but first I have to figure out the circles. There may be more dolly quilts!

In the meantime, I started working on an eight pointed star. Love the look of those! But not so much the look of *mine*:
The outer points actually aren't so bad, especially for a first try, but the center is completely cracked out. I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but it looks terrible. This is partly because I wasn't careful enough when sewing the diamonds together, and partly the fabric I used. (Yes, I realize strips would probably be easier, but I didn't actually have enough of the blue for that.) I was just using stash fabric, but this one is just not very good quality, and it stretched and warped a lot. Ah well, live and learn. I may still put this on a dolly quilt (since again, my children really don't care), but I may just toss it and try again. We shall see. M is going back to school on Tuesday, so I should have lots and lots of sewing time pretty soon. Maybe I'll actually complete some of the many, many projects in my head..... (Although I need to make a back to school dress before then - gotta get moving on that!)

Friday, August 14, 2009

First grade!

This great big girl of mine started first grade on Monday. This is her waiting for the bus on the first day. (She's wearing the first day of school dress that I made - we have a tradition of the girls picking out the fabric for their first day dresses. I love the snails she picked.) I guess first grade is going okay so far. It's a little hard to tell, because she'll only sometimes talk about her day. I think it's a big adjustment, though - for one thing, she doesn't get to play all day long like in the summer, and for another, I think it's probably more work and a little less fun than kindergarten was. Plus her beloved best friend isn't in her class this year, so she's bummed about that. At least she still gets to sit with him on the bus. Consequently, she's been pretty grumpy in the afternoons this week. This is a picture of the girls together before school started:

After school now, this is NOT what they look like. Imagine those two adorable children screaming at one another, and that's more like it. A is tired and cranky after her long day, but wants to play, and M has enjoyed eight hours of playing anything she wants with no one ordering her around ;), and wants to continue. Hopefully their moods will settle out over the next few weeks....

I've made good progress on the new room this week, though. I made the curtains, which I did not enjoy at all. They really aren't my best work, either, but they could be worse. The fabric's cute, anyway. I don't have any pictures, but it's this turtle fabric.

But the way more exciting thing is that I completed my quilted wall hanging. It took me a very long time to come up with a plan that I liked, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's all fabrics from the Clothworks line except for the binding (which was something random from Joann's). So this will be hanging on the wall soon, and the redecoration will be complete!

And I've totally been bitten by the quilting bug, and I'm thinking about making quilts for the guest room and our room. I'm not sure if I'll actually quilt them myself, though - I have a friend/neighbor with a long arm machine, so I might do that instead. It's fun to plan things, anyway!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Room Redo

I think I mentioned before that my girls have decided that they should share a room. So, we're in the midst of a room rearrangement and redecoration. I have all the fabric to make curtains and a wall hanging (although that's driving me crazy - I decided not to follow the pattern, and I'm having trouble coming up with a pattern that I really like). Anyway, I haven't made any progress with those yet.

But yesterday, my mom and I spent pretty much the entire day painting sea creature murals on the wall, and I absolutely love it! It turned out quite well, if I do say so myself. ;)

The biggest mural:
(Ignore the mattress - there are bunk beds coming at some point, but until then M has to camp out on the floor.)

Smaller one next to the bed:

Another by the closet:
We stenciled with freezer paper stencils, and then Mom freehanded the sea grass, coral and sand. (Very impressive, I have to say - all I did freehand were the jellyfish tentacles, and that took absolutely forever! The coral especially was a huge job. Thanks, Mom!!) I've never really stenciled that much in a row before - I had no idea how exhausting something so seemingly simple could be. But I really am happy with the results - and so are the girls - so it's worth it. And once the curtains and wall hanging are made, and we get the bunk beds and a little dresser, it'll be all done. (Of course, then I'm going to have to work on the new guest room - what was M's room - but hey, one step at a time, right?)

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

A quilt!

Well, like I said, I've gotten interested in making a quilt lately, and I did!

I didn't use my Wonderland fabric - I thought I'd start with some random fabric from my stash. So I made this spaceman quilt:

Here's a closeup including the sprockets I used for the backing:


You can also sort of see the letters on the orange fabric.

So, mistakes were made (many of them!), but for a first quilt, I'm quite pleased with myself. And I learned some things so I can make improvements the next time. I actually didn't have any purpose for this quilt; it was just meant for practice. Which is just as well, because my kids have claimed it as their own. I don't know what they're planning to do with it, but apparently it's theirs, lol!

So next I'm actually going to make a little wall quilt. The girls have decided they want to share a room, so we're redecorating A's room with an ocean-y theme. I found some super cute sea animals fabric from Clothworks, so it's in the mail to me now. I got enough to make curtains, and then an assortment to make the free pattern in the link. (Well, more or less. Mine's going to be a bit smaller, with less edging.)

I'm all excited about quilting at the moment. We'll see how long my crafting ADD keeps me on this! ;)

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

I haven't been very bloggy lately, although I have made a few things.

A couple of weekends ago, my mom and I took a trip to Savannah, which was lovely. I decided we needed water bottle carriers, since we were going to be walking a lot. So, I made myself this:
(Wow, what a terrible picture!)

I made my mom one as well, which I actually think is much prettier. However, my camera freaked out on Saturday, so none of the pictures I took were actually there. So I have no pictures. But it's cute! I did find that we didn't really wear them quite the way I'd intended - I had a messenger style purse, and I didn't like slinging the water bottle around my neck the same way as the purse. So I used the strap to tie it onto my purse, and that worked fairly well. It was nice to have something to stick water into, anyway.

Before that project, I'd been working on the Portabello Pixie Gracie pattern for the girls. I found the bodice annoying, so I had to put it aside for a bit. (For the record, it's probably my own fault it was annoying, because I misread the directions at first. But that didn't stop me from being annoyed!) Anyway, I finally finished the dress, and A really likes it:

Twirly!

I didn't actually follow the pattern for the tiers at all; I just did my usual tiers. I don't love the way it turned out, though, because I think the bodice is really too small for the tiers - it looks a little disproportionate to me. But A likes it, so whatever. Sometime I'll make M one to match - it's all cut out; I just haven't felt like sewing it together.

(As an aside, I made the dress M is wearing over 2 years ago. It was a gift for A on her 4th birthday, only she was in her blue phase and refused to wear it. Ever. It's nice to see it on one of my kids! :) )

I also made a purse that I don't love (seems to be a theme at the moment, lol!)


It's an attempt to make the Buttercup bag a little bigger and therefore more useful. I didn't enlarge the entire pattern; I just made it taller. (Oh, and it turned out a little narrower at the top.) Something about the proportions is off to me, though. Maybe it would be better with a longer strap? Or maybe it's that I prefer the brown version of this fabric, and that's coloring my opinion. I don't know. For the moment I'm just using the slightly too small one I made a few weeks ago, until I decide what I want to try next.

I did get some pretty new fabric, though - a yard of My Secret Garden from Alexander Henry (so pretty!), and an assortment of Wonderland by Momo. (I realize I'm very late to the party on that fabric, but I like it a lot.) I think I'd like to get a few more fat quarters of it, and then I'm thinking maybe I'll make a quilt of some kind. I'm thinking about it, anyway. We'll see. I might do something simpler first, quilting-wise. Or not. I'm sewing-indecisive right now!