Time Warp

A shag rug?  Really?  Yes.   Yes indeed.  And it's a great size to boot.  The colors are great and it feels so wonderful under your bare feet.  The only down side was the amount of fluff that I sucked into my sinuses while weaving it. 

It weighs a ton so I'm hoping someone will buy it at Craftacular in Madison.  I can't even imagine how much it would cost to ship. 

pipe cleaner bling bling

i was hunting around on the martha stewart website and i came across this awesome pipe cleaner ring   tuturial.  i was like "shut up".  really.  i was.  had you been standing here, in my home, you would have heard me exclaim "shut up".  after rummaging in the basement for 2 minutes, i came up with just enough pipe cleaners to make 1 ring.  5 minutes later it was done.  so cute and easy.  perfect for a little girls birthday party or craft party.  sorry about the fuzzy pictures.  it's storming out so i couldn't go outside where the good light is. 

so stinking cute!  i have to run out to the store tonight and i'm planning on picking up some thinner pipe cleaners in different colors.  gl and the neighbor girl are looking forward  to making these tomorrow. 

Birthday Skirt and other nonsense

What a week!  I completed an embroidered bag, got a final decision on the wedding headbands, sewed one and a half skirts and finally, FINALLY completed the weaving I had on the table loom.

This pattern is called "star and rose" and if I ever talk about doing it again, I want someone to hit me over the head with a shovel.  What a pain in the butt.  I'm so glad it's done I can't even began to explain what a relief it is.  If you look close in this picture you can see that I even have a very big mistake going across the pattern.  I need to decide what to do about that.  I could fold over the fabric and sew a hem past where the mistake is but that would mean that I would lose about 4 inches of length.  It is a table runner so length is desirable.  Another thing I could do is ignore it and try to sell it as is.  True story: I once had a piece with a similar mistake in it and I embroidered "nobody's perfect"  (or was it "everybody makes mistakes"?) right across the mistake and somebody bought it.   Sometimes we all need a reminder I guess.

It's my niece Bronte's birthday party on Sunday.  I decided weeks ago to make her a skirt and for weeks I thought about what type of skirt I wanted to make.  In my head I had a classic A line skirt with tiers of ruffles but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe that style was a bit mature for an 8 year old.  Don't 8 year olds like skirts and dresses that twirl?   My second choice was a simple elastic waist skirt with just an ounce of tulle for fluffiness.  I love elastic waists because they are easy and casual but what I don't like is the bulk.  I remembered reading that for an elastic waist the measurement should be the hip measurement +5.  Armed with that bit of info,  I drew a small pattern for what I think is called a "dropped waist".  It looks like this:

________________ waist divided by 4 +1

f                                     

o                                distance between waist and hips

l

d

_____________________ hips dived by 4 +1

and then once sewn it looks like this:

Almost completely doing away with all that bulky fabric. 

Here is Greenleaf modeling her cousins skirt.  I love this fabric.  I found it at Hobby Lobby on clearance.  I also bought some other clearance fabric for a skirt for GL and it's mostly made up but not finished yet.  Maybe next week I can post that.

This little embellishment was the hardest part of the skirt.   Originally I had the grey fabric mimicking

the colored spirals in the skirt, sloping down the side and trailing  off the bottom.  I had it all pinned down and it looked really smashing but then I decided to SHUT. MY. BRAIN. OFF.  I tried to machine stitch it.  Sigh.  It was a huge mess and the worst part was that the stitching was so tight and complicated that if I tried to rip it,  I would have done damage to the fabric.  Instead I ended up hand sewing some more grey fabric over the original mess and then putting some purple tulle in the middle.  Not at all what I wanted or intended but it will have to do.  So what would have taken me 15 minutes to hand sew ended up taking me a half hour to fix.  BLAH!  What was it again? Nobody's perfect?  Yeah, that sounds about right.

headband part trois

I made up a couple more flowers this morning and then pinned them to the headbands so you would have a better idea of what they would look like.  We are getting closer to a decision here.  The bridesmaids will be wearing grey so I made GL wrap up in some grey fabric that I have.  I took a front and side view of each option.

Darker green silk.  This is my personal favorite.  It's simple, elegant, and the fabric handles like a dream. 

These two flowers are sewn using the opposite sides of the saree silk.  You'll need to click on it to really see the difference in them.  They need to be a little smaller.

  

Lastly, we have one of each.  The top flower is the saree and the bottom is the plain.  

There you have it girls. 

Headband part deux

I went out yesterday and with tie in hand, I scoured Joann's for green fabric.  I found a couple things I liked.  1silk, 1 silk saree fabric, and something else that I can't remember what it is.  The flowers are a little messy but I just wanted to get them made up and the pictures out so that the ladies can see the different fabric.  My vote is for the silks.  I like the way the silk curves around itself.   What say you?

No more pencils, no more books...

Tomorrow is Gl's last day of school.  So far, I have loved every single one of her teachers.  Seriously.  She has not had a bad teacher.  They have all been caring and inspiring but this year's teacher, I feel, will stand out in her mind in years to come.  Much like my own beloved Ms. Williams (2nd grade), Ms. Peterson (4th grade) and Ms. Sawyer (7th grade).  Anyway, I of course wanted to make something special for Ms. S.   I was hoping to get it done in one day but as I am also trying to potty train a 3 year old boy at the same time and said boy is running around the house in nothing but a long shirt......well, stuff happens.

Day 1:

The fabric that I ended up using is a lovely green rose, floral that I found at a "thrift store".  I'm not telling you where because then everyone will go there and I'll stop being able to find such awesome stuff.  Let's just say this place rocks and that I also found a couple yards (like 6) of lovely wool that I can't wait to use.  OH MAN!  You wish you knew the name of this place! Ahem, moving on... I knew I wanted to do some embroidery so I pieced together the green with some muslin (that gift just keeps on giving Nina). 

Then I basted it to some batting and drew my image on some tear away stabilizer and pinned it in place.  I've been using tear away stabilizer since I started doing embroidery but I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it.  There were a lot of little details in this image and it took around an hour to get all the stabilizer off once I was done because I had to be very careful.  I might have to try that washable transfer stuff sometime. 

This is how far I wanted to get by the end of Day 1 but I couldn't get to this point  because of this:

Ok. Ok.  He's adorable.  Don't I know it!  He also likes to eat paint and poop in the driveway.  And before you can say anything just let me tell you that I know it was crazy to let a 3 year old play with paint unsupervised.  I KNOW!  And yes, it was also not very smart to let a naked 3 year old play outside when he hasn't pooped yet. I KNOW these things.  I know.... I know..... I know....

Where was I?  Oh yes,  Day 2:

This again?  Yes. Because this is where I was around noon today.

And then (ta da!) I was here! Actually there were a lot of steps between these photos but the pictures were boring so I decided to jump to the conclusion.  The back side is all green floral and the inside is....

this gorgeous blue and yellow floral that I've been hanging onto FOREVER!  Every once in a while I would pull it out and try to think of something to use it on but I would always end up putting it back.  Now I know why.  It was waiting for this bag.  I love the way the blue brings out the blue of the birds.

So, that's it.  Ms. S.'s bag. I hope she enjoys it and I hope she knows just how much we have appreciated having her in Gl's life this past school year. 

Lindsey's wedding

I've been asked to make some headbands for a wedding.  Fun.  I love stuff like this.  This  is the practice headband.  I had to sew it up and rip it apart 3 times last night just trying to get the size of the flowers correct.  I still don't think they are quite right.  The bottom one needs to be a bit smaller and the top one needs to be a bit bigger.  I used (hey, i'm using caps!) some buttons that I had lying around for the centers but for the "real" ones, I'll go with some sort of pearl.  I think.  What do you think Nina?  Jessica?  Do you want to use the flower girl fabric or should I look for some different fabric? I can look for something a little dressier if you think these are too casual.   What about the black headband and the size of the flowers?  Is my assessment correct? 

Gl kind of has a tiny head so I took another picture using the neighbor girl.  She has a bigger head and she's a brunette.  So now you can see how the black looks with the darker hair.

Here is a picture of some buttons I bought today.  What do you think?

The pearl ones are what I was picturing when I was sewing them up.  The store I went to today didn't have just plain, larger pearl buttons but I could definitely find some, if that is what you want. 

Lastly, this is the two colors of green felt that I've been able to find.  Neither matches perfectly but neither is horrible either.  If you like the look of felt.  Ok.  I'll be waiting to hear what you think.