To be a bit cliché, this shoemaker is a professional Web Developer and her child is this blog, but it was past time to launch what I have of a new design. All the content is still here, everything else is a work in progress (kind of like most of my sewing projects)!
Welcome back to another Vacation Christmas reveal. I was far busier over the past two months than you might have guessed based on the frequency of my posts here. Now that we’re traveling to Missouri and delivering gifts, I can show you what I’ve been working on. These were the last of three types of gifts I made for the 10 nieces and nephews Carl and I have between our two families.
The two youngest nieces were a bit of a challenge for me. I made a bag for the older one (four) for her birthday a few months ago, so didn’t want to duplicate it, and the youngest isn’t yet two, so I wanted something else appropriate for them.
Welcome back to another Vacation Christmas reveal. I was far busier over the past two months than you might have guessed based on the frequency of my posts here. Now that we’re traveling to Missouri and delivering gifts, I can show you what I’ve been working on. These were the second of three types of gifts I made for the 10 nieces and nephews Carl and I have between our two families.
Boys are hard to sew for. I never know what to make. It seems like 90% of the projects out there that are age appropriate (6–10y.o.) are also very girly. But, when I came across Chez Beeper Bebe’s Nature Explorer Bag, I knew I’d found my project. In the right colors and fabrics, it’s perfectly boyish, but still useful. It’s also relatively quick and painless, which was awesome, because at Thanksgiving, Carl’s sister announced that she’s engaged and he has two boys of his own, so that upped the number of these bags to five!
Welcome back to another Vacation Christmas reveal. I was far busier over the past two months than you might have guessed based on the frequency of my posts here. Now that we’re traveling to Missouri and delivering gifts, I can show you what I’ve been working on. These were one of three types of gifts I made for the 10 nieces and nephews Carl and I have between our two families.
Over the summer, I saw the Summer Reading Bag posted on Sew Mama Sew and knew it would be a great gift. It was quick to make, simple to put together and overall seems to be a great hit. I made these bags for the five oldest nieces, who range from 4–13.
It’s Christmas week and we’re on vacation, but it’s time to unveil the finished Strip-pieced Lone Star/Star of Bethlehem quilt. You got a sneak preview last month, when I reviewed Nature’s Touch batting, so without further ado, here is the full quilt.
I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season, whatever you celebrate! Here in my world, we’re gearing up to celebrate our first Christmas in our new home tomorrow, and after trying to weasel out of spending most of the day at his parents’ house, ended up volunteered to host Christmas dinner (sans oven!). We’re off on our annual end-of-the-year trip to Missouri (both Kansas City and the Lake of the Ozarks) to visit my family starting Monday. Once we get to MO, I have a full five days’ worth of present reveals scheduled to show you.
Last Sunday, Carl asked me how long it took to make a quick quilt, and I—clearly out of my mind—told him I could make his Grandma one by Christmas. So I did. She won’t receive it by Christmas, seeing as we just mailed it yesterday, but it is finished.
(…yesterday, not now) … and Carl, while frazzled shopping for Grandma at the third store and finding nothing, asked “dear, how long does it take to make a quilt”? And, I, clearly drunk from shopping all day, said “it can be shipped off by Christmas, if we shop for fabric now, don’t delay!”
Uhh, so that is how I got myself into making a quilt this week, on top of the other projects I’m working on.
This has been a pretty big year for changes—we adopted Moof back in March and now we have our new house, complete with an actual mantle in the living room! So, of course, Moof needs his own stocking to hang.
I don’t know which of us actually came up with the idea, but Carl and I were joking a few weeks ago about how Moof chews on pretty much anything, so if we got him a stocking, it’d probably be chewed up. We thought it would be funny if he had a pre-“chewed” stocking with child-like lettering.
Most of my gifts are going into basic paper gift bags (yes, I’m too lazy to gift wrap soft stuff or box, then wrap, it all), especially since I already made the gifts themselves, but there is one present I’m excited about that I decided to whip up a quick gift bag for.
The gift
A young friend is getting her first sewing machine for Christmas, so in addition to advising the giver on basic sewing tool kit stuff, I thought it would be great to give a quick first project for her to work on (she does have a bit of experience from whatever they call home ec class these days).
So, I bought a pajama pants pattern (which also comes with the pattern to make a dog sweatshirt—how cute!), two spools of thread (hey, it was bogo, why not?), the elastic for the waistband, and the fabric for the pants. In other words, everything she needs to make the pattern, that isn’t in her sewing kit.
First off, it is Sew Mama Sew giveaway day but I didn’t get my act together, so I have nothing to give away here. But you should check out all the great blogs and their giveaways!
What I did get started working on this weekend is organizing my sewing room a bit. I need more shelves. Here’s a start:
I really wish I were an illustrator, so that I could draw something out to show you the image that pops in my head every time I read the word “sewer”. For now, words must suffice. Picture this, if you can:
Michelangelo—no, not the painter, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle—chillin’ in front of a late ’70s Singer Touch and Sew, chain-piecing HSTs in the TNMT’s sewer lair from the ’80s/’90s animated show. He keeps screwing up the corners and is getting increasingly agitated.
Splinter looks on, counseling “Possess the right thinking. Go slow, it is not a race.”
Mikey gets one right and yells, “Quiltablocka, dude!”
Okay, so maybe we should’t go into my head all that often…