January Stash Busting "Itty Bits" report

So, January is over and it is time to repot in on my progress after my epic fail at the fabric store the other day.
The theme for January was Itty Bits for stash busting and so in the few days I had left after I signed up (late!) I pulled together a couple small projects.  I still have one on the go (journal cover) but not done so I will report that later.  For now, I have made two tag blankets for my friends twins using left overs from the owl tag blankets I made them, a couple fat quarters from my stash and a bunch of ribbon bits.

 I also had a whole mass of scraps from straightening edges, clipping corners, odd angles from patterns, the thread bin, and small fabric bits that had "issues" (like the first cut off the bolt that has the ink stamp on it and the store clerk and I didn't notice it)! So with those and some other fabrics from my stash I made dog beds for the animal shelter here in town.

In total I made four dog beds and one cat bed. The dog beds are fairly big. Three are 30x24 and the 4th is 24x18 ish, that one is made from all the corners we cut out making fleece tie blankets at Christmas so more scraps gone there! The cat bed fits the bottom of a small travel kennel. That was a LOT of itty bits out of my sewing area.

I also sewed up several of the flannel sheets out of the project pull pile that were intended for my office so that is about 20 yards of fabric ready to move out too.  Not a bad start to the stash busting project.
I can't wait to go see how everyone else is doing, this is very motivating!
Have a great day!

Summer comes to an end.

We have had a wonderful summer here over all.  The weather has been mixed between hot summer days with high humidity and thunder and lightening shows at night.  I love the heat and the humidity doesn't really bother me so I have been a happy clam!  We have travelled some and spent some time at our boat.  I am sad to see summer go but I do love the fall as well.  I live at the bottom of a foothill and the colour show in the fall is spectacular!

This is last year!  We are not this deep in colour yet!

As for the sewing department, I have been doing several projects but nothing too big.

I made this sun dress for Me!  I love the pleats on the front but the underarm binding on the back was a little odd, just ending out there all on it's own!  Maybe it is the pattern....maybe it is me sewing in the wee wee hours of the morning?  However, it is light and flowy and doesn't touch me much which is great when the humidity is really high!

I made Kobo covers for the kids.  One for Moo (girly) and one for Bean (boyish).

And we all made several dog beds to donate to the Humane Society.  Of course they need to be tested before they go so the Princess Moo did the testing!  They work well apparently!

Friday Night Sew In ....Success!

Well, the Friday Night Sew In went on until 3:00 am Saturday morning and I am not quite done, but I am thrilled to say that I sewed two Christmas presents!!!

This one is for my grandson's to share.

Room for six cars.

I love how the cars settle all the way into the pockets!

This one is for my nephew....

He is a Hot Wheels fan.

I used the tutorial here from Punkin Patterns blog.  I managed to scrounge up the Riley Blake Wheels (My Minds Eye) fabric from a Canadian fabric shop online called Dragonfly Fabrics.  The mat folds up and buttons closed for play on the go.  The cars all stay put and it is small enough to pop into just about any bag or purse to take along to the doctors or park.   I need to get some cute buttons for these two mats and then I can show a picture of it all folded up.  But all in all, I think Friday Night Sew In was a great success!  I also got to watch a great movie called the notebook while I was sewing.  A friend lent it to me and it was a lovely movie.
Well I think I may try a Saturday night sew in also, just to get ahead!
Hope you all have a great weekend!

Pay it Forward and a New Challenge.

We have been traveling quite a bit this summer and so I have not been able to blog much but I wanted to share a picture of my first "pay it forward"! 
I made this apron for Kelly from A Plain Path.  She is a sweet Mamma and a terrific, supportive bloggy friend. If you click her link you can see her wearing the apron!  We got a chuckle out of the fact that I was making her apron as she was making jelly and needing one!

This was the first time I used the labels that I made and talked about in this post.  They seemed to work great!

Now for the challenge,  I have finally decided to join the Friday Night Sew In group.  I really need to make some sewing commitments and be accountable, so I am hoping that I can do it with this FNSI plan!  You can find out more by clicking the link on my side bar under For Interest Sake. Come join in and have some fun!
Now off to my sewing room so I can set up for tonight's Sew In!!

Bracelets and Blankets for Craft Hope

A while back I bought the book Craft Hope.  It has some wonderful ideas in it for sewing for charities which I think is a great idea.  I try to teach my children good values and thinking about others is one of them.  The other day I stopped by Craft Hopes' blog to discover that they are running two projects this time around because of the recent tornadoes that have hit in the USA.  My step daughter lives in Missouri and the tornadoes have come within three miles of her house but gratefully her family has been safe.  Still I am moved by the struggles that others are facing. So, for the last week the kids and I have been making bracelets for an orphanage in Russia, "project #12 and blankets for the States affected by Tornadoes, "project #13".  The kids had a great time making a variety of bracelets and encouraging their friends to help and I got to use some fabric from my stash to make some blankets.  So here are the results to date!

There are about 40 bracelets ready to ship tomorrow and the blankets will ship not long after.  I still have a few that I would like to put together so I may ship them on the weekend.

I hope you all have a safe and happy weekend!

Thanks for visiting.

Penny

Some things that I have been up to.

Well it was an interesting week and since blogger was down I couldn't amuse myself reading my favourite blogs nor could I update mine!  So I went sewing!  I finished a few things but I don't have pictures of all of them but here are a few:

The embellished onesie and pants match a burp pad I made for my granddaughter at Easter.  And then there are a few more that were just to cute to not make!  I love those mini pom poms!


I also visited some organizing sites and played a long one afternoon when I couldn't make my drawers close nicely!

Before

After!

It looks like we eat a ton of candy at our house!  That however, is the problem!   No one ever "eats" it so it gets shoved in this drawer and takes up my space!  The marshmallows are divided equally between the fire pit for roasting and Rice Crispy Squares!

Then I spent some time with the kids.  We set up the trampoline and jumped for an afternoon.  I even took pictures and what's more, I let them take pictures of me!  I never do that, but I was inspired while reading Sugar Bee Crafts blog. She was saying that we should make sure that the kids have memories of us on film.  We Mom's are so often behind the camera that when we are gone......there aren't many pictures with us in them. So for memories sake, here are a couple of shots of me so there is proof that I actually existed!

Mamma

Moo, Mamma, Bean.

I hope everyone is doing well.  Have a great week.

Breaking through the surface!

It seems like forever since I have posted.  In the little nutshell of my world it has been!  My husband is finally home from the hospital, it took 15 days for him to be released.  Not better, just released.  He is well enough that I can take care of him at home.  What a challenging journey.  Thank you to everyone who has been sending messages and saying prayers for us.  It seems they have been heard, our results from pathology are in and the cancer has NOT spread as first thought!  We may need to do some radiation or chemo but that should be fairly mild.  What a great result after all the original, dire expectations!



So other than keeping my head in the game for my husband I have also been tending to the little ones in my life.  During this whole journey my Moo turned 10...."Double Digits" she calls it!  She was so excited that it was finally her BIG birthday and I was so desperate not to disappoint her by letting her big day be over shadowed by our current battle.  I booked her a birthday party at Spa World before the surgery, so I wouldn't let it fall through the cracks.  It was great!  They got their nails and toes done and a goody bag was included (WHEW! I had no time to shop!). She had a great time and then we also had a birthday dinner with family at home. Her big thing for that was that she wanted to bake her own cake....ah....OK!  Worked for me!  It turned out great and looked fabulous!

I also finished her dress (that I started at Christmas!), the child has the patience of a saint.  I found this fabric years ago and had no idea what I would make out of it but it had Moo's name written all over it, so it had to come live at our house until I discovered a project for it.  This dress was her pick and the fabric was mine.  She loves it!  (And it gave me small moments of focus).





















I also joined an apron swap over at Country Pleasures (cause I didn't have enough to do!) and I did manage to finish and ship this apron over to my great partner Missy.  Hope she likes it! My daughter sure didn't want it to leave the house!.

I also calmed my mind by doing some thrift shopping between visits to the hospital here and there, but I will post on those finds later!  Hope everyone has a great day!

Starting to Settle!

This is Asia, she thinks she is the best present!

Well, Christmas is all over but the clean up, but I am in no hurry to get on with that!  I am taking some time to be with my family, most of whom are sick...yep it has been one of those years!  I was supposed to be off work from the 18th of December until the 6th of January but.... a few patients were not doing well, so I made a trip in to the office for a couple days to get everyone through until January.

As I was enjoying an uninterrupted scroll through my reading list and a peek around blog land tonight I found this post which is definitely worth passing along. Home Spun Threads is offering ALL her patterns for free!!  I don't know how long this will last, but she has some really cute patterns in her shop.

Outside of all the sickies in my house I had a great Christmas!  My hubby bought me an Ipad, which wasn't even on my list but I had mentioned a while back that I would like one. (I just thought that it was entirely too expensive for us as a gift!) I am thrilled and scared all at the same time!  I am not very tech savvy so it will be a learning curve for me, but if I can figure it out it will be a great asset for work and of course a little play!  I found a great sewing app that keeps track of all your patterns and fabric yardage and projects at various stages. "Santa" was also very good to me this year!  I was asked for a list of gift ideas in early December.  I am entirely practical and don't like to have money spent on things I won't use so a list is the best idea for all of us.  My hubby is not familiar with sewing things at all and I had put on my list a pair of KAI scissors as a gift.  Well he thought scissors would be a great stocking stuffer!  He really just about choked when she said "that will be $110.00 please." Of course he was too embarrassed to say "oh sorry I must have misunderstood" or something...anything!  He explained later that the clerk had the scissors on hold for someone else and she had called the woman to ask if he could buy them as a Christmas present if she didn't need them right away!  So he felt obliged to buy them.  Poor loving man! I do admit that I am thrilled with them though.

Well I can finally post some of the gifts we made this year for presents:

Placemats with pockets and fingertip mitts for my step daughters 

These are the mitts my son made from a felted wool sweater!

Moo's painting for her Dad....it is just beautiful!! She doesn't usually look this sleepy!  

Mug Rugs for the girls in the office...my first "free motion" quilting attempt! 

 This is the sweater for Bean and night gown for Moo that I made..  Thankfully they love them!

Well there are more things to see but my monkeys need to go to bed so good night for now!

I was VOLUN"TOLD" !!

Look what happened in our yard!!

YES WE HAVE THIS MUCH SNOW!!  AND MORE!!!

 Well, I am back to the computer at last!  I have been crazy busy with the kids school council.  I was "voluntold" to be on the playground committee for the new school that the Ministry is building for us.  Almost 800 students and NO PLAYGROUND equipment!!  YIKES.

Any way so 2.5 weeks ago I was appointed the lead on planning a craft fair and small business vendor event they wanted to have to raise money for the school.  WHY?  Because I sew.  I must know a lot of crafters....NOT!!!  However, I am good at last minute magic!  Pulled together a small committee of "go-getter" girls and we organized 23 participants, a bake sale and a silent auction!! WHEW!  I ended up being a vendor too because a few of the other Moms have some of my reusable snack bags and they thought those would sell well at the event.  So whilst I was planning the whole thing I had to put my Christmas sewing on hold and sew a bunch of things for this event.  Can you say time management issues!! Haven't been to bed before 2am for weeks!  But I did get some things sewn for the event so that was good.

                  

These are my version of crayon rolls.  I don't like ties because the kids want to do things themselves so I put a tab with an elastic and sew a button to the back of the tab and there you go! Toddler Friendly! If you click on the pictures you can see better detail.

The kids each sewed a stuffy as well.  Bean made his own pattern for a fish which he wants me to put into a tutorial, so I will try to get that together as well soon.  You can see his fish in this picture along with some of the other things we made.  The fuzzy things are dust cloths.  You can see here that we added pupils to TREY as his blue eyes look a little spooky in the picture below!!

Moo made a TREY owl from this pattern.  It is copy righted so we emailed and asked permission to donate the owl to the fundraiser silent auction table and she said YES! Moo was very happy that she contributed and the owl went for $8.00.  Two little girls had a little bidding war over him, it was cute!  All said it was a great event but it certainly put a crimp in my holiday sewing.

Gotta catch up!!

Hi there!
Again time goes by so quickly!  This week and a bit has been crazy like the rest.  Kids and Hubby have been sick, my son....the one with the cast on his hand...was sewing his dog beds for the humane society (we stuff them with fabric scraps from sewing!) and he sewed through his finger!  Right through! A finger on the hand that is in the cast none the less!  Then two days later just as we had gotten the puncture all doctored up he got hit with a ball at school and bent the pinkie finger on that "cast hand" back!  It was really swollen in the finger and down into the knuckle which was inside the cast so the pressure was painful as well.  It took me a while to decide whether I wanted it x-rayed or not.  I hoped it wasn't a broken finger or dislocated knuckle, so we waited over night and the swelling went down considerably, but the pain is still there.  He can move it today though so I hope that things are settling.  He has had so many x-rays lately I really didn't want more for another break on the same hand!

In the mean time we did get some sewing done!  I have been asked to co-ordinate a craft fair for the school playground fund-raising event so I made several snack bags and sandwich bags.  I also hope to get some baby burp cloths done and maybe a ball or two.  I would love to make aprons and mug rugs and so many more things too but as we all know time goes so fast and I do have to sew my Christmas presents up too!  I have decided that I can't do it all.  I will do what I can.

I did finish Beans sweater:

I also found these at the thrift store:

These sweaters are for felted wool mittens I hope to make for the craft fair (if time allows) if not the mitts will make great Christmas gifts as well.

I also picked up this jar at the thrift store to keep my laundry soap in.  I am trying to make the shelf look less cluttered and more pretty.  I hope that encourages more laundry doing!!!  In any case the jar is beautiful!

Here is a peak at what we are up to and will discuss in my next post:

This is Bean's first pattern creation! I had to entice him back to the machine after he sewed through his finger!  So I helped him come up with something he wants to sew...and that....was a fish!  He so needs to grow up to be a marine biologist!

Well, back to the sewing room for me, hope you all have a great day!