Not bad for a first try

I finally did it. I finally made a dang pot holder! I've been putting off getting into quilting for over a year. I want to, I'm just really really scared! So last night, with all my supplies around me I stepped in and made a pot holder. I didn't do a patch work top, because I wanted to figure out the mechanics first, but I did made a usable pot holder. Not bad for a first try.

All my materials ready to go.

Quality Inspector making sure all my cuts are straight.

All the pieces ready to sew!

See the front and back!

Sewn together.

And bound. My binding sucks, but it's functional. I'm going to try again after my dress is done and see what I can do! At least I can say I made a pot holder before 2011!

Fabric purchased

I had a successful trip to Mill End last night.

1. I got my fabric for my dress. I'm going to classify the color as Dark Teal. It's really pretty and I think with the right accessories it will be really sharp. Plus I can wear brown or black tights which makes me happy. I don't have to chose! I'm trying to decide what to do with my hair and leaning towards a headband with some red on it to compliment the teal. We shall see what happens! The fabric was 3.00 a yard and I got it half off so $3.00 for that, $1.50 for the elastic and I bought thread which was a few bucks. The pattern is 99 cents, so about $7.00 for a new dress. not too shabby.

2. I got batting for pot holders. I fear pot holders. I fear the fact that there are multiple layers and binding and you have to quilt them. But I'm going to face my fear. I have all the other supplies. I've had the quilting supplies and books for a year and I'm just so scared I haven't done anything. This weekend, I will face the pot holder. My plan - to make some pot holders without the four square top to figure out binding and batting and quilting and all that jazz and then jump into four square tops. I have a whole bin of fabric from my mom to work with. None of my pot holders will match, but they will be functional and sometimes, that is all that matters.

NYE dress

I want to make a dress to wear on NYE. It's Tuesday, NYE is Friday, this might be a problem. But I have Friday off, so we shall see!

The party I go to every year is hosted by some friends of mine from college. They always do it with a dress code suggested as cocktail attire. In past years, they've done black and white as the theme, but this year, we're allowed to punch it up with some color.

I found a great Butterick pattern that I thought would be fun (5523) but they aren't on sale. McCall's patterns are on sale starting Thursday so I'm thinking McCall's 6112, 6026 or 6200. I'm leaning towards 6112. They show it (see above) in an animal print, although I don't think I'll be doing mine in an animal print. I'm going to head to Mill End after work and see if I can get the fabric. Then Thursday I can get the pattern and hopefully when they say Easy McCall's, they mean it! If not, I have some other options in my closet. I just want to start the new year with a new dress. Is that too much to ask?

Another Christmas come and gone...

Christmas is over. I'm not really all that sad about it. I had my fill of family and gifts and giving for a year. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, but some ppl get so into the gifts and not the thought behind them or the effort to get/make/wrap them. Luckily for me, my little girlies appreciate things.

I have to share something my dad did this holiday season. Background: Father Redmond is a retired priest that is really good friends with my Grandpa D. He's a really neat guy and my dad and Father have bonded over their love of restoring things. Father had to take some trees down at his property, so he gave dad some of the wood to make a few things for Father's house. Dad knows a guy who makes pens out of wood so Dad gave the guy some wood that is from Father Redmond's property. Below are the pictures of Father and Grandpa Jerry with their new pens. Dad made the box out of the wood and he layered the different types. Both the pen and box were beautiful. I know the gift meant a lot to both Father and Grandpa. My dad is a pretty thoughtful guy.

Fabric Heaven

My fabric heaven has a name and it is SR Harris. This place is out of control. If you've never been in the midst of 30,000 square foot of floor to ceiling fabric, you must try it. I had to snap one pic to show the sheer enormity of their fabric selection. It does no justice, but I'm sharing it regardless.

My to do list...

Source unknown.

I have so much to get done this weekend. I have presents to wrap, presents to finish, baking to do...basically, I'm going to be a busy little elf this weekend. My main goal is to hit up a fabric store and get the material for little Brin's tutu skirts. I'm hoping tonight I can get some lists made so the weekend will be a breeze! Cross your fingers blog readers. I need all the help I can get!

I saw the above picture on a blog today and I love it. And now that I've saved it to share, I can't remember where I pulled it from! All I can say is that it's not mine...but I'm sharing anyway!

Last night I was able to finish Peyton's jams. They turned out really good! I'm really excited for her to try them on.

I also finished the doll jammie pants. Just need to do the little tshirt. So excited!

and it's Monday again

I had a very productive weekend despite all the hanging out I did.

I made some more cookies. My gingerbread men got a tad hefty!

I attempted caramels for the first time. Boil boil boil.
Then waited for them to setup. It seemed to take forever! They turned out wonderful!

Then I did some sewing. My quality assurance manager was watching for any mistakes or safety violations. He's so picky and such a micro manager.

But despite his hovering, I did manage to finish another piece of Brin's Christmas present.

I decorated almost 80 cut out cookies (thanks to Amanda for saving the day with some backup frosting when I ran out!)

And then I packaged up some of the goods to take home. Below is a small sampling of our cookie bounty. I ended up with two cake pans FULL of Christmas treats.

I didn't get anything done on Peyton's present, which makes me a bit sad, but that's what next weekend is for. I'll be sewing and cooking. Hopefully on a post next Monday I'll be able to say I got mom's cut out cookies done, Brin's skirts done and Peyton's PJ pants completed. That's my hope at least! We'll see how that goes!

I wanna dance!

Last night I finished one of little Brin's tutus. Finished except going back over for some add'l lose threads. Not the skirt part, just the body suit part of it. The picture is bad (is that a theme throughout my blog? I feel like I type that sentence a lot). But you get the idea! It's much more red than the picture leads one to believe. This particular tutu has no sleeves. The pattern does have the option for sleeves, so when I make the purple one I plan on putting short sleeves on it for something different. If I have enough fabric left, I might make a few extras in a smaller size. The 3 just seems so big and she's such a peanut. Although Peyton might fit into the 3s. Apparently one of the last times she stayed at my mom's house she wore size 18mos PJ bottoms (and she's almost 5!). If I have an extra size 2 tutu, I know a little girl in Lino Lakes that would look very cute all dressed up and has a birthday coming up in January! BTW...this is pattern 5545 from Butterick.
I also got the bow fixed on Peyton's PJ shirt. I'm not 100% in love with it, and might try to add some more detail, but I'm in the mode right now that it's ok if I don't have the time to fix it up.

Tonight on deck is possibly some cookie baking with my sister. If that doesn't happen I'll be trying to get a purple tutu cut out and sewn together. My goal is by Saturday when all my weekend plans start to have a clean apt (only one room left to clean) and have two tutus 100% done. Next Saturday I will be working the skirts and the PJ pants.

I think I'm in love...

...with freezer paper stencils. Several blogs around the Internet have shared the technique of using freezer paper, which will iron onto your fabric, to make stencils to paint fabric. I finally had a chance to try this little gem out. I'm making some Hello Kitty flannel pj pants for my niece Peyton for Christmas. I thought I'd just take some extra fabric and applique something on a white tshirt to go with it. Then I remembered the freezer paper. Below is the results. The ear on the right side is a little janky, but that's ok because that is where the bow goes. It's a poor picture, but seriously, I am so excited about this! I think it's going to be the cutest darn thing ever! If I have enough fabric I'm also going to make a little doll pj set as well and maybe get to use the technique again on that tshirt!

Next up on my to do list is make the PJ pants, finish the tshirt and make some tutus for little Brinley. I have one cut out, fabric for another and then I just need to get the material to make the skirts.

Speaking of material - a co-worker just told me about a place called SR Harris in Mpls that is supposed to be amazing for fabric. Can not wait to check it out! I'm in love with Mill End Textiles as well, so maybe this will be another joint I can check out and get some good deals at.

H-A-double L-O-W-double E-N spells Halloween

As promised I finally have a few pics of my costume on me posted. I didn't think to get any head to toe shots, which is a shame because my shoes were HOT!

Me, DQ and Ibs (AKA...Miss America, Wolverine and Antone Dodson who won the costume contest). I love these guys!

All the super heroes! We have bat girl, Poison Ivy, Black Widow, Wolverine, Quailman, Miss America, Robin, Wonder Woman and Batman.

I'm still contemplating putting the whole thing back on to take a full length pic. If I do I'll post it!

Every party needs a dress...

I finished my dress! This is a very exciting thing for me because this is the first piece of clothing I've done for me that I've finished 100% by myself and actually wore out (twice already). The pic below is kind of dorky...but whatev. I wanted to post a pic so all of my maybe three readers could see what I did!

I also made a pencil skirt this weekend and I am wearing it to work today. I was so excited to finish it. I have fabric for two or three more skirts as well so guess what I'll be doing this week?!

Success!

Yesterday I mentioned that I couldn't find a twins shirt so I'm making my own. Below is the steps I took and results I got! I'm calling it a success!

The tshirt before! Less than $2.50 at Old Navy.

With the paper template on, making sure the size was right.

Used the red fabric left overs from my Halloween costume and the double sided interfacing for the M.

Reversing the paper template (and attaching with some scrapbooking adhesive...made it easy to cut around instead of having to trace).

Ironing on my M! Like the onion towel? Those were a past project. Still love my funny little veggie towels.

And Done!!!! Can't wait to cheer on the Twins tonight. Let's take those damn Yanks!

I've been bitten...

...by the sewing bug. Now that I've done my costume, I just want to sew sew sew. I know this is a phase, but I'm guessing that it will continue for at least a few weeks.

So now I'm working on a dress and a twins T-Shirt.

First - The dress. I'm using McCall pattern 5925. I'm making D, which is the yellow one in the picture below. I found some great Grey corduroy which almost has a little purple tint to it at the best most amazing fabric store I've ever stepped foot in (Mill End Textiles). My progress thus far - I have cut everything out except the interfacing (that's tonight's project) and done the first 14 steps of the pattern (which sounds like a lot, but some of those were specific to the other dress types). Tonight I want to cut out the aforementioned interfacing and get through some more of those crazy steps. I would LOVE to have it finished by Friday to wear out to dinner. We're hitting up Fogo de Chao as part of restaurant week. So excited!

Next up: Twins T-Shirt. I got tickets for Thursday night's playoff games against those damn Yankees! Woohoo! I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I heart any sporting event live and it's my first game in target field and I'm told they are good seats, so I'm pumped. I have a twins shirt from 2003 so I figure it's time to replace it. I searched high and low last night (well, a few stores but zero luck...thanks to all those ppl with great ideas today...file them under things I wish I knew yesterday). I didn't find anything. But I did find a baseball style t at Old Navy on clearance for $3.99 and it was 40% off and I got an extra 10% off because it was Tuesday and I'm awesome so it was like $2.15. The sleeves are blue, the rest is white so I'm going to try to make my own twins shirt. It will either be epically awesome or an epic fail. I'm really ok with either because I already have the rest of the materials. If it's awesome I'll post pics. If it's a fail, I still might post pics. Depends on how epic of a failure. Check back tomorrow for an update!

DONE!!!

I finished my Halloween Costume!! I am so excited! I even found the red tights that I need to go with it. All I need now is for Halloween to come so I can show it off! I don't have a pic of me wearing it (although after it was done I did have it on for an amount of time that is probably considered inappropriate) and won't until Halloween, but here is what it looks like on the dress form! I will try to remember to post a pic after Halloween, maybe with the whole cast of characters. With all of our super heroes on the streets of Minneapolis this Halloween, I have a feeling that the Minne will be a safer place...if only for one night.

Finally working on something!!!!

Okay kids...it's been a while. What can I say...sometimes my projects take a backseat to life. I don't mind. I did do a few things that either didn't photograph well (the framed map on my dining room wall) and a few other things that I just didn't document (hanging the curtains in my bedroom to create more closet space).

Well, now I'm onto a really important project. My Halloween costume. The crew is doing a superhero theme. It's not easy to find a female super hero costume that isn't...what shall we say...very revealing. I've settled on Miss America...super heroine from the 40s. See picture below.

Here's my progress. The dress is sewn, although not hemmed yet. The cape is finished on the edges, but I still need to tack it in. The belt is not made, but I will be doing that this weekend. The emblems and hair piece are not done, but that will be shortly. I'm getting close! Pictures to follow when I'm done!

Travel Bug

I had a week off. A whole week! Sure, it was filled with family and friends and travel but I also had just enough downtime (and some help from my Dad and Hobby Lobby) and I actually finished a project. Summer has been bad for my creativity and time to do any type of projects, so I was pretty excited to get my hands dirty again.

This project was inspired HEAVILY from this DIY idea on Design Sponge.


This was a fairly easy project, although cutting the cork was a trail and error experience due to the fact that if you don't have the correct knife you're in trouble! I doubled my cork because it was pretty thin. I also added Alaska and Hawaii. Now I want to make a similar map for the other continents! I'll have to con my dad into making me some more boards!

The only thing I have left to do is make my pins!

(Don't mind the messy desk...that area is always in a constant state of chaos.)

One thing to point out...the blue in these pictures looks MUCH brighter than the final project. I haven't figured out how to change my settings to make it a bit more realistic!

Nothing is getting done...

Frowny face. I'm just not getting to any projects. I'm not neglecting my blog, I just can't post what doesn't get done.

Hopefully this changes soon and I get a few projects off my list!!

m

What's that you say? A new Project? Yes sir!

I finally got a project done! I know, amazing isn't it?! I'm particularly shocked since I had guests in town this weekend, which usually means getting nothing done on a Sunday since I'm recovering. Today I got an idea and I had to finish it up. It was good to get back on the sewing machine, even though a certain roommate of mine (*cough* Morgan *cough*) likes to sit directly behind the sewing machine and lean against it which makes doing sewing with any big pieces almost impossible.
My friend Jenny and I have started our own little walking club. Since I live right next to Lake of the Isles, we have been walking from my place, around the lake (sometimes with a side trip to Lunds for a salad and some add'l chit chat) and then back. When it's a little chillier out, a sweatshirt is great because not only does it provide some warmth, but the pockets house my check card, id, cell phone, keys and other necessary biz. But now that the weather we Minnesotans wait for all year is finally upon us, the sweatshirt will soon be too much. So I took matters into my own hands and made something to solve my problem. IT IS NOT A FANNY PACK! It is a convertible purse. Ok, whatever, it's a fanny pack. But it's an updated version that I can wear when Jenny and I walk and talk and house all those things I have to have and not worry about a strap around my neck or back pack or other mode of transportation for my most important stuff.
I made this bag out of duck cloth and lined it with a fat quarter I bought forever ago. There is a magnetic snap to close the bag and D rings to make it an adjustable band for the waist. If these walks pay off, it may need to be shortened!! I did model this below...and please note that I loathed every minute of taking the picture, but I wanted to give the full effect!! Too bad you can't read the shirt. It says "without me the YWCA would just be aweso." It's true.
Can't wait for my next walk to try the new bag out!

Bad Blogger

It's been over a month and I haven't posted! In my defense...I haven't finished anything in that time period, so not much to post. I promise I'll be back soon!

Upcoming Projects!

Posted above is just a little piece of inspiration.

I have finished a few random projects and now I have to focus on getting a few more off my plate before I can start the two hugest ever projects on my life.

1. Clean out my craft closet. The thought of this makes my soul shutter. This is going to be a massive undertaking.

2. Sort and organize all my printed pictures. This is almost as bad.

So before I do either of these things...I am going to finish the last two journals on my list, do the invites for Megan's brother's fiance's wedding shower and finish my bedroom curtain project.

Just an update to a blog that otherwise lacks updates. I'm still here, just not quite as focused as I should be.

Now all we need is the cheese!

In preparation for a cheese and wine party in a few weeks at my humble abode, I took a little trip to the thrift store to create some platters on pedestals. Since we'll have a dozen different types of cheese, I figured it best to have some dimension to the table. I borrowed this idea from a few blogs I've seen...and although I no longer have the original post information, I will update this if I come across it again.
I made these three trays out of plates and glasses from Arc's value village. I think the most expensive of any of the pieces was maybe $1.99. The glasses are attached with E6000 glue. I think they will make the most perfect plates for some of the cheese and accompanying fare that will be served at the party and I am so glad that I can have some dimension on the table! I did get one add'l cup that I really want to find a platter to go on top of, but at least I have my three to start with! Bring on the cheese!

Weekend projects!

I haven't been working on many crafts lately...mainly because I really want to get some organization done around my house. Some of it is a long time coming, so this weekend I dedicated to getting some jazz done! Here's what I accomplished.

1. Cleaned out my bedroom closet! It's pretty amazing how much stuff I forgot I had. It's really quite sad. But now it's all hanging nicely and I can be happy again. Now I can clean out the rest of my room and put up a divider that I'm working towards.

2. I finally hung up my shower radio in my shower. I know...doesn't seem like much, but it was on my towel rod and driving me nuts, so it finally made it into the shower!

3. Put up a curtain in my hall way. I have this little inset thing in my hall way where I put my garbage can and the cat litter box. For two years when I walked by this would annoy me. So I bought a shower curtain (fabric of course) and a shower rod and put it up. At first I was not so excited about it, but the more I walk past it the happier I am! I might alter the curtain later, but for now...the results are shown poorly below. The whole project cost me less than 20 bucks.

Before - Notice the ugliness that is apparent.

After! All hidden!