Twick or Tweet!

That, my friends, is what an Angry Bird says on Halloween. :)

I made costumes this year from a great tutorial found online by Dragonfly Designs. Angry Birds want candy!!!

Read more about our Halloween here.

Happy Halloween!!!

The Cupcakes

Some of you know I've been working on these since October. I got frustrated after the first one, after finding that the pattern was a lot more tricky than I had anticipated.

Luckily Lisa came to my rescue. Ironically, she showed up with her basket of felt and showed me the adorable little animals she'd been creating for Lillian (with NO pattern, mind you...) So with her creative suggestions I got motivated to finish the set.

Bustin out the sewing machine

Whenever Doug goes out of town, I always feel compelled to accomplish some kind of project. This week I felt compelled to sew a couple aprons for my girls. I bought these dish towels a million years ago, made one (not great) apron for C, and stashed the rest.

I found a neat tutorial online and got re-inspired to dig out the towels and try again.

Here's the result:


Should be just right for when the girls want to "help" me cook!

Also, I found some motivation to organize all my leftover fabric stash. I have a whole bag of little scraps to be thrown away, too, but it's still sitting in my kitchen. SO HARD TO THROW AWAY! I must be strong. I will do it. Soon...


Before:

After:

The Latest and Greatest

sewing project! Any guesses as to what these rich fabrics will become?

Grocery Bag - Initial Prototype

I have completed my first "green" grocery bag. It's actually blue, but you get the point. I followed a pattern from Chica and Jo's blog pretty much verbatim. It ended up using a little over 1 yard of fabric and is 21" x 14". You can see how it folds down to a small, compact size which can easily be tossed in my purse or van.

There aren't a lot of great fabric choices in ripstop nylon, but it is supposed to be durable and very washable. I'd like to try some out of my "cool" new fabric, but I don't know how cotton would hold up in the long run. I put 2 full gallons of milk in here, and it was easily carried. Total weight was 18 lbs, but I think it could hold even more.

Some improvements I'm considering: add a little hanger so it can be easily used at the grocery store packing stations (see this example); and Doug thinks I should make one with a flat bottom to hold more stuff. I don't know how easily it would fold, then, and it would be a lot more time intensive to sew...

Another Sewing Project

Here's the nursing shawl I made for my friend Kristi. I love this fabric! The whole thing took about 2 1/2 hours. I think I could make the next one in less time than that. This is something I'm thinking about making for some craft shows. They sell on etsy.com for about $25. What do you think?

One Done

Here's the first apron I created. I made my own pattern, based on the Jessie Steele designs, which I love. Somewhere I read a tip about drawing your pattern out on old wrapping paper. That worked great.

The pocket was the hardest part of this whole thing. Actually, it's the hardest thing I've sewn, yet! Getting the bias tape to not pucker around the curve of the pocket was nearly impossible. The best result I got was when I used my hot iron to "pre-shape" it as best as I could. Then getting the corners to look nice was also difficult.

When I thought it was finally finished, I tried it on for Doug and realized that I'd sewn the pocket closed!

Yummy Fabric

I've got it in my head to try and earn some $ and save some $ using my sewing machine. My grand idea is to make some nursing covers (like the one I used with E), aprons and eco-shopping bags. I can give some as gifts and then try to do a craft show or bazaar and see how they would sell.

I stumbled across this great quilting store nearby that just happened to have a 25% sale last week. They have an awesome selection of designer fabrics, and I had a blast picking out a few to start with.

We'll see how it goes!