Reflections

Every year I come back from quilt market with 2 distinct emotions.  On the one hand, I feel completely inspired, wanting to go home and create as much as I can.  On the other hand, I feel completely humbled by people who are able to inspire the masses and be productive.  While I’m putting out a pattern here and there they are writing patterns, writing books, designing fabrics, all while taking care of their children.  Besides the obvious creative differences, another difference is people.  I don’t have people.  No Craft Apple staff.  Wouldn’t that be nice to have people?  I chatted with Darlene Zimmerman about having people.  She was so encouraging.  She told me about starting her business in 1992 and only this year has she started hiring a housekeeper.  Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

So while I don’t have people, per se, I am thrilled to have dependable test-sewers and a supportive husband.  I’m so happy to have a sewing room - even if it needs a major cleaning - and a little buisiness to call my own.  And I’m always excited to be able to talk to a small part of the craft world through this blog.  Besides inspiring me creatively, those fabric heroes of ours have inspired me to work and to be focused.

Ready for some more inspiration?  Anna Maria’s book, Handmade Beginnings (sorry, can’t find a link) due out in May:

And Sandi Henderson’s book Sewing Bits & Pieces due out in April.

Both are published by Wiley. 

On a side note, do you remember the first few times you read craft blogs and noticed lots of pictures with people’s heads cut off?  It used to seem weird, but after a while I got used to it.  It seems that it has become a normal part of our culture.  So normal that both of these books have pictures without heads.  Funny.

Quilt Market Houston 09

It’s official.  I love spending time with these  girls at Quilt Market!  I’ve decided it’s not just because we get along and laugh together.  On a subconscious level I love not feeling short around them.

Great meeting so many new people -

* The fun and creative Sheree of Sheree’s Alchemy - love those wool bags, Sheree!

* Finally, finally, FINALLY got to meet my long-time blog friend Kathy of Pink Chalk Fabrics.  What a complete joy to finally meet you!  We tested eachother’s first patterns in what seems like forever ago.  I had to remind myself that we hadn’t actually met before.

* Great new pattern line by Lola Again for Izzy and Ivy Designs.

* I had to buy this pattern from Serendipity Studio.  It will be like wearing a Chemisette Handbag on myself!!!

I felt like I was taking  a ton of pictures, but I get home and realize I didn’t take enough.  These are two lines of fabric I can’t wait to get my hands on…

Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks voile – this is going to be perfect for clothing.

 

And Heather Bailey’s  Nicey Jane.  Completely clean and crisp.

 

This couch was for those of us who swooned from cuteness overload.

And to the folks at Moda, I just want to say…

Crayon Cars

If there’s one thing that needs improvement in my mommy-ing , it’s to enjoy doing crafts with the kids.  As the kid’s homeschool teacher I do different crafts with them, but truth be told, I don’t enjoy it that much.  In fact, if given a choice, I always pick the least messy craft.  Doing crafts really brings joy to the kids, but I get frustrated with them mess.  I mean, the house is messy enough without getting out the glue and the yarn, the paint and the play-doh, you know?  I’ve needed help and there have been a couple of books that have been helpful:

• Global Art: Activities, Projects, and Inventions from Around the World.  We’ve been using this as part of our curriculum this year.  We’re currently studying Central America so I’ve been able to pick out different crafts from that region of the world.
• Green Crafts for Children.  This one had a lot of basic ideas – lots of stuff that I’ve seen online.  But it was inspiring enough for me to make pom poms with the boys and little cork animals.  It’s a nice one for the kids to look through and pick an activity out of.  My only complaint is that many of the crafts are aimed toward girls.
• Drawing With Children.  While this may not be crafting necessarily, I had to mention this book.  I love this approach to drawing.  It’s concepts are simple enough for the kids to understand but foundational to drawing.  Not being an artist myself, I’ve learned a lot using this book.

So let’s get on to the latest craft the boys and I did together.  It wasn’t too messy and was lots of fun.  Crayon cars. 

 

Melting crayons certainly isn’t new, but when I saw this car cake pan ($22 at Target), I had to try this.

1.  Peel the paper off of the crayons.  Sitting around peeling the paper off of the crayons together was fun!  A great fine motor activity that we all enjoyed.  My sons are pickers like me.  We sorted the colors so that the final cars would be different shades of the same color.

2.  Break the crayons up.  Snap, snap, snap!  Break the longer pieces up.  The boys loved this part.

3. VERY IMPORTANT STEP:  spray your car shapes with cooking spray to help the cars come out of the pan easily.

4. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.  Much hotter and your house will smell like wax for a few hours.

5. Fill the pans with crayon bits and pieces.  Here they are ready to go in the oven.

 

10 minutes later:

10 more minutes:

See how they aren’t full?

6. Add more crayons if necessary and put them back in the oven for another 10.

That’s better.

7. Remove from oven and cool. They should pull away from the edge of the pan as they cool.

8.  When completely cool, the cars should come out with just a little gentle encouragement.

 

In addition to using the crayon pieces we had around the house, I also purchased several boxes of 68 count Crayolas.  2 boxes ($5 total) made ~8 of the smaller-sized cars (we didn’t even try the bigger cars).  Not the cheapest little crayon, but certainly doesn’t break the bank if you’re giving a little gift to a friend.  I think we’ll be making some of these up for the boy’s buddies when we pass out Christmas cookies this year.  And for the girls?

 

These little hearts were made using mini silicone hearts cupcake cups I purchased around Valentine’s Day.

Free-Sew Time

Sometimes, after making a gazillion of the same purse over and over again, I just want to try something new.  Something free and unplanned.  So I started with some pieces from my stash and just started playing.

 

After a few minutes it got to be about the size of a mini patchfolio cover… 

…so that’s what it became.

 

I needed to just play around in the sewing room.  It’s been too long since I’ve taken the time to do it for myself.

Did you know you can sew scraps of Warm ‘n Natural batting together for quilted projects (like the mini patch above) if it won’t be washed?  Cut the batting with your rotary cutter to get 2 straight edges and zigzag them together on the machine, holding the pieces together as they go under the presser foot.

Here’s the sewn line.  You can see it, but you can barely feel it.  There’s no bump where the thread is.  Perfect.

This may work with other sturdy battings, but I don’t think this would work with polyester batting since it isn’t as thick.

 And as for the gazillion purses?  I’ll post about them another time – closer to when the pattern is ready.

Pants-Along Capris

I finished my pants!  It wouldn’t have taken so long if I had just made them the way Joanna suggested.  But I just can’t do what I’m told.  I tried to get all fancy pants around the hem and finally settle for a raw edge.  Fancy, eh?

 

I spent the holiday weekend sewing my pants and reading ahead in the kid’s school book Kingdom Tales by David and Karen Mains.  Cried my way through – it was so moving.  I hope the kids are old enough to appreciate it.  (Book link here - scroll down to find it.)

 The kids took  the pictures of me in the pants.  Here’s my favorite:

 

Apparently his fingers were over the lens.  Good for me you can’t see how ugly the garden is.    I especially liked how easy the pockets were.  And I liked the big screw-in grommets that I got in the purse section at JoAnn’s.
 

Thanks for sharing all your tutorials, Jo! 

Klutz Paper Fashions Fantasy Giveaway

Comments are now closed.

The winners are #14:  Michelle of Greeting Arts and #42:  Sarah, blogless.  I’ll be emailing  you ladies shortly!  Thanks for plaing along! 

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

Following the success of their books, Paper Fashions and Paper Fashions Fancy, Klutz books has a new book out:

When I’m offered free products to post on my blog, I don’t always participate.  But this book sparked my interest and when I was invited to participate in a design challenge, I got excited.  The book comes with glitter glue, ribbons, embellishments, stencils and paper to design a fantasy wardrobe.  It also has these itty bitty hangers to display your fashions on.  Perfect for girls 8 and up, wouldn’t you say?

So part of this promotion is that 2 copies of this book will be available in the next week for giving away to you, my dear readers.  Please comment if you’d like to enter.  There will be 2 winners chosen randomly.

The other part of this promotion is the design challenge I mentioned above.  While I love working with paper, it had been a while so I really had to stretch my brain to come up with something unique.  The entry is a picture of a fantasy design using the items from the book.  I decided that I wanted to have a nice background for my picture.  And that’s when I had the idea of making a diorama.  The first one I’d made since 4th grade Bible class.  I think I made one of Moses.  I have this specific memory of comparing my shoe box scene (I didn’t know they were called dioramas then) to everyone else’s and realizing that I *really* couldn’t draw. 

Well, nothing much has changed in my artistic skills since then except that I’m a whole lot better at using the computer to make up for my weaknesses.  I made a paper doll and lined a USPS box with felt.  Here’s my entry:

A little angel glowing in her dressing room.  And see that big pink skirt in the back?  The ruffle is a paper towel that I fed through my ruffler.  That was new to me and turned out well for paper doll clothes.

So if you have a daughter you like crafting with, or just enjoy playing with paper, you might consider this book.  This was a fun crafty project for me.  And for the record, I didn’t recieve any $ for saying so.

Simple Linen Bags

I have enough bags.

Really.  I have too many.

But I couldn’t help myself.  The idea for these bags stuck in my head begging to be made.

 

Fabric: Linen/Rayon blend from JoAnn’s + Atellier and Akiko by Lecien

A pattern for these bags is what I’ll be working on over the next few weeks.  They’ll need a name.  They’ll need some tweeking.  They’ll need some love and patience.  But for now, they’re functional.

Plus they go well with my linen tank.

Oversized Linen Tank

Several of the tops I got in Taiwan came with a little chemise underneathe.  Cute eh?

Then inspired by all the Japanese crafty goodness, I went out and purchased some linen and linen/cotton blends. 

 Pattern for this oversized tank is from Cotton Friend Autumn 2008.

Keeping in mind that I’m not super successful at making clothes, I was so happy with how the tank turned out and how well it went with the chemise.

 Ahhh…Lovin’ linen over here right now.

I’m trying to stretch my sewing skills by attempting some more clothes.  See the button on my side bar?  That’s right, I’ve joined the Great Pants Along over at Stardust Shoes.  The funny thing is that I remember making and wearing a pair of pants for myself in highschool so I’m not sure what I’m so worried about.  But I am.

Christmas Sewing

Yep, I’ve done some Christmas sewing!

Some tote bags for some young boys and girls on my list.

 

And I’ve started on our advent calendar stockings, too!  Woo hoo!  (tutorial here).

 

I’ve only made 7 so far because this house is filled with boys and that’s the number of fabrics in my fabric supply that don’t have flowers and aren’t pink.

I was originally planning on hanging these, but now I’m thinking of just filling a basket and emptying one stocking per day of the snacks inside. They’re the perfect size for holding some kisses for the boys.

There’s still time to join the sew along, if you’d like!  Merry Christmas!

T o r n

I suppose that for the rest of my life I will feel torn.  It had been 15 years since I’d lived in Taiwan and after the haze of being in a different country passed, I had a feeling that I didn’t expect:  the feeling of being home.  I miss the busy city.  I miss weaving my way through crowds.  I didn’t anticipate buying clothes on our trip, but it became quickly apparent that the clothes there fit me better.  I didn’t even try things on – just bought them off the rack and wore them.  But now we’re back.  Our house (which is a normal size) seems super spacious.  I drove to the grocery store yesterday and kept thinking I’d like to get a shopping cart and walk there since it really isn’t that far away and that’s what we’ve been doing for a month anyway.

Taipei. Taken from the world’s tallest building: Taipei 101.

I’m feeling torn.  I miss living where I grew up.  Yet I feel incredibly blessed by all the things we have here, but there were so many things I didn’t miss when we were gone.  Like the house.  And the car.  And it doesn’t help that within minutes of landing in Texas my sinuses were stuffed up due to allergies.  I had a month of free and clear breathing.

  We spent a night in the mountains. Just beautiful.

It took me a week to have the guts to really speak in Chinese.  Two weeks to get really comfortable speaking again.  It was good to see old friends, to have a place to stay.  To learn to dry fry beans  (totally delicious, btw).  To see my kids flourish in a new place.  To have my son say over and over again how much he LOVED dinner at a restaurant we found up the street.  To watch their excitement at taking the metro and high-speed rail.  It was wonderful to see how much the city had changed – how much cleaner it was and how metropolitan in felt.

I have no complaints about our life here.  If God has a plan for us to move, he will have to drop an opportunity in our lap.

I did get a chance to fabric shop.  Surprisingly, Japanese fabric in Taiwan is not much cheaper than in the US.  I found this beautiful piece at a quilt shop that I walked to.  It was 2 miles away and totally worth the walk.  Plus I got exercise so no complaints there.

I’m having trouble with capturing this dark grey-blue.

I found several crafty magazines.  Some local and some Japanese magazines that were translated into Mandarin.  I had originally planned to give them away, but after looking at them, I decided it would be better to purchase some duplicates so I could keep them for myself.

  Cotton Friend is a quarterly magazine, but comes packed with enough patterns to be a book.  Definitely worth every penny.

One of my goals in going to Taiwan was to let the kids appreciate how people in another part of the world live.  I think that goal was accomplished, partially.  It probably won’t stick unless we go regularly as they grow up.  I have a huge dislike of long plane rides, but it was worth it.  One surprising result of our constant grocery shopping in Taiwan was that when I asked them to help me get the grocery bags out of the car yesterday, they ran to come help without complaining.  Big smiles over here.