Reverisble Bird Seed Skirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

Reverisble Bird Seed Skirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

I just found a new blog and she does a giveaway biweekly! All of her creations are original and so cute! You have to post a link to her current giveaway post to enter the drawing so I thought I would give it a shot. All of her past giveaways are so darling I probably will be giving it a shot fairly often. You should check out her work some time.

Lisa DeJohn

I found this artist, Lisa DeJohn, through a really cool site called LillaRogers.com which represents some great illustrators. I was especially drawn to DeJohn's work. She's done some really neat pattern/surface design, collage work, and paintings. I really enjoyed her surface design especially and love her use of color. 

What a hoot!

Here are the flannel PJ pants for Olivia. I thought it would be fun to make a little pillow that coordinated with her pants since the fabric is so cute. So introducing my very first completely original pattern! I actually made the pillow first because I got so excited about the idea. I just used scraps that I had, mostly from Brennan's dino pillow. It was really fun and satisfying to make something from scratch and I think the idea of PJ sets with matching pillows is a really cute idea too. I would make a couple adjustments to our little owl friend but she still turned out pretty cute. 

I learned ALOT about elastic waist bands doing these pants. I got so frustrated I almost ripped my stitching from pulling so hard to get the dang elastic through the casing. I learned three things: 1. Even if you follow the given directions to a tee adjustments have to be made sometimes. 2. I need a jumbo safety pin to hook onto the end of the elastic to make the elastic band experience much more enjoyable 3. I hate elastic! I finally got the elastic through by attaching the end of the band to an unsharpened pencil with packing tape and ripping it through the casing :). I waited to do the rest on the pants the next day so that I was in a better mood. Happily I finished them and the fit and worked out just fine. Though I'm looking forward to trying these again and more gracefully creating an elastic waistband.

PROJECT#7: Liv's New Dress

Here's the dress! I have to say I am glad that this project is completed. Things that I found simple to do with her top I struggled with on the dress! I just couldn't seem to get the curves of the button hole tabs. I think I reshaped my stitching about four times and they still aren't symmetrical. I think I was just having an off night but I was too stubborn just to put it down and stop. So there was a lot of stitching, ripping out stitches, huffing, re-stitching, and more huffing. But now its complete and it fits her quite nicely. It is a bit longer than I was envisioning but that will give her room to grow :). Despite all the frustrations it was all worth it to watch her hold up her new dress and hear her say, "Oh mommy what beautiful buttons! Oh mommy what a beautiful job! I love it, I love it!". All of this said while dancing around her bedroom. I'm not even making this up, my daughter is never short on dramatics.

I'm happy with it especially since she's so happy with it. I've got the flannel cut out for her pants so I'll probably brave that one sometime tonight. I've been neglecting dishes and laundry to sew during the day so I need to restrain myself and catch up on the house :).

Because it makes me smile...

I had to share theses, just because :).

PROJECT#6: Liv's New Top!

Well I did it, my first garment! I've been looking forward to making my first piece of clothing and I'm so excited about the results. I'm even proud of my mistakes :). Her top is made from a "New Look Kids!" pattern from Wal-Mart which are great for practicing and learning because they only put you back about 3 bucks. I got the fabric at JoAnn's for $2 (some of which I have left over) and the buttons for $1.75, so Olivia's new top cost $6.75, not bad :). I think the most challenging part of this little shirt was the appliqued pockets (which I added to the pattern and are not completely round along the bottom as they should be) and the button holes (first attempt on that one). Other than that it wasn't too bad. My mom helped me out a great deal with piecing all the pieces together, especially the facing onto the outer shell. The directions for all of that on the pattern were a little confusing, especially since I am a severely visual learner and the diagrams leave out a bit. Next I'm going to be making the full length dress off of the same pattern and some flannel PJ pants using the pants pattern off of the same pattern as well. I think the pants are going to be a bit of a challenge the first time around, we'll see how it goes.

Prototype #1

So here's the beginnings of prototype #1, which will stay beginnings because I'm not even going to finish it. There's too much to change and adjust. I started out doing the arms and legs as separate pieces as you can see. I'm nixing that idea and am going to have the body arms and legs all as one piece and then sew a seam across the tops of the legs and arms to create joints in a sense. I think I'll do the same at the neck to give more definition. Plus the limbs are too skinny and I need to do some adjustments to the hair. In short it's back to the drawing board. 

Katie Doll

My Mom and I are going to be working on Olivia's dress this weekend. In the meantime I'm going to be working on the doll I designed a while back, maybe more than a year ago. I've done some online research and there's a lot of neat stuff out there in the relm of handmade dolls. Here are some of my favorites. I found these in a flickr group. So far I've made a pattern based on my sketch and am currently working on the prototype to see how my proportions and shapes work out. I'll continue to share the process and hopefully we'll end up with a beautifully finished doll! I'm excited to work on this and see the outcome(s) and I'm excited to share! 

A child's imagination becomes reality.

I saw this photograph on my husband's blog so I have to give him credit for finding it, but it was so cool I had to blog about it myself. Photographer Yeondoo Jung has taken the drawings of children and duplicated them as a reality in a photo shoot. A photograph of a child's imagination. This concept to me is so interesting and creative. There is a series of these exhibited on his site but this one is by far my favorite.

Fun findings during some online wanderings.

I found some fun new sites with neat things to look at, mostly for kids, but being a mother getting gifts for your children is kind of like getting gifts for yourself. Though I couldn't afford most anything from these sites anyway. But I love window shopping, even if its a web window :). The shirt is from ittikid. Their clothes host a ton of fun patterns and prints, Scandinavian design. I thought the viking was really cute. The wooden toys and the wall critter are from romp. I thought those play veggies were so cute, although is it malicious to cut up something with a little smiling face on it? The clock, which I love, is from fawn&forest. There were a million other things that I liked, but just wanted to highlight a few. So if you ever want to go window shopping from your office chair here's a few sites you can check out.

PROJECT#5: Olivia's Pockets

Ok, so I know I said that my next project would be a dress which this is obviously not. I haven't purchased the fabric for our dresses yet and I was going through sewing withdraw so I decided to try and make something with what I had. I had been thinking about making a bedside organizer for Olivia to store her little books and things but the pattern I have was a bit too complicated for what she needed so I ended up referencing a hanging organizer designed by BurdaStyle (the Tory). The coolest thing about it is that I repurposed a canvas tote that I received from the hospital when Liv was born. Anyone who has had a baby knows that you get about a million things to take home from the hospital and only end up using about a quarter of it. I have an identical tote from Jackson's birth and two huge canvas totes which we use when we go to the rec center. Anyway I ripped out the seams and used half the canvas for the organizer back and repurposed the handles for the straps. I'm very pleased with how it turned out and Liv really likes her "pockets". I have enough canvas and strap to make one for Jackson when he moves out of the crib :).

Story Time

Here's Brennan and his dino, Isn't he so cute! (Brennan, not the dino ;) )

PROJECT#4: Brennan's Dino

Hello all. I finished this project a couple of weeks ago and am just now getting around to posting it. I made this dinosaur pillow for my nephew Brennan. I recently got back from a visit to Indiana and was able to be there for his fourth birthday. I think he really liked it. I've been told he's been seen reading books while lounging on his dinosaur :). This was such a fun project for me. I got the pattern out of a stash that my Mom had. I redesigned the head; my Mom helped me create patterns out of newspaper for the pieces I was wanting to add and alter. It was so satisfying to take a sketch and translate that idea into three dementional form. I was very pleased with the outcome. I'm hoping to get a pic of Brennan on his dino, I'll post it when I get one :). Olivia really liked it as well, I think there will be a girly dinosaur in my sewing future. My next project/projects are dresses for Olivia and I . I'm really excited about trying my hand at clothing. Stay tuned for the results, hopefully I'll have something to post!