Family Room Stuff

Since I have a tiny sewing room, but I am not the only one that likes to sew around here, I started keeping a sewing machine up in the family room (which is right next to my sewing room).  I have been working on curtains for this room since February!  I actually had the curtains basically done, but was having a hard time getting the grommets to finish them.  My mom found a place for them and sent them last week, yay!  So now I have my curtains up and a nice sewing machine cover to match.  Up next (not sewing) is to rip down all the wallpaper (even the stuff that has been painted over) and then paint the room a color to match the curtains, maybe in a year I can report that I actually finished that huge project.

The curtains training (getting the creases in the right place for when they are open)

One side of the sewing machine cover

 The other side of the sewing machine cover

The curtains open during the day.

 The Curtains closed at night

close up of the grommets and rod

This really makes me excited to paint down here.  I hung up the curtains before we painted, because we had these horrid blinds in there that were impossible to open, and I am a light person.  I want all of our windows uncovered during the day, so it drove me crazy trying to get the blinds open.  So I hung these up before we painted, because I wanted to get the light NOW!  So someday the walls will match.

Works in progress: pants

My girls get mostly hand me downs from a cousin of Ben's.  The only problem is neither one of my girls really likes jeans, and that is all that this girl wore.  So we bought some leggins for the girls, mistake.  All the leggins we bought got holes, the seams started coming undone after wearing one or two times.  I decided I just needed to make them a bunch of leggins.  So we went to Joann's on saturday and picked out a bunch of fabric.  We pre-shrunk it and then I had a cutting party last night.  The goal this week is to get a majority of the pants sewn up and to get ready for Autumn's birthday party on Friday.

Here is all the fabric we bought, all stacked up and folded after being pre-shrunk.

Here is a stack of 13 pairs of pants all cut out and waiting to be sewn (2 pairs have already been half sewn).

My girls should be better prepared for the cold weather once I get these sewn up.  Autumn keeps wearing the same 2 leggins that don't have holes yet.

Random projects

These are some misc. projects I had hanging around and got a few of them checked off one day.
 
This is a pencil holder for a bag that I made Autumn for Christmas last year.  I had put the velcro in the purse, but just now got around to making the removable pencil holder.

This is the inside of the purse where the pencil holder attaches onto.

The purse (Christmas 2011 present)

Detail of the front pocket

She got scriptures for her birthday last year, and here is the inside of the case I made.

Here is the scripture case.

Autumn was baptized last Decemeber and me and my mom made her a really nice dress for the occasion.   I made this dress bag to keep the dress in, so it is less likely to get dirty.

I have also been working on American girl doll PJ's for the girls' dolls.  Autumn is having a pajama doll party for her birthday, so of course her doll has to have matching pajamas.  This was a big deal because I had to make the pattern.  I took a couple of other doll patterns and combined them to make this footed pajama pattern.  Even after I had the pajamas sewn I had to do some editing to the pattern, the neck was just way to big.  So I think I have it to an acceptable size.

Here is Autumn Prairie and Zephyr in their Christmas Pajamas from 2011.

I also have been working on a new dress for me, but haven't finished that.

I also took a pair of pants I made when I was about 40 lbs heavier, and made them into tapered leg pants, and I am super happy with those.

I have been keeping busy in my sewing room.  No worries there.

Halloween Costumes

I have been starting my Christmas sewing, and also finishing a quilt that I started almost 5 years ago.  But I have also been doing Halloween costumes.

Zephyr is being Nacho Libre.  Ben went to Mexico 8 years ago and got a couple of wrestling masks.  Zephyr is using one of those.  It is red and blue, but not the same blue as Nacho Libre, but we told him that he would just have to deal.  So I made his costume to match his wrestling mask instead of a look alike to Nacho Libre.  He LOVES his costume and totally takes on the character fully.

Prairie is being a vampire and this is a cape that I made last year.  With leftover fabric I made her a new skirt and we bought the fabric for the leggins, to help freshen up the costume and so it felt a little different than when Autumn wore it last year.

Autumn made her costume this year, so I was off the hook there.

Week of October 7th

I finished up three projects, yay!  I finished a small baby doll blanket for Zephyr that I started for his 2nd birthday, used up some leftover BYU flannel for the back.  Finished a baby tied blanket with flannel from my Grandma's house and I finished another car blanket from polyester scraps my Grandma cut up and repurposed from polyester for the back.

Maybe these quilts should be called the White Grandma quilts.  She would be happy that I am using up her fabric.

The above and below pictures are front and back pictures of the baby tied quilt from flannel.

This is a blanket we will keep in our car.  Basically my kids love blankets, but I don't want them dragging their favorite blankets all around town, so we have this one (and one other I made) in the car.  Also they are our of polyester which is super durable, and I don't worry about them getting dirty because they wash up so well.

This is Zephyr's doll blanket with the last of the 1.75" polyester blocks that my Grandma cut up.

Week of October 1st

So I have still been sewing quite a bit this week, not as much as the 2 weeks previous.  Partly because the tension on my serger got messed up :( and I need my mom to talk me through out to fix it.  Also I am working on projects that take longer to finish, so I can be working quite a bit, but don't have anything finished.

We have General Conference this weekend, so I wanted some good hand projects to work on while I am listening/watching conference.  So I have been prepping some small tied blankets to do the ties on during conference.

This is last general conference in April, when the kids helped me tie a blanket that my Grandma had made, but never got it tied.

I had a batting party to get all the blankets ready.  I went into my stash of batting and was able to piece all these pieces together to get batting ready for 3 different quilts.  I don't particularly like piecing batting, but I like using up supplies and not throwing stuff away.

This is a closeup of one of the quilts that we will be tying this weekend.  It is a nine patch quilt that my Grandma cut up all the pieces.  They are mostly polester fabrics, and they ar 2" square blocks.  I think she cut these up from old clothes and stuff.  My mom and aunts were just going to throw all these blocks away.  I couldn't handle it, because I imagined my Grandma so painstakingly cutting out all these squares, and I decided to keep them.  I made the below quilt in January 2008 (just 4 months after cleaning out her house) with some of the blocks.  Well I FINALLY have all the blocks sewn up.  I feel happy that these blocks didn'g get wasted.  These quilts remind me sweetly of my Grandma in so many ways.  She never wasted anything.

Quilt I finished in Jan 2008.  You can read about it here. 

This is some purple polyester that I bought to make a swimming sling for Prairie when she was !, but the fabric was all wrong, and it didn't work at all.  I have been taking it apart and I pieced up all the fabric to be the back for the nine patch polyester quilt.  I am sure my Grandma would be proud that I repurposed some fabric for the back of the quilt.

So my Grandma seems to be a theme with these projects.  This is some flannel that she had stored away at her house.  She always made nice little tied blankets for people when they had a baby.  I thought I would make a nice little tied blanket with this flannel that I got form her house.  I decided that I didn't want to use anything except the flannel from her house, so I had to be creative in piecing the backside.  This is a closeup of the back so you can see all the ways it had to be pieced.  So this will get the ties and I will finish the edges this weekend!

 This is the last project I have been working on this week.  I have been working on quilting up this bad boy.  I pin-basted this thing in 2008 and was working away on quilting it but the bobbin tension got messed up, so I stopped.  My mom was nice enough to unpick on the quilting that had loose bobbin threads, but I never got back to quilting it.  It was supposed to be a wedding present for one of my best friends, on sunday it will be her 7 year anniversary, oops!  So I am almost done with quilting the stars, and then I just need to quilt the borders.  I was thinking that hand sewing the binding down would be a good conference project, but I don't know if I will have to time to get it to the point before saturday or sunday.  I guess we will just see.

Sewing Update

So I am almost done updating everything I have finished sewing in the last 2 weeks.  I still have 3 more projects that I need to get pictures of.

My mom visited earlier in September, and bought me a serger.  It was the motivation I needed to get a bunch of projects done.  I feel really motivated to get everything I need sewn up with a certain color.  I really wanted to put white thread back in, but didn't want to do that until I finished all the black thread projects, hence getting all those shorts, pants and shirts done for Zephyr.

I am getting close to running out of small projects to finish.  I have made some good progress on my cabinet and getting some projects cleaned out, which is good, because I should really start on my Christmas sewing.

Here is a few pictures of my new serger and my sewing room so you can visualize where all these stuff is being sewn.  This is my little piece of heaven on earth.  If I seem stressed Ben will suggest I go hang out in my sewing room and sew for a bit, it almost always lifts my mood.

 The view from the door, new serger on the right.

View from the door, the wall opposite of the machines 

 My sewing machine and green walls.  Thread nice and handy, and magnet strip to hang up patterns so I can easily read them while I am working on a project.

My view when I sew during the day.  I LOVE sewing in front of a big window! 

 My cutting area.

 My aunt gave me this shelf, so I repainted it, and put on a small 2 ft fluorescent light.  Now I have good lighting for cutting!  Oh that makes such a big difference.

 This is my ironing area.  I got that iron holder at IKEA and that has made a big difference.  I don't get so stressed when ALL 3 kids come in when I am sewing, because I am not worried about a hot iron getting knocked over.  Thanks to Ben for hanging up the shelf and iron holder for me a few weeks ago.

 In case you were worried with all the projects I have been completing that I didn't have any projects already started, have no fear my cabinet is still pretty full of started projects.

This is where I store fabric that I haven't cut out, and don't necessarily have a project in mind, but I think it will be useful.  (let's be honest I have fabric stashed away in a few other closets in my house too) 

When my mom was here we hung up this fluorescent light.  It is right above my machines, so I have such good lighting to sew by.  I LOVE it!  For such a small room I have 3 fluorescent lights in there.

 Zephyr is a constant helper in my sewing room.  He always "cleans:" and "fixes" my machines with little tools I keep in there.  He is also an expert thread cutter.

T-shirts and shorts

So Zephyr's shirts were getting a little short and I am just trying to clean out my sewing room.  The skull shirt I actually bought the fabric specifically to make a long sleeved shirt for him, because I found the fabric on the super cleanrance rack at Joann's.  Zephyr was excited because he has a short sleeved shirt out of the same fabric that he got for his 3rd birthday.

The striped shirt  was just me trying to use up fabric from my stash.  The fabric wasn't quite tall enough, so I actually pieced the white stripe across the chest in.  I also pieced one in the back.  I think because of the stripes you can hardly tell, but he should get some good use of that shirt, especially when it warms up in the spring/summer next year.

Jaguar Outfit

When I went to Iowa my old Boss, who is like a surrogate Aunt to me, insisted on taking me fabric shopping.  I had a great time and picked out stuff to make for all the kids.  So I made the skirt for Prairie, but the outfit didn't seem complete, so I found just enough black knit to make her that t-shirt and appliqued the heart on.  Prairie LOVES it and wore it 3 days in a row, and I said something about it, and I guess Ben liked the outfit too, because it was on his suggestion she was wearing it the third day.

This is the best picture of the skirt.  It is a simple straight skirt with elastic waistband, with a 6" circle skirt ruffle.