Life In Color

I can no longer slack on weekend posts...

Especially when I hang out with two other bloggers, I know they will dish on everything we do!

Kristen (oh I like your new header Kristen, awesome picture!), Sciarrino and I had a sewing day in my basement. Kristen and I are being our own paparazzi here because we both made camera strap covers (Sciarrino snapped this picture of us—ignor my never going to be finished triangle quilt please, I found other things to occupy my time).

We (very loosly) used this tutorial. But we just made wider strips that we folded in half. And we used interfacing I had on had, so it was the really thin stuff, not padded.

Then we "quilted" them onto our existing straps. If I ever want to change it I can pick out the stitching and pull it off. But I don't think I will I love it and wish I would have done it a lot sooner!

Kristen also made these:

She saw them somewhere, bought a couple, and realized she could do it herself (velvet + rice + real pumpkin stems).

I can't show you what Sciarrino worked on (top secret), but I did finish another outstanding project:

No specific plan for this pillow it just makes me happy, happy, happy!

The back. The exuberant toddler was more interested in this cute little bag I made her:

The print is from Christina (the Sometimes Crafter). When I saw it I knew I had to get it to make something for Tuesday.

I even put a little pocket in it:

With Sciarrino and Kristen's help it came together really quickly.

Oh ya, she loves it. The outfit? She's a toddler, what can I say?

It went with us everywhere today.

You love it don't you Tutu?

Oh and for all you Portland Modern Quilt Guild members, don't forget to fill up your baggie next time you sew. I stuffed mine to the max so the person who drew mine would have some options. For those of you not in our guild we are swapping baggies filled with favorite bits of fabric. Then we make something with them (using only one additional fabric plus batting, pillow forms, zippers, buttons, etc.) and give it back to the person who brought the fabric. Such a cool idea!

And thank you for all the kind words about starting up my photography business (for reals!). I am so excited!!!

From the guild

This last Thursday Sciarrino and I headed to another meeting of our wonderful Portland Modern Quilt Guild. I love it so much. Wonderful people and a much needed break. I almost didn't go as Bj had a late phone meeting (meaning Tuesday would be too loud to have hanging out in his office) but my mom, step dad and step brother took Tuesday on a little adventure of her own and I was able to go! I whipped up this little pin cushion for our swap of the month:

and the back:

I was on the fence about it, afraid it was too simple. But the person who got it loved it, and I loved the one I got:

I wonder how you sew this block? It would be cool to do this as a big pillow. The bottom of it has crushed walnut shells so I can also use it as a weight, genius!

More goodies. The floss was from the speaker and the little needle book was tucked in with my pin cusion. I've never had one of these so it was much needed.

This adorable print wasn't from the guild exactly. I bought it off Christina's etsy shop. I'm planning on making Tuesday something from it because she is owl crazy right now.

Today I had the pleasure of sewing with a few dear friends and I was excited to learn that two of them now have blogs!

Kristen's blog was a real surprise. And she even had an entry about me. I'm looking forward to reading more about her crafty endeavors... you may remember one of our sewing days at her beautiful house. And following her business, making cute bike accessories.

And now the one you've all been waiting for.... SCIARRINO! Yes, my friend who I call by her last name (pronounced sha-reno) finally jumped on the bloggy band wagon (gosh that only took five years!). It's called Bear and it's right here.

I linked both on my sidebar. So my blog list is up to date and I changed the links on my loves list and book list. I still need to tackle the dailies, I'm so behind on that. I did add a few fun pictures and I'll try to catch up on the rest soon.

Summer Sewing

I've been adding lots of stuff to the Ribbon Jar lately in anticipation of fall (and dare I say it holiday!) crafting. I am loving this super wide ric-rac so I thought it would be fun to do it around a big pillow.

 

I might go back around it and sew it a little closer together so just the points stick out, but I like it!

 

The back is a combo of vintage sheets from the swap I participated in and some kona cotton.

I am working on re-organizing the basement and I want to do a little pillow full reading area for Tuesday. I'm also thinking play kitchen and big set of blocks. Plus these awesome drawers for mama that I am picking up tomorrow. Wait... back to the sewing.

 

I made Tuesday this little dress from another vintage sheet (actually I cut apart a pillowcase). I used a pattern out of this book, it has so many cute little things in it!

 

I wanted to highlight some of our new pom pom trim (speaking of this could you please tell me what you think of how I took the pictures for the trim. I was trying something new since pom poms can't be scanned).

 

I found it much easier to sew on with a zipper foot. The other two ribbons are herringbone and pinstripe. Now it's almost 100 outside so I think I'm going to go back to the sewing zone (aka the basement!).

Ladies sewing day!

I had such a fabulous Saturday at my friend's house sewing with three of my crew girls. 

 

I worked on a long suffering project:

 

Someday I will finish this quilt.

 

This is Kristen, her house is so awesome.

 

and welcoming:

 

And she has a new craft room built by her husband:

 

A special tall table for a tall lady:

 

There are so many great details in this house. And don't get me started on the awesome huge drafting drawer things that her husband got for free at his work. I begged him to get me some... I hope there are some left!

When I get the okay I'll link up to her new venture—all I can say is I have some awesomely creative friends!

The pants problem

So now that Tutu is in "big girl undies" during the day (Bj says we can't call them panties, in case we ever have a boy, for consistancy's sake :) Her small stature is made even smaller! This was no problem when there was a lot of fluff on her little buns, which bulked up her butt. So I took matters into my own hands for Miss Zero Percent and make a couple pairs of pants (using this book as a guide). It really is so easy. And hey even if you mess up it looks cool:

 

I sewed the sides of the pants together and realized the shirts hem was inside out, but it looks neat (and I didn't want to pull it out!). A favorite pair of cords wore out at the knees (mine) so I firgured I try the same technique with them:

 

It worked great! Since you use the hem of the pants that is already there, it looks pretty professional I think. I still have to perfect my pattern (made by tracing another pair of these I made earlier this year) so that there isn't as much extra fabric in the front, ideas?

On the road again

Oh my it's been so long since I've had a great morning of thrifting and I was able to get one today! Despite a sort of rough night with teething (or something) Tuesday I got up this morning and headed out with Sarah. 

 

I found my all time favorite towels; yummy, yummy green. And the pink floral ones I thought would be fun for Tuesday. The vintage sheets will go well with some sheets I got in a vintage sheet swap I participated in:

 

That picture is of my favorites—see the rest on my flickr. Back to today:

 

I'm so excited about this light up santa! How cute is he, so jolly! I'm always looking for cool Christmas stuff, but it's usually so expensive, he was only five bucks, and the perfectly colored green oranaments two dollars. The little shaker I'll fill up with cinnimon and sugar. The lided measuring cup and metal coasters are new "toys" for Tuesday, she loves stuff like that. The step stool she's still a ways off from being able to use. Question: what did you use before your kids were tall enough to use one of these, I think she needs to grow about a foot to get to the sink with this, and that's going to take a while! I might have Bj build something... ideas?

The other thing I've been doing is getting excited about a new community on Big Picture. I signed up for the Library of Memories community, which is going to be full of prompts, ideas, and chat about using Stacy's system (these two books talk about it). I worked on organizing my albums:

 

Updating the label holders and workign on title pages for albums/sections:

 

They are all this basic design. I think I made ten or so in the last few days:

 

So fun to look at pictures like that. And because my supplies were out...

 

A layout about missing doing fine art stuff.

 

And a layout about how much I love my little sparkle pants, or course. I finally used one of the fun half circle stitched pages Sarah and I made. 

 

Sarah's mom made me some of these crocheted hearts. Yes, you can all be jealous she is my friend now :) Actually it's funny because we were going through my albums and she saw this layout. She said, "Oh I wanted those socks so badly" (I gave them away on here because they were too big for me) and I replied, "well why didn't I give them to you?" And she said because we didn't really know each other then. Sometimes it seems crazy I met a good friend like that online! Thank goodness she commented (hint hint) :)

Also if the person is out there who got those socks... where are they? I never got pictures... I miss them!

Cheater

Well I was going to scrapbook last night, but first I thought I would file away the layouts I've been scraping lately. I guess I was in denial about how much space I had left in my albums and how many layouts I've done lately (lately is relative, but I did have about 50 in a pile!). My scrapbooks are a disaster, I didn't quite finish the library of memories class at Big Picture Scrapbooking, so I never made the rest of the title pages I need to be more organized. I'm out of page protectors and albums, so I'm off to order some (while trying not to put to many other things in my cart!). 

Meanwhile I thought I would share this awesome quilt my mother in law brought back from Florida when she was there caring for her dad.

 

I believe this was one of the last quilts that her grandma (lovingly called "granny" by all) quilted. She is still alive, but is nearly blind. The cool thing is this is a cheater print!

 

One of the coolest I've ever seen for sure. All hand quilted. 

 

I hope you can see the pattern of quilting on the fun back, Kathy says she did all her quilts in this pattern. The whole quilt is so so soft, I don't know what kind of fabric the back is (but Abby I think it might be flannelette that you often speak of!). 

The quilt is bringing Kathy much comfort after the passing of her dad, I love how handmade things can do that.

Have any handmade items brought you comfort in times of loss? I just found out my dear friend's grandma passed away and want to put something together for her. 

What all that binding was for

I am lucky to have a little god-daughter who has given us many of her old things, including this wrap jumper:

 

That is special to me because V wore it the day we went wedding dress shopping. After pulling it out for Tuesday I realized that it really is quite simply constructed. So I decided to try my hand at drafting up a pattern using this dress as a guide. Not quite as easy as I had anticipated, but I did learn a lot!

 

All is fabric is from my stash, and there is the bias binding I made out of shot cotton. Of course it looks even cuter on Tutu:

 

My neighbor let Tutu toddle around in her yard since ours is still a disaster zone (but only for a few more weeks!).

 

It was so beautiful out today! I've been working hard at getting Tuesday to leave on her sunglasses, each time she leaves them on for a bit longer, but eventually they come off. 

 

Over all I am super happy with this, I'll probably make at least one more in this size and then see if I want to figure out how to size up (scary!). Tuesday liked it, but maybe that was just because I let her put on her favorite shoes to go outside:

She cries when I take them away. A girl and her shoes...

A couple of details for Carmen who didn't have a chance to finish hers while she was here:

 

(really it's a hack job on the button hole. It's only on one side (the finishing) because I couldn't figure out how to get a small piece of fabric like that to feed right into the machine. Maybe baste it onto something?

 

The lining is from the lining of one of the Target Liberty dresses I pulled apart. I want to get a slightly bigger bias binding maker. This one was cutting it close and I had to go back on the inside and hand stitch a few places where the machine didn't catch. To make the dress I laid the two pieces together, pinned them, and then took the pins out one by one as I fed the edges through the machine with the binding on, it's what's holding everything together. I'll let you know how it holds up in the wash! It does give me the confidence to try and copy a few more of my favorite ready to wear designs. Have you ever tried this? Tips?

Continuous Bias Binding

So yesterday with all that math and craziness. I hope you saw that I updated the post to say that I did not come up with those numbers, but copied it directly out of the book, you can see how I got so confused! I did find a couple of good site for making continuous bias binding strips that I thought I would share. I had thought I would do a tutorial with lovely pictures.

 

But after this was taken I failed again to make the lines line up right. To see what I am talking about check out this tutorial. Basically it allows you to make a long strip of binding with out having to cut a giant triangle from your fabric (which I hate doing because you have a bit leftover piece of fabric with a bias edge, and thus lots of waste). Since I never could figure out what size square the book was trying to get me to use I found this lovely little cheat sheet. And I finally managed:

 

to make a weird tube/cuff thing turn into this:

One long strip, yeah! Of course it's not my fault really. I had some great distractions today:

 

Babies! 

 

Tuesday running around and Chloe being cute in our new (to us) swing:

 

I found this thing at a used kids store and it was pretty beat up. I cleaned it all up in the bathtub, Bj put in new rope and I sewed new straps for it. Tuesday has let it be known that it is no substitute for the park though. 

Carmen, Chloe, and Andrew are headed back to Alaska tomorrow. So I'll have time to take pictures of the thing I needed all that bias binding for!

For Donovan

Did you see that Ceara had her baby? A sweet little boy named Donovan that I can't wait to meet in a little over a month. Ceara said she didn't know if she was going to get a carrier, of course I decided that meant I needed to make her one. I found the Sew Liberated pattern and it was quick and easy:

 

iPhone photos, but you get the idea.

 

Of course it will look much different with a snuggly little newborn in it, but we had to try it out (and have used it quite a few times actually since it was sitting out). Now that I've made the pattern once I think I'm going to customize one and whip up a summer model to take Tuesday out and about in. The outer is a home decor weight canvas material and the inner is a flannel I had on hand. Oh and the whole thing folds up into the pocket:

 

Pretty awesome pattern, I recommend it! I only did a few really minor tweaks, like angling the ends of the straps and shortening them a bit.