Leaving the nest for the first time

Esther started a Zoo Art camp today.  This is her first time going to anything without me or her sister accompanying her.  Here she is leaving in the morning.

I had to crop out a lot of that photo!  Don’t want you the see the general disarray of the kitchen in the morning!

Here she is in the parking lot after I picked her up.

She happens to be sporting a cute little fabric bauble on her headband.  Svetlana of Sotak Handmade sent 6 (!!) of these cute little fabric sandwiches held together by a button and I knew they’d be perfect hair accessories. 

What a great way to use scraps!  My girls love these clips and wear them all the time, in fact I had them get their portraits done earlier this summer and they were each wearing one.  I covered an alligator clip with grosgrain ribbon and then hot glued the clip to the back of the felt on the fabric sandwich.  Like this…

I used sage green and light pink grosgrain ribbon for them all.  The nice thing is you can clip them in hair as is, or clip them on the side of a thin headband for an extra dash of style!  A great way to use up scraps and get the kids interested in making stuff from fabric.  All it took was felt, pinking shears, some scraps and a button to make the fabric sandwich.  The clips you can easily buy on Ebay or Etsy cheaply, or a little more expensively at beauty supply stores.  And the grosgrain ribbon is available easily at all the chain craft stores.  I added a little non-slip sticker on the inside top of my alligator clip, which helps hold it in place a lot better.

Thanks, Svetlana (and your daughters who made them)!!!  The kids love them!

Update on my front door…I painted it right after I posted pics of the ugly old plain front door.

The new door color, which happens to be Ruby Red by Duron, is a major improvement!‘

 

I’m really happy with it and it’s just such a great pop of color that adds some life to the front of our house.  My girls LOVED the new color because they think it looks pink, but I think it’s just the right shade of red for the blue siding.

I’ve read that red is the most welcoming color for a front door, and I’m hoping that holds true for our door!

Potholders or something like that

Two Christmases ago my husband bought me a book I had checked out from the library multiple times, Pretty Little Potholders.  I’ve loved to leaf through the book just to look at the pretty photos, but I’d yet to make a potholder. 

I’m not sure if these classify as potholders since A) there are no hand pockets and B) there are no hangy loops.  But I did line them with Insul-Brite and another layer of batting, so I plan to use them on the dining room table when serving hot dishes, which I believe technically makes them “trivets.”

I got these awesomely modern farmer’s market prints on Etsy at Twigs and Twist.  I plan to make 3 more trivets with the other prints and then maybe a tablerunner or even dishtowels?  I’m not sure, but one thing I’m sure of is how much I love these prints!

I made log cabin blocks for the reverse side.  I had some problems with my layers shifting when I was quilting them, maybe because the batting layer was so thick, and everything was kind of wonky by the time I squared them up. 

But I like them nonetheless and they really spruce up my kitchen.  Did you see Pink Chalk’s newsletter this week?  Kathy featured SOTAK Handmade’s Scrappy Apples and if you look in my photos, you will see that I am the proud owner of one of them!!!  A few weeks ago I was really sick and Svetlana sent me the sweetest package with goodies for me and my daughters.  The apple was one of the treats and I was so thrilled when I saw it!  Wait till I show you what she sent my girls!

I’ve finished the quilt top of my “Come What May” Stash Bee quilt and I have learned a ton from participating in the bee for the past few months.  I hope to get some good photos of the quilt top in the next day or two.  So say tuned for awesome-y modern triangles and dark gray!

A new pincushion

The first thing my one year old does when she goes into the sewing room is head straight for my pincushion.  She loves to pull the pins out and put them back in, and it doesn’t help that I tell her “no” and try to take it away,  making it all the more desirable. 

For the past few weeks I have been organizing my sewing room and painting the walls.  It’s been a major switcheroo—moving stuff from one side and back so I can move bookcases out from the walls and get behind them.  In the process, I put the pincushion somewhere that Ronnie couldn’t find it, and I lost it for good.  Haven’t seen it in at least 2 weeks.  So, I decided to make a new one following Svetlana’s super easy tutorial at SOTAK Handmade.

It was really pretty simple and I loved how her trick using Heat n Bond Lite really kept the small squares together perfectly.  I even did a little hand stitching around the perimeter with a dark green embroidery floss I had on hand.  The fabric is mostly leftover scraps from Punctuation by American Jane.

You can see the miniscule little pin holes in the fabric because I didn’t get a chance to take a photo of it and this is what it looks like when it’s in daily use:

Thanks for such a great tutorial, Svetlana!

I have been making a dress for my daughter for Read Across America.  It is Dr. Seuss themed and here is a little sneak peek of the body of the dress.

I just finished it up completely and it’s hanging on a hanger waiting to be tried on by Bea.  I do believe it will fit just fine.  I used a directional print with words on it for the sleeves, and they are not quite right (one is turned one way, and the other is turned upside down—but when viewed from the back one is going the right way and the other is upside down, so we are going to live with it).   Otherwise, I am pretty thrilled with the results and am definitely going to learn how to use my secondhand serger before I attempt to make another one.  It would make finishing the seams so much faster.

Also, we got a new addition to our family yesterday.

Our older Siamese cat, Mickey, has been losing weight for no medical reason, but I think he’s lonely since he’s always had his brother (from the same litter) and two other cat friends, all who have passed away in the past 5 years from various ailments.  So we got him a friend and her name is Oreo.  Good thing she likes sewing!  She fits right in.