Handmade Holidays: Ornaments

This holiday season ended up being a pintastrophe. Every Pinterest find turned into a disaster. I have yet to find/follow/execute a proper bird seed ornament. The kids' jammies were finished right before bedtime on the 24th (OK, big kid got pants, little kid had to wear a pair of leggings that matched, more or less), and the cross stitch ornaments never got finished. Moving on.

Painted ornaments for godparents. PX actually did a very careful, thoughtful job. Lots of color blocking and q-tip dots. BH gave zero effs and just wanted ALL the paint. ALL of it. More and more and more colors!

Preschool-made ornament by PX. It was supposed to be a grandparent gift (boohoo!), so we get to keep it. Not sure how to seal it so we don't have glitter/crumbs everywhere...

PX saw this in my bin o' stuff to be painted, and he insisted on making it for his baby sister. She had a very moosey Christmas! Sweet boy. He did his painting while she napped (and she while he was at school), so it was a real surprise for her.

No time to cross-stitch? Problem solved with a little heat-n-bond, puff paint, wool felt, and enough drying time. She got a matching pillow case for her big girl pillow.

Why did I buy so much sperm whale fabric? Matches his own pillow case (and his shirt, and his backpack...), and he has plans to make a family portrait of the four of us using four whales. Ha! Someday.

This is one of eighteen, each individual, sent to family. We missed the big extended family party because we were in Chicago for a different big extended family party. I thought to myself, "this is the perfect kind of project to photograph and write a tutorial for!" But the reality of squeezing in time to make 18 means no tutorial. I found a Sew Mama Sew project that was similar, but I wanted to use two fabrics, and I didn't like the way it looked just using a semicircle. So, I made my own almost-semicircle to make the folds more even. Uhg, these pictures are obnoxiously focused. This is what happens when you have to fight the battle with too little light. F-stop vs ISO. Sigh. Looked better on my teeny camera screen!

Last one! I didn't make this. It's from M's family, so it is at least 20 years old. His mom had mad talent, and I am so thankful to have pieces of her work. Especially when they have teeny holiday calico fabric and pompoms. 

I love the new year, even though it is only the illusion of a fresh start. I feel so motivated to get all my projects done, but I am also motivated to work out and cook and tidy and travel and hike and....sigh. Off to go do! Something! Anything!

Birthday, Thanksgiving, Advent

Time flies when you're having fun. It flies even faster if you're having fun and working non-stop.

Here's one week's work. Or, approximately ten hours of Gilmore Girls episodes worth. Time management has never been my strong point, so of course these are getting all the attention while my personal Christmas projects gather dust. Soon, soon. 

Birthday came and went (I grow old!), Thanksgiving did the same. "Buy Nothing Day" turned into "Do Nothing Day" and we barely even left the house all weekend. So many projects, so little time. The Halloween and Fall decorations are finally down, the Advent wreath is up, and we're slowly preparing for the Christmas tree. It is hard to get the tree up when the kids keep dumping ALL THE TOYS where it needs to go. I don't have an Advent calendar. I don't have a pile of 25 books to unwrap each day. I don't have the three dollar felt tree kit from Target that everyone is dying to have (though, I admit that I keep checking for it). I don't have kids who care about these things, so we will be ok!

In house excitement, we came up with a more-permanent-temporary fix for the leak in the kids' room which initially involved spray foam and then turned into some other kind of spray sealant. Many, MANY days of rain mean leaky roofs and grumpy humans. Don't ever buy a house with a flat roof. I love this house, and historically it didn't have a flat roof. I pushed, but not hard enough, to change it back to a plain dormer before we got our new roof.  Can't anyone just patch in the roof, you ask? No, of course not! Not stone-coated steel! Some day. Not soon, not soon.

A Tribute to Gutermann 266

I can't decide if this means I do too many sewing projects with blue, or not nearly enough. Gutermann 266, I had no idea how much I love you.  I found these gems while trying to apply the principles of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up to my sewing supplies. I would say that these most definitely spark joy, so they stay.

Organizing sewing things is much, much harder than I thought. I can't find some easy, intuitive way to store things. I ogle pinterest sewing rooms, but I don't want to go out and buy a ton of matchy-matchy storage containers just to have them not be what I really need. I thought I knew where to start, but now I've hit a road block. My sewing stuff is still piled up in the living room, and baby stuff is still piled up in the sewing room. At this point, I feel like I need to be next to the kids, and having them up in the sewing room is almost out of the question. How do they ALWAYS find the sharpies?! There's also the small matter of finding wasp carcasses up there. How? Why?? And life wasps in the basement. Again, how? WHY? For now we'll stick with our "make it work" set up of sewing in the dining room then shoving everything into the parlor and closing the pocket doors when company comes.

November, already?

Halloween has come and gone. Kids' costumes were ready for the preschool party on the 29, adult costumes were ready in time to scoot to Lauren's work to trick-or-treat on the 30th. Hot glue was still wet when we dashed out the door, but dry by the time we arrived. Win! The kids got some candy, but they were mostly interested in playing in giant pits of balloons. Can't blame them! PX did get a little upset no one knew who we were--oh son. You come from a long line of geeks. Get used to it. Today I have to put away all the Halloween decorations and find all the Easter eggs (from Mike's costume, Easter Bunny).  The kids keep hiding them...

I used to be vehemently opposed to letting anything Christmas related creep into the house before Thanksgiving. Now, if homemade gifts are going to be ready in time, I have to work early.  All the ornaments for the extended family are finished but need labels attached (hand made stamp from The Small Object two years ago).  My new job (!!!) involves sewing, so I am very glad I got the ornaments done. What little free time I had is earmarked for drool pads! Striking a home/work balance when I'm not making enough to afford a sitter and the kids aren't big enough to safely entertain themselves while I work is going to be interesting. So far I've learned that they can't be trusted with pin cushions or drawers of sharpies, and all my attempts at organization have been undone. Never a dull moment!

Rockin' Chair: Part 2

It is at this point in the process that I am ashamed to admit the rocking chair will require three separate blog entries.  That's half of my posts thus far!

I cleaned up a bit for you guys. I didn't want 18 mid-progress Christmas ornaments to distract you. Plus, spoilers. I started by measuring the base of the seat.  This is where my handy-dandy cutting mat really..uh...comes in handy.  My sewing soulmate (Aunt K) gave it to me for my birthday two years ago and it is used non-stop! I added four inches all around and made my cuts to the turquoise colored corduroy.  I knooow I just got RID of the cord, but I couldn't think of anything else that would wear so well!  And all my utility weight fabric would show ALL the dirt. We got the cord today at JoAnn. Speaking of...

This is NOT the way to cut fabric for a customer. Holy heck. If I had the time, I'd have a Tumblr dedicated to bad JoAnn cuts. The worst ever was when I got such a severe parallelogram that I didn't have enough yardage for my project. Clarice never would have stood for this nonsense! (Clarice worked at the old JoAnn location on Gravois. The charming one with all the leaks in the roof. You know the one. Infinitely better than Super Joann locations.) (Also, I just had to go back and switch all the "Joann's" to "JoAnn".  Who knew JoAnn was the Aldi of craft stores?)

At this point I started wishing I had kept the old cover to use as a pattern.  Send in the freezer paper! I just had to trim the edge a bit, then I marked it with where I needed to make my cuts. This picture looked a lot sharper on my little lcd screen. Hrmm. I made cuts where the seat met the seat back and did a very narrow 1/8 hem around them.

Then outside with all my tools to staple it to the bottom. BH was napping, and I didn't think a staple gun and hammer would help with that.  I hate upholstering things. I can never get the corners to look great, and it's always puckered. What's funny is the one upholstering expert I know is the nicest person ever and would probably give me the side eye for not asking for help. To which I would respond, "I can do it mySELF!" Following the trend of use-what-you-find, I used a tiny crochet hook like an awl to poke through the fabric while putting the screws back. 1. Blue tape kept them totally organized. Win. 2. I'm glad I took pictures of the chair before I took it apart because on one side there were seven holes and only five screws. Whew.

Boom! Next up: cushions. PX looked at it and said, "Uhh...I wanted the whole thing to be that blue." Wait for it, son. Wait for it!

School Bags and Moose Jammies

Most average human beings would roll their eyes at me for feeling like we've officially over-scheduled our kids.  PX has preschool 2x/wk for 2.5 hrs, and each kid takes one thirty-minute gymnastics class. You guys. That is FOUR DAYS IN A ROW I have to BE somewhere ON TIME with my ACT TOGETHER. And really, preschool days count doubly because I have to drop him off AND pick him up! ON TIME! Which, according to my observation, means fifteen minutes early.  Poor Bebe. If she naps after he gets home, she's up all night. If I toss her in her crib as soon as we get home at noon, I have to wake her up prematurely to go get bro. We'll figure it out. Or continue to suffer the sleep deprivation we've all felt the past ::double-checks math:: 42 months.

The boy's bag. It's the "Great Big Tote" from Virginia Lindsay's Sewing to Sell: How to Sell Locally & Online. Hm. More on the book another time. For now, let me just say I requested it from the local library BEFORE I found out about CPSC/local/state/fed requirements. So it is great, but the topics covered have taken a backseat to legal stuff for now.  Back to the bag: I completely redid all the measurements to make it more Finn-sized. It's about 14 x 16 x 2.5, with 18 inch straps. It's a bit large! The pockets are just right for storing contraband toys, like trains and dinosaurs. 

The front pocket is a squid, colored with heat-set crayon and gel pen. It is lined with a DS Quilts print, which I used again for the back pocket. The teal doesn't read quite right from far away, but up close I really dig it. The sperm whale fabric is from the "Don't be Crabby!" line for Robert Kaufman.

As soon as I presented the bag to PX, BH pointed to herself and said, "Ah-MAH!" Which means something along the lines of "Gimme!" and "Me, TOO!" She doesn't need a bag, but she sure could use another moose shirt. How many moms have had to say that? Every single day, we ask what she wants to wear and she signs moose. Every day. If she can see her moose shirt in the dirty laundry, she drags it out and tries to put it on. I guess it IS rather special--a four-times-handed down shirt from all her Conley cousins. Aunt Liz gave her moose jammies from Bar Harbor, but it's a wee hot for them yet. Mama to the rescue. A onesie and pants set.  These are upcycled from a pair of PJ pants my Aunt Mary Jo gave me (Christmas 2003) and were finally worn beyond repair.  The pants are loosely based on Georgia Leigh's Ankle Biter pattern. Mike said, "Hey! You have a pair that look just like this!" ::thud::

The onesie was leftover from the pile of blanks I bought for PX's monthly onesies. I had the Wonder-under (actually...not Wonder-under. Wonder-under is the "Kleenex" of fusible stabilizers. This was actually Heat and Bond Lite), thread, and elastics, so this little set cost me nothing but time. In other news, moose antlers are really REALLY hard to stitch around. The onesie stretched (knits! ahrg!) and the plaid stretched and it isn't perfect. Next time I'll try with an open-toe foot.

Not a bad week for sewing, really. Not the best week for photography (might need a spot besides the clothesline) or laundry (sweet lord, it is piling up!) but that's ok, too. 

Hello again.

Time to get back at this whole blogging thing. For now, I'll focus on documenting my sewing projects.  I'll probably share about our family's adventures--our travels, our wacky old home, our frequent invasions by neighborhood goats.

Our newest adventure started today as our first-born started school.  "Mama, I need a sperm whale shirt to go with my sperm whale backpack." OK, then. Not sure if he's spoiled or just has more-than-average amounts of autonomy when it comes to fashion design, but he got his shirt. He got his backpack, too, but that hasn't been photographed yet.  Not with the good camera, anyway!  It has been filled and dumped, and filled again, and dragged through the yard, and off to school.  But no photo (yet).

The shirt has a mommy whale, a daddy whale, and a baby whale. "But shouldn't there be a fourth whale? Maybe a baby sister whale?" "Nope." The child knows what he wants. Always. He chose exactly which whales, exactly where to put them, and exactly which color blue to use around their edges.