Time to stop whining and do something!
I took an old cotton knit dress and starting hacking away at it.
Unfortunately , after working for 30 minutes, my 20 month old discovered what I was doing and further hindered any progress. Hopefully I’ll get to the sewing this evening when the hubby is here to keep the toddler occupied.
Here’s what’s done so far. 
Wish I had a project to show you but I sadly do not.
It’s been almost a month since the move and I’ve finally gotten completely unpacked. On the second Saturday after our arrival, I felt that I’d unpacked enough to have a little fun and went into my sewing corner. That’s when I made a horrific and demoralizing discovery. The movers had indeed lost some things, namely, 3 or more totes of clothes and t-shirts from my sewing corner. Financially, it isn’t a big deal since these were yard sale and cast off items to reconstruct but emotionally it was quite a blow since there were about 10 items in the pile that had sentimental value including an altered sundress from my childhood that was waiting for a drawstring repair, the first thing my DH, who was then my boyfriend, purchased for me and some sentimental baby clothes that I was using in a scrapbook.
All my sweatshirts, t-shirts(over 40!), skirts, leather jumpers, wool and cashmere sweaters, blankets, fleece pullovers, nylon and lycra items, and repair items including a full length tweed coat are gone. 
I now have a mere 5 t-shirts and two bed sheets in my “to reconstruct” pile. The loss threw me off so bad that I haven’t been able to go back into the sewing area and try to make anything. I have some great vintage patterns and totes of actual fabric yardage so I could make something from a pattern for a change. And that would be a huge change. It’s been at least 5 years since I worked from a pattern. And that worries me. My last project didn’t turn out well and I scrapped it.
So boo-hoo for me. It’s hard to feel excited about making something when I keep thinking of the loss of the projects I was working on. *sigh*
I have not fallen off the face of the Earth! My husband has accepted a job across the country and we are making our very first move after 11.5 years of marriage and three kids. I am a tad bit overwhelmed with sorting, arranging things, complying with the homeschool laws of a different state, selling the house and looking for a place out there. All I want to do is sew and relax but that’s on the back burner for a while. I am so excited to get settled after the move in five weeks so that I can start sewing and blogging again.
Thanks to all those who are hanging in there with me and patiently waiting for new posts. I’ll see you all in a few weeks!
I’m going to be making at least 60 of these bags for a women’s event in March. I wanted to be sure my concept size would be appropriate for holding a full sized folder, Bible, water bottle and a few personal items before I made all of them so I whipped up just one. Luckily, my prototype was perfect!
In a nutshell, I cut a long rectangle 13X36 inches. I folded the rectangle right sides together and pressed down 1/2 inch on the 13″ sides.
Then I folded it again 1 inch and pressed again. Repeated for the other 13″ side.
Now, the top part will be the casing for straps so if I was using a t-shirt I could leave the edges raw. However, this is woven cotton. So I unfolded my presses and pressed in 1/4 inch on each casing end then redid my folds so that the raw edge was hidden in the casings.
Next I stitched the casings in place. Then I stitched together the upper bag sides with my regular machine. I switched over to my serger at this point and finished the sides. After turning right side out, I stitched two dime sized circles on the bottom corners through both layers of fabric. This was stay stitching for where I threaded through the straps in the last step. Alternately an eyelet could be used but that would raise the cost and not look as “hobo” as I wanted. I used a seam ripper inside the circle to create a 1/4 inch gash. Then I cut two strips from cotton jersey, 2″ X 60″ each. T-shirts could have been recycled for this at a slightly lower cost but yardage was more convenient for making so many bags. Jersey doesn’t have to be finished and it very comfortable for weight bearing straps. Using a safety pin, I threaded one strap through one side of the casing and all the way around and out at the same side it was inserted. I did the same with the other strap on the other side. The last step was to pull the strap ends through the backpack gashes and tie knots to secure. Strap length is easily adjusted by trying on the backpack and pulling the straps to cinch. Then just retie the knots higher and trim the excess.
I will try to add pictures for these steps as I work on more bags in the next few weeks.
I try to make a new birthday decoration every year for my kids to go with the birthday theme for that year. This year, my son’s theme was trains(again!).
My son says the ticking reminds him of a conductor’s hat so that’s why I went with that. It looks kinda mariner to me when it’s by itself but it went well with his train items.
His birthday cake turned out soooo good and I spent less than an hour of total time on it. I made a 13X9 hot milk sponge cake and used giant train cookie cutters(thrift store for $.50) to make train shapes. Then I topped the cutouts with warmed peanut butter, firmed that up in the freezer, then covered the shapes with Wilton chocolate melts. I put the confetti on while the chocolate was still wet. I used the last bit of canned icing I had in the freezer to decorate this in 5 minutes. It’s not perfect or terribly fancy but I’m out of practice and I knew he’d love it anyway!
My daughter’s theme this year was Cars 2.
I actually bought a shaped cake pan for the first time since my daughter is just crazy about Lightening McQueen. I used a homemade chocolate cake recipe and had no trouble with getting it out of the pan(well, I did but I knew that was because the cake hadn’t cooled enough so I waited and it came out the next try without damage). I couldn’t find the special icing dyes for McQueen anywhere and I wasn’t too excited with the idea of all that coloring anyway. I’m extremely sensitive to coloring. I accidentally licked my finger while decorating with the colored icing and my tongue swelled up. :/ And that’s why I only have a set of colors in the house for making homemade playdough. 
So I came up with the idea of icing the cake in almost all white and using red colored sugar to get color without as much dye. The wheels and outlining are melted chocolate.
I was really tired when I decorated this since we’d been celebrating birthdays for about 60 hours at that point, plus entertaining out of state relatives. I was muttering under my breath during the hour of messing with icing about never again decorating such a complicated cake. It just wasn’t turning out as well as I wanted it to and I was getting upset. Then something happened that totally saved the day. We lost power just as I was about to serve the cake. So we lit a bunch of candles and proceeded with the cake. The cake magically looked 10X better in the low light! And the birthday girl loved it.
One of my little nieces had a birthday earlier this month, her 5th. She’s just about to move into a new house complete with her own super pink bedroom. Renovations are almost complete. I thought she’d love something special for her new room. I found the sweetest little pillow on Etsy but I knew I could make something similar for much less than the $25 price.
Here’s what I came up with:
The pillow is 6X14 inches. I wanted it to be washable so there is an inner removable pillow. My 6 year old helped me make that. The pillow can be removed from the back . I made the back with a sham opening.
I know you’re supposed to completely hide the webbing of the ball fringe in the seam but I preferred the lacy look the webbing gave. After I looked at the completed pillow I regretted that I hadn’t done it the “right” way though. Oh well, I gave it to her as is but will remember to completely hide the webbing next time I work with ball fringe despite what that little impulse tells me.
This was about a 2.5 hour project. I spent an hour just on the applique. But the savings was worth it. This project came in at under $2 in materials. Of course, I just used stuff in my stash but the value would have been around $2. 
I needed a new pair of slippers super fast so I decided not to dig out my Mary Jane slipper pattern but instead, use a simpler, elastic style. Prudent Baby has some great directions on how to put your slippers together.
I used an old sweatshirt for mine and used plain sweatshirt for all the pieces, even the “batting”. The bottoms will probably wear out pretty fast because of that but I wanted something especially snuggly.
These can be made for just the cost of your thread and two pieces of elastic(about $.15)as well as about 30 minutes of time.
I made this top for my one year old from a pattern and tutorial posted at Prudent Baby. Despite following all the sizing to print directions, my top came out very tight for a 12-18 month sizing. So she only wore it once to a party. At least it was made from a $.10 yard sale pillowcase. And it was super fast and easy to make!
Just some shots of the finished diapers for my sister’s baby.
I kinda forgot to photograph some of the large ones but they were just plain blues and browns. I still owe her the covers and I’ll be working on those today.
You are so sick of posts about diapers right? I have more interesting projects coming up. Right now I’m dealing with a need issue as my toddler has outgrown all her medium diapers and has only 12 large diapers. That’s too few for my liking. So I again copied Motherease and made a paper pattern of the One-Size style diaper.
I had a $2 cut of stretch terry from the thrift store that yielded 3 diapers and overnight soakers . I used a pink t-shirt for the binding and they turned out not too horrible.
Just wanna say again how much I prefer snaps over velcro. When babies are small, the velcro is fine. As they get to be toddlers they like to undo the velcro just for fun. It drives me crazy. But these will be overnight diapers so we shouldn’t have that issue since she’ll be sleeping in them.
