Mommy & Me Apron!

So the whole premise behind my blogging here is that I will have time, when my babies nap, to sew and make fun things! Well, latley, the napping train has been derailed! I've been in GO mode this week, since it's the last full week I have at home with my babies before I go back to school!! I've had something planned EVERY day! Yesterday was a fun Splash Pad area in a local park (free!!), today we are going here ! I can't wait!! Brooke is into all things crafty and will LOVE this!! If Benjamin can paint with drool, he will be set too! Anyway, I think all of our activities are sometimes too much for Baby Ben and his cat napping in the car has made him not nap for more than an hour at home. Brooke sleeps for 3 hours though! With that being said, I started making these Mommy & Me apron sets sometime last week. As of this post, I have one of the small ones done and all I have left on the Mommy one is to add the ruffles! Must finish!

*I interrupt this post to tell you that my 2 year old (28months) just woke up for the 5th day in a row with a DRY diaper!! Gooo Brooke!! We are diaper free during the day except for sleepy time!! Even though she has been dry when waking up, I'm too chicken to let her sleep in panties! I think it is pretty sad that my 2 year old can sleep through the night w/out having to wake up to pottie.. yet I can not!! LOL!

So, my current To Do list is as follows: finish aprons (at least one set!), make more composition notebook covers for teacher friends, and make some shirts/dresses (?) for ME for school!! I'm scared to attempt making something for me to wear!!! I want something EASY to make, comfortable, and it can not look like a moo-moo!

On to the aprons!!

Here is the madness that was the floor in my sewing room. I goofed on these and didn't look at the fabric before cutting.. so I cut them w/ the pattern on the fabric upside down!! OOOOPs! So.. these particular ones are a little shorter than the pattern calls for, but it's a very forgiving pattern, so I pressed on! :)

Four sweet aprons, all pieces cut and ready to roll!

Here's a close up of the fabrics, too cute!

These are pretty easy to get together and I LOVE the quality of them!! They are fully lined,

gorgeous fabric on both sides, no exposed seams, totally cute!

There is, however, ONE thing that is a thorn in my side with them....

RUFFLES!!! I LOVE the ruffles, they make the apron, but gah all of the pulling, adjusting, pinning, etc!

Viola!! One toddler sized apron finished!!

Thank you Anna for your awesome tutorial!

I am SO PROUD to have been featured on the Yards and Yards blog again, for this very apron!!

Check it out here! Thank you Anna!

The Summer of Luck!

Hello, my name is Tracy apparently I'm lucky!! I used to be the one who NEVER (and I do mean, NEVER) won anything! However, the Summer of 2010 has proved otherwise! Woot!
First, I won 3 fat quarters of fabric from Bree at the Distant Pickles blog! Then, I won a boutique outfit from Molly at Mud Puddles and Ruffles! Last week I BEGGED my friends to "like" The Shoppes at Brownstone Village . I was able to get 50 friends to do this and I won a $100 gift card to the boutiques (which I spent today!!). On my way home I checked my email and found an email from Anna over at Yards and Yards that said I had won her giveaway!! The original winner never claimed their prize so she choose again and I won!! I got to pick a pattern from Little Lizard King. I chose this one!! So excited to make it!

I made a couple of composition book covers (using this tutorial) from Yards and Yards out of the fat quarters:

And here is the loot I scored from The Shoppes at Brownstone Village with my gift certificate!:

I got two shirts (the one on the left was a steal @ $10, on sale from $49!), soup mix, two cupcakes, a sippy strap for Benjamin, 3 sets of bows/clippes for Brooke, a felt flower clippie, a stuffed dog w/ a chime in side for Benjamin, and a bracelet! SCORE! I just LOVE all of my stuff and I love their shops! Oooh! I almost forgot, I also got 4 cookies (since I had roughly $4 left to spend and they were .99 each!).

They were homemade iced sugar cookies in the shape of an apple!

My misson: spend $100. Result: $99.59 spent. Mission ACCOMPLISHED!

Going "green"....ish!

I love the earth and all, but I'm not good at being green. I'm going to try though!! I'll start by using re-usable snack bags and sandwich wraps!! Here is the thrifty nifty sandwich wrap I made that can also double as a place mat once it is unwrapped! A few weeks ago I had made some "prototypes" of fabric snack bags that I love. The one's I'm making now are lined with nylon (wipeable!)!

When I took these pics I hadn't sewed on the velcro yet. I ended up sewing on larger, horizontal pieces. Greatness!

I'm feeling like I need to make a lunch bag as well!

T-shirt to yoga pants transformation!

So, I found this tutorial that shows you how to take an old shirt and convert it into COMFY lounge pants and I fell in LOVE!! I seriously have a TON of old t-shirts that I just can't bear to part with, but I sure as heck can cut them up and make them wearable again! I suppose I can still wear the shirts, but who needs fifty t-shirts (at least!)? Not I, but then again.. who needs fifty pairs of yoga pants either...? I won't make them ALL into pants, but I will make several pairs. Try them for yourself and you will see why! Who doesn't love a comfy t-shirt for their backside!?!

The front of the shirt.

The back of the shirt.

(See, I used to be cool. I used to have friends in fraternities and I would

 go to their parties and events and stuff. Yeah, cool, huh?).

*PRESTO CHANGE-O*

PANTS!! Notice how the front and back graphics go to the front and the side. RAD!

And here is the final product (with the waistband- made from the sleeves!).

You can leave it like that ^ or you can fold it over!

**On this one the seam is on the front and serged. I don't really like it like this.

After this pair I began sewing them so the seam is inside (like it's supposed to be, lol).

Here's a pair for my mom (hadn't added the waistband when I took the pic).

And moi modeling a pair made from one of my dad's old shirts. LOVE THEM!

Here is the waist, sewn the right way. You can leave it up, fold it over, or fold it in!

A new addition!!

There is a new addition to the family... a SERGER!! Woot! I scored this little beauty on Craigslist for $75!

It's a New Home (Janome) MyLock 434. Not sure what any of that means, but I know that Janome makes good stuff, so yay! I cleaned it up and then opened the instruction manual to tackle threading the beast...

OY VEY!!

The person who invented this contraption was a genius! Holy hell, the complexity of threading this thing is mind-boggling! FOUR threads that all go through different holes, hooks, loops, and crevices!

Oh, and there's two needles! I didn't even know that until I got it! LOL!

FOUR spools of thread! Neato reato! There she be.. all threaded and ready to roll (or purr, as it is).

I started playing with it and after a while figured out that it was set on R, which is for a rolled hem. Took some fiddling to figure out how to get it over to S, which is serge. So, serging is when you basically seal the edges of fabric w/ thread (lots of thread) and it cuts off excess fabric, thus giving you a straight line that is all tidy w/ raw edges encased w/in the threads. Clear as mud? Here you can see the little tail coming off on the right side, that is the part it cut off (with the super sharp knife!).

This puppy really hums. I like the sound of it and I like what it can do. My one problem is that I'm not sure how to finish the end. Like, you can't backstitch on a serger so I'm not sure how to get the ends to not unravel. I read that you can tie knots, or use liquid stitch (but it hardens and that's not comfortable), or you can do some other thing where you flip the tail back and sew over it, or something. Obviously, whatever that last thing was, wasn't clear to me!

Exciting stuff, I tell ya!

A Super sweet knot dress!

Brooke pretty much has an obscene amount of dresses...yet I can't stop making more!! I am just in LOVE with this one and the variation I came up with and other variation I saw! The possibilities as well as the fabric options are endless!! Sew.. here it is!

First let's talk about the French seam. What a lovely and wondrous thing this is! This was the first time I had used one and I will definitely be using them again! I never knew how easy they were!
Here is the beauty:

(It's the one up the middle ^. It encases the raw edges completely. Purty!)

Here is the finished product:

And, here it is on my beautiful model!

When I make things, I usually make more than one at a time, to save time. So, I cut out the pieces for this same dress, but with the brown Damask as the dress and the floral as the straps. Then.. I fiddled with it. I didn't add the small elastic in the bottom portion (that makes it bubble out a little), and I had both straps come out and have their own knot, instead of having the one in the middle).

She wore it out on a play date with two of her besties. It cracks me up that her besties are all boys! We rode The Mini Train and then went to get cupcakes!! YUM!

I have SO many other ideas of variations on this dress! It can be shorter and turned into a shirt. I saw one with a bow in the front instead of a knot- super cute! Could add a ruffle.. etc!

 Stay tuned, you will see more!

Boo for busy!

So, along came the weekend and then the week began with two days of  teacher training. That, combined with my sweet baby boy that enjoys eating 2-3 times a night = a tired mama with not much time to blog! I DID, however manage to eek out some projects since I last wrote!

Saturday morning I got a wild hair and wanted to make a plush ribbon teether for Benjamin.... I had a 2 year old helper for this one and I even got breakfast served to me in my sewing room! It turned out to be a VERY productive day!

I started with lots of ribbons in lots of colors, two fleece circles, and pins!

Then I pinned them on and pinned the fleece.

Sew around, leave a space to turn it, then turn.

I stuffed it with batting and a few jingle bells!

Then I added the ribbon to the space where I turned it and top stitched around the whole thing. You can skip this step and just  hand sew the opening shut, being sure to catch the ribbon.

Personally, I like the top stitching. It isn't pretty, but it's cool and Benjamin likes it! :)

And then in walked hubby with this:

MMmmm!! Soo cute! Egg sandwich with a turkey sausage face! Kinda makes you wanna do this:

Arrrgh!

Back to crafting!

I FINALLY was able to machine sew the binding on to Benjamin's quilt! It STILL is not done though.. that would be because in order to finish it, I have to hand stitch the binding to the back. Let me just say that hand stitching is NOT my idea of fun!

I pinned it on.

Then sewed it on.

And then I got to that gap where the binding meets. I looked at the quilt-a-long I have been using to help me (thanks Bree!!), but try as I did.. I could NOT for the life of me do the funky  thing she did with the ends. I think I cut them a smidge too short to be able to fold them over on top of each other like she did. So.... I had to think. And, think hard. Because, at this point if I would have messed this up, I would have slit my wrists. For real. I figured out that I would just sew straight down, snip the excess, then sew it to the quilt like the rest of the binding. The picture above shows how I just sewed straight down there.

See? Then I snip snipped that excess off on the right.

I layed it flat and then sewed the gap there.

And looksie, I did it.. and IT WORKED!!

And, drum roll please... bah duh bah duh bah duh bah duh....

QUILT BINDING IS DONE!!!

*takes a bow*

Since I still had some time on my hands, I got cracking on a pacifier clip for Benjamin, since I lost his (which *amazingly* showed up right after I finished this one!).

It's easy peasy. I just sewed a fabric sheath, turned it, top stitched, sewed a clip on one side and an elastic loop on the other. This owl fabric is sort of nostalgic for me. It is what I used on my vey first (pretty crappy, I might add) tag blanket. Ben has a coordinating crinkle tag toy hanging on his infant carrier as well (not crappy, I might add!) ;)

Okay and if you EVER need to turn a sheath of fabric for whatever reason, you MUST get one of these nifty tools!! I picked it up at Joann's for half off, plus my teacher discount, of course. So, it was pretty cheap actually, but SO rad!! It sort of makes you want to turn tubes of fabric for sport!

This is the one I have, it came with three different sized tubes! Love!

And.. my final Saturday project was re-usable snack bags! These are SO AWESOME!! I have plans to make a ton of these and sell them! These two are fabric bags with a fabric lining and velcro closure.

The ones I make to sell will have a nylon lining and I will have more sizes! :o)

Brooke loves these as well. She thinks the velcro is fun!