casserole blog

Little paper houses - a long intro and then a tutorial

2010-09-17T10:13:00.017-05:00

Sometimes my big fat mouth gets me into trouble. Like when Liv's teacher had a sign-up sheet for parents to come in and do crafts or other fun activities with the kids as a reward for good behavior. "Oooh, this sounds FUN!" That wasn't the bad part. The bad part was when I said "Just let me know what weeks aren't covered by other parents and I'll take care of those."

And then I find out that only ONE PARENT signed up to do ONE WEEK. That means the rest of the weeks are mine, all mine...

Ruh-roh.

And did I tell you that I got this news on a Wednesday, and the first reward activity time was scheduled for that Friday? As in, two days to come up with an activity and prep it.

After the "What heck am I going to do" panic left, I realized that this could be a good opportunity for me. Nothing stretches the creatives muscles better than a little bit of repetitive exercise.

The school that my daughter goes to is one that focuses on the arts, so I wanted the activity to be fairly open ended for the children to express their individuality. And not having met most of these children, I wasn't entirely sure what they'd be capable of doing.

So the first project had to be cheap, easy to prep, open-ended, and fairly simple. No biggy. Heh. Heh. Heh.

I was two steps away from running out to the craft store to buy some cardboards shapes for the kids to glues feathers on to when inspiration struck.

When I was a kid I had an origami book. Most of the projects were too complex for me, but I did remember one that was easy to do. A few simple folds could turn a rectangle into a little house. A square of paper folded in half could make a roof. The cool thing about this little house is that it shows the inside of the house more than the outside. What if I folded up a bunch of little houses and let the kids decorate them? Would that work?

In a word, YES. They LOVED it!! Waaay more than I expected they would. They really got into it, with pictures of beds and tables and couches and TVs. I had kids running up to me and showing me what they drew inside their houses. They were all so proud of their creations! The teacher got out a bucket full of plastic bears that they use for counting, and let the kids put a trio of little bears in each house. Even MORE fun!!

Needless to say, I felt a little bit like a rockstar when I left.

Look at the one that Liv made:

It's a kitty house, of course. With kitty bunk beds...

...a parent's room upstairs, and a playroom downstairs...

...and of course a kitty bathroom.

Liv's teacher had me show her how to make one so she could show the other 1st grade teachers. Which got me to thinking - maybe other people would like to know how to make some little paper houses. Perhaps a tutorial is in order?

I think it is. And so....

This really is a simple folding project. The house itself is made from an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper. The roof is just a 6" x 6" piece of paper folded in half. I used cheap-o cardstock from Michael's - the stuff that comes 50 sheets for $2.99 and is so thin that it can hardly be considered cardstock. Not good for making cards, but perfect for this project. Copy paper is too thin, but really thick cardstock would be too hard to fold.

1. Fold your cardstock in half (the short way).

2. Fold both edges to the center and crease. I usually measure to find the center and make a small pencil mark there as a guide.

3. Open up one of the folded sides.

4. And the top down, making a triangle.

Here's another view of the same step. See how the top crease of the folded rectangle is lined up perfectly with the fold at the side of the rectangle?

5. Do the same with the other side.

6. Fold the side flaps back to the other side to create a crease, and then stand up your house.

7. Fold a 6" x 6" piece of cardstock in half and lay it across the top. Easiest roofing job ever!

Here's my stack of 20 that I made for the class. It took about 30 minutes to fold all 20, plus cut and fold the roof pieces.

This was the example I put together to show the kids. Nothin' but a Sharpie and some quick line drawings. I still contend that I don't draw well, but I can say that a Sharpie really is the best way to disguise it. Something about those thick, crisp, black lines...

If you make your own little paper houses, I'd love to see them!

Toodles,

Yay Goodwill!!

2010-09-15T12:23:00.006-05:00

Today I got my first fall paycheck from my teaching gig, and I celebrated it with a whirlwind shopping trip - to the Goodwill. I know that sounds pitiful. I should be celebrating with a trip to the mall or lunch with the girls at a shee-shee bistro. But instead I celebrate the return of bi-weekly paychecks by digging through second-hand clothes.

The truth is, I've made it a rule that my discretionary clothing (clothing I want but don't necessarily need) should either be handmade or purchased secondhand. Even better is when I make them myself using fabric repurposed from secondhand clothes.

And I don't really shop at Goodwill that often. I prefer finding my secondhand clothes at church rummage sales, where they are priced MUCH lower. How sad is it that I think of Goodwill as being "expensive"? When the same shirt you can find at a rummage sale for a dollar costs $3.50, that's more than 3 times the cost. But rummage sales are only here and there and not open for shopping on a random Wednesday morning, so it's off the Goodwill for me today.

I did pretty well, even with the inflated Goodwill prices. I walked in to see a sign that the green colored tags were all buy one, get one free. Woohoo!!! I grabbed up a handful of men's polos and long-sleeved tees with exactly that color tag.

And then I took a stroll through the women's clothing. I snagged up a pair of embroidered chambray drawstring lounge pants for $1.55, a pair of stretch khaki cords for $3.75, and a long-sleeved tee in one my most favorite color combinations - gray and yellow.

Total cost for my shopping spree was $13.85. Yay Goodwill and happy paycheck day to me!!

Sorry - no pics of my haul. I had planned to lay it all out and snap some photos, but the pieces have already all migrated to various project stacks and laundry piles.

Toodles,

Shield your eyes...

2010-09-14T16:44:00.010-05:00

...because this dress is BRIGHT. I made it for my niece's 5th birthday this Saturday. The nieces all play together at my mother-in-law's house and I'm all the time stopping by to try some dress or another on Liv to check the fit. I thought it would be fun for her cousin to get a dress of her own.

I don't have any illusions that her cousin thinks that I make the greatest dresses ever. But I do know that she really looks up to Liv, and so having something like Liv has will probably be pretty cool.

I gotta tell you, I really struggled with this. For the piles and piles of t-shirts I have stacked ready for a refashion, I wasn't able to come up with a killer color combination that included the all-important bright pink. I played around with color for several days before I resigned myself to the brown and hot pink.

The construction of the dress is really pretty simple. It's a long t-shirt with a ruffle added to the bottom. I like this drop-waist ruffle style because it grows with the child. There's no defined waist, and as long as it fits across the chest then it's wearable. If the dress gets too short to be worn on it's own, just add a pair of jeans and call it a tunic. For cold weather, layer it over a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved shirt.

I had a close-up of the kitty cat applique, but Blogger seems to think that it needs to be rotated. I didn't think a sideways kitty made a good photo, so I'm leaving it at just the one pic.

Toodles,

My shiny happy iron

2010-09-11T21:11:00.004-05:00

Do you know how sometimes seeing someone else's house makes you realize how utterly disgustingly messy your own house is? I had a similar thing happen with my iron.

It started by reading this post at Crafty Gemini, where Vanessa tells how she used a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to clean the soleplate of her iron. Up until then, cleaning the sole plate was one of those "extras" - you know, like changing the oil in your crappy car when you're in college. Things you figure people who really baby their car do, but you don't baby your car so you don't do it.

Enough about the crappy Datsun 210. We're talking about my iron. I read Vanessa's post and I realized how yucky the bottom of my own iron was. Not just discolored and with bits of old burned on starch, but NASTY. Like, areas of black gunk all burned on.

What was I waiting for? I needed to clean it. NOW. And it needed to look all shiny and happy just like Vanessa's iron.

So I dug around under the kitchen sink and found the remnants of some old, pitiful, thrice used Magic Eraser and get to it. It got off a lot of ugliness, given how little life it had left in it. But the burned on gunky stuff was still there.

And so I broke out the Dritz iron-on cleaner. I squeezed some out and wiped and wiped, and squeezed out more and wiped and wiped. It got it a little bit cleaner, I suppose, but the smoke was starting to hang thick in the studio and I was afraid I'd set off the smoke alarms if I did it any more.

And so I hit the Google - "how to clean an iron" - and came up with a couple of tips. One said to wipe the (unheated) plate with vinegar. It did nothing. Nada. It was like wiping it with water. The stubborn burnt stuff remained. The next tip said that if the stains were "stubborn", to mix warm vinegar with salt before wiping it on the soleplate. Did that, and it achieved absolutely nothing. The gunky stuff was still there.

And then, I came across a how-to at Real Simple telling to make a paste with baking soda and water and wipe that on the unheated sole plate. This, my friends, was the magic bullet. I got a lot off with a simple wipe across the soleplate, but the more stubborn of the stubborn stains required some scrubbing. Like, an HOUR of scrubbing. Scrubbing and wiping and scrubbing and wiping and "man, my arm is sore". At the end, I got every bit of it off and my iron is the shiny happy piece of equipment you see here. YAY!!!

Toodles,

Count me in!

2010-09-10T12:04:00.005-05:00

Count me in!! I've joined the Sew 5 Challenge over at Creative Maven!

The point of the challenge is to use the month of September to complete 5 sewing projects and blog about them. Molly, The Creative Maven, came up with the challenge as a way to motivate her to complete some of the many projects on her must-sew list.

I can sooo relate to the ever-growing project list and the need to mark some items off of it. This is why I'm going to join her for the month and finish 5 of my own projects and blog about them here. It's like a classier way of saying "Git 'er done!"

My own must-sew list grows every day. I'm sure it has a little bit of something to do with my gig at Craft Gossip and the hundreds (literally) of sewing blogs that I follow. I see someone doing something cool and I think, "Ooooh, I need to make one of those, too!" And then I see another cool project, and another, and another...

And then there are the donations to my project pile from friends and family members. Those stretched or stained t-shirts than can be made into something fabulous with a little bit of recutting or applique. The must-sew list grows...

First on my must-sew-in-September list is a t-shirt dress for my nieces 5th birthday. She wears the same size as my daughter, so this should be fairly straightforward. I'll post pictures as soon as I git'er done.

Toodles,

Lookie what Livvie made for her Grandan!

2010-09-08T11:56:00.007-05:00

I have no idea why it is that I am perpetually unprepared for people's birthdays. It's not that I don't know ahead of time that they're coming up, that I should make a card, or get a gift or do something -anything- in preparation, but somehow I'm all the time rushing around at the last minute.

Yesterday was no exception as we prepared for my father's birthday. I had asked Liv the week before what she wanted to give her Grandan. Her response was a handmade t-shirt with a rocket and saturn painted on it.

This was my first time I used freezer paper stenciling and I am sooo hooked! It was easy to trace through so I was able to reproduce the exact shapes that Liv drew in her concept picture. The waxy back of the freezer paper ironed down to seal the edges of the stencil so we got nice, crisp lines (for the most part).

It turned out reall pretty awesome if I say so myself. I am lovin' that funky rocket and the wonky Saturn rings!

And like any post-crafting analysis, I'll follow my bragging with a list of all the things that didn't go quite so well.

1. Timing. Last minute crafting with a child is sooo stressful! I should learn not to do this to myself? We didn't even have time to wrap it. We took it to my sister's house still wet and let it dry during dinner.

2. Stingy with the freezer paper. Because freezer paper is so expensive??? I have no idea what I was thinking. I left enough a deep enough margin if I were doing the painting, but children don't have the concentration or fine motor control to keep things in the lines as well. There were several places with paint drips or brush slips that could have been prevented if I had left more freezer paper around the images.

3. Dark t-shirt. The navy made an awesome background for the space scene, but it also showed off alllll of those paint drips.

4. Melty freezer paper. Somehow I transfered some of the waxy stuff from the back of the freezer paper to the plate of my iron, which then burned and transferred to the t-shirt. The navy blue shirt. So it looks like someone wiped their snot above the sun. Luckily it seemed to chip off pretty easily - it should wash out.

5. Cheapy paint. Back in the day when stenciling was all the 1980's rage, we used cheapy craft paint on t-shirts all the time with great results. But it seems that the manufacturers have been watering down the paints since then. My textile paints worked great, but I only had two or three colors of them. The others were watery and runny. They seeped under edge of the freezer paper on the Saturn rings, and they took coats and coats and coats and still didn't cover. I finally gave up and put a base coat of white textile paint, and then covered it with a second coat of cheapy craft paint in the color I wanted.

And yet, in spite of all the self-wrought challenges, it DIDN'T turn out to be a craft fail. Quite the opposite. I'm proud of how Liv and I worked together to create her design on a shirt for her Grandan.

Oh, and in case you were wondering... My father LOVED his shirt!

Toodles,

This is what's holding me up

2010-09-06T13:44:00.008-05:00

Thank you for the well wishes! The headache finally lifted on the fifth day when the front came through. And oh, what a huge weather change it was - one day it was in the 90s, and the next morning when I went to go get the paper it was actually chilly. No wonder I hurt so badly during the build-up.

Before the headache began I brought out a bunch of photos and pretty papers and made a huge mess of things getting some scrapbook pages put together. And then I started hurting and so everything stopped. Now that I'm feeling better I'm out of scrapbook mode and have a pile of sewing projects demanding my attention. But my craft table looks like this:

Bonus shot of the pile of knit scraps:

And my kitchen table looks like this:

Must get this finished! Little girl clothes and Barbie clothes and birthday gifts and more are calling my name.

Toodles,

Nothing crafty to show today...

2010-09-01T15:46:00.003-05:00

...thanks to my headache that is now reaching into its fourth day. Yes, FOURTH day. I am so ready for it to be gone now.

So instead I give you a picture of my assistant, who makes the mornings I spend on the couch with the laptop doing school work and blogging (and lately, a sinus headache to boot) a little bit sweeter.

Toodles,

The child clearly needed another dress....

2010-08-30T10:22:00.003-05:00

...like she needs a hole in her head.

And yet I keep making her dresses! If it weren't so much fun, I suppose I could stop. But when a couple of hours will yield a special new something for my girl, I just can't control myself.

It was supposed to have a peace sign on it, but when I got the applique shaped layed out on the tie-dye it just didn't look right. So I changed it to say "SWEET" instead.

I think it suits her.

Check out the sparkly kitty mask that her Aunt Catherine found for her.

Little girl LOVES her new dress! She tried it on Friday night and insisted that she sleep in it. She wore it all day Saturday and Sunday as well.

Toodles,

I don't know why I didn't think of this before

2010-08-28T13:58:00.002-05:00

Lately - as in the last several years - I've been on a sewing kick. But I also like papercrafts, whether it's scrapbooking or collage or cardmaking. I was even a Stampin Up! demonstrator back in the day. And just like sewists hoard fabric, papercrafters hoard paper. Lots of it.

I have a good sized studio. But when you have to find space to store sewing machines, sewing notions, scrapbooking supplies, ribbons, yarns, collage materials, rubber stamps, ink pads, and lots and lots of paper, the space becomes quite a bit smaller. Every nook and cranny is used for storage. Take my 8 1/2" x 11" paper, for example. It's stored in milk crates underneath my craft table.

See?

The hanging files are a great way to hold my paper. They keep the paper from getting bent, but they're also easy to flip through. But under the table?

Every time I want some paper I have to either lean over really really far, or clear out enough space on the floor in front of the table to sit. Not exactly convenient.

I would have moved the paper, but there wasn't another surface in my room large enough to hold the crates.

And then it hit me. What if my paper wasn't craft paper, but important files that I needed to access? I'd keep it in a filing cabinet.

Of course!

The file cabinet takes up very little floor space. And it's soooo much easier to get to than on the floor! And better protected from the boxes that usually end up getting stacked on top of the paper crates.

I have no idea why I didn't think of this before.

Toodles,

More Livvie art

2010-08-27T10:54:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite parts of the day is when I pick Liv up from school. That happy grin on her face as she recognizes her mama standing at the top of the steps. That excited look as she runs up the steps to meet me. And then when I get home I dig through her backpack for the artifacts of her day.

Being a first grader (can't believe I'm typing those words already!), the backs of all of her worksheets are covered with artwork. Her pictures are joy to me. They're a peek at the world through her eyes. What is the thing in her mind at that moment? Her perspective, her color choice, the details she chooses.

Here are a couple of my joys from yesterday.

A mama kitty nursing a kitten. She has a stuffed kitty with that has places for three little stuffed kittens to nurse. Notice the "pink magnets" that she included. hehehe...

And a "rainbow land of kitties."

What a happy, colorful, feline world my little girl lives in.

Toodles,

If you do nothing else in the next week...

2010-08-26T11:24:00.003-05:00

...you MUST go see Hubble 3D. Trust me.

photo by NASA, retrieved from popsci.com

It was probably the most amazing film I've ever seen, and I'm not even a space geek. I don't know how to describe the impact that this movie had on me. It was only a 45-minute film, but I left the theater feeling like I had been part of something historical, like I'd been out there in space with the astronauts on their spacewalk. It was so.... real.

If, at like our theater, the movie only plays during the day, check your kid out of school for "an appointment" so you can take them to see it. They'll think you're super cool for letting them watch a movie instead of sit in class, and it will be far more educational than anything they'd do in the classroom.

Do it.

Toodles,

Layered hoodie for Liv and a dress for her doll

2010-08-25T09:26:00.007-05:00

The first few weeks of school are always my most productive. I have the house to myself during the day, and my own responsibilities as an instructor (online course) are fairly light. Once the semester gets further underway, I have to spend more time actually working. But for now, I get to play.

This weekend I made a hoodie for Liv.

It's from the book Sewing Clothes Kids Love. It takes a lot to get me to purchase a sewing book, but the photos in this book had me weak in the knees. And the patterns in the book are super versatile. The t-shirt pattern includes several sleeve options, two bodice options, and two optional hoods. You can mix and match to get the style you want.

I chose a long-sleeve with a gathered cap layer on top, along with a rounded hood. The knit for the body of the shirt came from a man's polo shirt. The flowered knit on the sleeve is yardage from the fabric store.

While the styles in the book are cute cute cute, it turns out that the pattern sizing for the hoodie was too broad through the shoulders and too big through the sleevecaps. I spent yesterday morning recutting and refitting the sleeves and I think we've got something that will work.

I'm super excited about this hoodie pattern now.

Here's a full-on view so you can see the way it's all put together.

And Liv wasn't the only one who got some new clothes.

So did Dolly Rachel. Check out her new dress!

Toodles,

Make last minute wrapping cute with scrapbook paper

2010-08-23T18:46:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my mother's birthday. Even though we had planned in advance for a little birthday cookie/coffee time, it totally slipped my mind until that morning that I hadn't addressed the issue of a birthday present.

And of course, when you run around town all morning looking for a last-minute birthday present that doesn't suck, then you're also left with last-minute birthday present wrapping. Keep in mind that my sister always has the most beautifully packaged presents for people, usually wrapped in vintage wrapping paper and embellished with cute-as-a-button vintage tags or ribbons.

So how to make my last-minute gift and my last-minute wrapping not look like the pitiful stepchild?

Easy! Just bust out the scrapbook paper scraps, your Sharpie, and your gluestick. Oh, and a pair of scissors, too.

Instead of seeing the present as a 3D object, look at it as a blank canvas.

Draw and cut out a fun kitty cat. And maybe a thought bubble. And a cupcake, of course. It IS a birthday after all.

Don't worry if you "can't draw". I "can't draw" either. But somehow "can't draw"-ing always looks cute when done in a Sharpie on patterned paper.

Glue your picture down, and add some happy words. Voila!

Liv was so excited when I showed her how I had wrapped her present for her Nan. On the way to Nan's house, she asked me, "Mom.... Will Nan be careful when she unwraps the present?"

Toodles,

Donut hole drama

2010-08-23T08:29:00.004-05:00

photo from Orange County Register

Yesterday we had little girl drama at church, and it was all over donut holes. I'll spare you the details, but sufffice it to say that there were tears and two little girls who left church early very very sad. Okay, that's a little bit too vague. I'll give a little detail. We grabbed the last donut holes out of the foyer before the service started, but there was some misunderstanding about sharing and one girl ended up having gotten more donut holes than the other. And since we had grabbed the last ones, there was no running back and grabbing a few extra to even things up.

My attempts to help Liv help the other little girl feel better only resulted in Liv feeling worse. I suggested that she give the little girl on the Silly Bandz on her wrist, or perhaps her treat from Children's Time. I didn't realize that Liv already felt rotten about unintentionally making the other little girl sad, so she took my suggestions as me giving her a punishment. So then she was reduced to tears, and then we have to make our own exit.

Eventually we talked it all through. In the hallway, in the bathroom, and in the car. What I realized through the whole discussion is that my little girl is me made over. I've always known that she is intense and has sensitive emotions, but I didn't realize until then exactly how much. Just like me, she's quick to feel guilt and to feel it strongly. She felt so bad about the donut incident that her stomach was tied up in knots. And because she already blamed herself, my attempts at helping her achieve a happy ending were turned inside out and back on herself as even more blame. My poor girl!

The happy side of this whole thing going down is that I now know better how to handle my daughter's feelings and protect her gentle spirit from her own inward-facing assaults. Of course, the guilt-ridden side of me is thinking back to every time in her 6 years that I've lost my temper, or sighed audibly at the thought of getting up "one more time" to help her with something, or any other time I may have inadvertantly hurt her feelings. Like mother, like daughter, right??

Oh, and the donut drama? It ended up with a trip to the bakery and two sugar-iced flower cookies, and the girls sharing them over a little kid-sized table in the playroom. And an impromptu playdate with baby dolls and girl time.

Happy children. Healed feelings. Sugar rushes all around.

All is good.

Toodles,

Summer vacation is over!

2010-08-23T08:27:00.001-05:00

So I had a bit of an unintended summer vacation from the blog. WHY WHY WHY did I think that my life would be simpler with little girl home from school? Ah well, we had a great time this summer, me and my girl... But she's back at school and I'm getting back to my routine and that includes no longer neglecting the casserole blog.

Toodles,

Fabric storage inspiration? Not quite.

2010-05-20T10:56:00.007-05:00

I spent all day waiting for fabric storage inspiration to hit, all the while sorting and folding and stacking. I knew I had a lot of fabric, but I was still surprised to see how much was there. The pile of wool garments ready for felting was the largest, thanks to my mother cleaning out all of her business clothes when she retired this year.

In the end, fabric storage inspiration didn't exactly hit me in the face like I was hoping. Instead, it kind of tapped gently and gingerly on my shoulder saying in a timid little voice, "Ummm... I think maybe if you put these pieces in a box together, ummm... it might be a little bit better than it was. That is, if it's not too much trouble for you, cause, umm.... I might be wrong about this."

So rather than a photo of some eye candy stack of fabric all neatly folded and organized, I'll give you a quick description. Same fabrics, but sorted and in stacked plastic tubs rather than spilled out all over the floor. Not earthshattering, but it gets my studio back to being functional again. (I'm still not finished; plan on being there by this time tomorrow night.)

------------

On a totally unrelated note, I just had to share some of Liv's homework. The teacher asks them to write a "story" on the back of their worksheets - basically just three sentences all about one theme. Usually it goes something like, "I like cats. Cats are the best. Yay for cats!" Every now and then she gets creative and we get some real winners.

Like these....

"My mom has a mine (mini) van. I rid to scool in it. I love mine vans!" I love her illustration of the mini-van. She's got the pointed nose shape DOWN. What you can't see in the scan is that there's a body all slammed up against the pointy windshield. That's me. And the picture of her in the side has her wearing a seatbelt. Safety first.

For this assignment she had to write three sentences using her spelling words, which included "you", "not", "sit", and "do". So of course she strung them all together and wrote, "Do you not wat (want) to sit and do your homwrk? No I dot (don't). I do not like homwrk."

And finally, a set of sentences about her daddy.

"My dad plas goof (plays golf). he uoosis (uses) a cluB. he pas (plays) Good."

Toodles,

Progress

2010-05-19T13:34:00.010-05:00

So today I got the big idea to clean out my sewing studio. I am NOT one of those people with the dreamy sewing room, with decorator colors on the wall and inspirational art pieces scattered on shelves throughout the room. My studio is purely a place to put things until I want to work with them. Except that sometimes I get so much stuff stacked around that I can no longer walk into the room.

I'm at the point right now.

Those boxes in the floor are all vintage fabrics. I had been "storing" them in my van, but since we went on vacation and had to use our minivan for its intended purpose, rather than just a storage room on wheels, they ended up in the floor of my studio. I'm waiting for storage inspiration to strike.

What you can't see in this photo is that there's an area of the room that is literally knee-deep in knit yardage and garments for refashioning. I spent the morning hauling it all out, sorting it, and folding it on my dining room table. I no longer have a working dining room table. I'm waiting for storage inspiration to strike for this as well.

Now that I'm all depressed about my fabric hoarding and lack of storage, perhaps I should show you some progress that's happening in our house. Remember my ugly fireplace? It started out as this:

and then my sweet husband added sheetrock above the fireplace (actually, it was fireboard because it's a working fireplace) to cut the ugly brick fireplace off at its knees. He also built a new mantel that's considerably deeper than the ridiculously shallow one that was there before. After mudding and sanding and mudding and staining, it now looks like this:

I'm totally digging the dark stain on the mantel. We'd be all done except for the decorating (see my pretty new bottle on the mantel?) except that Home Depot did a piss poor job matching the paint and now we have to repaint the rest of the room. I'm not going to think about that right now. Instead, I'll start obsessing over what to put above my new mantel.

Toodles,

It went... swimmingly

2010-05-13T13:48:00.004-05:00

So I've been absent for a while. During my little blog absence we've gone on a family vacation (will post pics tomorrow), I've finished up the semester at school (YAY summer!!), and Liv has finished up her first soccer season. All in all, a crazy busy time.

In betwixt and between I was able to get a bit of sewing done. Nothing major - some t-shirt dresses and such for Liv. But the BIG thing I tackled was actually something not so big after all.

Ever since I saw Dana's Coast to Coast Swimwear Sew-Along last year, I've been dying to try my hand at making a swimsuit for Liv. Over the past 10 months I've been reading, gathering supplies, and generally getting my nerve up. Given that a basic girls' swimsuit doesn't require much in the way of supplies, and there's actually not super a whole lot of practical nuts & bolts info out there on sewing swimwear, the bulk of that time was spent in avoidance. Thinking, planning, plotting, but not actually DOING.

But this week, I tackled it.

And it went.... swimmingly.

The edges all have contrast binding with cotton-wrapped elastic on the inside for stability. I'm not so happy with the top where all the binding comes together with the straps. With all of that elastic sandwiched, I couldn't get anything to lay down smoothly.

I couldn't find any information about how to transition from binding the edge to wrapping the binding around the elastic. I couldn't get a smooth finish where the edge binding met up with the straps, so I finally just stitched it all down ugly covered the top with a strip of black that I pulled really taut. A band-aid fix, literally.

I tried it on Liv tonight and it fits to a tee! I'm so giddy from my bathing suit success that it's taking every ounce of self-control to keep me from spending down my entire bank account on spandex for future bathing suits.

Toodles,

Rummage sale finds and fireplace progress

2010-04-16T21:43:00.008-05:00

I realize that I've started grouping two random topics together in my titles. That's because I get a bit lazy (or maybe it's busy?) and forget to blog about things right after they happen. And so when I do get time to sit down and blog, I usually have a few saved up. Tonight the two items are my rummage sale finds and the progress on the fireplace redo.

Even though my fabric stash runneth over, I couldn't resist the siren song of spring rummage sales. I allowed myself to go to two sales last week, which was all kinds of self control because yard sales were all over the city that week, people. The first was mainly clothes and everything was priced as "fill a bag for $5". And fill a bag I did. With books and old t-shirts for refashioning. At the second, it seems that not everyone was on the same page with the pricing structure. But I dug around and found the cheapie t-shirts, as well as some vinyl make-up- bags at 10 cents each. I plan on cutting the vinyl into applique shapes for t-shirts and such.

Three long-sleeved tees

Two sweaters

Odd strapless dress (ties in the back)

Ugly chenille sweater (to make swiffer cloths)

An assortment of short-sleeved tees and tanks

Kid-sized pajama pants with a fun scooter print

Vinyl make-up bags, scarves, and necklace with gold-painted wooden beads

And a stack of books - some for reading and some for crafting.

Oh, and new short sleeved blouse for me. (not pictured because I wore it for three days this week and now it's in the laundry)

All for a total of $6.70. I've already used some of the t-shirts to make a couple of dresses for Liv. Will post pics tomorrow.

And now for a bit of a progress report on the fireplace.

Mantel is built.

Sheetrock is up.

I'm loving it already! This weekend we'll have to finish floating the sheetrock and then paint the wall above the fireplace to match the walls around. After that, I get to bust out the chalkboard paint to give the wall NEXT to the fireplace a bit of a redo. and then... and then... and then...

Toodles,

The beginning of a BIG project

2010-04-14T13:02:00.003-05:00

There is a long brick fireplace/heart that cuts across the corner of my dining room. Odd, I know. The room used to be a den but in made more sense to the layout of our house to use it as a dining room. And the idea of a fireplace in the dining room is really kind of neat to me. A fireplace says come in, sit down, warm up, have a good meal. It has kind of an old timey farmhouse charm that's a natural pairing for a dining room.

Except not THIS fireplace. It's loooong and it's ugly.

The brick is somehow simultaneously busy, blah, and dark. The floor-to-ceiling aspect overwhelms and makes the whole room feel dark. There are so many colors in the brick it's impossible to put anything in front of it and have the items stand out. And what you can't see from the photo is how narrow the mantel is. It's only 7 inches deep. But it's easily 10 feet long. So whenever I see pictures in decorating magazines and on DIY blogs with these beautiful, creative, colorful mantelscapes, I can love them from a distance but know that they will be impossible to replicate in my own home on my long, skinny, ugly fireplace.

It's only taken 13 years, but we've finally come up with a solution! YAY!!! My original plan was to paint the brick, but sweet husband says he doesn't want to do something that can't be undone. I'm thinking, "When would I EVER want this brick again?" But since sweet hubby lives at this house (and is doing most of the work), I found another solution.

Instead of painting the brick, the plan is to nail sheetrock above the fireplace so that it looks just like the walls on either side and effectively cutting the fireplace off at its knees. That will solve the looming dark aspect. And to solve the long, skinny mantel problem the plan is to create a larger mantel that will fit around the original. Work has already begun. I can't wait until it's all done!!

Toodles,

Scrapbooking, Baby Kitty's quilt, and more

2010-04-12T08:41:00.012-05:00

I've been busy in my studio this weekend, though not with sewing. Every now and then I get bit with the scrapbooking bug. So Friday I cleared my schedule and cleaned off my sewing table. In place of the cutting mat, I got out my paper cutter and stacks and stacks of pretty paper. (I hoard scrapbooking paper, too. Sad....)

I don't know that any of the pages I made were showstoppers, but they are DONE. Done and behind plastic page protectors in Liv's scrapbooks. She's always so excited when I make new pages in her book.

And while I've got you here, I gotta share what my little girl made last night. The lead-up to the project went a little something like this:

"Mama, can I make a quilt for baby kitty?"

"uhhh...." (That's me, trying to work up the energy to tackle a sewing project with her instead of finishing up the last of the scrapbook pages.)

"Pleeeease!"

"uhhh.... Well.... I'm in the middle of something."

"Pleeease!! Baby kitty needs a quilt. And it would be really small."

"uhhh.... How about when I finish your scrapbook page?"

"...and I can make it myself. And I'll use the fabric out of my own stash."

And that last statement sealed the deal. The little girl has her own fabric stash, but just like her mama she has hoarding tendencies that have prevented her from cutting into any of her gorgeous fabrics. So when she offered to actually USE her fabrics, I couldn't say no.

And unlike previous sewing projects where I let my perfectionist tendencies take over, I decided that I'd take her at her word and let her do this completely on her own. She chose the fabrics. She did the cutting, the design, the sewing, the everything. I take that back. I did do the fusible webbing kitty patch. That whole hot-iron thing.

I could see her confidence increase stitch by stitch, piece by piece as it all came together. The result was a far-from-perfect little bit of fabric scraps sewn together. The fabrics were just layered and stitched, no right-sides-together going on there. The seams are crooked and the threads untrimmed. The sides are wonky and the edges raw. But it's all her own work, her own vision, her own little sewing triumph.

She's written up her own blog post about her project over at her blog, Cool Show by Olivia. Just like her sewing project, the blog post is all her own - phonetic spelling and all. See her post here.

(Baby Kitty snuggling under her quilt.)

Toodles,

Another t-shirt for me

2010-04-07T20:12:00.004-05:00

So when I created my sweater-to-scoopneck tank the other day, I cut the v-neck band off of the blue sweater. I don't know if it's a sign of thriftiness or mental disorder, but I save the collars and cuffs and pockets and button plackets and necklines from garments I cut up for fabric or refashion into other items. I have a shoebox full of them just waiting for the right project.

Today, I made use of the neck band from the sweater. See?

I made a fitted tee from some brown knit I had on hand and then stitched the sweater banding down to create a neat v-neck detail. That sounds awfully simple, doesn't it?

Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. First of all, I had to be sure that the neckline I cut out of the brown tee was the same size as the v-neck band, since the sweater band was a closed circle. This involved first cutting the neckline really small (like, the same as the back of the tee), folding it in half to find the perfect middle, lining up the sweater neck band so that the point of the V was exactly at the middle of the t-shirt, and then pinning up and around. After it was all pinned, I marked the top edge of the neckline, removed the sweater band I worked so hard to pin down evenly, and then cut the neckline slightly larger than the line I had marked. I made it slightly larger to be sure that there would be no brown t-shirt peeking out.

I decided at this point that the colors were a bit drab. To add a bit of "pop", I cut long strips of cranberry red rib knit and ruffled one edge. I stitched them down around the neckline of the shirt before I -once again- pinned the sweater band down very carefully and very evenly. Finally, I stitched all the way around the edge of the sweater band to attach it permanently.

Voila!

And because I can't get pictures of me without also taking some pictures of Liv...

LOVE those big eyes!!!

Toodles,

Getting my sewing mojo back

2010-04-05T22:20:00.004-05:00

Man, that last project really threw me! The Dress That Nearly Kicked My Butt totally zapped my sewing mojo. Everything - from cutting the thing out to binding the apron edges to making the casings - ended up far more difficult than it needed to be. The floral print was so ravelly, the elastic was so cheap it rolled all over itself, and then my measurements were apparently not as accurate as they needed to be.

All of that had me hiding out from my sewing room, until a few days ago. I got my feet wet with some little covered felt brooches. (Still haven't glued the pinbacks on them.)

Then today I got the nerve to finally cut into an old sweater of mine. It had short sleeves and a deep V-neck so it really wasn't practical for winter wear. But the steely blue always seemed too drab for spring. And it's worn out and a bit too big for me since last year's mondo weight loss.

So today I cut the sleeves off and reshaped the v-neck into a scoop neck. I then bound the edges with a cranberry red rib knit. I'm especially proud of how there's no buckling at the neck or sleeve. This was one stretchy sweater!! I used Naomi's binding technique, but I moved the seam in so that there was a 1/2" seam allowance. I think this helped control the buckling.

I'm lovin' my new shirt!!

Toodles,

The dress that nearly kicked my butt

2010-04-01T20:33:00.004-05:00

So this is the dress that nearly kicked my butt. A simple raglan-sleeved gathered dress with elastic at the waist. There was nothing about it that should have been difficult, it was just. one . of. those. projects.

You know, the ones where everything that could go wrong, does? I won't list all the frustrations and things that went south, but let me tell you it was every step of the way. The kicker was the end when Liv tried on the dress and I realized that it was very nearly too small. We'll get to wear it for about 2 weeks before it becomes a hand-me-down.

I don't know if you can see in the picture, but the ruffles at the bottoms of the sleeves are the same fabric as the skirt.

A very solemn pose. I promise that Liv really did like the dress. It just turned out that the only time to get a picture of her wearing it was right before she left to go to school. At 7:00 in the morning. Check out the rainbow ankle socks and black sneakers. Niiiiiice.

See the little applique on the apron? And the black and white gingham check bias trim?

Toodles,

A prototype

2010-03-31T13:47:00.003-05:00

Fiddling around in my sewing room today, I came up with this:

This is just a prototype, so I don't have the finishing details all worked out. Though I kind of like the rough, wonky look. It's made on 1/8" thick industrial felt so it's fairly sturdy. I'm thinking it needs a pin back to make it a brooch?

I've been busy on some other projects, too. Including a supposed-to-be-easy dress for my daughter that nearly ended up kicking my butt. Will post them tomorrow, along with my excuses about how I got busy with schoolwork and neglected my blog for over a week. Or two weeks? I don't know. Too long. Right now I'm off to go pick the child up from school, and then to the park so she can play in the pretty spring weather.

Toodles,

On being a soccer mom

2010-03-14T21:27:00.004-05:00

It was nearly 7 years ago that we bought our minivan. You should have heard the snickers when our friends and familys heard the news. The guffaws. The doubled-over-laugh-till-you're-crying. I kept saying in our defense that with a baby on the way, we needed to have one car that had 4 doors AND air conditioning. And it was a bargain, thanks to a tornado that hit the car lot. But I digress...

When we got the minivan, we endured comment after comment about me becoming a soccer mom. "Hey, I'm gonna get you one of those soccer ball decals!" Yeah, funny. Hadn't heard that 50 times in the past week already.

Well.... Fast forward 6 years plus some months, and I took the plunge. We never played team sports in my family. We don't tend to be a physically coordinated lot, nor are we particularly social by nature. But Liv had been itching to do some sort of organized activity, and I had just recently had a conversation with a park mama about the social skills kids can learn from team sports. Things like working together toward a comman goal, losing with grace, stretching their sense of their own abilities - how could any respectable mama deny her child this experience.

And so we signed Liv up to play soccer this spring. In place of snickers and chortles and eyeball-rolling, our friends and family have become Liv's own little cheering section. For the first game we had my mother, my father, my father-in-law, my sister and her husband, and my dear friend Summer. And of course Tony and me. All to cheer for Liv and her little soccer team as they ran around on a field, running after the ball and playing a game that looked only vaguely like soccer.

There were cheers. There were atta girls. There were the urges to "Get in there, girl!" and "Kick it hard!". There were also quick with a "Nice try!" when the foot didn't necessarily make contact with the ball. And when it was all over, they were of course all ready to give her a hug and tell her what an awesome soccer player she was.

I know that by the end of "soccer season" I'll be ready to have my Saturdays back, but for right now I am totally diggin' this whole soccer mom thing. It's not about my kid being the best on the team (she's not, but she's not the weakest player either), or about keeping score, or about bragging rights with the other mamas. It's about my little girl running around out there on the field, taking chances, doing her best, and knowing she's a got a cheering section ready to back her up. After all, that's what life is all about, no?

Toodles,

The Aftermath

2010-03-11T09:58:00.002-06:00

Typical scene in my studio after a feverish sewing session.

Toodles,

Groovy Girl got a track suit and a long-sleeved tee

2010-03-07T20:47:00.006-06:00

When I said I'd become obsessed with making Groovy Girl clothes, I wasn't kidding. Today I'm posting showing off her new track suit.

The track suit all started with a little sleeveless cotton top for the Groovy Girl. It's a basic gathered-fabric-on-a-band-with-straps style, except that the band and the straps are made out of the ribbing from an old pair of Liv's socks. It turns out that the ribbing works wonderfully for Groovy Girl clothes! And since I had plenty of socks that we're getting rid of, my mind set to thinking about all the other ways I could use the ribbing in a Groovy Girl garment.

First to mind was as a waistband on a pair of pants. Liv's old size 24-36 month Children's Place socks are exactly the right size to go arouned Miss Groovy Thing's waist, so all I had to do was zig-zag the pants body to some doubled-over ribbing. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

I made the pants to match the little cotton top, but as I was looking at the ribbing on the waistband I was struck with how much they looked like yoga or athletic pants. Which got me to wondering if the sock ribbing could be used to make little tiny cuffs at the neck, wrists, and waist of a shirt. If so, turn it backwards so the slit that I usually put all the way down a shirt is at the front, and you've got a track jacket to match the pants.

And of course, if you have the track suit, you need a t-shirt to match. I already had a basic t-shirt pattern sized for a Groovy Girl, but setting in the sleeves on something that small usually involves repeated uses of the seam ripper and me cursing like a sailor.

A raglan sleeve tee, I thought. That would be MUCH easier! And so yesterday I drafted and tested and drafted and tested, and made a long-sleeved raglan tee for Miss Groovy Thing.

The gray shirt was my first prototype, and it's a bit snug. Groovy Girls have mighty big hands that are difficult to pull through a more fitted sleeve. A few pattern adjustments, and now I have a pattern for a long-sleeved raglan tee. It's SOOOO much easier to put the sleeves in now!!

Oh, and see that pretty binding at the neck and wrists? That's courtesy of Naomi's tutorial.

Toodles,

A-line skirt for a Groovy Girl doll

2010-03-05T10:25:00.003-06:00

The pattern & tutorial for the A-line skirt is now up at Craft Gossip. This is such an easy sewing project! Just 4 seams and you've got a new skirt for a Groovy Girl. Make it from a cotton print or from a heavier fabric. I bet it would awesome out of denim. Though I think the next one I make will be out of white flannel-backed vinyl. Space age.

Next up - the little halter shirt!

Go to the A-line skirt pattern & tutorial.

Toodles,

Groovy Girl clothes, part II

2010-03-03T19:24:00.009-06:00

So I've gotten myself caught up with my schoolwork again. At least temporarily. It will all hit again in a week, but for the next few days I can pretend that I have no teaching responsibilities.

And what did I do with my temporary freedom? I made Groovy Girl clothes, of course! Want to see?

And the close-ups.

Of the shirt:

And of the skirt:

The skirt is made from brown velveteen. I free motion stitched the flowers and reverse appliqued the centers. I know. A little over the top for doll clothes. But I just. can't. help. myself.

This is actually the same pattern as the previous Groovy Girl outfit I posted. Though this time around I paid more attention to detail and I took pictures at each step along the way so I could share the pattern & tutorial. I'm in the process of writing it up. I expect to have it out on Craft Gossip in the next day or so. I'll link to it from this blog, though, so it will be easy to find.

I also made a little strappy top for a Groovy Girl out of one of Liv's old socks and scrap of fabric. I would have taken pics of that as well, but it's just a top with no pants to match. And Liv has already requested the pants, "so it will be, you know, a whole outfit she can wear to school."

In other crafty news, I finished the Shutterfly book about Mama Kitty. I got a little obsessive over the details. I'd be mortified if I got my pretty printed book back in the mail, only to find a typo or a glaring grammatical mistake. With the help of some friends with some very sharp eyes, I was able to finally let go enough to submit the order. It will be here in a week. I can't wait!!

Toodles,

I'm still here

2010-02-28T08:50:00.002-06:00

Nope, I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth. I've just gotten myself behind in schoolwork - again - and am playing catch-up.

I've gotten myself mired in details of the child's twill tape toolbelt that I promised. I'm still working on it, trying to find the balance between being specific and taking details to their most ridiculous conclusion.

I'm also excited to hear that people wanted to know how to make Groovy Girls clothes. I've got some patterns to share - I just have to find a scanner so I can convert my cutout pieces of paper into printable patterns and templates.

Toodles,

Groovy Girl got a new outfit

2010-02-23T13:22:00.001-06:00

I had a few scraps of fabric hanging out on my sewing table, and it turns out they were just the things I needed to make a new outfit for Liv's Groovy Girl dolls.

A pink halter from hot pink t-shirt knit. It was actually a bit of a sleevecap left over from a t-shirt refashion. And the skirt is from a rectangle of fabric left over from my x-o-x-o-x tablerunner project.

I have a feeling that I like making the doll clothes more than Liv likes playing with them. Sometimes I get started and I just. can't. stop. making. them... It's a combination of the small size (uses up my scraps!) and the over-the-top girliness which means I don't have to worry so much about good taste. If it's hot pink and has ribbon or sparkles, it's hip for a Groovy Girl.

I've been toying around with the idea of sharing some of my Groovy Girl patterns online. Is this something anyone else would be interested in?

Toodles,

$2 Sweater awesomeness

2010-02-21T20:13:00.005-06:00

Several weeks ago I hit a rummage sale and grabbed up a fair-isle style cardigan for $2. It was too big, but a 10-minute fix had it fitting me like it was made for me. Technically, I guess it was kinda made for me...

I didn't take a "before" pic because there really wasn't that much of a change. Too large to just right.

What you can't see from the picture is that the sweater is soft and fuzzy - mostly angora with lambswool. And scattered in the pattern around the neck are little sparkly crystals.

And the silly photo.

Always at least one silly photo. Partly because I'm basically a silly person at heart. But mainly because when a 6-year-old is taking pictures of you, there's really no way to get a particularly flattering shot - best go for outright silly and then at least you're looking funny on purpose.

Toodles,

Mama Kitty went to the park with us today

2010-02-18T19:36:00.004-06:00

Mama Kitty went with us to the park today.

She did a little bit of hiking.

She got thirsty, so she had a drink of water.

She found a good spot to pitch a tent, then pulled out a good book.

When she got tired of sitting in her tent to read, she pulled out a camp chair.

Then she built a campfire and curled up for a good night's sleep. Night-night, Mama Kitty!

In case you're wondering what's up with all the stuffed animal photos, they're all part of a photo book project Liv and I are working on. The story will be about Mama Kitty, Liv's favorite little stuffed animal since she was a baby. (Can you see how much poor Mama Kitty has been loved over the years?) I'm fairly happy with how the photos turned out - now to weave a story around them!

Toodles,

What I did over my bloggin' vacation (long post, pic heavy)

2010-02-16T12:35:00.019-06:00

It's only been a little over a week since my last real blog post, but it feels like it's been ages. It's been a busy busy week with lots of weather, playtime, worktime, partytime, etc...

So what did I do for those 7 days? I feel like I should give one of those "What I did with my summer vacation" reports...

Snow Days

It's been a long time coming, but we finally got a real snow.

It came down hard, and fast, and in big flakes. There was even enough of it for us to make a snowman.

And of course with that snow came THREE DAYS off of school.

Created a D-Ring Play Toolbelt

I made this for my daughter's little play tool set.

I'll be writing up a tutorial for this in the next day or so.

Made a Sleepshirt

So I've been knowing for a long time that my sleepwear has been... umm... less than attractive. Old, worn-out, faded, stained t-shirts, YIKES! I like the idea of wearing cute clothes for sleeping, but the need for comfort always wins out. I like the idea of the cute little satin sleepies, but in reality I want to wear a soft knit shirt. And yet, the only soft knit sleepshirts I seem to be able to find in the stores have ridiculous pictures of Tweety Bird on them.

I finally had a dash of inspiration and realized that if I could piece two too-short cute tees together to make one longish tee, then I could piece three of them together to make a colorblocked sleepshirt.

It's not an earthshattering refashion by any means, but it does serve its purpose. It's comfortable, relatively fashionable, and at only 50 cents per shirt at a rummage sale it's also economical. I'll be making more of these.

Hosted a Valentine's Tea Party

Every year at Christmas we host a Cookie Decorating Party for all of Liv's friends. This year we decided to simplify things and invite only school friends to the annual cookie party, and then have a Valentine's Tea Party for her other friends. Of course, by the time the tea party rolled around, the guest list had expanded to include school friends as well. I suppose I should have seen that coming, right?

So after the snow days and the sewing projects and the getting caught up with schoolwork, we cleaned and baked and cleaned and baked and put together Liv's tea party.

Think there was enough food?

And the seating. We didn't have enough room around our dining table for the food and the kids, so we made little tables from boards and upturned 5-gallon drums. The kids sat on the floor.

And of course after the desserts (and before, too) there was a lot of running and playing and general mayhem. Here they all are playing inside the big tent we put up in the den.

The kids all had so much fun, I'm afraid this will also become an annual event. :)

Toodles,

I disappeared for a week, didn't I?

2010-02-14T21:02:00.000-06:00

Yeah... sorry about that. Snow days, school work, prepping for two Valentine's parties. Will blog again tomorrow with some of my recent projects, and later this week with a how-to.

Toodles,

Get out of my head!!

2010-02-07T15:41:00.003-06:00

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day who was describing how the characters in her books demand her attention. They rattle around in her head, demanding that she give written words to their thoughts and histories and actions.

What she describes about her writing is very similar to what happens to me with craft projects. Instead of characters, it's an idea that demands that I bring it to fruition. I suppose that's inspiration. I've got plenty of it, folks. Granted, there are times when I sit down to make something and find the well has gone dry, but by and large I suffer from idea after idea after idea all waiting to just be created.

I swear, sometimes they multiply like bunnies, these ideas. A thought flashes through my head and the next thing I know, there's one more voice added to the chorus. Take this morning, for instance. I'm sitting in church, and my mind drifts for just a few seconds to the sweater I bought at a rummage sale yesterday. What it needs is a ruffle down the center placket. No, what it needs is a REMOVABLE ruffle down the center placket. And so now my mind is whirring in the background working out the logistics.

At some point there just gets to be too many voices, too many potential projects and I start to lose focus. "Get out of my head!" I want to say. But really, I like them in my head. I just wish they'd quiet down just long enough to get some of my responsible-person tasks out of the way. Does this ever happen to you? If so, how do you get the projects out of your head - or at least using their inside voices?

Toodles,

Lookie who posted over at UCreate!

2010-02-04T10:09:00.006-06:00

Yep, it's me!!

I was so super excited when Kari from UCreate asked if I'd like to guest blog over at her site. Go check out my tutorial for this XOXO table runner.

Don't sew? Not a problem. This puppy is a n0-sew project. Just get some fusible webbing and a temporary marker. (The tutorial says to use a rotary cutter and a quilting grid, but they're not necessary. They just help keep everything lined up straight.)

Oh, and it's reversible, too. One side of mine is fancy with black & hot pink polka dots. The other is shabby chic with a retro coral heart design. All I have to do to change the look is just flip it over.

Go over to U Create and check it out!

Toodles,

Never the same game twice...

2010-02-03T13:29:00.005-06:00

One of the things I love about Liv being a big ole' 6-year-old is that we've moved into the world of board games. And not just Candyland or Chutes and Ladders, but games that the whole family can actually get into. Games like checkers that require strategy. Or games like Battleship that requires logic. Or good old-fashioned backstabbing games like Sorry.

When I was a kid, one of our favorite games was Bonkers. Anyone else remember that game? You built the gameboard as you went with little cardboard tiles that told you to move forward 10 or back 3 or go to Roll Again. It was "never the same game twice."

Our Bonkers game is long gone, the victim of a house-purging and subsequent yardsale. Sadly, they don't make Bonkers anymore. But that doesn't mean they're not still available. After a fit of nostalgia one night, I hit Ebay and grabbed one from an auction. A week later it arrived in the mail. One game, and Liv was hooked.

She loves the "make it up as you go along" and the crazy graphics (1970's, anyone?), and the fact that she can really smoke us at the game. I love that we're partaking together of one of my childhood memories, moving together back in time to when I was also a 6-year-old girl who loved the "make it up as you go along" and the crazy graphics and the chance to outsmart my opponent. And though it truly is never the same game twice, I think it's better this second time around.

Toodles,

Baby shoes, oh my!

2010-02-02T13:15:00.006-06:00

So a good friend mine recently had a baby. A sweet, sweet little baby girl. And what every girl needs is shoes, right??

So I made her a couple of pairs of shoes. A pair of white vinyl Mary Janes...

...and gray wool kitty cat shoes.

These were made with patterns from Precious Patterns. There are a lot of shoe patterns and tutorials out there, but I was struck with how absolutely CUTE their designs all are. The instructions were easy to follow and the sizing seemed to be just about spot on.

Toodles,

Finally, some snow!

2010-01-30T16:31:00.008-06:00

Actually, it was mainly ice with just the tiniest dusting of snow on top. But it was enough to send my daughter into a joyous whirlwind of "It's a wonderland!" and "Look! Our driveway is all white!" and of course "Let's go play - NOW!"

There wasn't enough snow for a snowman, or even a small snowball. But the layer of ice on all the roads made for some AWESOME sledding.

It also made the bottom of the slide reeeallly slick.

Toodles,

DIY leg pillow

2010-01-29T14:14:00.004-06:00

I sleep on my side and I use one of those leg pillows to help keep my back from going all out of whack. The one I had was soooo old and sooo pitiful. I bought it several years ago and it's all worn out. The foam inside the cover is literally all broken apart; I just stacked it, taped it together, and put it back into the cover.

So when I was at Hancock's when they had their pillow forms on sale, AND I had a few extra dollars spending money in my pocket, I decided the stars had aligned and the universe was telling me to finally send that old pitiful leg pillow to the trash.

I won't even take a picture of the old one - I would be far too embarassed to have it out on the Internet as something I still used. But look at the new one. Isn't she pretty?

I made it from a Nu-foam Poly-fil densified batting chair cushion and 1/3 of a yard of fabric. The sale price was $5, and I only used half of it. If I was to buy a new one, it would cost me far more than that. And I wouldn't get my choice of fabric for the cover!

I created a tutorial for making one, and have it posted out at Craft Gossip. So if you need a new leg pillow, go check it out.

Toodles,

Stymied

2010-01-28T09:25:00.003-06:00

I have an idea for what I think will be a really easy, really neat no-sew fabric project, but I keep getting stymied.

First I didn't have the right fabric. Which totally blew me away because I have enough fabric to fill a three bedroom apartment. And yet I didn't have fabric that was right for the project in mind. So Liv and I went and bought some more fabric just for this project. Ridiculous, I know.

Then instead of being able to dive right in, I had to clear some teaching stuff out of the way. Another day or two delay.

Finally... yesterday I cleared my afternoon schedule and get all set to make said project. I work up a template in Word, but then my printer wouldn't work. Foiled again!

I feel frustration as I TRY to maintain my "post at least one sewing project a week" resolution, but the universe seems to be working against me this week. Maybe tomorrow the stars will align?

Toodles,

Low-carb chicken enchiladas - YUM!!!

2010-01-25T09:37:00.007-06:00

This recipe is for a low-carb chicken enchilada that's actually really really yummy. This recipe is based on a very similar recipe at Diabetic Life, but I tweaked it for my own taste, adding more garlic, using jack cheese instead of mozzarella, and adding sour cream to the chicken mixture.

I made them for dinner when family came over for dinner the other night, and they turned out so good that we made them again last night. (Had plenty of leftover parsley and cilantro that hadn't gone bad yet so it seemed good timing.) My sister has declared that on the next gift-giving occasion she wants a whole batch just for her. Easily done.

Anyway, to make the enchiladas, you'll need:

1/2 cup fresh parsley
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
4-5 large cloves garlic
2 cups green salsa (I used Kroger brand tomatillo salsa verde)
4 tbsp lime juice
2 - 3 cups cooked diced chicken breast
1/3 cup sour cream (or roughly thereabouts. I actually just used 2 big whollops, but I figured 1/3 cup was more of a technical term)
2 cups shredded monterrey jack cheese
Low carb tortillas. (I used Tumaro's Low In Carb Gourmet Tortillas from Kroger)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a food processor, mix together the parsley, cilantro, garlic, green salsa, and lime juice to make a green sauce.

Then, in a mixing bowl combine the chicken breast, the sour cream, 1/2 of the green sauce you just made, and approx. 1/2 cup jack cheese.

When it's all mixed, spoon it into 6 8" low-carb tortillas. Roll them up and lay them seam-side down in a casserole dish. Cover with the rest of the green sauce and the rest of the monterrey jack cheese. Bake at 350 degrees until the cheese is melty.

I served it with a side of citrus salad - chunks of fresh grapefruit and orange with bits of fresh cilantro thrown in - and steamed asparagus.

Mmmmm....

Toodles,

My favorite email ever

2010-01-24T17:59:00.003-06:00

Earlier today I got what has to be my most favorite email ever. It's from my mother, but clearly the words were dictated from Olivia who was spending the day at her Nan's (my mother's) house.

Subject: Olivia's Day

First I got up. Then I got dressed. Then I brushed my teeth. Then I went to church. Then I came home and ate lunch. Then me and my mom played marbles. Then we got on Webkins. Then we cuddled.

Then Daddy came home. Then Nan came over and picked me up to go to her house. Then we played Groovy Girls. Then we did laundry. Then we wrote this email.

Love,
Olivia

My most favoritest email. EVER.

Toodles,

More new fabric for me!

2010-01-22T09:48:00.002-06:00

Or should I say, more old fabric for me!

From my sweet sweet generous sister. I... just...couldn't.... say... no.

Working today on school stuff, so no sewing for me!

Toodles,

We both have new skirts!

2010-01-20T17:43:00.008-06:00

Liv and I both have new skirts! Hers is the one I made earlier this week out of the striped quilted cotton.

And the action shots.

Mine is refashioned from an UGLY wool dress my mother gave me. Check the before pics:

U-G-L-Y.

It's a lined dress and it has a zipper that goes all the way up the back. I realized I could keep the zipper if I unzipped it before cutting across it at the waist. That way, the zipper pull would be down at the bottom.

When I cut across the dress at the waist, I ended up with an outer skirt and a lining that were joined at the zipper. I took the edges in on both of them, flaring from the waist out to the full width at the bottom to create an A-line shape.

I finished the waist off with bias tape. I extended the bias tape across the zipper to create a stop for the zipper pull.

And now, the results of the refashion:

It was just me and the little girl this afternoon, so she got to use mommy's big camera. Hence the funny faces - apparently my poses were "boring".

Toodles,

Mix-n-match Valentine's napkin rings

2010-01-20T09:04:00.008-06:00

Last weekend I worked up these mix-n-match Valentine's napkin rings. It's essentially a band that buttons around a napkin, with a series of other embellishments buttoned on. Layer as many or as few as you like to get the look you want.

Want to make one? I've got the tutorial for you out on Craft Gossip. It's a quick little project with just some fused fabric and some buttonholes. Oh, and a button too! Check it out!

Toodles,

Turning it on its side

2010-01-19T13:35:00.008-06:00

Last week I showed you some of the fabrics and patterns from my stepmother. One of the fabrics not shown was this one - it was already in my sewing room getting cut up into a project.

It's a pretty print, no?

The colors and the cute little motifs remind me of some of today's Japanese imports. Traditional, but with flair. And it's quilted. *sigh*

But look what magic happens when you turn the striped fabric on its bias and make a bias-cut skirt.

The A-line shape was easy to draft, starting with a rectangle and then slashing and spreading to get the flared bottom. It took some creativity to get the pattern pieces placed and cut out of my small bit of fabric, but the quilted lines helped by marking the bias grain for me. Then it was just a matter of sewing side seams, using bias binding for the hem and waistline, and installing an invisible zipper.

The challenge for me on this project was getting the invisible zipper in right. I had never installed an invisible zipper before and the instructions from the zipper foot package were less than helpful. And the stupid plastic foot wouldn't fit any of the sewing machines in the house. There was much cursing after my first attempt ended up with the zipper in backwards.

In the end I emerged victorious and made a few "Woo! Woo!" victory laps around the house, skirt in hand, feeling the sewing power. "I don't need no stinkin' plastic crappy foot!"

It fits Liv to a tee and looks far cuter on my little model than it does hanging from a clotheshanger. I'll take pictures of her wearing it tomorrow when we've got good light.

Toodles,

It's a losing battle...

2010-01-16T21:03:00.008-06:00

...and let me show you why.

Last week I made a patchwork hat for Liv. With all of the piecing and the lining and the pompom, I think I used up say.... 24" x 40" area of fabric?

And then the next day I had dinner with the family, and my stepmother hands me a bag of fabric and patterns left over from when she was making her granddaughter (Liv's step-cousin?) some American Girl doll clothes.

She gave me a pile of fleece. (The blue on top is actually craft felt.)

Some vintage prints. There's also a quilted stripe but I had already started a project with that when I took the pic.

And some patterns. There are three more Simplicity patterns that aren't pictured.

And also some small D-rings and about 18" of velcro.

Oh, and my sister gave me an assortment of old buttons she scored at an estate sale.

Let's put this side by side, shall we? The pile on the left is all my new fabric. That small folded up thing on the right is the fabric that left the studio in the form of a completed project.

The good news is that I've found a home for the fleece. The mama of one of Liv's friends was saying that she loved sewing with polar fleece. "Oh, fleece? You want some more?" Hehehe.

Toodles,

Tutorial: Deli meat & cheese mini-kabobs

2010-01-14T12:45:00.008-06:00

Today I included these meat & cheese mini-kabobs in Liv's bento lunchbox. These are super easy to make, so I thought I'd create a little tutorial showing how to it. I used mozarella and roast beef, but you can use any deli-style meat and cheese.

Here's how I did it:

1. I started with two slices of roast beef and two sticks of mozarella approx 1/2 inch thick.

2. I folded the slices of roast beef in half lengthwise. This made them the same height as the cheese sticks. Depending on the size of your meat slices and length of your cheese sticks you may need to fold more or less.

3. Place the cheese sticks on top of the sliced roast beef and roll up.

4. Cut across the rolled up meat & cheese.

5. Now you've got a lot of little meat-wrapped cheese squares.

6. Just stab them on some pretty toothpicks and put them in the lunchbox! Less than 3 minutes start to finish.

This was the first time I've made these for her, so I'll have to wait until school is over to gauge her reaction. I made some for myself for lunch, though, and they've got my seal of approval.

Toodles,

Oh, I'll just...

2010-01-12T17:04:00.007-06:00

Have you noticed that the projects that begin with the words, "Oh, I'll just..." have a way of becoming far more time-consuming that originally thought? It's the ones that start with the words, "Oooh, I wonder if..." that are gold. I need to remember this.

This patchwork hat is my latest "Oh, I'll just..." project. As in, "Oh, I'll just cut up a lot of my scrap t-shirt knit and patchwork it together to make a hat for Liv. It'll clean out my scrap bin and make a rockin' hat!"

Yeaaaahhhh...

Serger issues created wonky seams that I was too lazy to resew. That's fine. And I came nowhere near using up all of my scraps. Though I did get rid of of small handful. And some of the infernal gray fleece that I bought years ago thinking I'd make a bathrobe for my dad.

But most importantly, Liv loved the hat. Because she loves anything that mama makes for her.

Liv was totally in the mood to ham for the camera, too.

Toodles,

Back to work, plus a scarf tutorial

2010-01-11T10:18:00.007-06:00

Today is the day that I dread each January. The first day of classes. That sounds bad, doesn't it? A teacher should look forward to starting a new semester. HAH!

Don't get me wrong. As jobs go, being an online instructor for the university is a pretty sweet deal. I can choose the hours I work and I don't have to arrange childcare. And I do get a sense of accomplishment when I see improvement in students' writing and when I get feedback from them saying that they've learned a new skill or concept from me. But in all truthfulness, a job is a job and they don't pay you for it because it's fun. It's work, and I'd rather be playing.

So my challenge in the next few months is to give the time to my writing class that's necessary in order to be an effective instructor, while at the same time giving enough time to my crafty endeavors that I can continue exploring and refining my skills. Oh, and do this without neglecting time with my husband and little girl. Can I do this? I think I can! It'll just take focus and prioritizing. Taking advantage of downtime in one area to move another area forward.

Speaking of which, I used my downtime this weekend to write up a tutorial for making this scarf.

I call it the Pantaloon Scarf cuz it's gathered like the pants of a pair of pantaloons. The tute is out on Craft Gossip. Go check it out!

Toodles,

Mock turtleneck, revised and refashioned

2010-01-09T20:56:00.007-06:00

I've been a bit of a sweater refashioning fool this last winter. I weigh 25 pounds less than I did last year. That means starting from scratch with cold weather gear. And 25 pounds less of natural insulation means that I need to pile on extra layers to keep warm.

Yesterday I took a less-than-attractive teal mock turtleneck sweater (think mid 90's) and turned it into a fitted funnel neck sweater with fabric flowers.

Check out the "before" pic below. And yes, I'm standing in my bathroom. I cropped out most of the toilet but you can still see it behind me.

Yikes! I have no idea what possessed me to buy this sweater, except that it was only 50 cents and the lady at the yard sale had been digging through her sweater pile for 10 minutes trying to find one I'd take home.

The mock turtleneck bit was kind of saggy and sad, more like a thick ribbed neckband than a turtleneck. I cut the sweater across the shoulder seams and took about 1/2 off of each side. That made a smaller neck hole and moved the "turtleneck" up more around my neck.

Then I cut the extra off of the sides of the body and the sleeves. I used scraps from that to make a ruffle to stitch to the top of the turtleneck. At least that's what it was supposed to be. In reality the extra fabric from the ruffle just smooshed the ribbing of the turtleneck out, rather than the turtleneck bunching in the extra fabric from the ruffle. So it's more of a funnel-neck now. Lesson learned.

I tried adding puff sleeves, but I didn't have enough "puff". Another lesson learned.

When I got it all finished, I wasn't exactly in love with it. It seemed rather like this giant blue expanse across my chest. So I took what was left of the scraps and made some folded fabric flowers to add to the neckline.

(I promise that I'm not jaundiced. Color-adjusting wasn't my friend tonight. But hey, the blue of the sweater is just about spot on.)

And it was then that I noticed that I had set one of the sleeves in inside out. As in, the wrong side of the fabric was facing outward. Yikes! Is there ANYTHING about this sweater that went according to plan?

After I got it all done, I put it on and thought, "ehhh, it'll do." But then it grew on my as the day progressed and now I think it may be one of my favorite sweaters, wrong-side-out sleeve and all. Funny how that works.

I LOVE my new sweater!

And the leftovers. All one handful of them.

Toodles,

Timeline of a sewing project

2010-01-07T13:53:00.007-06:00

Excited about project.

Trying to figure out what the project will be.

Overhelmed with possibilities for the project.

Decide on one and love, love, love it.

Start making said project.

Hrmm... project isn't turning out as expected.

Unsure of the project.

Dislike the project.

Hate the project. This will never work. What was I thinking???

Make changes to fix the project. This could still work.

Love the project! Even better than the original idea!

Work, work, work on the project.

Hrmm... project isn't turning out as expected - AGAIN.

It was better before I "fixed" it. Damn.

Disillusioned with the project. This was a huge waste of time!!

Set project aside and go watch TV, while trying to figure out how to put the half-finished project to new use.

Avoid the project.

Avoid the sewing room because the project is in there, taunting me.

Grow tired of the avoidance, and decide to take the project to its crappy conclusion.

Hrmm.... This isn't as bad as I thought it was. Just need a little tweak here and there and...

WOW! This project is AWESOME!

Love, love, LOVE the project!!!

"Oh this? It's just something I made one afternoon. Nope. Don't be impressed. It was really easy to make."

Toodles,

Tutorial: Heart-shaped strawberry makes a lunchtime treat

2010-01-06T10:11:00.006-06:00

So aside from renewing my commitment to my personal blog, another one of my New Year's resolutions was to fix healthier lunches for Liv. But healthy food is not enough, the child has to actually EAT it. And when all the other kids at school are opening brightly colored packages of sugar-packed chips, cookies, etc., plain-jane healthy food just doesn't compete.

Starting this week, I've started packing her lunch in a bento box with food cut into small bits and arranged prettily. So far, it's gone well. The healthy food is getting eaten, and she reported back how cool her friends thought her lunch was. Yay!

This morning I packed a trio of strawberries in her lunch, and cut them into pretty heart shapes. I'm sure I'm not the first person to happen upon this presentation idea, but thought I'd give a quick little how-to just in case you haven't seen this before. It only takes a few cuts to go from whole strawberry to pretty little heart.

Want to know how?

First, start with a whole strawberry.

Second, cap it. (That sounds awfully violent, doesn't it?)

Now, cut a small V out of the center.

Next, shave a tiny bit off each outer side to create a more rounded edge.

Now shave a little off of the inner sides (the top of the V) to smooth those edges.

Voila! A heart-shaped strawberry. Easy peasy, lemon squeezey.

I arranged three of these strawberry hearts into the corner of her lunch box, along with a small container (REALLY small) of sugar for her to dip them in. I know, I know. Sugar doesn't make a healthy lunch, but she won't eat tart berries. And still better than the pre-packaged, artificially flavored alternatives.

These really are easy to make - and quick, too!

Toodles,

65 Roses quilt block

2010-01-04T12:53:00.003-06:00

Have you seen Whip Up's call for donations to the 65 Roses charity quilt project? Kath_red from Whip Up is collected quilt blocks made with a rose embellishment. They'll be sewn together into a quilt that will then be auctioned off at a gala benefit in Canberra, Australia to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis.

When I saw the announcement, I knew I had to contribute something. My dear dear friends Debbie and Kimberly lost their daughter/niece Jennifer to Cystic Fibrosis several years ago. In spite of everything she had to endure, Jennifer maintained a sunny disposition and an optimism that inspired everyone she knew. This block was made in honor of Jennifer, her mother Debbie, and her aunt Kimberly.

The upper lefthand block is made from linen, repurposed from a jumper that my mother gave me. (Gawd, it was a hideous jumper but it's made a ton of cool craft projects!!) The rosette is made from a scrap left over from a sweater refashion for my daughter. I just cut a curved strip of it and stitched and flipped and turned and coiled and stitched more until it made a little rosette shape. I had a turqouise button all picked out for the center, but the rosette ended up looking better without it.

Here's a close-up of the flower. I love the dimension of it! And the sweater knit is soooo soft....

You can see some 65 Roses quilt blocks that others have made at the 65 Roses Quilt for Charity flickr group.

Toodles,

Little girl sews

2010-01-03T19:56:00.004-06:00

Liv and I worked on a sewing project today. She's making a pair of pajama pants for herself. So long as I draw out the stitching lines with an air-erasable marker, she can stitch a fairly straight seam.

She was sewing rather indepedently today so I thought I'd grab a little video. The sound is a little low on this, so if you want to hear what she says you'll need to turn up the volume.

It cracks me up how she looks like a little adult sitting at the machine, working the fabric and removing the pins.

"What do you like about sewing?" "It's fun and it's hard." She soooo gets it!

Toodles,

New Year's Bloggin' Resolution

2010-01-01T16:14:00.004-06:00

So it should be no surprise what my New Year's Bloggin' Resolution is going to be. That is, if you notice that the last post before this one was this summer. Maaaaan, I'm a bad blogger!! I do tons of blogging over at Craft Gossip, but that's all focused on what other people are doing. My personal blog is where I get to show off what comes out of my studio and what's going on in my crazy life. Sooo.... this year I'm going to focus on giving more attention to ye olde Casserole Blog. Say, at least two posts and one project a week? That should be doable, no?

And to start it off, I'll show off a little number I whipped up for Liv this morning. This morning, noon, and early afternoon to be honest.

Santa brought these killer red and white boots to her, but we didn't have a thing to match. Can't have that, can we?

Anyway, last night a friend of mine gave me a hand-me-down long sleeved knit shirt. At first I was going to make it into a fitted shirt for myself, but then I pictured it on Liv as an A-line dress with a dropwaist, button placket, and little fake pocket flap.

I think it turned out pretty darn cute.

Toodles,

It's official

2009-06-01T20:26:00.006-05:00

I had a sneaking feeling when I started washing out my baggies. But I pushed it back, reasoning that I was only washing the gallon-sized ziploc baggies.

Later when I was cleaning out my fridge, I found myself looking at the tail end of some salsa I made and thinking, "Hmm... Half a cup of salsa. That might be just exactly what I'm wanting for a snack one day." And then, as if on autopilot, I pour the salsa out of the larger container and into a smaller one. But I didn't break out a grease pen and label the contents, so really I wasn't being over the top.

And then tonight. I was going to refashion two old tees into one cool new tee, but I miscut and I was faced with two large rectangles of knit fabric that needed to go into the trash can. Except instead of throwing them away, I start cutting them into 7" squares. I stacked two squares and serged the edges together to make a dishrag. I got 5 double-layered dishrags from the old tee.

As I was admiring my thriftiness, I realized that there was no more fighting it. It's official. I have become my grandmother.

Over the years we've made fun of my grandmother for all of the above acts of thriftiness, so I have to laugh at myself when I find myself repeating them. I suppose it's in the blood, the need to stretch the usefulness of all that you have at your disposal - whether it's a wad of food or a bit of fabric. She raised two babies during WWII rationing, and did so for several years in a house with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. This woman knows about thriftiness, about repurposing, and making do. So while I laugh at myself for washing out baggies and hoarding little morsels of food, I also find a certain bit of pride in seeing my grandmother's traits in me.

I need to find me a denim jacket

2009-05-28T08:39:00.003-05:00

...so I can make a jacket like THIS one at HodgePodge Farm.

Seriously. I NEED that jacket.

Toodles,

Yellow halter dress from hell

2009-05-22T16:00:00.004-05:00

So Liv loved the dress-shirt-turned-kid's-dress I made her. So much so that she asked me to make another one. I had another shirt that I snagged at the same time I got the shirt for the first dress. I was all ready to repeat the process when she said that she wanted it to be a sundress for summer.

I was all planning on just making a simple elastic band across the top with thinnish straps over the shoulders when I saw the pieces left over from the first dress. (I'm not the best at cleaning up after my sewing self.) In particular, what I saw was the collar I had cut off.

At first I thought the collar would be really cool placed across the top of the elastic band, like a wide shirt collar across the dress. Then I realized that the points of the collar are shaped for the collar to be in a circle around your neck, and that when you straightened out the collar the points overlapped. No good.

But then... but then... inspiration. What if the collar wrapped around the neck? What if the collar was the strap of a halter dress? Yes, yes!

And with that, I began the project I now know as "The Yellow Halter Dress From Hell". Without any instructions or any templates or any patterns to work from, there was a lot of ripping and resewing, re-ripping and re-resewing. But in the end, I came up with a dress that I really, really love. Even better, Olivia loves it too.

The fit of the top is a bit off in these pictures. I realized the day after I took these photos that the reason it seemed too bunchy at the top was that the collar was too long. I had already taken one bite out of the back when I made the dress, but I went back and took out another tuck. Now the fit is perfect! (But the dress is dirty so I'm not retaking the photo...)

Here is a close-up of the front. The tab in the front is actually a bit of one of the cuffs. The collar is stitched down on one side, and buttoned down on the other. To put on or take off the dress, you just unbutton the one side. The buttonhole is actually the original buttonhole on the front of the collar. The bow is just something I made with a bit of the extra fabric from the sleeve. It snaps on and off (snap is hidding by the cuff-tab) so it doesn't end up in a wad after being laundered.

Toodles,

More of what I've been sewing

2009-05-11T11:54:00.004-05:00

Here's another peek at what I've been sewing lately. This dress was made from a man's dress shirt. Isn't that just the cleverest thing? I can't take credit for the idea - I used this tutorial from MADE.
Liv loves it so much - she wants me to make a yellow one next, except she wants it to be a sundress. I've got some ideas knocking around in the skull, but haven't had a chance to actually try them out yet.

Oh, and gotta share a few pics from the Mom's Day celebration at Liv's school on Friday.

First some pics from the little music program. Nothing says childhood like songs with accompanying hand motions!

And then Liv presenting her Mom's Day gift to me.

And the two of us on the playground.

Altogether a very sweet day at Liv's school.

Some of what I've been sewing: baby dress & matching shoes

2009-05-06T08:25:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, Tony's cousin & his wife welcomed their first child into the world. A red-headed girl named Avery. I wanted to make something special for this little bitty girl, so I grabbed up some fat quarters with soft colors, ultra feminine prints. I ended up with a handful of prints from Anna Griffin's Fiona line. (The exception is the celery and white polka-dot. I have no idea who made that print, but it coordinates so perfectly.)

For the dress, I used this tutorial from Made By Petchy, but followed RedInstead's tutorial for the neckline so that the ties would come up from the armhole rather than across the top. (This makes a safer neckline for a little baby, as it does not involve a drawstring casing around the baby's neck.)

I also made a pair of shoes to match using a free pattern from New Conceptions Sewing Patterns.

Here they are from the front. I pieced the front of the dress because I didn't have enough of one type of fabric (fat quarters, remember) to make the whole dress. Then, because of a piecing foobar, I ended up having to recut the back. Except I didn't have a big enough piece of fabric to match the front, so I ended up raiding my stash for another print. Here's the back:

And a close-up of the little shoes cause they're just gosh-darn-it-cute.

Toodles,

What to do on a rainy day...

2009-05-02T14:22:00.002-05:00

Make a clubhouse.

No, make that a movie theater.

And invite all your Webkinz to watch a movie with you.

Toodles,

My poor, sad, neglected blog

2009-04-22T22:06:00.003-05:00

I haven't posted anything here in several weeks. I'm a bad blogger. Bad, bad, blogger. Not that there hasn't been anything going on worth blogging about.

There was the trip to visit my SIL in Wisconsin, a few sewing projects, the madness of prepping food for Codie's wedding, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... But in the business of actually doing all these things, I didn't have the focus to actually WRITE about all these things.

I've got a couple of cool projects up my sleeve, which I'll be posting in the next few days. Okay, next few weeks is probably more realistic, given that now we're entering into the last few weeks of the semester.

Toodles,

I think I created a monster...

2009-03-26T21:40:00.004-05:00

...though I don't think I mind in the least.

Tony just walked in the room from tucking Miss Liv into bed, and reported that she had tried to curl up under her dolly quilt. And then he says, "I think I may have started something I shouldn't have... but I asked her if she liked that quilt so much, did she think maybe she needed to make a girl-sized quilt with mommy. And she said yes."

I'm not sure what makes me happier. That my girl wants to make take on a girl-sized quilt, or that my dear husband is so supportive.

Life is good,

Buttercup, buttercup

2009-03-19T10:42:00.004-05:00

Wye is a small town about 30 minutes outside of Little Rock. In Wye, there's a small Methodist Church that plants a hillside with daffodil bulbs. Every spring the entire hillside turns yellow with buttercups and they host their annual Wye Mountain daffodil festival. It's kind of a local tradition for parents to take their kids to the festival and to snap some pretty spring phtos.

Yesterday evening we did just that with Liv. Tony had to work late so Denise went with me. The drive was beautiful, leaving the city behind and winding deeper into the hills. The weather was perfect - 70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We got there just before sunset.

Happy Spring!!

Tutorial: Shamrock pins for St. Pattie's Day

2009-03-15T17:11:00.015-05:00

Liv and I made these fun shamrock pins other day in honor of St. Patties day. It's really a simple idea, and it can be adapted for just about any holiday. They look like they've been coated with UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) but really it's just a thick spray glaze.

What you need:

--chipboard (I pulled a cream puff box out of the recycling bin. Yummm....)

--newspaper scraps

--die cut machine that can cut chipboard. I used a Sizzix with a retired shamrock die. Really, I don't suppose you *need* a die cut machine, but it does make it super easy to cut shapes from chipboard.

--Decoupage medium. (I used Aleene's, but that's just because my Mod Podge wasn't handy at the moment.)

--acrylic craft paint

--Deco Art Triple Thick Brilliant Gloss Spray (I love this stuff!!!!)

--pin backs

--strong adhesive for gluing pin backs. I used E6000

So here's how you do it:

1. Cut the newspaper into thin strips. You don't need very many, just enough to cover the piece of chipboard.

2. Coat the chipboard with the decoupage medium and lay the strips down, covering with a second coat.

3. After you've covered the whole piece of chipboard with newspaper, paint the newspaper with a thin coat of acrylic craft paint. I used several different colors of green and mixed them together here and there. You should be able to see the newsprint faintly through the paint.

4. Wait for the paint to dry. This could take a while so go do something fun while it's drying.

4. Now here's the fun part. Use your die-cutter to cut out a bunch of shamrocks from the painted chipboard. Then, spray the shapes with the Triple Thick glaze. You'll end up with some very shiny shamrock shapes.

5. Now, just glue a pin back on to the back of each shape.

Voila! Shiny pretty shamrock pins.

Tuesday night is dinner party night

2009-03-11T13:43:00.003-05:00

We have a new and old tradition in our family - Tuesday night dinners. When I was a kid, Tuesday night was one of my dad's visitation nights. He'd take my sister and I out to dinner while my mother was at night school. We continued our dinners long after my mother got her degree, but finally as my sister and I became adults it was harder and harder to keep it up.

Fast forward 15 years. My father was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. He'd most likely been experiencing symptoms for years, but we just chalked it up to his natural ditziness or his habit for smoking something he probably ought not. We realized that we didn't have that many years of good times together, so we restarted our Tuesday night tradition. With the addition of my sister's husband, my husband, my husband, and my daughter, it wasn't financially feasible for us all to go out to eat. So the Tuesday night dinner party was born.

Last night my stepmother was out of town and my sister and her husband had to work, so it was just my father and my immediate family. We hosted at our house. Lemme tell you how my last night went:

With my stepmother out of town, it was iffy whether he would remember our dinner or not. So I waited until early afternoon to even invite him, and then 10 minutes before he needed to be here I called to remind him. If he had remembered to come, he would have already left. Naturally, he forgot. I told him to come on over, that dinner would be just coming out of the oven. Now, it should take no more than 20 minutes for him to get to my house, so I was a little concerned when 40 minutes later he still wasn't here. He probably just took time to get dressed before he left, I think. So I call his house and get no answer. Good, he's left.

Meanwhile, my mother-in-law calls me to get the update on my grandmother. I hadn't told you that part yet. It was about midafternoon when I got a call from my mother saying that my grandmother had fallen outside her house, and that she'd been laying on the ground calling for help for 30 minutes before a neighbor saw her. (No broken bones, by the way. We think she'll be okay.) So, all the while I'm trying to get dinner together and trying to order things so that my father will remember to show up, I'm playing phone call clearinghouse receiving updates from my mother at the emergency room and then passing that information on to all interested parties.

So I'm on the phone with my mother-in-law giving her the update on my grandmother while Tony is shuffling around all the food in the kitchen either finishing up the cooking or trying to keep it warm. And that's when my dad calls. "Hi hon," he says, "It looks like I've gotten myself lost."

So I quickly end my conversation with MIL and proceed to find out how far off track my father is and give him real-time directions all the way to my house. AAAAAAAHHHH!!!! It was at that point that my brain started to explode.

Anyway, the dinner worked out really nice. My father was on good behavior, we think because it was such a small group. Sometimes at our "dinner parties" he can be overly self-centered or thinks it's fun to get my daughter all riled up. The previous week he had said something very hurtful to me, and then had no memory of having said it. I was a bit nervous about this week, but we ended up having a lovely time together as a family.

After dinner, I went over to my grandmother's house and sat with her while my mother ran a few errrands in order to get settled in to stay with her for a few days.

So that was my Tuesday night dinner party night - stressful, but filled with feelings of kinship and the interdependence that is part and parcel with such closeknit groups.

Toodles,

Remember the doll quilt?

2009-03-08T22:11:00.004-05:00

We finished it last week.

I'm so proud of my little girl. Not only was she integral in the design process, but she stitched every single seam of this quilt. I'm afraid at times I was a little bit of the quarter-inch-seam-Nazi but by the end of the quilt she really got the hang of how to feed the fabric through in order to maintain the straight seam allowance.

We pieced it together in rows, then attached row to row to make the rectangle. Her eyes lit up when she saw the pattern taking shape, and she let out a little gasp. "Oh!" When the top was finished, I sandwiched it and pin basted it for her, then let her do the quilting. I used a edge-stitch foot to help her keep the stitching as much in the ditch as possible. She did surprisingly well.

As a reward for finishing her quilt, Denise and I took her to our local quilt shop to show off her creations. The ladies oohed and ahhhed and gave her a round of applause, and generally made her feel like a rock star. And then we bought her more fabric for her stash. She's got good taste, I think.

Toodles,

Dude... These are our curtains

2009-03-07T08:00:00.000-06:00

This was Thursday's Daily Swatch over at True Up. AND it's the fabric in our living room curtains. How seriously cool is that?!?!

Toodles,

Yeahhh, I'm still here

2009-03-06T20:04:00.003-06:00

Remember how I said I had a busy, busy week? I guess I actually had a busy, busy week followed by a lazy, lazy 2 weeks, and then another busy, busy week.

I don't know why it is, but once a week had passed without posting to the blog, it got harder and harder to write this entry. I think I thought that with that much time away, I had better write something significant - either to justify my silence or perhaps penance for my silence.

So tonight I'm just writing the "get the feet wet again" blog post. I won't bother you with the details of my absence, but I'm back from blogging vacay. Liv finished her dolly quilt (even did the quilting herself) and I'm finishing up a cool mini-art quilt. Will post pictures tomorrow. Or Sunday.

Still here,

Busy, busy week

2009-02-16T11:31:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I kinda dropped off the face of the planet for a week. We hosted a baby shower at my house yesterday and the preparations took over my life. It was all kind of craftiness getting ready for it, but I'm ashamed to say that I got so busy that I didn't get any pictures of the final result! (I'm hoping Denise or Scarlett got one???)

I'll post later with more details. Right now I'm kind of braindead with the post crafting/party letdown.

Oh, and guess what came in the mail Saturday??? The Orange Dreamsicle print from Marisa!!! It's going to hang over my computer desk. Off to the frame store to find something that will do this justice....

Toodles,

I totally jinxed myself...

2009-02-09T16:55:00.002-06:00

...when I said I thought we could have Liv's dolly quilt made by the weekend. Just 4 hours later, Liv comes down with a stomach bug.

That'll teach me.

It was only a 24-hour bug, but it kinda interrupted the crafting mojo. Gotta make a bunch of stuff for a baby shower this weekend, then we'll get back on track.

Dolly quilt sneak peek

2009-02-05T09:58:00.005-06:00

We're making progress on our dolly quilt. It's actually going together much faster than I had expected. Yesterday while Little Bit was as school, I cut all the pieces for her to sew. I had thought we'd spend days sewing little pieces of fabric together, but now I'm thinking that we can get the whole thing knocked out by this weekend.

We started with Liv's birdie fabric that her Aunt Scarlett had given her. I think she went for that one because she had the most of it, and she didn't want to actually run out of any of her precious fabric. I added some "dogs" from my own stash to get our palette:

Based on Liv's design changes, I came up with the basic pattern. Each square represents 1 inch.

AND just so I won't be called a tease again (punkinhead), here's a sneak peek of the progress so far.

No, the corners don't match, but keep in mind that it was sewn by a 5-year-old. Her seams were actually pretty straight. I hovered a bit, I'm ashamed to admit. Every time it looked like she was getting off of the 1/4-inch mark, I'd tell her to stop and we'd straighten it up. By the end, she was starting to get the hang of it.

We're gonna sew some more today. Hopefully I'll have a finished top to show you tomorrow.

Toodles,

Gonna make a dolly quilt

2009-02-03T11:00:00.004-06:00

I saw this post on Sew, Mama, Sew! about a doll quilt sew-along and immediately wanted to make one, too. So I showed the post to Liv and explained what a sew-along was and she asked me, wide-eyed, "Can we make one, too?" Oh girl, I love how you take the bait!

Of course, I follow it up with the fact that she'd have to use fabric from her own stash to make the quilt. "Or, we could make it with part my fabric and part your fabric" she countered. My little hoarder.

I found some old dogs in the stash bin (that's what we call the ugly fabrics - dogs) that matched one of her fabric pieces. I laid them out for her and she immediately starts showing me with her hands where we need to cut the pieces to alter the pattern from straight square blocks to squares and rectangles. I love the way her brain works!

Today, I wash the fabrics and then we'll cut them into rectangles and squares. I think this is gonna be fun.

Toodles,

This might actually get me to buy brand name butter....

2009-02-02T12:55:00.002-06:00

...at least one time, just to see if this really works.

http://averagejanecrafter.blogspot.com/2009/02/and-you-thought-butter-was-all-innocent.html

Toodles,

Orange Dreamsicle print

2009-01-26T14:06:00.003-06:00

OMG, check out ElegantBloggery's Orange Dreamscicle Cupcake print!

And get this - it's coming to yours truly! YESSSSSSSSS!!!! A while back she hosted a contest to come up with a flavor for a new cupcake print, and if there's one thing I know, it's sweets. I suggested an Orange Dreamsicle cupcake, and that was the one she chose. I am so flippin' excited!! I can't wait to hang my new art print above my desk. It'll be like guilt-free, calorie-free indulgence all day long.

If you want one of Marisa's prints for your own self, check out her Etsy shop. Her prints are lovely!

Big home dec project revealed, part II

2009-01-21T08:53:00.003-06:00

This is where we left off in the previous post - everything loaded up into my van. We arrived in Fort Smith around noon and immediately began the process of unloaded all of this. Keep in mind that the "crew" is just me and Denise. And both of us are weaklings with bad backs.

Lucky for us, my kind, sweet hubby nailed together a makeshift dolly. Just 4 2x4s nailed together with casters on the bottom. but it did make the process of moving much easier. That, coupled with the fact that Scarlett's apartments were originally designed as a retirement community, which means that all apartments are wheelchair (and furniture dolly) accessible.

After much pushing and pulling and grunting and panting, we got everything inside. With the exception of the big pink metal desk, we were able to manage it all just the two of us. (Luckily with the big desk, a strapping young 20-something showed up at the apartment house catty-corner at exactly the right time. Little meek Anne had to get big and bold and knock on a complete stranger's door, but he helped us.)

Four hours later, the apartment looked like this:

The couch, coffee table, and chair function as a sitting area because all the fabric is now on shelves and all the paperwork is now in a file box.

The black card table is replaced with the pink metal desk. We used this as Liv's changing table when she was a baby, hence the pink color. The bottom drawer was big enough to hold Scarlett's DVD collection, which freed shelves up on the entertainment center for books and pretties. (Also made the entertainment center feel far less cluttered.)

And do you see that turqouise bucket on the bottom shelf in the picture above? That's one of the half-bushel baskets spray-painted a pale turqouise and lined with white broadcloth. We ended up with 5 half-bushel sized baskets, and 3 bushel sized baskets. All were spraypainted. I fell head-over-heels-giddy in love with the trigger attachment for spray paint cans. It's SOOO much easier to pull the trigger than to push down on that tiny little button on top of the can.

Here's the sewing nook:

The sewing machine sits on the table donated by my sister. How perfect is that table?!? The blue shelving to the left are the old metal shelves from my basement - with a fresh coat of spraypaint of course. Bushel baskets sit on the blue shelves.

On the back wall of the sewing nook is another new set of shelves. They hold bins of fabric, and the top is exactly the right height for a tabletop ironing board. She'll still need to pull out the large ironing board when pressing large fabric cuts, but for pressing seams open on small quilt blocks this is just the right size.

By the way, check out her design wall above the ironing board. It was already there before the re-do, but I wanted to call attention to her quilt in progress.

Finally, just to the right of the sewing nook is the cutting table. Now that this table is devoted solely to cutting, she's got full use of the cutting mat. Two bushel baskets sit underneath to catch the scraps. (Later, we ended up transferring her entire collection of fabric scraps into those bins.) I had wanted to make a piece of artwork to hang over the table, but I didn't have time.

So there you have it - the surprise apartment makeover. If you add up every bit of money spent on spray paint, shelves, fabric, organizers, table top ironing boards - the total adds up to LESS THAN $75.

Toodles,

My big home dec project revealed

2009-01-19T21:17:00.005-06:00

So I'm back from my weekend in Fort Smith, and now I get to tell you all about the home dec project I've been working so hard on. I was busting to write about it last week, but I couldn't talk about the project until after the trip to Fort Smith. Why is that, you say?

Why, it's because the home dec project took place in Fort Smith.

Here's the quick and dirty backstory: My dear friend Scarlett's had a lot -LOT- going on in the last few months. There have been a string of medical crises in her family. Though these crises were not with her own personal health, it was the health of loved ones. The frequent drives to and from Little Rock (2 1/2 hours from Ft. Smith) took both time and energy, which she gave freely and with love. However, it was also taking a toll on her apartment. Her living room/dining room functions as a living room/home office/sewing studio but she didn't have the right kind of furniture or organizing systems to make this work efficiently. So stuff ended up piled here and there, which was made even more overwhelming by her travel fatigue. The addition of a few pieces of functional furniture (desk, shelving, etc.) would fix this, but the travel and health crises made purchases like that impossible for the near future.

So it was in this context that about a month ago this idea flashed through my head to do a surprise apartment re-do and create a functional living space for her. Given my own financial constraints, this had to be a super-dooper-budget project. As in, what could Anne do with $75??

Enter my angels. The first angel is Denise, who eagerly signed on to help with this project. She was my co-conspirator, contributing energy, inspiration, and $$ for some of the materials. Another angel is my sister, who helped me locate an inexpensive bookshelf for Scarlett's fabric. She also generously donated a sewing table to the cause. Another angel is my friend Jennifer, who upon hearing of the suprise apartment makeover, wanted a piece of the action and donated hanging file folders. There were also two Freecycle angels: one who donated bushel baskets, and another who donated plastic organizing bins for the drawers.

I just realized I've typed a jillion words and still haven't shown any pics. I suppose that's a bit mean of me, but I wanted to give some context before the big reveal.

Now, for the before shots. They're a bit blurry due to some difficulty with the camera.

The computer lives on a card table, which doesn't give any space to store papers, pens, files, etc.

There's no place to store fabric in here, so it ends up in piles here and there.

You can't see it very well in this picture, but the sewing center is just a small dining table. There isn't room on the tabletop for both the cutting mat and the sewing machine, so the sewing machine ends up sitting on top of the cutting mat - which makes for a smaller cutting area. What you also can't see is that just to the right of the couch is an ironing board. When Scarlett is working on a quilt, she has to walk across the room to iron out each set of seams.

During the weeks that we planned this secret project, we collected up a number of furniture and organizational pieces:

1 - Old metal desk that had actually been Liv's changing table when she was a baby. The person we bought it from then told us that it was from the 1930s and came from the old nursing school here in town.

2 - Small set of wooden shelves, about 36" wide and 30" tall. Perfect height for a small table-top ironing board.

3 - Small set of metal shelves, discovered in the dark recesses of our basement. They were rusty and nasty, but a good cleaning and a coat of turquoise Rustoleam had them looking like they came from The Container Store.

4 - Wooden sewing table, courtesy of my sister. Very stury - a very nice piece of furniture.

5 - Set of bushel baskets from Freecycle. They had glued ribbon around the outside of them and used them for storage in their daughter's playroom. We took the ribbon off, spray painted them in fun colors, and made cloth liners. Denise was a genius figuring out how to make the liners with as little fuss as possible. We ended up with 5 half-bushel sized baskets, and 3 full-bushel sized baskets.

6 - Set of small plastic organizing bins for drawers, also courtesy of Freecycle. We ended up with probably 10 that were 4x6 inches, and 3 that were 6 x 9 inches. She also ended up throwing in some cutlery organizers that were perfect for organizing pens and pencils and such.
7 - Hanging file boxes scavenged from around the house and outfitted with the hanging files donated by my friend Jennifer.

That's a lot of stuff!!! To get it all to Fort Smith, we had to take out both back seats in my van:

I'll post tomorrow to show what it looked like when we got done.

Craftily yours,

Teaser

2009-01-14T13:58:00.002-06:00

Just had to post to let you know I'm working on a home dec project. It's top secret - I don't want anyone to know exactly what I'm doing until I post the finished product. I'll give you a clue though - it involves digging around in my basement, some generous freecyclers, a bit of sewing, and a large amount of spray paint.

Curious?? I can tell you no more until it's complete, which will have to wait until after my trip to Fort Smith this weekend.

Laughing maniacly,

Aprons and antennae and stars

2009-01-07T08:11:00.009-06:00

I think I'm in denial right now. I've finally gotten some free time after all of the end of semester-Christmas-pillow madness and I'm being rather selfish with it. I haven't blogged. I haven't commented on blogs. I haven't even thanked all my friends/relatives for the Christmas presents I've received. I'm just being bad, enjoying all of the fun of being a true stay-at-home mom, rather than a stay-at-home mom with a part-time job. Of course, that all ends next week with the beginning of the new semester, but I've still got a few days to pretend I have no responsibilities outside of my four walls.

But even though I've been hiding out from the outside world, we've stayed pretty busy at our house. Liv's been practicing sewing on my big sewing machine and amassing her own fabric stash. She's also developing the fabric hoarding tendencies, as evidenced by her inability to cut into her charm squares in order to make a dolly quilt. She actually hid them from me rather than having to use any of them in a project. "But they're so pretty," she said, "and if I use them up then I won't have them any more."

Luckily, her Aunt Scarlett gave her a yard cut of a piece of fabric this weekend, which allowed her to use some of it and hoard the rest. So yesterday we completed her first real sewing project - a very simple half-apron.

And of course after we made the apron we had to make cookies. Too bad I got sidetracked and put in only half of the flour. Cookies didn't exactly turn out that good.

After the apron sewing project, she decided to create he own Word Girl costume. Word Girl wears a space helmet; Liv used a bicycle helmet. Word Girl has a star on her shirt; Olivia had me cut out a star which she colored red and taped on to her own shirt. "There are 5 points and I have 2 pieces [of tape] already, so that means I need 3 more." Then she made the antenna and taped it to the top of the helmet.

Here she is doing her Word-Girl-in-flight pose.

I know it looks... ummm... phallic? Even more reason to take tons of pictures. This is SO blackmail for her teenage years.

Later, Liv figured out that she could pull up the webpage with a picture of Word Girl and check to be sure she had everything just right. Turns out Word Girl doesn't have an antenna at all; that's some guy named Huggy Face??? So the big penis came off of the helmet and got taped to the top of a stuffed kitty that she was pretending whas this Huggy Face character. So now we have a black & white stuffed kitty with a penis on his head sitting in our living room.

Yeah, we're classy like that.

The science of cleaning up

2008-12-31T11:32:00.007-06:00

So this morning I was moving a little slow so I parked the little one in front of the TV while I had my coffee. I know, bad mom. Whatever. We keep the TV on PBS at least.

Anyway, after watching an episode of Sid the Science Kid, she gets up and goes to the computer and pulls up the website for the show. After clicking around a little she comes to me, bright-eyed with ideas. Seems she wants to make a chart. A chart of what, I ask. Of food, she says. In my big toy kitchen.

Whoa... Mama wakes up and has to do some quick thinking. Her room is a total pigsty, as is the den, and the last thing I want to have happen is her getting out more piles of small objects.

The wheels start turning... Hey, I say, I've got an idea for a chart. "How about we make a chart of all the stuff on the floor in here." Her eyes light up. I go in for the kill. "We'll make a mark for each thing we put away, and when we're done we'll know which kinds of toys were most on the floor."

She took the bait.

And so she drew out this chart. I wrote in most of the labels, but she did write in the words "cat" (for all her stuffed kitties) and "science".

Based on our chart, it seems that there was more dress-up left out on our den floor than anything. Art stuff comes in second, and science pulls third place.

If you've got little ones around the house, or not, check out the science songs over at Sid the Science Kid. (Sorry I can't provide links to the individual songs. Their website is set up with a scrolly navigation thing that makes it where I can't.) They're kicky, fun little ditties. Be sure to check out the ones about:

Charts. This was the inspiration for today's cleaning activity. "I'll be checkin' out charts, cause charts rule. A chart is a handy-dandy scientific tool. It gives you information you can see with your eyes. Charts help you vis-yooo-ah-liiiize... You get the picture, so do I."

Decomposing. "De-caaaay.... De-caaaay.... Nature happens that way. De-caaaaay.... De-caaaay..... While you were dozin' they were decomposin'"

Estimation. Sounds like a tween angst song of sorts, but it's actually about estimating. "Cause that's my.... best... guess.... Guess I mean more.... or... less..."

Gawd, I love PBS Kids.org.

Toodles,

Pillows are done - ALMOST

2008-12-28T22:49:00.006-06:00

So I set a goal of getting all of the pillows made by Christmas. And I made that goal - almost. I had made the one pillow earlier so my client would have time to ship it to her brother. That left 5 more pillows to make. Really, only 3 of them needed to be by Christmas morning, as one of the pillows was for the client and one for the daughter who had helped her plan the project.

Anyway, I was able to get all 5 pillows pieced, stitched, and turned by the 23rd. I stuffed 4 of them and stitched them shut. Then, oh then, the unthinkable happened. I notice a small tear in the bottom of one of the ties on the 5th pillow. A small tear with big consequences, as it was the result of pressure of the stuffing on silk that had degraded with time and staining.

Because the tear was at the bottom, at first I thought I could enclose the tiny tear within a new bottom seam line. But when my sister came over that evening to offer her advice (she's an expert with old fabrics) she tells me that the entire tie is bad. If I try to keep it in there, it will continue to tear. So now I have to take apart the pillow and replace the one stripe.

Not so bad except that all the stripes are pieced on to a muslin foundation (for added stability). Oh, and the side seams of the pillows? All reinforced for extra strength and extra trouble to rip out.

Luckily, the pillow that was damaged was the one meant for my client personally, which meant that the Christmas deadline was flexible. I devised a plan to rework the pillow, which I'll post about tomorrow, and called the woman to set up a time to deliver the 4 that were complete.

Before I handed the pillows over, I took pictures of each of them so I could share them. I worked hard on these and I'm darn tootin' proud.

This is a pillow made from the same set of ties as the first one I made. (I took photos of the piecing on the front and the back.)

This one was made for the client's mother. The difficulty on this one was using all these ties with very strong diagonal stripes. I couldn't put them next to each other because it was just too much on the eye, but I only had one tie that would go in between - and much of it was damaged.

This is the one for the client's daughter. Her house is decorated in more muted, beachy tones so we chose grayish, bluish ties for her pillow.

Finally, this is one that was made for the client's sister.

This afternoon I got the final pillow fixed. Tomorrow morning I'll stuff it, photo it, and post it out here. Then this project will be done done done done done.

Toodles,

Christmas chaos, the good kind

2008-12-23T13:29:00.006-06:00

With all the rush of end of semester, pillow making, last minute shopping, cookie party preparing, I've been feeling like Christmas is happening without me. Swirling all around me with it's craziness, but all the good stuff going on while I'm busy trying to keep all the pieces up in the air.

This Sunday provided the perfect antidote to swirling, out of control Christmas craziness. It came in the form of the live nativity at our church. During the Sunday School hour, all the kids met downstairs and got costumed up in the form of shepherds, angels, sheep, donkeys, etc. Some came in already dressed up, but most were costumed out of a collection of sheets and fabrics and tinsel and sashes. It was such a beautiful chaos.

Children and animals alike held court in the altar area of the sanctuary. There was a donkey, several goats, a sheep, somebody's pet chickens (in a cage), two dogs, and a puppy. One of the goats was wearing an elf hat, and one of the dogs was wearing a shepherd costume. Not exactly historically accurate, but full of good cheer.

The children and the animals stayed up front throughout the entire church service. Every now and then a toddler angel might take off wandering around, only to be shepherded back into position by an older angel or beaming parent. There was the rather stinky load dropped by everyone's favorite donkey and you could tell the exact moment the smell wafted up to the choir, and the goat that nearly drenched a little girl when he relieved his bladder. Mary had to keep shooing the animals away from 4-month-old baby Jesus. The animals, enthralled with the baby, kept their backs to the congregation which gave us all a great view of a row of goat butts.

Not exactly a Norman Rockwell scene, and yet it was absolutely beautiful. It was just what I needed.

Cats really will pee on everything you love...

2008-12-21T20:48:00.001-06:00

...including the Christmas tree.

'nuff said.

An ambitious undertaking

2008-12-20T17:19:00.005-06:00

Remember when I vowed not to make myself crazy this holiday season? Well, Christmas is nearly here and I have -once again- bitten off more than I can chew. This time, though, it wasn't the birthday party or the Halloween costume or Thanksgiving.

It's from this:

This pillow is part of a larger custom job I've taken on. My client (ooh, I love saying that - it sounds so PROFESSIONAL!!) wants a set of 6 pillows made from her father's old ties. She's going to give one to each family member on Christmas morning. The one pictured above is the one I had to get done early so she could ship it to her brother. The remaining five need to be done before Christmas Eve.

This project, along with the end of the semester (which was last week - WOOHOO!) and my new gig as Sewing Editor at Craft Gossip has turned me into a crazy woman the last few weeks. The good news is that I'm over half way through with the large pillow order, I posted my grades last week (WOOHOO!), and our Christmas shopping is all done.

Sewing machine is beckoning. Toodles,

A new venture for me

2008-12-16T12:32:00.003-06:00

Lately my crafting pursuits have been taking me deeper and deeper into the world of fabric. Really I guess I should say I've been pulled -back- into fabric, since really that's where a lot of my crafting obsession originated.

Anyway, this pull back into sewing has gotten me reading all sorts of sewing blogs. I have no idea how many blogs I subscribe to in my Google reader now, but I have a feeling it borders on being obscene. I spend far too many otherwise productive hours of the day trolling the blogs seeing what everyone's been sewing while I've been, well, trolling the blogs seeing what everyone's been sewing.

Which brings me to my newest venture.... Yesterday I started at Craft Gossip as their Sewing editor. Don't believe me? Here's a link to the sewing blog itself. See the little picture at that top right? That's me!!!! (Sorry, I'm just a little bit excited...)

Feel free to subscribe to it with your own Google reader accounts. Hint, hint. :)

Toodles,

Merry Christmas to me!!!

2008-12-15T22:25:00.003-06:00

I know it's been a whole week since my last post, but I've been a very busy girl! Between the normal holiday madness, a large custom sewing job, grading finals for my writing class, and something else which I will announce tomorrow (no, I'm not preggers, sorry to disappoint...) I've hardly had time to breathe, much less post to my blog...

BUT I got the most wonderous present in the mail yesterday and I just have to share!!! Remember the AREtsy swap that I posted about last week? Well, I got my own present in the mail and all I can say is,

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ME!!!

Lookie! It's a gorgeous scarflett from none other than Idyllhands herself!!

I am so in love with this! It's warm and soft and snuggly and the colors are just fab!!! I'm so cold natured - this is going to keep me warm this winter.

I am indeed one lucky girl. If you're insanely jealous of my scarflett (which I'm betting you are) and you want one of your own (which I'm betting you are), head on over to Idyllhands' Etsy shop and get one for yourself! Just don't go trying to steal mine cause you'll have a fight on your hands...

Fa-la-la-la-la,

la-la-la

la,

AREtsy swap - check!

2008-12-08T16:11:00.006-06:00

Simply Stacy Jewelry - if you're reading this hide your eyes!!!

This time two days ago I was thoroughly convinced I'd be the last AREtsian to finish her swap. But a conversation with my good friend Denise and a hot and bothered evening with my sewing machine, and I've now completed my swap present. YAY!!!!

I'm posting it here cause I'm just gosh-darn-it proud of it and I don't think my swap partner reads my blog. I'm hoping she doesn't.

In case you're wondering what this fabric wallet looking thing is, it's a notepad cover. Inside there's a 4x6 notepad and a pen. The black line thingie across is the elastic that holds it closed.

I love this so much that I'm already planning to make one for myself, and my mother, and my sister, and my mother-in-law. Christmas, anyone? I'm thinking this will also make a good addition to my Etsy shop, though I'm thinking they won't make it there until after Christmas.

Later,

Writing practice

2008-12-02T11:43:00.004-06:00

Not mine, the little girl's.

She brought this to me yesterday and proudly told me that she wanted to practice writing so she copied some words out of her Garfield comic book.

I'm keeping this forever.

On a totally unrelated topic, I was finally able to pitch these shoes into the trash this morning.

What's wrong with them, you ask? Well, let's just turn them over and have a look-see at their soles.

Umm.... yeah, those are HOLES in the bottom of the shoes. I now have a new pair that looks suspiciously the same from the top, but no worn out holey soles. And some pretty dressy shoes, and some very warm brown suede numbers that are super warm, super comfy, have a full heel, and - get this - FUR LINED even. Yay!

Toodles,

Emoticon in the sky

2008-12-01T14:50:00.003-06:00

This is so totally not craft-related, but sweet husband just sent me a link to this news article about the smiling face that will be in the night sky over Australia. Their diagram is so cute - it's like an emoticon in the sky!

Toodles,

Thankful

2008-11-27T10:38:00.008-06:00

If the only prayer you ever said was, "Thank you," that would suffice.
--Meister Eckhart

Looking at my blog history I'm seeing that it's been 10 DAYS since my last post... OUCH.

Here's a little peek at what we've been working on the last few days. I think this is one of my favorite projects I've ever done with Olivia. It's a garland of things that little girl is thankful for.

She put so much of herself into this project. We spent one afternoon to cut the leaves, one night to paint them, one morning to write the words and create the garland. She's really getting into writing letters now, so I let her write the words herself.

And close-ups of each of the leaves showing what she's thankful for:

Paper and hearts

Dad and mom

Cat

Yellow (her fave color)

Friends (note the upside down F)

Colors

a close-up of the smaller leaves

Ever thankful for all the gifts in my life,

casserole

I knew it'd happen sooner or later....

2008-11-17T09:54:00.004-06:00

...I was just hoping it wouldn't be this weekend.

Liv had just "rediscovered" one of her stuffed kitties, the one she had gotten for her birthday two years ago. She stroked its soft lavender fur and hugged its neck. Then she starts inspecting, as kids often do - looking first at the ears, then the big stuffed bow around its neck. Then she sees the tag.

Liv: Why is my name on this tag?
Me: Because you took it to school last year for nap time and we had to label it.

Liv looks closer at the tag and then her face lights up.

Liv: Oh, look at this! (pointing to the label) It's a DISNEY kitty!

Yes, little girl has learned to recognize the ubiquitous Disney logo, stamped on everything from stuffed animals to lunchboxes to bandaids. And apparently this little Disney logo makes the items more valuable.

We had the little "do you think this makes this a better kitty?" followed with "it's just a word they put on the tag" talk, but it was all lost on her. The logo-twinkle never left her eyes.

Yay.

Bah....

Inspiration: Paper Box Tutorial

2008-11-13T08:00:00.001-06:00

Take a look at this paper box tutorial by Sweet Miss Dasiy at Sassy & Sweet! I know, there's lots of tutorials out there for making any number of sizes and shapes of paper boxes. But I liked this one for how easy it will be to customize and how perfect it will be for holiday giftiness. She shows it with fancy tea packets, but it could also totally rock with hot chocolate, cookies, soaps, craft supplies, anything.

I also like the thriftiness of this. The base is plain cardstock and the fanciness is one strip of patterned paper. If you used 12x12 cardstock for the base, you could get this box out of one piece and still have some scraps left over.

Toodles,

Shadowboxing

2008-11-12T19:30:00.003-06:00

I'm still knee-deep grading papers, but the good side of that is my avoidance of said papers has resulted in a cleaned studio. Semi-cleaned I guess. Okay, so my mother would refer to it as "a good start," but for me it's clean enough to work in. Funny how a clean work table and the absence of clutter on at least 1/2 of the floorspace results in a flurry of creativity. It's like viagara for impotent crafters.

It was on the heels of my cleaned studio high that I went into the local Target store. There, in the dollar spot, they had a bin full of these wooden games. You know, the ones where there's a little picture on the back, and you have to roll some little ball bearings into holes spaced around the picture? Anyways, they looked like collage fodder to me, so I bought one and took it home. What can I say, I'm a big gambler - the whole $1 and all.

Guess what, folks? With a little bit of prying, you can take these suckers completely apart! Dissassemble, paint, collage, bead, and then reassemble them into little shadowboxes. Like this one:

I went back that night and bought a dozen more little games - I mean, shadowboxes. I would have gotten more, but I don't have room to store them in my semi-neat studio.

Viva viagra!

Grinning in my crafting afterglow,

PS - Did you notice those little smears around the top edge of the glass? Apparently E6000 has some sort of paint thinner as an ingredient. I also noticed that it was crazing the silvering on the backs of my little acrylic gems. I love me some E6000, but this paint thinning thing is causing me to rethink it as my stand-by. Anyone know a better all-purpose super strong adhesive?

I won, I won!!!!

2008-11-11T21:23:00.001-06:00

Hey, check it out! I'm one of the winners of the cupcake contest over at Marisa's blog. Woohoo!!!!!!

Her illustrations are simply divine, and now there's one heading my way. I am so totally excited!! If you want some of her artwork for your own house, check out her Etsy shops, Elegant Snobbery and Tootsie and Grace.

Truly a lucky girl I am,

Motivation

2008-11-11T08:00:00.000-06:00

It's amazing how easy it is to get motivated to clean my studio when the alternative is to grade papers... If I keep it up, I might actually see the floor soon!!!

Somewhere in the recesses of my studio actively avoiding reality,