Tag: sewing

Monthly Review
Monthly Review

Monthly Review

LSiehLeave a comment

It’s that time again! It’s been one more month of this crazy idea of mine, so I thought it was time to review my progress. Lately I’ve felt rushed and not very crafty, so it was good to sit down and see what I actually accomplished. I was tempted to hold off on writing this until I could maybe finish one more craft project, but decided honesty was best.

The thing I’ve learned most this month is to really focus on being more productive with the time I have. I’ve had to shift my dinner prep time to the mornings, or lean more on the Husband to help get it done, which has forced me to be more prepared.

I’ve also reset my alarm to be 15 minutes earlier, so that on mornings I have less time, I can still get things done. I have had some episodes of insomnia and have been able to get things done when I would normally be sleeping. It’s not an ideal situation, I’d rather have the sleep, but at least I can be a little productive. This morning was one of those mornings. Fancy woke me up at 5:30 am to go outside and I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I’ve washed two cast iron pans, made taco meat for dinner, and made eggs and bacon for breakfast. Now I just want a nap, of course.

So on the the review:

23 new recipes, 5 of them were family/my recipes. I used six new cookbooks, Market Fresh, Bacon 24/7, Icebox Pies, Nancy Drew, Garlic, and the Food of China.

The hits for the month were definitely the Thai Spiced Duck from Garlic, and the Pasta Carbonara from Bacon 24/7. The Husband also liked the Smothered Pork Chops from the Nancy Drew cookbook. Pretty much everything is a make again. We didn’t have a whole lot of misses. I’ve been going with my gut for seasoning and adding more spices if I think they might be necessary. I’ve also had the Husband do more with actually making the dinner and it’s worked well.

I’ve realized that I should remember that I don’t have to make a new recipe every day, especially on days where I have to work late. Canned soup, leftovers, or things from the freezer are also good options. The Husband assures me that he can actually feed himself if he needs to.

We are getting better about meal planning and I’m trying to use what we have. Making more things, like the crescent dough and flour tortillas for dinner tonight is also theoretically helping our food budget. We’re terrible at sticking to one when we go to the store, so if I can automatically take some of the items off the list, it will help. It can be super annoying sometimes. Lately all it seems I’ve been doing is cooking and it leaves no time for crafting or sewing. Hopefully I can make a better balance with those two things.

Speaking of crafting, I did nowhere near as well as I wanted to with finishing projects. The Snowball quilt top is still not ironed and folded in a pile and I haven’t finished any other big projects either. I mostly made Etsy or vending items, which I need to take better pictures of so I can post them. I’m going to run a sale on my Etsy store in the next week, but want to get some more items up first.

The finished craft list is 4 tea wallets, Kanzashi pins, and two hip wraps, a black and gold one and a grey and black wrap. Granted, I was out of power for a few days and have had extra work, but it’s still a little disappointing. I started it to get motivated to finish things, not let them sit half finished.

I get antsy and cranky though when I haven’t had a good crafting session or a good book to read, so I know I need to fit it in. I’m a counselor, for goodness sake! I tell my clients all the time that they need to find the time for self-care and for things that make them happy. You’d think I’d be able to make myself follow my own therapeutic goals… I should have some time on Wednesday and Thursday to buckle down and clear out a space to sew in. I’ll try to decide later tonight what project for me I’ll work on this week. Normally the decision of what to make is half the battle. I did straighten up my craft space bookshelf and find several more craft/sewing books as well.

Also, a confession… The Husband and I went to the thrift store to see if we could find a dog gate because Fancy is getting too pushy around his computers. We didn’t find a gate, but did come home with three new cookbooks… I couldn’t help myself, and he enabled me. 🙂 One is a slow cooker book, which is good, the one we have has not been terribly impressive. The second one is a Lebanese cookbook and has five separate kibbe recipes in it. I was introduced to fried kibbe last year and it is amazing. There’s lots of lamb recipes too, which the Husband was excited about. The third one is a home cheese making cookbook! It has recipes for homemade cheeses and how to use them.

I know, I shouldn’t have even looked, but I did and somehow the books just leaped into my hands and came with me to the checkout. And now that they are here, I have to add them into the rotation.

So my goals for this next month will be to stay away from the cookbook section in any stores, finish at least two big craft projects, and use at least two new cookbooks. I think it’s doable.

In the meantime, I have a dog dancing a jig because she wants to go for a walk and tortillas to finish.

Stay tuned this week for my new favorite picture of my Fancy pup and thanks for reading along.

 

 

 

 

A Dress is Made and a Quilt is Delivered
Crafty

A Dress is Made and a Quilt is Delivered

LSiehLeave a comment

What to do when you need a fancy dress and have five hours? Make one, of course!

I made this dress to go to a Dita Von Teese show nd it was a ton of fun. Sadly, I was heading up the stairs to the seats and somehow stepped sideways on the side of it and ripped it straight across. It stopped at the side dart luckily, but it was still sad. I fixed it though and it looks as good as new.

The pattern is Mcall’s Evening Elegance, M5002. I don’t know if it is still in print. I got the pattern and the fabric from a friend from my craft group and it was fun to finally use it. It is red cotton with gold Chinese dragons all over it.  It’s a tunic dress, so has slits up to the hips and I will wear it over pants. For the show I wore leggings and boots, but I also have a pair of gold pants for dance that would also look good with it.

Also, the three stages of pitbull curiosity, just for fun:

“What are you doing?”

“Can I eat it?”

“Can I play with it?”

What I don’t have is a picture of Fancy running away because the other side of the dress fell on her ear. She’s also scared of lamp shades, moving holiday decorations, and bags filled with air. Oh, and Betsy the dress form when she is not dressed. Silly pittie.

I also washed my strawberry dress and it is nice and soft. I’m looking forward to wearing it. I think it’s adorable! I have no idea what pattern it is. It might be New Look 1080. The lines look similar. I need to potentially add a hook and eye, but I’ll see how it works first.

I also delivered a baby quilt this weekend and got to hold the little one. It made me excited to see him with the quilt and as it turned out, the circle backing and binding perfectly matches his bedroom curtains.

I have plans to make a shorter tunic with some other material from my friend with the same dress pattern. I’ll alter the keyhole neckline to make it a little more work friendly. After delivering the quilt, I started making another scrap quilt. I couldn’t resist. So far I am making pretty good progress on using my craft books. My project bin is getting some love too, so I’m pretty happy. Now I’m off to get the crockpot ready for dinner.

 

Crafty

A Weekend of Creativity

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This challenge has really inspired me to think about what happens when a project doesn’t go my way and isn’t easy. Generally this means that it gets shoved in  box and I stop working on it for a while. With this challenge though, I decided that I wasn’t allowed to work on more than two new things and I have to finish something before I can start another. The only things I can work on while working on new projects are ones that are already started.

I currently have two sets of slippers in my craft area waiting to be finished, but got confused on how to put them together and stopped working on them. They will be cute when finished and I will have new slippers, but I got frustrated. I can’t figure out the directions for how to put them together and I think that the pattern didn’t include seam allowances, but it doesn’t say that anywhere. As a result, the backs of the small pair are too short and they are very tight. I am debating whether or not to call it a wash, but I actually do need new slippers, so I need to figure out what is wrong.

In the things going well category, I have made a lot of progress on the rainbow snowball quilt. This one is an example of why you should read the directions. My rows are two shorter than they should be and I ended up making one more row just to use up the squares. It looks like I meant it though, so that’s alright.

All the rows are together, I just have to sew them into the quilt top. It looks very pretty. I haven’t decided if it will have borders like the one in the book. I don’t have enough cream fabric to make one and am trying not to buy more. I’m going to use a bright red floral flannel for the backing, so that it is as interesting as the front. I may just use a flannel on the back and not add batting, just make it a lighter quilt. Or I may add batting and see if I can learn to use the long arm quilter on it, if my in-laws will teach me. There are still lots of possibilities. I had put the quilt rows on the floor in the living room yesterday to check the alignment and my dog, Fancy, decided to help me with that by standing on the rows until I petted her. Quilting with pets is never as easy as it looks. Here’s pictures for proof of progress:

And here’s a picture of just the quilt:

Crafty

Hello again sewing machine!

LSiehLeave a comment

I haven’t had to cook much over the weekend. Friday and Saturday were busy with party prepping and partying respectively. We’ve been busy eating all the party leftovers since then. I did make cheesy polenta with sautéed veggies for dinner tonight and will post the recipe details on Thursday.

I’ve been sorting and cutting fabric for my first official craft project for the year. I’ve not sewn anything in a few weeks and it’s funny how much I miss it. The project is a Strip Pieced Snowball Quilt, from the book “Making Scrap Quilts To Use It Up!” by Lynne Edwards. I have another project from this book that I started long go that’s about half done which I want to finish as well. I desperately need to use up my scraps. I have three overflowing boxes at the moment. The project in the book is made of blue strips, but I wanted to use rainbow colors. It will have cornerstones of black fabrics and black sashing. So far I’ve made 14 blocks and need to find some more yellows, oranges, purples, and greens to make the plan work. Here are some of the untrimmed blocks:

I’ve included a picture of what the finished quilt should look like below. Obviously my color scheme will be different, but it should still look pretty neat. It will be about twin sized.

I’m not sure what I am going to do with all quilts that I make during this challenge. Some of them I will keep and some may find their way to other people. I looked up some places to donate them to as well, so I should have enough places for them. Not all of the quilt projects will stay as full quilts. I want to experiment with making some quilted bags or other items to go on my Etsy store, Twinflower Fancies. No matter where the projects end up, or how many quilts I make, the point of this is to just keep making new things, and to finish the projects I have already started. I think I’ve made a good start. Now back to sewing!