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The new year always makes me want to clean out junk drawers and closets, make a new reading list, and sew something for someone.
So, I cleaned a little, finished a great book (or two. or three. reading is so much more fun than exercising when it’s cold outside. especially when your bed is outfitted with an electric blanket), and got out the patterns.
Spring is coming (someday!) and it’s hard to resist those little baby sundresses.
There’s something I want to practice this year: sewing clothes for myself. Clarification: sewing clothes that I want to wear in public. I’ve admired the Wiksten Tova shirt for a long time (some examples here), and after a lot of hemming and hawing around, I broke out the muslin and made myself a shirt.
(sorry about the dark picture. )
Then I extended the bottom of the shirt, and made myself a dress. And they both turned out pretty great.
Then I remember how much I liked the Collette Violet shirt (from this post), so I tried it again, this time with longer sleeves. After much agonizing over the sleeves, I ripped them out and completely altered them from the pattern.
Sometimes I like to make piles of fabric and just look at them, together.
Here are some things I made for Christmas gifts.
A quilt for my niece.
A wall hanging for my mom. (Not sure why the corner is turned up like that. ?) This was just one single quilt block, but it’s kind of a challenging pattern so it’s fun to practice it one square at a time. Someday I would love to make an entire quilt of these blocks. Maybe in different prints of white?
Some appliqueing for my big girls, to freshen up some plain tshirts.
My sewing machine has been humming along in our house the past few weeks.
I made this jumper (McCalls 4160, apparently out of print) for Charlotte. I tried a zipper in the back (my least favorite thing to do on sewing a dress) and it turned out okay. Just okay. I’m practicing. I love the fabric on this dress (a corduroy from the new line of Lisette fabrics), but the overall result of the dress I am not crazy about. I think my expectations were pretty high for this, and I had a specific way I wanted it to look on her. It doesn’t look anything like what I had envisioned.
But she loves it! And that is important.
Next up was a skirt for Ivy. I think this was also from the Lisette fabrics (I love these corduroys….they hang so well on a dress or skirt and aren’t clunky at all), and this pattern I got from The Handmade Dress, one of my favorite Etsy shops. I had to alter the pattern slightly due to a lack of coordinating fabric, but the result was lovely.
Ivy begged to wear this skirt to play in one day, and at first I cringed but then just let it go. A true test to see if I’ve made the seams sturdy enough! (It held up just fine.)
I also stitched up a little romper for Annie B., which was quite easy until I got to the snaps on the legs. This was Simplicity 4054, and I added a little embroidery on the bodice to dress up the lightweight denim.
Boy it’s hard to get a full-length picture of a wiggly baby who can’t stand up.
Tiny pink buttons in the back make for a sweet little outfit.
Now my gaze shifts to sewing Christmas gifts. In the works is a quilt for a niece (which is moving along….pictures soon!), and some small gift things which will probably include cloth napkins and appliqued shirts. After the holidays are done, I am strongly considering diving in and making a dress for myself. I’m picturing something dark gray, similar to this (over at Boden, which is where I do all my clothes dreaming).
Needing inspiration for a blog post idea, and I happened upon my friend Melanie’s blog and considered myself tagged.
1. I am attempting a half-square-triangle quilt, after finding instructions at Make It Do. I love this blog. My hst quilt won’t be nearly as pretty as hers, but I am enjoying the process all the same, and it’s using up my basket of scraps. Each square is 1×1 inch, and working with such tiny blocks is a challenge. I take it on a piece-by-piece level: sewing a little here and there, when I get the chance. It may mean I only get to sew two seams all day, but it works.
2. I made a quilt for a silent auction recently. Our wonderful, dear friends Dawn and Eli are adopting children from Uganda. This quilt was sold at an auction to raise money to help them. We are so excited for them and can’t wait to meet the new parts of their family!
3. I love summer. Love it. But I am glad fall is coming. This has been a hot, dry summer. Just sayin’.
(Annie B. is wearing the dress her Aunt Judi got for her. Thanks Aunt Judi!)
4. We are going on a vacation to the beach in about a week or so. I think our entire family is ready for a change of scenery: some ocean breezes, sand between our toes, waves at our ankles, and a general lazy change of pace. We are vacationing with several other families who are all great friends (just like last year) and we are so excited to go.
5. I am a fan of Pinterest, and it is delightful to have a place to categorize pretty things that I see.
6. Recently I came to the realization that it would really serve my family to have our household on some kind of cleaning/upkeep schedule. Then I found information on keeping a Home Notebook, and I have since bought a new binder and some page protectors, and made a cleaning list. That is as far as I have gotten, but my vision is ever onward and upward and we will conquer the disarray!
7. I am re-reading Wuthering Heights, and it is good. I also just finished North and South, and it was very good.
8. (I can’t fit it all in!) Homeschooling is going very well this year. We are into week 5 of our fall schedule, and all the big kids are doing just great. (The tiny baby is doing great, too.) We are using Singapore Math, Rod and Staff, First Language Lessons, and Writing with Ease (from The Well-Trained Mind). With a third grader, a second grader, and a little guy in kindergarten, it is just a lot of work. I fall into bed at night earlier than I’d like to admit, and the days are full. But, as my husband is so kind to remind me, we are working at planting trees. I wouldn’t trade this all for anything. (note about the link: he talks for a minute, and it is worth listening to.)
These trees will spread their branches out and bless someone.
I liked the shoes so much from the last post that I decided to go ahead and make another pair. These are for a dear friend who just had her first baby, Elyse.
(This pair is cut smaller for a set of really tiny feet.)
I found a free tutorial for baby shoes.
Pulled a little scrap fabric out of the pile and whipped them up in a day.
Perfect for tiny (but growing fast!) little fairy feet.
Who doesn’t love a good before-and-after photo?
I sure do.
This is our craft/sewing/homeschool/games/everything room. Yeah. It was becoming a bit of a mess. It is just off the living room, with a door that can be conveniently closed when the mess gets overwhelming and company’s coming.
With school getting a bit more involved this year, especially with the number of books that were rapidly accumulating, something had to be done. It felt constantly messy, our homeschool books and supplies were in three separate rooms of the house, and I knew it could be organized more efficiently.
Off to Ikea!
I didn’t think to get a “before” picture until he had already started to put the shelves together. But this is a pretty good idea of what it was like.
Notice the precariously placed stacks of fabric on the shelves in the back. The games stuffed in the cabinet so wonky that even the doors wouldn’t close all the way. Overabundance of mis-matched shelves.
After selling a few cabinets and bookshelves on craigslist to make room, we ended up with something far better.
Probably not the most drastic before-and-after photo set you’ve ever seen, but it’s drastic to us. Really. All the homeschool supplies, books, planning notebooks, pencils and games are in one room! We can all see what’s available, clearly.
Don’t you love shelves of organized books? And a works-in-progress sewing project on the ironing board?
Something I learned whilst re-organizing all of our things: I have a lot of fabric.
And it’s really wonderful.
Something else I learned: fabric is much nicer when folded larger and flat. Not all bunched up and careening off the shelves.
And when it’s organized by style and color? Amazing. I think I could make an entire quilt out of most of these fabrics together, and it would look pretty great. Something I hadn’t noticed before.
Basket o’ scraps. Looks like I need to do something with these soon.
I also realized I have quite the collection of vintage bed linens. With which I am completely happy, because sometimes you get a little 8-year-old girl who asks her mommy to make a new summer nightgown for her. And these fabrics are my favorite to use for just that.
We’re squeezing in some outside time, now that the temperatures have calmed down a little. You know it’s been a hot summer when a “cold front” brings the thermometer down to 95.
We’re keepin’ it okay over here, though. I am not sure I’ve ever had to be more creative in my life to think up things to keep everyone busy and content all day inside. We have gotten a lot of schoolwork accomplished, though!
(doesn’t cool grass feel great on bare toes?)
Little Man found a big-boy tool set at a yard sale today. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him more excited about a toy (besides his Legos, of course).
He’s been “nailing” pieces of styrofoam together with the screwdriver all afternoon. “Mommy, I want to build Annie a little box. To keep her spoons in for when she eats her special cereal. And when it opens, it will play music for her.”
Sweet boy.
I just love back-of-the-neck baby pictures, don’t you?
Tiny buttons and fuzzy hair. *sigh*
The summer is moving right along. Can you believe July is over and done with?
Our good friend “Uncle” George came to visit from Texas for a few days.
Asher had a good time pickin’ away while George played us some tunes on his banjo.
And oh boy, it’s hot.
We’re only really able to go outside in the late evenings or early mornings, and even then only for a few minutes.
(a cookie, a book, and a swing. can it get any better?)
Hi pretty baby!
I’ve also discovered that Annie looks really cute in this bonnet I made for her.
I found the pattern from this Etsy store, littlebettydesigns, and it was probably one of the most well-written, easiest-to-follow patterns I have ever seen from an Etsy shop. Highly recommended.
So easy, in fact, that I made one for a friend’s baby and it turned out just as delicious.
So other than all that, we’re just hanging out around here. Trying to keep cool, and waiting for rain and something less than 100 degrees during the day.
Turning the living room into a tent, bringing out all the craft supplies, watching a few movies, and generally making a big mess of things.
I have a feeling I’ll miss these days someday.
Sewed a little dress for Annie during naptime today.
Pattern is from Babes of Sweet (link is to their Etsy shop). Fabric is some pink corduroy I had from last year’s pile (never got around to using it for what I had planned), and size is 12 months. I think it’ll fit her just fine come October or so.
Appliqued tree is something extra I decided to add at the last minute, using MiniBoden as inspiration. (love that store.)
The girls learned to use the sewing machine!
And this is what they made.
Pillowcases: fun to pick out the fabric, not a lot of thought needed for the design, and it’s nothin’ but straight stitching the whole way.
They’re using a little Singer Featherweight sewing machine, on loan from a friend’s mom (who used it to teach 4H sewing in the 1960′s).
It works just right for them: a few simple things to learn about the machine, and they’re off.
I think they did a great job, don’t you?
