MIA

I know.... I know, I've been MIA lately.  In fact, it's been almost an entire year since my last post. I apologize, I keep meaning to post in my spare time, but that explains the problem... I am currently running extremely low on spare time.  In January, 2014, I went back to school for my second bachelor degree and it has been incredibly hectic here ever since.  I had a few spare moments tonight, so I thought I'd let everyone know that I am still here and creative, just lacking on time.  I'd like to share completed projects that I had promised to share, more projects, and past happenings.  So here it goes...

I couldn't resist sharing this self portrait my son created during the 3rd grade.  I absolutely love it and it is still on my wall of fame!

When I was in Chicago visiting my girl, Jessica, we had a photo booth session.  As a 'thank you' for hosting my trip, I replicated the film strip at 1.5x the size in graphite and gifted it to Jessica.  I kept the original film strip as a souvenir from my trip.

I was so incredibly inspired by Lucky Jackson's stitched portraits, that I used her technique to create similar portraits of my kids...

This one turned out alright, but I was really taken by the backside stiching,  pictured on the left.

We had another robin make a nest in the tree in our front yard.  In just a few short weeks the baby birds grew up and flew away.

Unfortunately, these baby robins weren't as lucky.  After a spring storm, we found these guys on the ground.  We took them in, nursed them back to health, and released them in a nearby green space.

We also hatched baby quail in the spring.

Did I mention that my 9 year old was a budding artist?

Remember the opera gloves I made for my aunt's wedding last spring?  For her wedding gift, I wanted to make her something special and meaningful, so I made her a "wedding band quilt".  I didn't have the time to create an entire quilt, so I settled on making a small pillow sham.  I wasn't a fan of any of the traditional wedding band quilt patterns, as they tend to have flat sides on the circles... so I created my own pattern and used a paper piecing method to piece the top together.  I didn't manage to get a finished picture, but here is the quilt top completed.  If you look close you will see that it isn't perfect, but for my first real attempt at quilt piecing, I was pretty happy. Besides, you can tell by the errors, it is handmade.  :-)   As a special bonus, I used gold fabric I inherited from my grandmother, who passed away in 2004, and fabric I cut from a few of my dad's old shirts.  I thought this would be more meaningful for my aunt to have her mother and only brother represented in this quilted pillow sham.

I made this fox stole as my mom's Christmas present last year.  You can find the pattern here.

 My passion flower bloomed this past summer... one of my favorite flowers!

And check out this Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!  This was a volunteer that sprouted from our compost!

I re-decorated my house, painted the green-apple wall color a neutral gray and updated the wood toned trim and mantle.  The before picture can be seen here.

These were fun...  I crocheted/knit masks for my cousins.  Both attended their first semester in college  this past fall and I thought, who doesn't need fun masks/disguises in college?  This one is an Ood mask from the Doctor Who series. Pattern can be found here.

And this one is a viking disguise, pattern found here.

I knitted a fun button cowl for my son's art teacher. (I made up the knitting pattern and if I find my notes, I will post this as a free pattern).

 ....  and I made one for the Music teacher too.

On a sad note, our lovable rooster, Duck Dynasty, passed away in early November from old age.  This happened only a few weeks after I created this screen print, which was created as a testament to our family's fondness of our sweet rooster and turned into a tribute piece.

I also played photographer for my friend, Kiesha....  out of the 900+ pictures that I took during this photo session, I did manage to get a few good shots.

I did one of those BYOB painting parties with my craft group...  it was fun, although I wish we had the option to paint more interesting subject matter.

Last but not least, I used this bracelet as inspiration to make my mom a bracelet for Christmas.

That just about catches you up to now.  I have very little time to create, but it still happens now and again. I have big plans for this summer and hope to be able to post sometime between now and then.  If you have any questions about anything or just want to say hi, feel free to e-mail me! Until next time, Happy Crafting!!

Craft Room

April, already?  Busy doesn't even come close to describing my schedule lately.  To be honest, things have been absolutely insane.  I have a few moments to spare right this minute so I thought it would be a great time to update the ol' blog.

One of the biggest changes that I have made lately was moving my craft room.  Previously, I was in a small section of my basement.  My basement is a "multi-purpose room" that was housing my craft room, is a movie/living room and also acts as a part-time spare bedroom.  A few years ago, my sons decided that they wanted to be bunked together in the same room and our 3rd bedroom was then transformed into their playroom.  We decided that the areas might be better used if we moved the boys playroom downstairs, along with all of the gaming systems!, and then move my craft room up into the 3rd bedroom.  So we did it.  I painted the bedroom exactly how I wanted it, including the trim and I love love love it!  I did lose some space in the move, but I gained a small closet, a bigger window and the loss of space is helping me consolidate and purge.

I am almost finished putting the final touches on my new room to show you but in the meantime, I will show you the pictures of what my room looked like before.  The walls are a butter yellow color, to go with the "theater theme" in the rest of the basement.  My craft room was an afterthought when it came to picking the colors of the basement, so I had to just live with the yellow.  It worked ok. (the actual color of the basement is much prettier than the pictures show.  It really is a butter color and not so much a sunny yellow)

Lets start with this corner.  As you can see, I got stuck with the Christmas tree.  I couldn't "sell" my husband on the ambiance that it would add to the other side of the basement and how awesome the "outdoorsy" feel would be when he invites his friends over to watch the UFC fights.  He wasn't buying into it AT ALL!  So we had to make room for it in my craft room because, well, we have nowhere else to put it.  Literally, we have outgrown our house tenfold, but that is for a different blog post.  I also have "stations" in my craft room like my drafting table (from college) that I use to draw, paint, do paper crafting and alike.  The built-in basement shelf also came in really handy with holding knickknacks.....

and my growing button collection:

Please notice that although I got stuck with the Christmas tree, I did insist on getting the only window in the basement.  As we rotate clockwise, you will now see my sewing table.  The sewing table is actually my desk from high school and college.  It was probably made in the 70s and we bought at an estate sale when I was in middle school.  It was that fake painted-to-look-like-a-better-quality-wood. After we moved into this house, I sanded it and painted it a super glossy white and traded out the 70s brass hardware for a brushed nickel.  This desk works very well as a sewing table and the chair is actually a spare to our dining set.

More of the knickknacks that I don't need and don't know what else to do with, under which houses my spare sets of knitting needles in a "caddy" that I made with scrap pieces of fabric.  That purple thing in the corner, wearing clothes, is my duct tape dress form.

Just pass the under-the-stairs-storage-access is one of my favorite furniture pieces.... the lockers!!!!  There is a small strip mall just around the corner from my house and right after we moved in, there was a hardware store in the strip mall selling sets of lockers like this for $50!!!  SOLD!  We picked out the coolest set.  You can't see it, but on the back corner it looks like it was dropped, which is probably why it didn't make it to the school it was intended for.  It's cool, we could probably hammer it out but no need, it's still functional.  The locks on the lockers are the collection that the hubs and I have made over middle school, high school and college.  On the top are craft books and my old sketch books.  Scrapbooking paper-y stuff is next to the lockers.  Did I mention that the lockers hold a bunch of stuff???  You should have seen the piles of pictures and books that I had to take out of there to move them.  WOW.  And they are heavy!!!

In this picture, you can see the curtain divider that I made to separate my craft room from the other side of the basement.  We made the "curtain rod" out of conduit piping and I found the decorator weight fabric for the curtain panels on a huge sale that just happened to be a few shades darker than the wall color. For a curtain divider that spans about 13.5', floor to ceiling, I think we maybe made the whole thing for under $50.   In front of the curtain is one of my childhood furniture pieces housing my fabric.

And next to the fabric hutch is my industrial shelving.  I think I paid $70 or so for these shelves at a big hardware store.

As you can see, the overall theme to my craft room is mismatched, hand-me-down furniture that I LOVE!!!!  The total space here was about 8.5' x 13.5'.  I lost about 20 square feet in the move and the room that I am in now is more of a square shape instead of such a long rectangular shape.  I have a few more things to do with it and I will be posting the pics soon.  Until then, happy crafting! 

Knitting Bag

Years ago, my husband's grandmother, Bev, gave me all of her knitting/crochet supplies.  I just started really getting into knitting and she wasn't able to knit or crochet anymore so whalaaa, I had an instant yarn stash!!!  Granted, most of the yarn was itchy acrylic from the 70s in very 70s colors, but I adored it all!!!  I still have a lot from that stash and I have used a bunch too.

As Bev would find more yarn and supplies, she would send them along... even now, when she is no longer with us, her husband still finds things here and there and makes sure they make their way to my house (those are the supplies that I find really special).  In the last group of things I received,  was a fold-able knitting basket.  It's probably not THAT old... maybe purchased in the 70s or 80s?, but it doesn't matter because I was instantly in LOVE!!!!  Not only was it sentimental because it was very well used by my late friend and 'grandmother-in-law', but it is also a functional piece that I will use everyday! 

I knew for sure that I was going to have to replace the lining before I could use it, so it has been sitting in a corner of my craft room waiting until I could make time to work on it. Last week I finally had the time to spend, so I sat down to tackle the project.  As I was removing the lining....

..... I notice that the exterior fabric was shot too!  I know that they have had mold issues and alike in their home and there was evidence on both the interior and exterior fabrics, and I didn't want to take any chances so I had to replace the exterior fabric too.  I failed again to get a 'before' image but here is what the exterior looks like:

I picked out my 2 favorite fabrics from my fabric stash and went to work.  The construction was very interesting and I had to do a lot of hand sewing but I LOVE the final result!  

I absolutely treasure it!  It has been in use since it was completed, filled with various knitting projects and I can honestly say that there probably won't be a day that goes by that it won't be filled with yarn and supplies.  I think that Bev would really like it and I think that she would be tickled to see how much I use and adore it!  I will honestly think of her every time I see it and just in case I forget (won't happen), I found these 2 little safety pins attached to the old fabric that is clear evidence that she used this basket, so I think they will make a permanent home pinned to the new fabric of her basket!

Until next time, Happy Sewing!

Sewing Kick

I made another shirt last week.  We carry this pattern for the Schoolhouse Tunic at the store and it looked easy, and comfy to wear so I gave it a go.

Years ago I bought a 100% cotton "tapestry" from Urban Outfitters for under $10. It was for a full size bed, so I used that to for this tunic and I have plenty of the fabric leftover for another tunic or 2, or even for another project entirely.  Here is the result.

Sizing for sewing patterns is soooo crazy.  There doesn't ever seem to be a universal system, everyone just kinda makes up their own.  Some pattern companies run small, some run large so I usually check with the pattern recommendations before cutting out a size, which I did with this pattern.  It turned out to be too big (which is better than too small).  I will still wear it, but I definitely want to make another to fit.

We also just received Tula Pink's new line in the store, which I have been drooling over!!!

And we had Kristin Roach, Author of Mend it Better, in the store on Saturday for a book signing.  She was awesome and really fun to talk to...  LOVE her!!!

Until next time, Happy Sewing!!

New Summer Top

Sunday, I had an idea for a new summer top.  The original idea, I remember from thumbing through this this book a few years ago.

And more specifically, this project.

I'm not really crazy about the granny squares crocheted into the top of this shirt so I decided to kinda make up my own.  It honestly started with the fabric...  I bought the Anna Maria Horner, Little Folks Voile 2 years ago, with the hopes to turn the less-than-a-yard that I bought, into a skirt.  

Right after I bought it, I make one french seam to turn the yardage into a tube and then I got distracted and the skirt ended there.  Voile is a lightweight mercerized cotton and it flows beautifully and I knew that it would be perfect for this project and I just so happened to have the perfect yarn, which I bought on sale at Tuesday Morning wile visiting the in-laws a while back.

It took 2 balls of this yarn for the top, mostly because of trial and error, otherwise I probably could have made it with just 1.  I gathered the top of the Voile tube, I made my own biased tape to enclose the gather, I attached the crocheted section to the fabric, then made a channel at the bottom which I enclosed a crocheted "ribbon" to gather the bottom and add a bit of detail.  I LOVE how it turned out.  I also learned a lot in the process.  Here is the result :-)

I had to add in a little something extra, but serves a huge purpose....

This is to remind which side is the back, just in case I forget what side the bottom tie goes on :-) I have an upcoming project in the works for this fabric, so hopefully I can share that soon.  

Until next time, Happy Sewing!!