Tiny Apron

It's birthday time again; this time for my little niece who'll be 5 in a couple of weeks.  Right now she is obsessed with mermaids, anything "pretty", and of course, the color pink.  I knew I wanted to make her something, but wanted to stay away from extremely girlie prints while still catering to her pretty preferences.

I came across this awesome (free!) apron pattern at Sew Liberated which was specifically designed for little kids.  Not only is it very wee, but she was clever enough to make the waist strap velcro to the body rather than burden little hands with tying bows.

I just love this fabric!!  I decided on it fairly quickly at Hobby Lobby, and without even considering how little fabric I actually needed for the apron, I inadvertently bought MORE than I needed, so I have plenty extra for future projects.

It turned out pretty well, except for the usual snags.  I'm still having trouble with stitch settings; the current tension on my machine is still too tight for top stitching, so it makes unattractive pulls on the undersides of things.  I also never worked with velcro before, and as evidenced below, I had issues with straight lines...(arrrgh!!).

I also wish I had added a pocket to the front so my niece could carry around art supplies or mermaids in it, but I thought of it too late.  Ah well, next time!

Giant Food Pillow Giveaway!

Hey, my crafting hero is giving away giant pillows that look like slices of pizza and stacks of pancakes on her site.  Go on over and post a comment for a chance to win!  SO awesome.

Christmas In June

My fellow craftdactyl has been mad at me for not posting in a while, so I'm going to try to make up for it by posting twice today.

Here is another project I've been working on lately - I went to a workshop on making felted wool animals at Craftland a few months ago, and absolutely fell in love with the whole concept. I bought all of the supplies I needed to start crafting my own little cuties, and here is what I've come up with so far...

I ran into a slightly terrifying set-back before the photo shoot - this fuzzy little miscreant...

....decided my poor polar bear needed a make-over!

Phew - could've been a lot worse, just needed to be tamped down a bit :)

New Art

Whoo! It's been a while since I've been able to post anything new - I lost my reliable internet connection a couple of months ago, but, AT LAST, I am back in business! First things first, here are a couple of new pieces I recently added to my portfolio. I meant for them to be part of a series of three, but thus far only two pieces have manifested themselves - I got distracted and started another series before I finished this one! Haha, that happens a lot :) Anyway, I was listening to this beautiful song while I worked on "Ghost Of My Old Dog" (I named the painting after the song) and I was just feeling like my poor, aging brain had been causing me a lot of grief lately when I created "Dunce Cap."

(Fancy frames can be found here and here. Thank you FrodoBabbs!)

Pillow case

It has only been since this past Christmas that I finally figured out how to use my sewing machine.  At first I couldn't even thread the machine without consulting the manual, every...single...time.  So with that being said, I was looking for an easy sewing project to use for Christmas gifts, and came across this awesome tutorial.

It totally worked out and was a great beginner sewing project!!  I mean I definitely had my share of tribulations from cutting big pieces of fabric to sewing straight lines, but I made five pillow cases for gifts and they all turned out well.

Anyway, one of the cases I made in December was for my little nephew who is turning three in a couple of weeks.  I came across this incredible dino fabric perhaps months ago and bought two yards of it before I even knew what to do with it.  Sooooo, I made him another one :)

And I have to say, this go-around was a thousand times easier.  Why I never thought to fold the huge pieces of fabric in half for easier measuring and cutting, I'll never know.  But it took way less time, and everything came out evenly and most importantly---the cuff matched up on the seam which meant I could go to bed in peace.  Aaahh!!

Dino Alterations

A good friend of mine got me a couple of Threadless tees for Christmas, and as rad as they were, they were both Larges, and sadly I'm a Small, so they've been sitting in my drawer for five months.

So I spent the morning altering this one!

Turned out pretty good.  The shirt had no side seams (how in the world do they make a tube of cloth with no seams??) so I had to cut the sides and take it in about two inches total.

 

Hemmed the bottom another two and half inches, then shortened the sleeves and decreased the arm hole diameter.  I love using thread that stands out from whatever fabric I'm working with, but there's something to be said for matching thread...darker colors show everything, right or wrong.

I'm also sure there's some other type of stitching that's better than a straight stitch for stretchy t-shirt material, but I have no idea what it is.  I say, straight stitch all the time. 

It gets the job done for now!

Shorts

Gah!  Tried my hand at a pair of shorts recently, and uh.....wellll, shoot.  They were supposed to be custom fit, but that ended up meaning very fitted.  And, it made the front and back rise the exact same measurement, so the shorts barely cover my bum in the back, while covering my bellybutton many times over in the front. 

 

Still though, with a shirt covering the waist, they're pretty cute.  I'm gonna try again.