Fabric storage inspiration? Not quite.

I spent all day waiting for fabric storage inspiration to hit, all the while sorting and folding and stacking. I knew I had a lot of fabric, but I was still surprised to see how much was there. The pile of wool garments ready for felting was the largest, thanks to my mother cleaning out all of her business clothes when she retired this year.

In the end, fabric storage inspiration didn't exactly hit me in the face like I was hoping. Instead, it kind of tapped gently and gingerly on my shoulder saying in a timid little voice, "Ummm... I think maybe if you put these pieces in a box together, ummm... it might be a little bit better than it was. That is, if it's not too much trouble for you, cause, umm.... I might be wrong about this."

So rather than a photo of some eye candy stack of fabric all neatly folded and organized, I'll give you a quick description. Same fabrics, but sorted and in stacked plastic tubs rather than spilled out all over the floor. Not earthshattering, but it gets my studio back to being functional again. (I'm still not finished; plan on being there by this time tomorrow night.)

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On a totally unrelated note, I just had to share some of Liv's homework. The teacher asks them to write a "story" on the back of their worksheets - basically just three sentences all about one theme. Usually it goes something like, "I like cats. Cats are the best. Yay for cats!" Every now and then she gets creative and we get some real winners.

Like these....




"My mom has a mine (mini) van. I rid to scool in it. I love mine vans!" I love her illustration of the mini-van. She's got the pointed nose shape DOWN. What you can't see in the scan is that there's a body all slammed up against the pointy windshield. That's me. And the picture of her in the side has her wearing a seatbelt. Safety first.




For this assignment she had to write three sentences using her spelling words, which included "you", "not", "sit", and "do". So of course she strung them all together and wrote, "Do you not wat (want) to sit and do your homwrk? No I dot (don't). I do not like homwrk."


And finally, a set of sentences about her daddy.




"My dad plas goof (plays golf). he uoosis (uses) a cluB. he pas (plays) Good."

Toodles,

Progress

So today I got the big idea to clean out my sewing studio. I am NOT one of those people with the dreamy sewing room, with decorator colors on the wall and inspirational art pieces scattered on shelves throughout the room. My studio is purely a place to put things until I want to work with them. Except that sometimes I get so much stuff stacked around that I can no longer walk into the room.

I'm at the point right now.

Those boxes in the floor are all vintage fabrics. I had been "storing" them in my van, but since we went on vacation and had to use our minivan for its intended purpose, rather than just a storage room on wheels, they ended up in the floor of my studio. I'm waiting for storage inspiration to strike.

What you can't see in this photo is that there's an area of the room that is literally knee-deep in knit yardage and garments for refashioning. I spent the morning hauling it all out, sorting it, and folding it on my dining room table. I no longer have a working dining room table. I'm waiting for storage inspiration to strike for this as well.

Now that I'm all depressed about my fabric hoarding and lack of storage, perhaps I should show you some progress that's happening in our house. Remember my ugly fireplace? It started out as this:

and then my sweet husband added sheetrock above the fireplace (actually, it was fireboard because it's a working fireplace) to cut the ugly brick fireplace off at its knees. He also built a new mantel that's considerably deeper than the ridiculously shallow one that was there before. After mudding and sanding and mudding and staining, it now looks like this:

I'm totally digging the dark stain on the mantel. We'd be all done except for the decorating (see my pretty new bottle on the mantel?) except that Home Depot did a piss poor job matching the paint and now we have to repaint the rest of the room. I'm not going to think about that right now. Instead, I'll start obsessing over what to put above my new mantel.

Toodles,

It went... swimmingly

So I've been absent for a while. During my little blog absence we've gone on a family vacation (will post pics tomorrow), I've finished up the semester at school (YAY summer!!), and Liv has finished up her first soccer season. All in all, a crazy busy time.

In betwixt and between I was able to get a bit of sewing done. Nothing major - some t-shirt dresses and such for Liv. But the BIG thing I tackled was actually something not so big after all.

Ever since I saw Dana's Coast to Coast Swimwear Sew-Along last year, I've been dying to try my hand at making a swimsuit for Liv. Over the past 10 months I've been reading, gathering supplies, and generally getting my nerve up. Given that a basic girls' swimsuit doesn't require much in the way of supplies, and there's actually not super a whole lot of practical nuts & bolts info out there on sewing swimwear, the bulk of that time was spent in avoidance. Thinking, planning, plotting, but not actually DOING.

But this week, I tackled it.

And it went.... swimmingly.






The edges all have contrast binding with cotton-wrapped elastic on the inside for stability. I'm not so happy with the top where all the binding comes together with the straps. With all of that elastic sandwiched, I couldn't get anything to lay down smoothly.

I couldn't find any information about how to transition from binding the edge to wrapping the binding around the elastic. I couldn't get a smooth finish where the edge binding met up with the straps, so I finally just stitched it all down ugly covered the top with a strip of black that I pulled really taut. A band-aid fix, literally.



I tried it on Liv tonight and it fits to a tee! I'm so giddy from my bathing suit success that it's taking every ounce of self-control to keep me from spending down my entire bank account on spandex for future bathing suits.

Toodles,

Rummage sale finds and fireplace progress

I realize that I've started grouping two random topics together in my titles. That's because I get a bit lazy (or maybe it's busy?) and forget to blog about things right after they happen. And so when I do get time to sit down and blog, I usually have a few saved up. Tonight the two items are my rummage sale finds and the progress on the fireplace redo.

Even though my fabric stash runneth over, I couldn't resist the siren song of spring rummage sales. I allowed myself to go to two sales last week, which was all kinds of self control because yard sales were all over the city that week, people. The first was mainly clothes and everything was priced as "fill a bag for $5". And fill a bag I did. With books and old t-shirts for refashioning. At the second, it seems that not everyone was on the same page with the pricing structure. But I dug around and found the cheapie t-shirts, as well as some vinyl make-up- bags at 10 cents each. I plan on cutting the vinyl into applique shapes for t-shirts and such.


Three long-sleeved tees


Two sweaters



Odd strapless dress (ties in the back)


Ugly chenille sweater (to make swiffer cloths)


An assortment of short-sleeved tees and tanks


Kid-sized pajama pants with a fun scooter print


Vinyl make-up bags, scarves, and necklace with gold-painted wooden beads


And a stack of books - some for reading and some for crafting.

Oh, and new short sleeved blouse for me. (not pictured because I wore it for three days this week and now it's in the laundry)

All for a total of $6.70. I've already used some of the t-shirts to make a couple of dresses for Liv. Will post pics tomorrow.

And now for a bit of a progress report on the fireplace.

Mantel is built.


Sheetrock is up.


I'm loving it already! This weekend we'll have to finish floating the sheetrock and then paint the wall above the fireplace to match the walls around. After that, I get to bust out the chalkboard paint to give the wall NEXT to the fireplace a bit of a redo. and then... and then... and then...

Toodles,

The beginning of a BIG project

There is a long brick fireplace/heart that cuts across the corner of my dining room. Odd, I know. The room used to be a den but in made more sense to the layout of our house to use it as a dining room. And the idea of a fireplace in the dining room is really kind of neat to me. A fireplace says come in, sit down, warm up, have a good meal. It has kind of an old timey farmhouse charm that's a natural pairing for a dining room.

Except not THIS fireplace. It's loooong and it's ugly.


The brick is somehow simultaneously busy, blah, and dark. The floor-to-ceiling aspect overwhelms and makes the whole room feel dark. There are so many colors in the brick it's impossible to put anything in front of it and have the items stand out. And what you can't see from the photo is how narrow the mantel is. It's only 7 inches deep. But it's easily 10 feet long. So whenever I see pictures in decorating magazines and on DIY blogs with these beautiful, creative, colorful mantelscapes, I can love them from a distance but know that they will be impossible to replicate in my own home on my long, skinny, ugly fireplace.



It's only taken 13 years, but we've finally come up with a solution! YAY!!! My original plan was to paint the brick, but sweet husband says he doesn't want to do something that can't be undone. I'm thinking, "When would I EVER want this brick again?" But since sweet hubby lives at this house (and is doing most of the work), I found another solution.

Instead of painting the brick, the plan is to nail sheetrock above the fireplace so that it looks just like the walls on either side and effectively cutting the fireplace off at its knees. That will solve the looming dark aspect. And to solve the long, skinny mantel problem the plan is to create a larger mantel that will fit around the original. Work has already begun. I can't wait until it's all done!!

Toodles,

Scrapbooking, Baby Kitty's quilt, and more

I've been busy in my studio this weekend, though not with sewing. Every now and then I get bit with the scrapbooking bug. So Friday I cleared my schedule and cleaned off my sewing table. In place of the cutting mat, I got out my paper cutter and stacks and stacks of pretty paper. (I hoard scrapbooking paper, too. Sad....)

I don't know that any of the pages I made were showstoppers, but they are DONE. Done and behind plastic page protectors in Liv's scrapbooks. She's always so excited when I make new pages in her book.

And while I've got you here, I gotta share what my little girl made last night. The lead-up to the project went a little something like this:

"Mama, can I make a quilt for baby kitty?"

"uhhh...." (That's me, trying to work up the energy to tackle a sewing project with her instead of finishing up the last of the scrapbook pages.)

"Pleeeease!"

"uhhh.... Well.... I'm in the middle of something."

"Pleeease!! Baby kitty needs a quilt. And it would be really small."

"uhhh.... How about when I finish your scrapbook page?"

"...and I can make it myself. And I'll use the fabric out of my own stash."

And that last statement sealed the deal. The little girl has her own fabric stash, but just like her mama she has hoarding tendencies that have prevented her from cutting into any of her gorgeous fabrics. So when she offered to actually USE her fabrics, I couldn't say no.

And unlike previous sewing projects where I let my perfectionist tendencies take over, I decided that I'd take her at her word and let her do this completely on her own. She chose the fabrics. She did the cutting, the design, the sewing, the everything. I take that back. I did do the fusible webbing kitty patch. That whole hot-iron thing.

I could see her confidence increase stitch by stitch, piece by piece as it all came together. The result was a far-from-perfect little bit of fabric scraps sewn together. The fabrics were just layered and stitched, no right-sides-together going on there. The seams are crooked and the threads untrimmed. The sides are wonky and the edges raw. But it's all her own work, her own vision, her own little sewing triumph.

She's written up her own blog post about her project over at her blog, Cool Show by Olivia. Just like her sewing project, the blog post is all her own - phonetic spelling and all. See her post here.

(Baby Kitty snuggling under her quilt.)

Toodles,

Another t-shirt for me

So when I created my sweater-to-scoopneck tank the other day, I cut the v-neck band off of the blue sweater. I don't know if it's a sign of thriftiness or mental disorder, but I save the collars and cuffs and pockets and button plackets and necklines from garments I cut up for fabric or refashion into other items. I have a shoebox full of them just waiting for the right project.

Today, I made use of the neck band from the sweater. See?

I made a fitted tee from some brown knit I had on hand and then stitched the sweater banding down to create a neat v-neck detail. That sounds awfully simple, doesn't it?

Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. First of all, I had to be sure that the neckline I cut out of the brown tee was the same size as the v-neck band, since the sweater band was a closed circle. This involved first cutting the neckline really small (like, the same as the back of the tee), folding it in half to find the perfect middle, lining up the sweater neck band so that the point of the V was exactly at the middle of the t-shirt, and then pinning up and around. After it was all pinned, I marked the top edge of the neckline, removed the sweater band I worked so hard to pin down evenly, and then cut the neckline slightly larger than the line I had marked. I made it slightly larger to be sure that there would be no brown t-shirt peeking out.

I decided at this point that the colors were a bit drab. To add a bit of "pop", I cut long strips of cranberry red rib knit and ruffled one edge. I stitched them down around the neckline of the shirt before I -once again- pinned the sweater band down very carefully and very evenly. Finally, I stitched all the way around the edge of the sweater band to attach it permanently.

Voila!

And because I can't get pictures of me without also taking some pictures of Liv...

LOVE those big eyes!!!

Toodles,