This past weekend I went down to DC with my group of stitching friends from Boston! We met up initially at In Stitches in VA and what a great store it is! We shopped, took a break for lunch and a needleshow nearby and then shopped more. On Saturday we spent the afternoon stitching!
On Sunday when I was home I finished up a little piece I had finished stitching a few weeks ago – finished it into a needlecase as it called for. It’s called Appleseed by Jeannette Douglas Designs :
Appleseed Needlecase
It was a small piece from Celebrations of Needlework years ago that I had 1/2 finished – so I finished it up as I’m working through a pile of unfinished pieces.
This next piece is one that I started last week and finished up Saturday in DC. It’s called Tales of Wonder by Dragon Dreams and it is just a cute small piece I’ve had in my pile of things to stitch forever. I’m not yet sure if I’ll frame it or make it a small banner.
It’s been a few years since I’ve made any real time to do much stitching. I’ve quilted on and off over the last few years but I’ve decided to get back into cross stitch as well this year. I’m going to document my crafts here as well as house projects.
In January my Aunt gave me a quilt she and I had pieced back in 2011 and I had left mine at her house unfinished. I took the last week in January and put the final border on it, then hand quilted and put on the binding. Finishing up the Japanese Diamonds quilt (Japanese and homespun fabrics).
Pieced in 2011, finished in 2017
I’ve been going through boxes of cross stitch and quilts and patterns, trying to organize and find projects I have. I found this piece called the Shepherd’s Bush purse that I stitched back in 2009. It’s beaded and I always loved the soft color pallete. So today I turned it into the purse with some fabric from my stash and a little sewing then hand stitching. Cute and can go in my bin of finished stitchery now!
Shepherd’s Bush Purse
Hopefully soon I’ll be able to show the other piece I’m stitching – started about 2005 and hopefully to be finished soon!
This is a very late post but generally I like to have my sewing projects on here along with house projects. So I’ll do a quick recap. No house work has been going on, Ryan has been working every free second he has including all weekend every weekend 🙁 This means I’m on Alex duty and with the teething lately (molars!), her naps haven’t always been great so I’ve been focusing on things that are easy to quit when she wakes.
What have we done ? Well first up was Halloween, I made her costume this year, she was a purple owl. She LOVED it. She loved the costume, loved trick-or-treating and just overall had a blast. She walked down and back up the street carrying her bucket and chatting with the neighbors. The idea of picking out candy and then getting to eat some at the end of the night – wow. It was fun.
Alex with her glow wand and bucket of candy when we were all done. It’s impossible to get a still picture of a toddler!Another costume view
After Halloween Alex and I went down to Aimee and Jason’s for the weekend (Aimee’s birthday) and the kids all got dressed in their costumes. We had a great weekend playing, Alex loved playing with all of Jason’s toys (I got a ton of great xmas gift ideas out of it for Alex 🙂 ).
Alex, Jason and Brobee – a favorite 🙂
The last 2 weekends we’ve been home. We started going to myGym on Saturday mornings and Alex loves it. We love it because she’s happy and gets tired out enough for a great Saturday nap 🙂 I need to come up with a Sunday morning activity to do the same! In the afternoons we hit up the park and do some daddy snuggles while he works (usually a xmas movie is on). We started introducing xmas concept to Alex and so far ‘Santa’ and ‘Ho ho ho’ are fun ones.
Alex’s favorite toys right now are trains so we spend a lot of time playing with Thomas and friends 🙂
Bedtime train time.
And this weekend I finally finished the top to Alex’s wall hanging for her bedroom. I set up my sewing room in my diningroom and Alex sat at the table and colored while I cut and ironed. After Alex went to bed I put the top together and I am looking forward to hand quilting it!
Top finished!
Hopefully we’ll have a house update next week, this weekend we plan to tile!
It went slowly, one panel at a time but this weekend I finished the last curtain panel for the nursery! I still want to make tie backs (for now I’m using ribbons), but they give great coverage and make her room dark enough for naps!
These are simply a brown fabric with beige dotted vertical lines and a white lining on the reverse. We’re using spring rods for now because we didn’t want to cover the trim up although if the rods fall down easily I may do some mounted rods on the inside of the windows instead of the springs (babies like to grab things!)
Second window has curtains now!And tied open with ribbons to let in some light for photographs 🙂
This weekend I had my second baby shower (my local friends threw one for me). They went with a theme for gifts and all got me/Itty baby books! I am in awe with the little library Itty has already now!
Books from my friends!
And of course some of them couldn’t resist a few other gifts – including a home made blanket from Harrin, Moby wrap (and owl toy) from Sarah, adorable winter hat from Erin, Red Sox gear from Denise (she and Harrin are big fans), and a necklace from Michele (not pictures because I was wearing it all weekend and it’s up on my dresser) 🙂
Non-book gifts - baby blanket is my favorite colors! Purple and green 🙂 of course!
And on Sunday while Ryan worked on the nursery (he had a lot of work work to do this weekend but did have some time to work on the nursery of course), I took a break and did a little work on my wallhanging I’m making for the baby. I started cutting out the applique pieces for the owl and tree blocks. I’d like to get this far enough along that I can have some hand work going in the evening when I’m too tired to do anything but sit on the couch. I think 2 blocks are ready for hand sewing almost (just have to cut the background fabric down a bit and center the pieces).
The owls will have a lot more details (eyes/beak and feet) but I just wanted to get started with the bodies and wings. The green fabric will be sashing, the pink/daisy fabric will be corner blocks and the purple/daisy will be the outside border me thinks.
I’ll have a separate post on nursery progress when I get some pictures of that – my phone is acting strange with pictures, sometimes I take them and they don’t show up as pictures later – a complete loss of the progress part since I don’t realize it at the time 🙁
With the amount of work ryan had to do this weekend, he really surprised me when he said he’d do house work on sat and just work Sunday. I had not been getting my hopes up with the late nights he’s been pulling that he’d have time this weekend.
Saturday we got to work on the drawers, ryan hung the last bit of hardware for the drawer slides, then we built the last 4 drawers! Next we made face frames for them all with a nice routed top and attached them. All 10 drawers are finally done! Just doors to finish up and the built-ins will be done.
The right hand cabinet with finished drawers!The middle cabinets with finished drawersAnd the left hand cabinet with drawers - that's 10 total!
After that we put together the glider we got for the nursery (our first nursery purchase). For now it will live in our room because we don’t have a place for it and Fitz is not a fan when it moves 🙂
As if that wasn’t enough for a day, Ryan said he would hang one of the tvroom doors if I could find the door and door frame I wanted to use. Unfortunately this was harder than I though and he almost put in three frames before we found the real matching frame for the original door. (The frame was hiding). And we have a door (Fitz is also not a fan of this 🙂 )
Door to the front entry hung! This swings out into the entryway as it originally did.
After that we settled in for some chili for dinner and went to bed early. Sunday Ryan had to work so I decided I would do some spackling and then end the day with some sewing while he watched the big game. There was one section up by the crown molding that needed to be spackled so I got 2 coats on that (maybe one more needed) and I got the closet corners all taped and a skim coat on both the left side and back walls (including the ceiling).
I think in general I need one more skim coat on every surface and the closet will be ready to be sanded! Considering how this started I’m very impressed with it.
Corner taped and another coat on the seam of this wall. Taping that curved seam was HARD!Ceiling got a good skim coat as well as that left wall. This side did not get taped since it was in decent shape (not great shape) but didn't have a hole that needed taping at least.And a view of the back wall, after this I actually skim coated that whole descending wall so everything except the right wall has a skim coat or more now.
While I was skim coating I think Ryan was looking for a break because he said that if I got everything set up and found a door and door frame (for sure this time) he would install the other door in the tvroom! I dropped everything and went on the hunt. This door originally was replaced by a newer door so I had to go through the collection of ‘removed’ doors and frames to find one for this spot – and we were in luck!
Door from the tvroom to the kitchen area installed!A view of the built-ins and the door hung 🙂
That leaves only 1 more door (which I’ve already picked out) to be hung in the tvroom – the closet door. It’s kind of nice to wait until the spackling is done though in there first (almost!). We can start baseboards (which will make the built-ins look more finished) anytime now!
At this point I was going to caulk the built-ins but the game was about to start and I would have been blocking the tv so instead I went up to my sewing room and spent the next 4 hours making up a crib skirt for my sister’s nursery (hey it’s never too late – well it’s not too late yet – my nephew does still use a crib) 🙂
Pleated crib skirt, the main material is white with green stripes and the pleats are solid green that match the stripes nicely.A better view of the pleats.
The only reason that took so long is that I overlocked every seam so it could put up with harsh washing (not that it will but just in case). This probably wasn’t necessary but I had the time and it was good practice (i’ll have to make one of these for my nursery soon and being a dust fanatic it will definitely get washed a lot). AND I used up 2 spools of thread almost on this – overlocking uses a lot of thread! Me thinks I need a surger soon 🙂
What a great amount of progress we made! I can really see a finish in sight for the tvroom which is good since pretty soon we’ll be switching gears to start the nursery and focusing on that room!. I’ve planned out what I want to do storage wise in the closet in the tvroom which has motivated me to finish that soon so I can get some stuff stored in there (I currently have no closets downstairs at all!).
Getting close to Christmas! Shopping is almost done (just need a trip to Joann’s now!) and I got my sewing projects done last night! This was just a quick project that my sister-in-law gave me the idea for because she said my nieces both want hooded towels so I jumped at the idea. I purchases regular sized towels with matching hand towels at target and some fleece at Joann’s earlier this month.
I cut the hand towels in half and made them into hoods, then attached them and cut out the girls’ names from the fleece, appliqueing that on with a blanket stitch on the machine (that was a first and it came out okay. I hope the girls like them. I wanted to add flowers applique’d on too, however I realized while doing the names how hard it was to go ‘around’ instead of in straight lines so it didn’t happen last night.
One for Emily 🙂 - The towel is actually light pink, not white as the picture shows.And one for Finley!
Can’t wait for the girls to get them on Saturday! I had high hopes of making embroidered burp cloths for my nephew HOWEVER the universe conspired against me. I couldn’t find the burp cloths (gerber cloth diapers) ANYWHERE – babysrus only had their brand which were gauze and gerber ones that were already decorated. Target only had the gauze ones! Failure!
The cousins came over today to pick up their costumes! We had the obligatory picture session…
Costumes 2011!Georgia the witch - still needs some accessories but the costume part is adorable if I do say so myself 🙂Maia - Rapunzel from Tangled, fits over her whole outfit today 🙂And Chloe the Vampiress - also in need of accessories like fangs!The back of Chloe's costume since it's more elaborate than the front even.
Now a little trip down memory lane … when did this halloween costume extravaganza all start? Well one year for Chloe’s 3rd birthday I made her the sleeping beauty dress as a birthday gift and the idea of costumes blossomed.
Sleeping Beauty Dress in Sept 2006
The next year both Georgia and Chloe decided what they wanted to be…
Oct 2007 - Georgia was a pirateOct 2007 - Chloe was a 1920's singer
And that brings us to the year I started making all three of them costumes…
2008 - Georgia was a zombie, Chloe was the princess from Enchanted and Maia was Jasmine.2009- Georgia was a devil, Chloe and Maia were genies in purple and pink2010 - Georgia was a gypsie, Chloe was a black cat and Maia was Ariel in the pink dress
After going out to dinner Ryan joined me in the sewing room to watch movies while I sewed. He even stayed up ‘late’ with me so I could get the costumes completely finished last night!
First I worked on Maia’s Tangled (princess) costume, it’s a bit more elaborate than recent princesses with a few extra steps but I just had to add the zipper, add the lining, construct the sleeves (which had ribbon sewn onto the fabric to make ‘stripes’), then attach the lace and hem the skirt. It was about half the costume left but it went along pretty smoothly and came out cute. I can’t wait for her to try it on!
Tangled (Rapunzel) costume finished!
Next up I worked on the bustle for Chloe’s Vampiress (victorian) costume. As I do a lot I cheated and skipped the lining piece, it actually would have made it easier to have a lining piece but since I hadn’t previously cut it and I didn’t want to have to find the patter piece I just ‘winged’ it instead and it doesn’t need it, especially since it’s a costume. I started with the side pleats then ruffled the top and bottom. The top when into a waistband and the bottom I just ‘hemmed’ the ruffled part. This is where the lining would have been handy but due to the drapey effect of the bustle it worked out fine. Finally I pinned up and then tacked those sections to get the full effect. I ended by doing button holes and then attaching buttons to the skirt so it can be attached after the skirt is tied on. First time using my buttonhole on my machine and it went quite well, even without interfacing the fabric like I was supposed to 🙂
Vampiress costume back with bustle attached!
That was it for the cousin’s costumes! Next up I just had to finish the black cat costume for a coworker’s daughter. It was just hand stitching the black fur to the neck and sleeves so it went quick and finished up in about 15 minutes. This matches the American Girl Black Cat costume for her doll.
Black cat costume
That’s it! I’m done with costumes … next up … baking! But first I think I’ll take a night off and relax tonight 🙂
Got a late start last night so not a lot done but I did manage to hem the skirt and add the trim to Chloe’s vampiress costume. It still needs a bustle to be made but I’m doing that very last since it’s not essential for the costume, just adds some nice flair. With 4 costumes this year I have to prioritize a bit.
Vampiress Dress from frontVampiress dress from back
Once the skirt was finished and the costume was all together (I have some snaps to add by hand but that’s no biggie), I moved on to the black cat costume for a coworker. I hemmed the dress and got it ready to attach the fur by hand (hopefully tonight?). Then I used scraps to make a tail and ears which I attached to the headband. The ears have wire in them and really it’s a glue job not a sewing job although I do plan to do some whip stitching to hold a few lumpy spots down and make it look nicer now that it’s all being held by glue. The tail also has wire so it can be formed a little but it doesn’t hold the form too well because it’s heavier than the wire.
Black cat costume pieces, just some hand sewing to complete it!
