May Vacation!

Last week I went and visited my parents which is why I don't have much to share here.
I am working on a wall hanging of the USA. Each state is a different shade/print of red/white/blue. It's coming along so good! I'm very excited!

You can find the posting here, a bunch of people from my ward started it a couple of weeks ago at our weekly "project group" I wasn't sold on the idea at first but then came around to it once I thought of only using patriotic colors.

Hopefully I'll finish soon and have a picture for you!
Stay tuned!

New wallet!

 Lately I've been getting some flack for my ragged wallet, I also am in the mindset right now of, why spend money on something that holds your money. I'm sure that will probably change in a few years though.

On to the wallet already! So last week during nap time, I went through some extra scraps I had and figured it would make a decent wallet. I just laid out my old one and cut the same general rectangles from it adding seam allowance.

The tricky part is that the old one (the pink and white one in the pictures) is mostly made of serged edges and generally that's why it looks more ragged. So I had to figure out how to do it without a serger and to get all the seams tucked under. I did have to rip out a few seams and my wallet is a bit more bulky because of the seams all tucked in but hey, it does look more finished and wont wear so easily.


Last week I also turned this bag of random ribbons into some fabulous new bow clips for Hayley. She's been on a real bow kick lately requesting and picking out her own each day. 

I promise once I figure out my dress dilemma I'll post pictures.

Easter dress...

 I had originally planned to make myself a dress in time for Easter...but it didn't quite work out. I got this pattern on sale for a buck, and then got dark green linen like fabric. I'm not sure why the sizes are what they are on patterns. I measured and measured and carefully cut it out adding length and little bits of extra here and there to make sure it fits ok.
So, there we were, about to leave town for Easter and I'm scrambling to make my own deadline. I'm sewing frantically calculating what I can finish in the car by hand on the 8hour drive when I try on the skirt, supposed to be 100x easier then the fitted custom made top(more on that later) and it looks terrible! It has these little pleats in the front that are at maximum pleatage making me look like a fatty. So I gave up and brought a skirt along for Easter Sunday.
I'm now perplexed on whether to finish it and sell it to someone a bit smaller than me and start over (I kind of wanted deep purple fabric anyways) or just take the darn pleats out and finish the thing.
As for the custom part- I really liked this pattern as is, but I thought it was a bit bland. (I made the yellow dress on the front) So, I dug into my memory and found that I had just seen a tutorial on how to add a tying sash to a shirt.  I didn't think it would be that different then adding it to a collar. Since it is already made of an attached band of fabric. It worked out beautifully. (I wont lie, I did doubt myself and rip out seams that I had done right the first time.)



This is Hayley's Easter basket I whipped up, I'm pleased with it, but it has some quirks I wish I had worked out better. It's a little floppy which is great for storage but you don't really get the effect since the ears wont stay up. I would have engineered those better (and bigger) too. But hey, I had no pattern! 

If you are looking for the chevron stripe blackout drapes I was doodling about in my last post....I gave up. Hayley was waking up at 5:30 everyday for 2 weeks and I said forget it, they have to go up, cute or not.  So maybe next winter when it isn't so crucial I'll finish them. (Sorry!)

Easter Dress? Check.

 Hayley's Easter dress came out great, considering it was made during nap times and evenings, so I couldn't and didn't try it on her until I took these pictures! 

It's a little wide I'll admit, but I'm loving the length and how the scallops turned out.

A sneak peak at what I'm working on now- drapes for Hayley's room. It took me probably 30 minutes to locate this blog for making chevron stripes that I saw a month ago. 

I'm thinking of doing 3 light yellow chevron stripes on the bottom edge.

p.s. I'm REALLY struggling with the new way to  upload pictures, it's easier, and you can make some small and large etc. but in the preview it looks totally different then when I'm writing the post. Any suggestions? Are you struggling too?

Easter Dress in the works

I decided to make Hayley an Easter dress this year. I don't typically fall under the category of mom's that dress their youngsters in formal attire on holiday's when they themselves aren't especially dressed up. So, I haven't really made any "special" dresses yet.
I got a bag of scraps of fancy fabric from my mom a while ago to make flowers and other things from but I was poking through and found a good chunk of pink and cream silk feeling fabric (my untrained eye doesn't know names of fabrics, sorry).....which inspired me to make something special for H.

I'm using this skirt I recently got for inspiration. (I am loving the scallops!) I also found an awesome tutorial on how to do it here.

Stay tuned!

Pottery Barn Inspired Mirror

I finished the mirror! 

This mirror is a weird size, 16inX13in. I would probably have made it bigger but I don't really have a mantel or anything large to display it on yet. 

I got the wood from the hardware store, I had to get a 2ft X4ft piece and have them cut it. BUT now I have other chunks I can use for something else. I used the same black paint from the shelf and coat rack. Nine mirrors from the dollar store, and 2 pieces of fancy trim from the craft store. 

Wood $2  ($6 originally but I only used a small chunk)

Trim $6

Paint $.50 (I seriously didn't use that much paint on this, the bulk of the small can went to the shelves)

Mirrors $9

Total = $17.50

Pottery Barn Mirror =$699 (That one is huge at 44inX55in)

The break down:
PB mirror: $699 / 2420 sq.in. = .28cents per inch
DIY: $17.50 / 208 sq.in. = .08cents per inch

That's huge!

Finished!

Spring Break happened. So I lost some steam on the shelf projects, but I bit the bullet and finished the other day. I love them and I cant wait to move so I can hang them up and make our living room more finished looking.





I started another project, it should look like this when finished. It's putting my wood crafting skills to the test, so we'll see how turns out. ;)