March Along Progress

We are a little over halfway through the month, and since weekly check-ins for March Along have not happened, a halfway point check-in seemed like a good idea.

I did very well for the first 2 weeks, but week 3 I got very busy with life. Between kids events, job interview, church stuff, school volunteering, doctor appointments, dance lessons and then getting sick with the Flu (I think), I was just tired out! Sewing did not appeal.

I am still sick, so I think today I will just read my newest Block magazine for my 15 minutes.

Here are some of my efforts this month.

Pieces cut for making a "Farm Girl Vintage" quilt block.

First round of fabric choices for the quilt pattern test.

Squares cut for quilt pattern test. The light where I sew is not good for photographs. See the photo below for truer colors.

Scraps from the quilt pattern test. They look very different in this light. It is pretty true to the real colors.

Diaper clutch made for a neighbor of my mom's.

Shirt appliqued with a little shamrock for St. Patrick's Day.

St. Patrick's Day outfit with a  rosette on the headband  and an appliqued shamrock on the shirt.

2 of 6 rosettes made for St. Patrick's Day. These went to teachers to pin on their shirts.

Drawstring bag made to carry a camping sleep-mat. Later it will house my yoga mat.

Throwback - when I was a kid, I took clogging lessons. I have recently started taking them again with my sister. It is quite fun and funny. We laugh a lot!

 

Another Diaper Clutch

A friend of mine is having her first baby so I made her a diaper clutch.
 I love these! If I had time I would make 2 for her. One for the diaper bag and one for the car for the "emergency stash". I added a wrist strap with the theory that it would be easier to carry while carrying the baby. Sometimes you don't want to haul the whole diaper bag, so I think this makes it easy to just grab the essentials and get 'er done!

The original tutorial can be found HERE.
You can view my other diaper clutches on Flickr in my Diaper Clutch set.

 

March Along: Week 1

 

 Darla at The Scientific Quilter is doing her March A-long again this year. I missed it last year, but decided to join in this year. I think it will help with my UFO goals. Basically you commit to sew or do something sewing related for 15 minutes every day. Pretty awesome!

The first week went well. I only missed Saturday, but I kind of made up for it I think, since I got in a couple of hour+ blocks of time during the week.
One thing specifically it has helped with was un-sewing the baby quilt. I started quilting it, got 2/3 finished and checked the back and found pleats. I couldn't leave it and the whole thing would have to be picked out. That was a daunting and discouraging task, but I am a fan of the theory that one can accomplish hard things if  you just do it in15 minute increments. Since the baby is here already, that deadline is past. Now I would just like to get it done before he moves from bassinet to crib.

I made a calendar to keep track of my sewing.

Projects worked on this week:

St. Patrick's Day Stay Put Kitchen Towel

Stay Put Kitchen Towel Tutorial

I made towels for my friend and the ladies I visit teach. I have a couple more to make. Better hurry  up!

Diaper Clutch

Diaper Clutch Tutorial

Diaper clutch and matching burp cloth

 I made the clutch and burp cloth with a dishtowel from Target that was on clearance and a fat quarter. I was hoarding the towel to make an apron. I got home from fabric buying and then I didn't care for the other fat quarter I chose to go with the pink check. Looking through my stash I spotted the towel and it looked so nice with the liner fabric that I went with it. The clutch turned out quite large. I am not sure why. I have made these before and never had any size issues. Maybe my seam allowance was smaller. She will be able to get lots of diapers in there! :)


 

A little of this and that

I have been working on a few things here and there and also had a couple of things I have been meaning to post, but have not gotten around to it, so this is a catch-all/catch-up post.

First was a little clarification on the part that I broke on my sewing machine. This is the spool pin. The one on the left is the new one. Obviously the one on the right is the old (broken) one. The new one is very tight in the hole and I am afraid of breaking it again when I pull it out to put the machine away.

This is how the spool pin sits in the machine.

A little sewing tip from my smarty mother in law. Put those empty tissue boxes to work as your sewing space trash can!

Last week a friend agreed to come sew with me, if I would teach her something to make. I decided to make another skirt like this one.

The night before I thought I had better refresh my memory on how to make them, so I made one using my husband's dress shirt that got a hole in the pocket. Silly me did not photograph the process, but I just buttoned up the shirt, cut across it (I cut off the shirttails and under the pocket) to make a tube, and sewed the button strip shut. Then I measured to get the right length, did a little trim, and then did the hem and waistband as directed in the tutorial. So easy!
Littlest Miss saw it the next morning and said "Mommy! You make me a pretty skirt!!". Of course, she had to wear it so I had to go get the butterfly skirt to use for our reference sample.

Just a pretty flower. :)

I have a couple of friends who need a baby gift from me, so yesterday this is what I worked on. I was all set to use my new gathering foot and it would not attach to my machine. I guess the shop picked out the wrong one for me. One of these days I will go exchange it. I did the ribbon the old fashioned way, with basting and gathering. I was going to put a ribbon rose on it, but after thinking about how much I take mine in and out of my bag, decided not to. It probably wouldn't stay on long.

Diaper & wipes clutch: Sew Mama Sew

This week, supposedly, is teacher appreciation week. The kids' schools/PTAs gave no indication of such an event, so I took it upon myself to say thanks. Another blogger posted this idea (http://ourlifeinaclick.blogspot.com/2010/06/teacher-gifts-part-1.html) so I ran with it. The tags were printed from anther blog (http://lisastorms.typepad.com/lisa-storms/2011/05/teacher-appreciation-week-part-3.html) where she used no spill cups, but the only ones I could find were $12-$15 each, which seemed a little crazy to me.  So we went with the $7 drink jugs and some Crystal Light lemonade mix and a shaped ice cube tray. Less than $10 each. Yay! The tags said "Thank you for quenching my thirst for knowledge."  I just hope they don't get a bunch of them. Pinterest is a wonderful place but everyone seems to hit the same popular ideas. I got them off blogs, but you know they had to have been pinned a bunch. :P
Anyway, the feedback from 2 of 3 teachers was good, so it works.

And last, is the gift that I gave my mom and sisters, that I think I have forgotten to post since February. I have a friend who made me this super cool and beautiful book mark for my birthday last year. She agreed to make 3 for me for a very reasonable price and I gave them to the girls in my family for their birthdays this year.

 

TADA!

Christine's Diaper Clutch

Here is the little project I made the other day that I could not share because it was a surprise for my friend. The one I wanted to keep because it turned out so fabulous. And she loved it! Yay!!

This is a diaper and wipes case from the tutorial on SewMamaSew. I prefer these to the vertical versions I see in blogland, because I find it easier to get the diapers in and out of them.
I didn't do the matching changing pads for these since I had to use what I had on hand and I didn't have enough fabric.

I think it is safe to share the other two I made as well for my other 2 friends, one of whom had her baby yesterday. Congrats to Allyson!

Allyson's Diaper Clutch

This one I did not have anything great to put on it to dress it up. Sorry it is plain Jane Allyson! :(

Kasia's Diaper Clutch

  This one is for a friend who loves purple and I've seen her wearing animal prints so I went with the zebra stripe on a darker purple satin ribbon to add some pizazz to that basic polka dot fabric.

 

 3 of 4 baby gifts made recently.

I have also made a couple of other things in the last week or two.

Littlest Miss's Trick or Treat bag, not modeled by Littlest Miss.

 

Tooth Fairy Pillows

Test Tote

The tooth fairy pillows were made for a couple of my 7- year-old's buddies back in Texas.  

The totes came about because my youngest can't quite manage the pillowcases I made the kids last year, and my Sister-in-Law wanted to make her boys trick or treat bags, so we got together to make them. 

The blue tote was a test to size up the tiny tot tote to make the trick or treat bags. It came out a little too long. The starting measurements were 12" x 18" I think.

The measurements we ended up with to make the Trick or treat bags were 13 3/4" x 15". They finished out to be just about 12"x12" and perfect for a good haul for a toddler.

I used a different assembly than I used in the Tiny Tot Tote, to hide the seams.  I think it is easier for a lined/reversible bag.  You can find the instructions at The Happy Zombie (Poochie bag). I think my tute still works great for a basic tote.

We did the handles the same as the Tiny Tot Tote though, instead of the ones in the Poochie Bag and we left the pockets off, since we were short fabric. We had a 1/2 yard of each fabric.

And that is my sewing recap for the week. :) 

Have a great day!

WIP Wednesday

Edit: I am un-linking from the WIP Wed, cause I didn't really follow the rules. I will do better next week! But still go see what everyone else is doing!

While I haven't actually worked on my usual WIPs I got a fair amount of sewing done. Most of it I have already talked about.

Teacher gifts: tote bags filled with teacher-y goodies. I made 3. Two green and one red.

Hats/Vests: look how much "hair" those things left on my workspace (and me). This was after 2 cleanups and this is from just one hat.

A baby quilt for shower # 1. This is a quilt as you go strip quilt.  A fairly quick project if you need a gift in hurry as I did. I think I figured out, when all was said and done it was about 9-10 hours of work, from cutting to photo shoot.

These I made yesterday for Shower #2. The matching diaper clutch and changing pad. There is still a burp cloth or two in the works, but if they don't get done, I won't come empty handed. :) (Click here for tute).
I really enjoy making these. They are so useful! I use my clutch all the time, now that I don't need to carry a diaper bag. I need to make one to keep in the car. The only thing is that this time I did ties instead of elastic and as you can see the 12 inches called for in the tute was not enough. I can barely tie them. So next time, at least 16 inches I think, then I can cut them shorter if needed.

 This is one of my regular WIPs. The poor Supernova. Yes, it is still mostly fat quarters and things are even beginning to get put on top of it. It makes me so sad to see it like this, but I just have not had time to work on it.



This is not really a WIP, just a funny thing my daughter was doing while I sewed yesterday.  I have a bucket of markers on the half wall that separates my dining room and living room. She climbed up on the storage bin and would take the markers out, dump them on the bin and then put them back in. She lasted 15 minutes, until she heard me turn on the iPhone video camera. :)

click photo to enlarge

And completely and utterly unrelated to WIPs...

This morning, while writing this post, my 6 year old son helped himself to some ketchup on his scrambled eggs. About a cup of ketchup. On 2 eggs. I was a little ticked at first and scolded him pretty good, which made him cry, which made me think, okay self, it's only ketchup. So I apologized.
I scraped some of it into a cup for him to use tomorrow. YUCK.