Back on the Chain, Gang

Back to Blogland: I have no idea what I’m doing.  Getting an architectural license, having a baby, and obviously not blogging for over a year can make one completely forget how to publish to a blog.  I think the above picture of me is skewed, and I have no idea how to fix it. 

But I’m back to sewing, I hope.

Goal number one is to start using fabric I already own, and then, maybe finish some unfinished projects. 

To start, I’m chain sewing a bunch of 2 1/2” fabric strips I cut from fabric that I purchased too much of online.   Minimum yardage is no fun!  The plan is to turn these leftover greens and blues into a zigzag quilt. 

A Not-so-“egg”-cellent Wreath

A friend of mine discovered a really cute Easter wreath on a do-it-yourself craft blog, and since we have a reputation for making wreaths together, she thought it would be a fun project for us to whip together for our front doors.  Making the wreath involves wrapping many plastic Easter eggs with different pastel colored yarns, and with much help from the glue gun, you attach the yarns to the eggs, and ultimately, the eggs to the wreath.  The finished picture on the blog made it look to cute…

Until you start wrapping the eggs.  And wrapping…

And wrapping…

So in conclusion, it took a lot of time to wrap yarn on plastic eggs.  We certainly didn’t have enough eggs to cover one wreath, more or less one for each of us to hang on our doors.  This year, we have a bowl of yarn wrapped plastic Easter eggs.   Let’s just say, don’t try this at home if you want an Easter wreath for this year.

Fancy Four-Patch Table Runner

I can hear your applause!  Yay!  My table runner is now a finished project!

What I thought was a simple project that finishable in an evening, took me over a week.  I suppose that’s not terrible; I technically could have never finished it.   (Lately I’ve only been finishing embroidered onesies, so I’m exceptional proud of myself for sewing something different.)  This finished project was immediately put to use, now running on the coffee table in my living room.  Perfect to complement April’s showers, the bright blues and green warm up my room with a springtime touch.

I picked up this table runner kit, complete with pattern and fabric for the top and binding, from a vendor booth’s at a local quilt show.  I recognized the proprietor of the booth as also being local, one of the “generations” at Generation’s Quilt Shop in Pottstown, PA.  I’m sure that if you stopped by the shop, you could probably pick up this kit, but if you just can’t make it to town, the fabrics were from Robert Kaufman’s Dill Blossoms fabric line and the simple pattern was nicely laminated on a two-sided card from Pieced Tree Patterns.

Here’s my Fancy Four-Patch Table Runner in its current resting place.  It was a beautifully sunny, 75 degree day here, so I’ll have to apologize for the sun beams across it.

Rotary Cutter: Found!

Would you believe it?  I went to a local quilt show this past Saturday, came home, and found my rotary cutter!  It was right beside my quarter inch foot.  Of all the places for it to be, right?

Luckily for the three of us (Jill, RC and the 1/4”), I picked up a table runner kit, complete with pattern and fabric, at one of the vendor booths that very morning.  It seemed the perfect, quick project for me and my newly relocated cutter and foot.  Still early afternoon, I figured I could knock this thing out before dinner.

 

Three “tonights” later, it’s still not done.  (I was so looking forward to amazing the blog world with a finished project.)  Alas, I started working on the quilting tonight, and it’s surprisingly very fun and addictive.  It shouldn’t be long before I share my table runner!

Fun with Sergers?

Over the weekend, MrBeans accompanied me to my local sewing machine shop while I picked up some supplies.  Digging around for gift ideas, he asked me if there’s anything I might like.  Without hesitating, and possibly subliminally prompted by the one in front of me, I said, “A serger, of course!”  

Of course I want a serger; what sewista is complete without one?  Though, I don’t need one.  But by some total twist of uncanny fate, day one of a two day serger class was being held in the shop at that very moment.  Quickly drawn into the classroom by the friendly shop keepers, I was instantly immersed into a garment making frenzy and the latest and greatest trends in sergers.  Maybe I do need one…

Then, once I saw how the Baby Lock sergers magically thread themselves, it was a no brainer.  I had to have one!

If it wasn’t for the voice of reason (aka MrBeans,)  I would have swept that bad boy up into my arms and taken it home with all the extras and goodies only available for the limited time special weekend price of $$$$.  $$$$!  Falling off of cloud 9, I realized I really don’t need one, now.

So tonight, while dreaming of sergers, I enjoyed embroidering another cute, little onesie.

Onesie, Twosie, Threesie…Eightsie, Tensie

Lately, I’ve been overrun by onesie orders.  These are all the ones I’ve made in the past week and a half.  Not much time for other projects!

Winter Doesn’t Inspire Me

It’s been a while, and I can’t promise I’m back.  I suppose I’ve been busy with work during the days.  (Half of my department went out on maternity leave over the holidays, leaving my other coworker and me swamped!)  And at nights, I snuggle under layers of quilts, too nervous to get up even for some hot chocolate for fear of my toes getting cold. 

But with a bit of spring finally warming up the air, I found some motivation this morning to sneak out from under my quilt and revisit an old project.  Remember my DIY fabric wreath?  I’ve been thinking about making another for some time, so I found the perfect excuse.  We’re hosting a Dinner & Auction at church, and I thought this would the perfect item to donate to the auction!

I bought a straw wreath from the craft store for not more than $3.  (I didn’t even use a coupon.  Tisk. Tisk.)  Then, while searching through my fabric stash, I found some perfect pastel batiks, unused for quite some time.   As long as someone purchases it for more than $3, I think this will have been a profitable endeavor. 

The colors make me feel closer to Spring!  I hope it fetches a pretty penny at the auction!  Speaking of Spring, my neighbor just knocked on my door trying to sell me lemonade.  Spring is in the air!

Adult Snow Cone

What do you get when you mix me, the margarita loving beach girl, with too much snow?  A Snowy Margarita!  Okay, that was just ridiculous, but I got your attention, right?  This lovely idea was actually from the brilliant mind of MrBeans.  Like I’m going to say no to the idea of pouring margarita mix over snow.  It’s an adult snow cone! 

Clutch!

Trying to fight off the winter doldrums, it seems I’ve been spending too much time huddled in front of the stove and not enough by the warmth of my sewing machine light.  Apparently, it’s not a very warm light.  But prompted by the sale of a few Bean’s Clutches in my Etsy shop, I decided I better move away from the stove and make more before I’m all sold out.  So I turned up the heat (my creative juices and thermostat) and got to work!

In a matter of a few nights this week, I was able to crank out 10 clutches, managing to use up all the oil cloth in my stash!  Which probably means that there won’t be any more Bean’s Clutches for a while.  Not a big deal.  I’ve been putting so many projects on the backburner, and I’d like to push my shop aside for a little while to get them done.  I’ve cleared a lot of items out of my online inventory, and I keep my fingers crossed that my onesie don’t get discovered by more than the occasional trickle of buyers.  I packed up the remaining scraps from my Bean’s Clutches and some fabric I purchased for new products and they’re off to the closet!

What’s everyone got against pink?

Occasionally, etsians ordering a custom embroidered baby equation onesie ask, “Can I get a different color for the mom’s name?  The baby is a boy.” 

On a “standard” baby equation onesie, dad’s name is embroidered in blue, mom’s name is in pink and “baby” is in green.  The intuitive shades make the onesie cute, colorful and whimsical; perfect for a 0 to 3 month old.

But for those thanking heaven for little boys, I have options.  I like to switch out the pink for purple to keep mom’s name feminine.  After all, what’s purple, but pink with blue added to it?  Sneaky, huh? 

The other option to switch out all the colors for a new color scheme.  Since we’re specifically talking about “boys,” all the names have been switched to blues.  Not as colorful, but still cute.  Mom’s name is in a greenish-blue, because I just can’t get myself to embroider mom’s name in a pure shade of blue.  She’s the one having the baby, and there’s nothing blue about that!

Quilting in the New Year

Today, being the last day of my Christmas vacation/winter break, I sewed as much as possible to make up for all the sewing I didn’t do last month.  I should have been making blocks for this quilt, but instead, I started a new one. 

Inspired by a Jelly Roll of Sugar Pop, I used my quilt software and designed the slightly abstract quilt shown above.  I didn’t really want to make an abstract quilt, or completely design my quilt before I cut any fabric, so I pushed the computer aside, found my rotary cutter and got to sewing.  This is what I’ve got after a day of sewing.  I hope I can be motivated to finish it!

Happy 2011!

Where Did December Go???

It’s been too busy of a month for much crafting and sewing. I do have this onesie I finished for a friend’s first birthday:

 

and I made up a fun Stocking Stuffer Christmas game in which I made up the rules and 10 stockings to stuff.  Unfortunately for this blog, I was too flustered to get them done in time for Christmas to take any pictures. 

Today, finally getting a day off, I got back into the sewing spirit and checked out a new quilt shop!

Hayloft Fabrics, in Morgantown, PA, absolutely surprised me.  I walked up a staircase in the supermarket of a rural Pennsylvania town and ended up in a loft full of fabrics, notions, patterns, and books.  This photo doesn’t do it justice.  With the supermarket over the loft’s half wall, I perused a great selections of fabrics along the edges of the market.  Definitely was worth the trip!

Fire Department Bust

Happy December!  I’m almost ready to start wrapping up my Christmas shopping and am looking forward to decorating the house! (When I’ll find time to do both is another question.)  I haven’t made any sales on my Etsy site for 2 months! and have been just as lazy about blogging my craft and sewing projects!  It’s fun to have a break!

Yesterday, I set up a table at a local Fire Department’s craft fair.  I shared a table with a friend (she’s a Thirty-one consultant,) and marked down everything I had to rock bottom prices hoping for lots of sales.  She assured my that she’d seen the fair advertised everywhere.  Apparently, she was the only one.  I didn’t make a single sale, and it seemed that the vendors (about 50 of us) were the primary patrons to the other vendors.  Total bust.

The day wasn’t a total loss.  I made Smucker’s Jewel Box Cookies for dessert.  A simple butter cookie with jam will turn any frown upside down!

A Year-at-a-Glance in a Year and a Half

 

It’s time for a celebration!  I finally finished my Year-at-a-Glance quilt tonight!  That’s right, finished!

 

The fabric and pattern were a gift for my birthday back in the summer of 2009.  (Remember this post?  or this post?)  Tonight, I finally tacked down the last two feet of binding. I rarely ever finish anything this big, and  I had to pinch myself to relinquish my disbelief.  Now, I just wish I had somewhere better than the bedroom curtains to prominently display it.

 

With every beautiful quilt, there’s a beast.  Not to be nit picky, but the appliqué patterns were all backwards.  And as adorable as this quilt is, this takes the cake and makes this pattern a solid D.  The sashing measurements were all off!  I had to calculate them and re-cut all the pieces.  That includes the outer square border, folks.  Pain in the …

I was forced to conquer a new technique on this quilt: hand embroidery.  I treated myself to a crash course in embroidering techniques via the internet, and with great success, I do think my lazy daises turned out perfectly.  That’s why the May block is my favorite!

Three Down, Ten to Go!