Stop staring and start sewing!

Time flies

I thought I'd spend the week crying here but I've held up pretty good.  My oldest girl turned 18 and I'm not sure how that happened so soon.  She showed up after 2 miscarriages, 4 (not fun) appointments with the fertility specialist and 5 clomid pills (and 9 months!).  We knew she would be Olivia which means "Bringer of Peace" and she brought peace to my sad heart the moment I saw her.  Within the first week she started smiling at us....(6 days old in this picture with her young daddy)

She hasn't stopped.  She's so ladylike and, for the life of me, I can't figure out where she learned it.  She loves Jane Austen, classic literature, Victorian fashion, and she refuses to burp with the rest of us most of the time.




She's way more organized and detailed than me so she decided to plan and organize her own birthday party (and as the sole employee of Fabritopia she had the money to pay for it too!).  I know I've shown my table before but it was covered so here it is with the new sunny paint job.  This is actually the family room and we just move the couch back for parties and pull the table in.

Peety, my 16 year old (who's actual name is Pietra) designed and arranged this "heart chandelier" and I'm incredibly impressed (and leaving it up!).  Just plain paper cut into hearts of various shapes (big ones on the outside and little ones hanging lower on the inside).  Brilliant!  What a way to spruce up a homely fixture.

I made her a chocolate mousse cake (a pound of butter and a pound of chocolate in this baby!) and she bought cookies and candy (she has always had a major sweet tooth which has made us crazy at times).  Too too sweet (I mean it!).

We replaced a few broken doors at Christmas and decided to spray paint the kitchen door with chalkboard paint.  We love it and it cost about 3.50 (for the paint).

So apparently it was a fun party (Joey and I left with the boys for part of it) and it was a joy to see her with her sisters and dear friends just enjoying being together, playing games, and eating (and maybe even burping a little).

We are blessed beyond measure.

Easier than giving birth...

...but still a lot of labor.  My pattern is ready (in pdf format, paper coming later)!   It's Slipcover Chic (a huge thanks and charm pack to Amy for coming up with the name)!  When I decided to make a cover for my homely chairs I didn't expect to end up making a pattern but I was so in love with it I knew I couldn't be the only one out there who wanted a cure for the common folding chair.  It takes just over 2 yards of fabric and once I made the first one the others took about 1 hour each to make. 

Here's my cover page:

The front (man, I love this fabric)!

A huge huge THANK YOU to my pattern testers who really made it so much better than what I started out with (I'll show you pictures of the process in a future post)!

Here's the darling cover Marie made while testing the pattern (I adore her blue dining set).  Marie is great at catching my grammatical errors.

Here's Caren's version.  I love this lively print she used.  Caren is so experienced she didn't use a seam ripper even once (that impresses me!).

My friend Angela made this beauty.  She seriously went over the pattern with a fine tooth comb (which I knew she would!) and I made some huge improvements based on her questions and observations.  Check her blog for great Target scoops and some neato tutorials.

Coming next is my apron pattern which I am even more excited about. Here's a sneak peek of the one Marie made while testing it.  I can't get over how cute this is!!!  Next week!



Be sure to run over and visit my pal Jamie.  She's giving away a stack of Nicey Jane fabric big enough to make a quilt to celebrate the release of her new pattern (which the winner will also receive).  Crazy!!

Drifting along...

*All the skirts have sold!  Thank you all so much for your generosity!!

Okay, my skirts are up on the crafthope etsy site (they've sold over 1100 items so far!!).  The links are here, here, here, here, and here.  Thanks for taking a look!  Doctors without Borders is a great organization with a solid history of good works on behalf of the needy and right now few people are more needy than the Haitians.  And don't forget to check out crafthope.com if you have something you would like to donate.

I don't want to post without a picture so here is a picture from today.  We are getting slammed by storms here in Arizona but it wouldn't be an Arizona storm without a tumbleweed.  Typical. 

I love it!

Giving where I can

My heart hurts for the people in Haiti. I'm so relieved to be able to do something to help. You can too. Follow this link to Crafthope.com to go to the website (to join in) or go to the etsy site to shop (click the picture below). All the money raised (over $10,000.00 so far!) goes to Doctors without Borders.

I am donating these 5 skirts. They will be 30.00 each and that includes shipping anywhere in the world. The size range is 2T up to 5/6.  They should be available on the etsy site tomorrow and I will let you know (here and on twitter) when they are listed.

I know we are all in hard times.  Some of us are just getting by and can't give money right now.  We can all pray though.  So let's.

Not much. How 'bout you?

Sorry for being so scarce these past couple of weeks.  I've been spending hours upon hours working on patterns and I'm nearly done with my folding chair slipcover pattern.  I owe a huge thanks to my patterns testers because their input has really made it so much better than my first draft (I'll share their pictures soon).  I really appreciate the offers to test my patterns (but be prepared, I just may take you up on it!).  I have more coming so I'm keeping a list of willing folks.

We've been doing a ton of juicing around these parts because January is when all the citrus is perfectly ripened.  We got over 100 lemons off of our tree this year (that's double last years harvest!).  Once I'm done with my "lose the holiday butt" diet I'll be making lemon bars.

I've always wanted some of this stuff.  I didn't know what it was called and once I found out it was "baker's twine" I found some and now I'm set.  It was great for Christmas presents and it turns out it comes in different colors so I can get some for every season eventually.

I made a little valance for the corner of my fabric room and I don't know why I didn't do this a long time ago (the rod has been bare for at least a year).  It was so fast (just two strips of fabric and some hems) I'm determined to make new ones every time I get a new favorite fabric in the store.

 

And just when I thought I was done Christmas shopping I get this gorgeous catalog from the great folks at Moda and I couldn't help myself.  French General has a Christmas line coming and it's beyond beautiful (with matching ribbon too).  So I ordered that and the collection from Kate Spain.  Darling.  Those will show up in late spring so by then I'll have recovered from the December burnout and will welcome them joyfully.

And one last pretty picture of some fat quarter stacks.  These stacks of Sandi Henderson's Meadowsweet are just luscious.  We've tried to have fat quarter stacks of entire collections in stock but the Hope Valley stacks keep flying out the door and we can barely keep up.  I hope people start posting their quilts on flickr soon because this is one of my favorites from Denyse Schmidt.

I'd love to know what everyone is sewing right now. Anything? I've made a "quasi-resolution" to sew something fun at least once a month (and maybe finally make a pair of pants with a zipper) and a real resolution to get my patterns finished for real. Did anyone else make sewing resolutions? Have a great (sewing) weekend! Be back soon!

A bit obsessed

So I got all my chairs covered and our 25 people Christmas dinner went off with only one hitch.  My kids decided our dog should become quick friends with our dear guests dog and one bloody ear later (guest dog) the dogs decided that maybe they didn't want to be close friends.  I love having guests but it's a little tricky with that many folks when my kids decide they want to try dippy things.  It was easier 2 days later when my mom took all 5 kids (bless her!) over night so we could have a smaller dinner with 4 other couples.  We try to get together a couple times a year with our "northwest friends" (we're all from Oregon, Washington, and Idaho) and eat good food, drink good wine and talk about things like trees, rain, and hippies while saying "Warshington" (the proper pronounciation).

Anyway, my chairs looked great but I'm three chairs short since I only have 7 chairs (I inherited the set from my aunt and my cousin took off with chair number 8, hence the odd number).  So I was left having to fill in the gap with padded folding chairs which are brown and boring and blah.  So began my obsession.

Tada!  Slipcovers for folding chairs.  Cute ones!

I've made a 4th cover since this picture was taking (trying to break the curse of the odd numbered chairs here).  But I'm slightly addicted to making these since it only requires 2 yards of fabric and about 1 hour.

So I've been working on a pdf pattern.  I'm ready to have it tested and then it will be available.  Here's one of the pictures.  Does this make sense?

Here's our party table.  We normally have a big red sectional in here but we moved it out over Christmas to make room for everyone.  We actually had 2 long tables for Christmas dinner.

A few weeks ago I ran up to the Goodwill store and saw this love seat.  Look!  It's the match to our couch!  When we bought the couch (over 10 years ago) I was just happy to be able to get a new couch but I always regretted not having enough money to get the matching loveseat.  And as an added bonus it's in better shape than our couch (the previous owner obviously did not have cats).

Here's another view.

Okay, time to put the decorations away and get on with our new year here.  I try not to make resolutions but I did get a Wii Fit for myself and I'm determined to stay off computer games.  And I want to finish all my window covers, paint my bedset (and finally get matching bed tables), make a quilt and just add more color around here.  That's enough for now.