Should've Seen It Coming...

Here it is! My wonderful hooded scarf! It's hard to get a good picture of something when you aren't doing it yourself, but my husband isn't nearly as cute as I am in it, so this will have to do. :) I have another of it wrapped, but I can only stand so many pictures of myself, so use your imagination. It really is cute, so I'm almost sad that Spring is on it's way. Almost.


As for seeing it coming...the dress. I really should've expected this... I searched high and low for a sleeve that refused to be found and then I lucked out by finding the same fabric at the store I purchased from a year ago. Even they said I lucked out since it's a closeout shop. So, I was thrilled and set to work on my dress. I finished the sleeves and the band around the waist, just needed to hem it. I was too excited to wait, so I tried it on... and it didn't fit and never will. I have measured myself and I'm about back to my normal size everywhere, but the band that is supposed to run under the bust makes it's way directly across mine. Awesome. I'm not surprised, really, I have had this problem with shirts and dresses in similar styles, so I don't know what I was thinking. It's beyond any alterations I can do, so It's now back on my desk, waiting to be hemmed, but I can't bring myself to put the work into something I can't even use. But this brings me to my next project...

A dressform. I will not be buying a dressform. One of the reasons I like to make things is because it's fun, another is because I can make something unique, but another is that I don't have a lot of money to buy a wardrobe. Dressforms, if you haven't looked into buying one, are expensive. So I, with the help of my husband, will be making a dressform. I found directions on the internet and will be getting most of my supplies today, so I'll be sure to post the results soon. I'm excited about this one! Not only will I get a clone of myself (there really should be more of me around :P), I will be able to alter my patterns to fit ME, thus wasting less of my time and money and stuff that ends up not fitting. Brilliant!

Mini Update

I really could've waited for this, but why would I want to? :) I finished my hooded scarf!!! I actually finished it a few days ago, but it is finished, wearable, wonderful and I'm so happy to have finally finished something for myself. I have a bad habit of starting and not finishing those projects for Me. I'll be sure to get pictures up soon, I really don't know why I haven't taken one already.
Next up on the agenda is to finish the dress I started for Easter last year. When I realized it wasn't going to fit my quickly expanding, pregnant frame, I put it on hold for other projects and just left it there. I started hand-stitching the inside of the waist, have a little machine sewing to do before I can finish up by hand, but in order to do that I have to find me a sleeve. I have no idea where it went or how, but I either have to find it or dig out the fabric and hope I can find the pattern piece. This is what I get for not finishing in the first place. I'm just hoping after all this that it will actually fit. I'm almost back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but still nursing, so my size isn't quite what it normally is, if you know what I mean. :)
Well, that's what we have to expect in the next week or so, a picture of a scarf and a dress that could very possible be way to tight in the chest to actually wear. Back to searching for a sleeve!

Well, I tried...

I really did... One project a month. Doesn't sound hard at all...unless you have a baby that just looooooves being held. :) I did manage to get the hood portion and well over half of the scarf done for my hooded scarf and I bet I can have it done by the end of the week. As long as I get something else completed by the end of the month, I'm hoping to stay on track. So until then I'll have to make up for my lack of projects with a picture of a finished one from a month or so ago. A close friend of mine had her beautiful baby girl, Jillian, months ago and being me, it took me way too long to send along the gift. I wanted to make her a hooded towel and it was actually why I decided to go ahead and make some for the boys. I figured that while I was at it, I might as well. Jillian's was a little more fun though...

Isn't she a cutie? And making something pink is always a nice change of pace. :) I hope she gets a lot of use out of it.

Happy New Year and Finished Projects!

Happy New Year, Everyone! :)

Our family had Christmas in Wisconsin again this year and except for the part about passing illnesses to one another, we had a wonderful time! We brought along a few things that I made for my boys, my nieces and nephew and something for my future sister-in-law, Chelsea.

First up, some fun little tutus and ballets skirts for my nieces. These are mostly no-sew, just a lot of tulle cutting and tying. The elastic is sewn together, but you can also use ribbon (or so I hear). Here they are after completion...

...and here they are on the girls! Malia is on the left and Kaelana is on the right. I had taken pictures of Zeke trying them on so I could send them to my mom to give her an idea what they would look like. Poor little Zeke loved them SO much, he insisted there had to be boy tutus, too and he wants one in Spiderman colors. Any ideas? lol

These are some simpler ballet skirts made with ribbon, tulle and thread. Nothing over the top about these, just simple and pretty, made prettier by my beautiful nieces.

This one was so fun, I just had to make it for my nephew August. The pattern, found here shows X's for eyes and that creeped out my sister, so I went with a plain dot. I used Caron Simply Soft and it worked out great. I am already thinking of a few other kids who would look cute in this hat, so I'm pretty sure I'll have to keep an eye out for some yarn sales and stock up!

Here it is on Aug Dawg! Just love this hat!!! And he knew what it was before he even finished pulling it out of the paper, smart little dude.

Meet Chelsea, my lovely sister-in-law to be. Chelsea is definitely on the tall side. I don't know the numbers here, even though I'm sure she has told me, but I am thinking somewhere in the 6' range. Anyway, tall equals long and my brother Nate told me she has a hard time finding hoods that fit her correctly, so I knew I wanted to make her a nice, hooded scarf, despite the fact I couldn't find a pattern I liked. I measured, tweeked and figured out which stitches I wanted to use and finally came up with this. Doesn't she look adorable?!?! You can't tell from this picture, but I tried to make it long enough for her, over 6', so it wouldn't look puny on her. It's nice and soft too, made out of JoAnn's Sensations Rainbow Classic in white. I hope she is able to get a lot of use out of it!

And finally, my own kids, including Phin in his (late) debut on here. Here they are modeling the hooded towels that I made for them. A friend of mine sent me a link one day for hooded towels that were simply made out of hand towels and bath towels and then personalized with fleece. Sounded easy enough, but tell that to my sewing machine! Lots of layers to sew through meant it took a little work, but they turned out very nice and I'll probably be making them again sometime, maybe try doing some edging or something. These are all made the same size with a decent sized bath towel and a halfed hand towel for the hood.

And that's about it. I have one more gift going out in the mail tomorrow that wasn't intended as a Christmas gift, it's more of a really, really late new baby gift for a friend of mine. :) Once she gets it, I'll be sure to get pictures up. I'm already thinking ahead to Christmas 2010 and how I'd like to put a few more people on my list, so it'll be a much earlier start for me. In the meantime, I need to figure out what to do next. My sister and I both want hooded scarves now, so that's on the list. More fish hats perhaps or a pair of longies for Phin? Or maybe those socks I never finished for Josh. Yes, those socks. I know, I know... I still want to do all the things on my "thinking about doing" list, too, and that list is growing in my head every time I go looking through patterns. Well, it is a new year and I'm going to try and do at least one project a month and see what I can get done. I should probably put that on my calendar or something so I don't forget! :)

I guess that means I need to get started on something new so I can have a post up by January 31st! Until then, have a great start to the new year!!!

And She's Off!!!

Less than a month until Christmas and that means I have some very busy nights ahead of me! Project after project, knitting, tying and sewing! I have almost all the materials I'll be needing, a few things have been started and one gift is all done. Not a bad start! There is still plenty to do, though, so I hope Phin will cooperate with me the next few weeks. I am so excited about these things, I can't wait to see how everything turns out! The only bummer? No pictures until after Christmas and everyone has their stuff. :)

There is a napping baby in my house and this time can't go to waste. There is tulle calling to me! :)

My last big project for a little while...

At least I think it will be. It's a carseat organizer I made for the kiddos, since we moved them to the back of the van. I wasn't even sure I wanted to start it, but I was able to complete it in just a couple days. I also replaced the elastic in some diapers and I'm just waiting on one to be re-waterproofed so I can fix that one, then I can pack up my sewing stuff for a while and get ready for the baby.

So here it is...super fancy. :)

That's all folks! Nothing too exciting, but it's nice to get things done that you've been procrastinating on. This was definitely something I had been waiting on a looooong time. Now let's just hope I"m not waiting on this baby for much longer. :) Until next time!

I Did It! I Did It! The Newborn Diapers Are Done!!!

If it hasn't been made clear, I finally finished my newborn fitteds! It was a pretty time-consuming process, but that's mostly because I have to make everything as complicated as humanly possible.

These are all made with the Darling Diapers pattern. The first three pictures are of the Tiny Newborn size and the outers are stretchy or at least somewhat stretchy cotton knits that I found at JoAnn. The second group of three are the Newborn size and are all made with woven, non-stretchy fabrics also found at Joann. For all of these, the hidden part of the diaper and underside of the soaker are made with Bamboo fleece and the inners are Bamboo Velour. Bamboo Velour is SO, so soft and it dyes up really well with Dylon, as you can see. You can also see that while counting my pieces and figuring out which ones would be which colors, I messed up somewhere. I switched up the sizes for a red soaker, so two are mismatched and the left diaper in the bottom row was suppose to be all yellow inside. Whoops! At least the blue kind of matches. :)


The inners of the Tiny Newborn size...




The front of the TN size...



The back of the TN size...

The center diaper in the bottom row is probably my least favorite of all I made. With the mismatched inner, tabs that match the diaper, but not the inner and then the wrong colored thread used to stitch the tabs...it's just craziness. My favorite of these would probably be the Hawaiian print on the top left. It's just so cute!!! I saved some of the fabric to make undies for the big boys, too. :)

The inners of the Newborn size...

The front of the NB size...

The backs of the NB size...

I like all of these, for the most part. Not crazy about the natural soaker in the otherwise red inner of the top right diaper. I particularly like the Snoopy Flannel and the Packer and space wovens. The Packer inner is actually mismatched on purpse, so no mistake there. :) I also got extra of the planet fabric to make the boys undies with.

A more close-up picture of the fabrics I used, except for the plain blue and red stretch knits...

Overall, I'm happy with the work I did, especially since this was my first try at diapers. This won't be my entire newborn stash. I have a bunch of prefolds as well as a couple little pockets. From here I'll be going to mostly pockets and I also have a bunch of small fitted pieces cut out and ready to go, but I am short on materials and time right now, so those will have to wait a bit. The next items on the agenda are some nursing pads and I'm also going to be replacing the shot elastic in some bumGenious! pockets. Busy, busy! If only I could do it all in my recliner. :)