Maybe not THREE months, but it feels like I’ve been making or trying out a lot of things that I’ve neglected to report on. Some of which is DARN CUTE or DARN TASTY!

Darn cute:

Baby Blanket

Big Footed Bunny with reversable dress (this shot was still in progress, never got a completed shot):
Dress on side A

Dress on side B

Granola (it was OK at best):

And with no photo accompaniment,
Monkey Bread

Potato soup (it was ok, but got much better as it aged)

Beef Stew (Still have some of this in the fridge, and it was Yum, despite some technical difficulties)

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (orange, with jack-o-lantern faces painted on) (I guess I could still take some photos of these) (for some reason everytime I eat one, I think of our friend Kurt, who loves anything with pumpkin – Kurt, you would love these)

I also have a bunch of things on deck that I am aching to get started on.

I need, nay, I REQUIRE myself to make chili in the very near future, along with some cornbread.

Butternut Squash soup

Butternut squash risotto (this one may be dropped)

Braided Challah Bread

Picture Day dress for Jocelyn
I saw this adorable corderoy jumper at Kolh’s yesterday that I am going to try to make for Jocelyn. It was a dark chocolate brown with a pink long sleeved knit shirt underneath. Pink and brown always make me swoon, so sweet. We’ll see if this actually gets accomplished. There was another one next to it, pink with cute little princess embroidery embellishments along the bottom.

It is also at Kohls.com.

Very sweet. I am not going to repeat my mistake from last year and put her in a busy print for picture day. NO SIR.

Circle Skirt for Jocelyn
This, I actually did for Jocelyn last night, using the Fold Over Elastic that Angry Chicken has been going on about. Now, with normal elastic, you measure the waist and then make the elastic 2 inches shorter. I cut the elastic about 5 inches shorter with some trepidation, and it is still too loose. I should have just not worried about the actual measurement and just stretched it as tight as I could while sewing it on. There will be sewing and adjustments made tonight. I also don’t like the look of the full circle of the skirt, so I may be fiddling around with using only half a circle as well.
Final note on this skirt, I cut into some beloved fabric that I had been saving forever, but looking at the HUGE STACK OF PINK fabric, I shook it off and cut (the fabric I used is the top right in the picture in that link). As my mother always says, there will always be cute fabric, no need to hoard. I will be showing this skirt off when I finally work out the kinks.

*UPDATE* SKIRT COMPLETED! Here it is!

Picture taken last night, immediately after finishing

Taken this morning.

Hopefully James got some good pictures with the camera, as these iphone photos leave much to be desired. Still, I am VERY proud of myself, as this sucker pretty much came directly out of my head, no patterns involved (though some tulle inspiration probably came from the dress I saw in Kohl’s).

And finally, I have ordered a bunch of stuff to start beading jewelry again. I say “again” like I used to do it last week, but I haven’t done anything with beads since high school, when me & friends used to string beads onto fishing line, melt the knot with a lighter and call it good. I have actually ordered some tools and got a book and even am going to take a CLASS! My initial order should have been here by now, but due to my recent ordering of fabric on the internet for my mother, I accidently put down an address that was half my own, and half my mom’s, for my bead order. Who knows where it is now, DOH. So this, “Did it come did it come??!” ending with deflation and RE-ordering has made me super excited to GET GOING ALREADY!

– amy will string you along with a trinket or two

Well, that was a quick sewing goal accomplished! The bag went very quickly with only 1 place where I had to stop and scratch my head. (Not doing the patchwork = EASY bag!) I think it took maybe 4 hours to sew all together, including cutting out.

I was going to wait until I could take prettier pictures of it, but oh well. iPhone photos below! Once again, the pattern can be purchased here.

I used the material I had left over from Jocelyn’s sundress. I did buy a new walking foot for my machine, and I must say, I wish I had bought one of these things YEARS ago. Sewing machines have this jagged little thingee that comes up from the bottom and “feeds” the material through — called the feed dog. If you have several layers however, the feed dog only pushes the bottom through and the top layer can go through at a slower speed than the bottom layer causing some wonkiness. A walking foot feeds the top side of the material through so there’s no wonkiness. This will be VERY handy on the satin binding of the baby blankets I make from time to time!

The only real question I had was the bias tape binding for the top edging and handle. The pattern calls for 1″ double folded bias tape. First of all, the tape I was looking at didn’t come in 1″ wide, only 7/8″ wide. And second of all, it looked much too wide. But, I bought some anyway and took it home. When it came to the binding/handles/tape part though, I still wasn’t quite sure. I had some 1/2″ tape on hand so I used that, which looked VERY nice. When I was pinning it on for the handles, it struck me that it would make very flimsy handles/straps. So I ended up taking the 7/8″ bias tape and folding it over – this made for a VERY thick binding/straps (my machine complained a little) but the end result is very satisfactory – nice thick handles to hang on to.

I love this bag SO much. I think it would be especially cute to do a little hand quilting on it – outline a flower or two, maybe sew on a few beads. That’s the kind of time-consuming hand work that I am not good at finishing though, so I doubt it will happen.

I definitely think I’ll be making another one of these. Or two. Or three!

-amy

Not a quilt for a baby, but a quilt made out of baby clothes.

Although actually, it’s more like made out of toddler clothes.

Except no, it’s not just clothes, it’s her adorable DRESSES!

I should really call it Jocelyn’s Toddler Dress Quilt.

So, just to warn you guys, this is a sewing post. But there are also pictures, so you can just glaze over the SEWING words and look at the pictures – sure, they’re of quilts, but there’s also a blurry one of Jocelyn wielding a naked barbie doll, so don’t skip!

I’ve been stockpiling the sweet little summer sundresses as she grows out of them with the intention of making a quilt out of them for her some day. I first discussed this here. Now, we’re talking about a myriad of patterns and colors and even fabric weight (though I’m trying to keep it to just wovens, no knits) so when I do make this quilt it will be quite a task to meld it all together.

So, a few items have caught my fancy in the last month or so, and I wanted to make a note of them so that when that Quilt-Making Day DOES arrive, I’ll have some ideas to draw on.

This Denyse Schmidt “Single Girl” quilt looks adorable, but I don’t think it would showcase each fabric enough. I want to be able to look at each fabric and remember my little girl WEARING it.

If I was making the quilt today, I would have to go with a coin quilt. Here’s Hillary’s blogiversary quilt from Wee Wonderfuls that jump-started that idea. The white base color frames each fabric beautifully.

I wonder if I have enough dress fabric for this yet? I think I definitely will once she outgrows this summer’s clothes.

Which will be in about TWO MINUTES!

(All they can talk about every time I drop her off in her new classroom is, “She’s HOW old? Wow, she is TALL. Look how TALL. She looks like she’s FIVE, because she’s SO TALL, TALL, THE TALLNESS, I MUST COMMENT ONCE MORE ON THE TAAAAAALLL.” — I get it. She’s tall. We have spawned a tall amazonian girl-child. Shuddup already.)

I am all itchy to sew something. I sewed a sweet little sundress for Jocelyn which she has not allowed me to take a picture of (here’s one I got where she is RUNNING AWAY IN PROTEST, wielding a naked Barbie doll. “Don’t take my picture! I have a naked Barbie, and I’m NOT AFRAID TO USE IT!)

I SHIRRED! It was lovely fun, the shirring! When I finally got it to work! If you don’t know what shirring is, it’s sewing with elastic thread in the bobbin which makes the material get all stretchy and lovely – the top half of that dress = shirred. I got the motivation and know-how for it over at Portabello Pixie (the Shir Madness! Tutorial is down the side of her sidebar).

But that was months ago, and I want to sew something NEW! Something FOR ME!!

Look! It even says it’s FOR ME!!

I bought Alicia Paulson’s Tanglewood Bag pattern the instant she put it up for sale in her shop, but not the fabric kit, and have been hung up on fabric.

For ease of use, I thought, “I don’t HAVE to cut 48 2″ squares… I could just make the pattern with a solid fabric and not do the patchwork thing…” Which, let’s face it, is an EXCELLENT idea because I’m bound to mess something up and messing up on a 48 pieced 2″ squares will definitely make me cry, and so I could make the solid purse kind of my trial run before a “final” version, and also? I still have PLENTY of material left over from the blurry shirred dress up there — but even that sort of lazy talk didn’t motivate me into actually sitting down and doing it. I may pitch in the fickle towel and just MAKE IT ALREADY.

So this bag is my goal for the next week. Sewing. WOOOO!

-amy. lazy, fickle AMY.