The end of ‘06

Christmas vacation was good!  I celebrated my birthday and my little one celebrated his birthday.  One of us turned 35 and one of us turned 3, but I’m not telling who turned what. 

Too much food, lots of trips to the park, and enough relaxing that the gray hairs on my head actually stopped growing for a few days. 

I had 2 crafty goals over Christmas break, just 2:

• write up a pattern for the Little Artist Drawing Case
• get my website up.

 Well, the pattern is done.  One down.  The web site needs more work, and as I work on it, I’m building the confidence to actually go out and market the pattern.  I don’t have any trouble promoting other people’s work, but myself?  That’s something I have a hard time with.  This should be it until 2007.  What a fun year of blogging it’s been!  Happy New Year to all my blogging buddies!  And everyone else too!

Goodies and Felting Fun

I don’t really collect anything.  I’ve seen other blogger’s cool collections – white jugs, hangers, books,  aprons, that’s all I can think of right now…but I’ve never really had the urge (as an adult) to collect anything.  Until now.  Lately I’ve become quite fond of pincushions.  I started off with my little red tomato.  Then I had to get the pink and green ones.  Then I started making my own out of pieces of fabric.

And no, I don’t normally color coordinate my pins and pincushions.

Then a few weeks ago I felted an apple.  It wasn’t super successful, but with a little encouragement from Sue, I decided to try felting again.  Thanks, Sue, I’m having fun!  I’ve branched out into pear pincushions,

and my apple is looking better with a real stick as a stem. 

    

I read somewhere that I could start by wrapping my wool around a styrofoam ball.  This really saves a lot of yarn, but I’m not happy with the outcome.  The finished pincushion isn’t heavy enough to stand up on it’s own.  Such a sad-looking pear.

I don’t think I’m ready to start a full-fledged collection of pincushions just yet, but I’m having fun adding to my growing group of pincushions.

Rebecca sent me the most beatiful work of art – a little painted pear card from the Painted Pear herself.  You are so talented, Rebecca.  Thank you for sharing a bit of your art with me.  A nice artist like her deserves a pear pincushion, don’t you think?

And more goodies… Kimberly sent the boys a whole kilo of chocolate.  That’s 2.2046 pounds, folks.  And it’s almost gone!  Those little German kiddos sure grow up eating the yummiest chocolate.  Thank you so much, Lolly!

And more generosity.  When Patricia read about my felting woes, she offered to send me some wool roving and a drop spindle!  The wool is so soft and the spindle is like a work of art.  I’m going to try to learn to use this thing.  I’ve looked at a few online sites for instructions, but if anyone has one to recommend, I’d really appreciate it.

Sooooo pretty!

Christmas is almost upon us!  While I haven’t opened any of my “real” presents, I feel like I’ve been blessed with the generosity of so many of you.  Thank you!  My hope is that in the craziness of what our culture has built into this holiday, God will bless you with His peace this Christmas!

Diaper Bag

It’s been a while since I’ve made a diaper bag so I was thrilled when Shelly asked me if I could make her one.  A bagaholic is always looking for another excuse to make a bag, you know.  The fabric is from Amy Butler’s Forest line of decor-weight fabric.

She wanted an outside sippy pocket so her toddler could get to his beverage easily.  This was a fun challenge.  I’ve never put a pocket on like this before: 

The inside has 2 bottle pockets, a wipes pocket, and a cell phone pocket with a nice big flap to keep the phone from sliding out when you lean over in the store to pick up a shoe that has been thrown on the floor AGAIN.  I speak from experience here.  Having your phone slip out of it’s pocket at that moment is enough to send some moms over the edge.

Thanks, Shelly!  I hope it meets your needs for years to come!

The pattern for this bag is available here.

Mini Tutorial – Monogramming Without an Embroidery Machine

I was a pastor’s kid and a missionary kid.  Us kids would often get gifts and presents from people we had never met and that always made me feel special.  I still remember a necklace with a dove flying down on it (for peace) that I loved and wore for many years when I was a girl.  To this day I don’t know who sent it to us in Taiwan all the way from the States.  I always thought that when I got older I would do the same for my pastor’s kids.  About 5 years ago, I started giving them gifts at Christmas time.  These two drawing cases are for 2 of my pastor’s daughters. 

When it came time to monogram them with coordinating fabric like I’ve done in the past, I couldn’t find anything that would go with this blue toile.  So I “embroidered” them, without at embroidery machine.  You all may have figured this out WAY long ago, but it’s taken me until now to figure this out.  So here’s a mini-tutorial on how I did it.

You will need:

• Fabric fused with fusible interfacing (I fuse all mine for the drawing cases)
• A piece of heavier-weight interfacing
• A letter stencil (I used the pop-out of the chipwood letters available at Michael’s)
• A pen that matches the thread you will use

Make an outline of the letter.

    

Place the heavy-weight interfacing under the letter.  This keeps the fabric from scrunching under the pull of the stitches.  Using a zig zag stitch, sew over the lines to form the letter shape, stopping at corners and adjusting the fabric as necessary.  My zigzag stitch width was 3.3mm with a length of .4 mm.

I used a presser foot with an open toe so that I could see the lines more clearly.  Ta-da!  It takes more time and energy than an embroidery machine, but it sure is a lot cheaper. 

Gifts to Give, Gifts Received

Deb made the most beautiful recipe boxes  and inspired me to try some of my own.  Deb is crazy about paper like I’m crazy about fabric, and when I see what she’s done with paper, it makes me want to a) copy her or b) try the same thing in fabric.

Of course, they never look as perfect as hers do, but here’s my first attempt – a Christmas gift for my sewing student:

And now I’m thinking it would have made sense to fill it with sewing stuff . . . oh well.  Maybe next year.  Here’s what’s inside:

Don’t you just love those chipwood letters?  They’ve come in so handy.  More on that in a future post.

And for my nephew who’s crazy about basketball:

And the inside.  I love ModPodge! 

And look what Karyn sent:

A beautiful set of paper-quilted cards.  For being a supportive blogging friend.  Supportive blogging friend?  There is much inspiration at your blog that I can’t NOT visit!  You are so kind.  Karyn and I share the same affliction: migraines.  But her creative drive is so strong she somehow manages to craft during a migraine.  I can not.  She opened up an Etsy shop recently and has sold bunches of her card sets.  Thank you, Karyn!

And Lera, how do you manage to get anything done while managing your home and new baby?  If I were you I fear this blog would not exist.  But manage she does, folks, and she makes soap.  Chocolate.  Chocolate soap.  Mmmmm.  Delicious.  I mean, delicious-smelling, since I’m not allowed to eat it. 

And little wreathe snowmen.  This little guy is too cute.  Do you care to share where you got your itty-bitty wreathes?

On the schedule for tonight?  A diaper bag.  Stay tuned.  )

A Little Bit of Knitting, a Little Bit of Felting

A chunky ribbed scarf to be gifted at Christmas.  Yes, I am gifting this one to a family member (my brother) who I hope doesn’t care anything about knitting.  This was a good project for me to learn the basics of going back and forth between knitting and purling.  I am SUCH a beginner!

 *********************************************** 

Felted goodies and baddies.

Felted balls.  Exhibit A (on the left) was felted by hand according to instructions on Martha Stewarts’s web site.  Something went wrong.  Very wrong.  Probably because I didn’t want to spend the $ on wool roving and tried just shredding some wool yarn with a comb.  It’s definitely a tosser.  Even thousands of stabs with the felting needle tool couldn’t save this sad product of felting gone bad.  I would welcome any tips or links on felting balls.

Exhibit B is just some wool yarn wrapped in a ball, put into the toe of cheap hose and felted in the washing machine.  I like how it turned out.  It’s now an apple pincushion.  Is anyone thinking Pink Lady?

And here are some felted pouches that will hold some small Christmas gifts.  I’m hoping my knitting projects in years to come will look better and better.  It’s almost embarrasing posting this stuff, knowing they look like a preschooler’s work when compared to the beautiful work of some of you long-time knitters.

instructions for little artist drawing case

The Little Artist Drawing Case pattern is now available for sale here.

Little Artist Crayon Cases

I think that is what I’ll call these:  Little Artist Crayon Cases, or just crayon cases for short  (pattern available here).   Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been sewing an order of 5 of these for some Ladies in Training and their friends.

Here are some shots of the finished products.  Lots of dots:

 Some frogs chit-chatting with eachother:

This is how the drawing pad slides into it’s pocket:

I love this fabric combo:  

And, PINK, PINK, PINK!