Not Mine

So I mentioned that I was recovering an old umbrella, right?  I went back to my second class and everything was going great until I went to open up the umbrella.  The canopy fit perfectly, but there's a problem with my little end piece.  It's too complicated for words and I don't think that a picture would work, so here's my classmate's umbrella.

She started out with one of those clear plastic umbrellas and it was a struggle at first to cut out an accurate pattern, but after everything was sewn together, she slipped it on and it was a perfect fit!  The plastic end pieces that hold the umbrella to the ends of the ribs were not available, so she had to improvise with some beads.

Oh!  It's fuzzy!  I only took one photo.  Boo.  Anyway, she used a little wooden bead and then a little metal bead to secure that.   I think she was planning on doing a different color bead at each end point.  Pretty neat.  

Mine is in a sad pile on the floor in my craft room.  I need to use a drill, but I have all these horrible images running through my head of drilling off a finger.  Blah.  I'll figure it out.   

Birthday Gift and a Bonus

We went to a birthday party today, so I spent some time at the sewing machine this weekend.  I wanted to do these gifts up last week, but I was too depressed by the utter disaster area of my sewing room.   I think one night I went in to clean it and just curled up in a ball and napped.  Just the thought of tackling it made me sleepy.

Anyway, the first gift was a pillow.  My kid loves pillows and I think it is adorable when she puts her little head on one.  The birthday girl's room is animal themed and her initials are G and E and since I had these furry animal appliques (courtesy of my mom), I decided to make up a coordinating pillow for her.  One is side is an elephant and the other side is a giraffe.  

I debated for a while on the background fabric.  I wanted to do a dark blue brocade for the elephant, but in the end I went with the pajama fabric and just used one pillow for both animals.

As for constructing the pillow itself...that caused me a bit of sewing anxiety.  Why?  Measuring!  I hate measuring things sometimes.  It was a 12" pillow form, so I had to decide what size square to cut.  I read all these things and they kept saying I needed an 11" square, but that absolutely baffled my brain, so I cut the square at 13", I think.  Obviously it is not taut on the form, but I think it is still okay.

Next up, I used a vintage (possibly 1980s...is that considered vintage now?) pattern from Butterick.  It only came in size large, which is supposed to fit a 22 to 26 pound kid.  My fifteen month old is about 26 pounds, so I figured it would fit her and the one year old would grow into it.  

I made the little yellow dress, though they call it a jumper.  I skipped the little panties, because I'm afraid of elastic.  I'm also afraid of buttonholes and I had to tackle that.  Yikes.

I revisited the prairie bonnet and created a little matching hat.  It's a pretty sweet little dress.  I worry that the buttons are a little heavy.  I followed the pattern directions and added two buttons to each strap so that it can be adjusted.  I lined it with the sweetest little print.  

I've had the lining in my stash for ages and I was so happy to find the perfect project for it.  It's so soft and snuggly.  

And I made a little card.  Nothing fancy.

Oh...did I say there was a bonus?  There is!  I made another little dress and bonnet to keep!

The main print was purchased when I first started sewing and was convinced that every single fabric I saw should be turned into an apron.  This never met that fate and, instead, sat in my closet for five years.  I lined it with a little calico.

And here's me in the car frantically trying to install the snaps on our way to the party.

One of the holes got ripped when I tried to pry up the incorrectly installed snap.  I did two females instead of a male and a female, so I had to fix that in the car.

Top Secret!

I am working on an album for my husband and I anticipate giving it to him in October for our anniversary.  I should've done this for our first anniversary (that's the paper one, right?), but I didn't, so I'm doing it now.  It's just a little album highlighting from the time we met until present.  

I am using a 12 x 12 spiral bound black scrapbook.  I love this style of scrapbooking.  I know that those plastic sleeves are there to protect your memories from the grubby fingers of time, but I'm entranced by the tactile nature of the open pages.  Seriously.  I love to feel all the bumpy letters and the flocked stickers.  

I'm not going to show many pages of this album, but there are two so far that I am fond of.  I have wanted to do this next one for many years and am so excited to finally do it.  We have three photos of ourselves together where we both look really good and they were all taken in our first year together.  The first was taken in New York during the weekend that we decided to be together, the third was taken on the monorail in Las Vegas on our way to my sister-in-law's wedding, and the second was taken on my first trip to California where we picked out our first apartment.  Anyway, the photo is called "Dog Beach," because that is where we snapped it.  To memorialize it, I recreated the beach using sandpaper, fuzzy dog stickers, and bubbly wave stickers, as follows:

 Do you see the one dog sniffing the other dog's butt?  That made me laugh.  I don't think my husband will appreciate my potty humor, though.  Oh and the other two dogs were not meant to be humping -- just playing -- but it didn't turn out that way, I guess.  Anyway, the only thing I am missing for this layout is a picture of our dog to add to the mix.  

The next page I am sharing was from our trip to the Bahamas for my sister's wedding.  We did one of those off-the-boat snorkeling excursions.  They got us all set up and gave us these little feed bags of fish food and then instructed us to never ever ever ever open the feed bags under the water.  So what does my husband go and do?  He opened up the feed bag under the water and the fish swarmed.  He screamed, I laughed and it is one of my favorite memories of him.  So over the years, I've been collecting little stickers and embellishments to use on this page.  Here's a snippet of it:

I changed the color saturation in the photo and used some matching metallic purple paper to represent underwater and then I just stuck fish all over.  Pretty fancy, I know.  

Anyway, that's what I've been secretly working on.  Hopefully it will all come together.  I printed out photos through Shutterfly many many moons ago and I only printed out the first two years, so I still have five years to cover, which includes new pets, engagement, whale watching, marriage, new house, and baby.  Phew...I hope I have enough pages!

May Showers

Well, technically, we had May Snow, which is perhaps why I've been such a crabass lately.  Seriously, I've been so cranky.  I've had no motivation to email or blog or anything.  The sun is finally out, though it is super cold out today and I was kept awake all night by the wind whistling between the houses.  And, adding to my general crankiness/anxiety, whenever it is windy like that I worry about tornadoes.   

Anyway, last Saturday I took an umbrella recovering class at Treadle Yard Goods.  We got as far as deconstructing the umbrella, tracing our pattern pieces, and sewing them mostly together.  I'm using some floral yardsale fabric from my mom.  It's just a cotton, so I'll have to Scotchguard it, or whatever it's called.  I also have to go to the hardware store and get some sort of drill bit for boring a hole into the umbrella topper, because it broke during the deconstructing, but can be fixed with a hole and a new dowel.  Anyway, here's a teaser pic:

I'm off for my second class today, but before I do that I need to go to the ER with my kid in order to follow-up on a fever and a rash from last night.  This just adds to the Crank that I am.

Letters and Pages

It seems to be scrapbooking week over in my neck of the woods.  I've put the pajamas and other projects on hold while I do this.  I've also moved out of my craft room and into the dining room.  Sometimes it gets lonely up there and sometimes I like to share the pages with my husband for feedback, so it's easier to do that from the dining room.

So here are some bathtime pictures on a page:

I used a sheet from the Citrus stack and those stickers have been in my sticker stash for over seven years, I bet.

And then there's this page to commemorate her first election.

I had this sheet of stickers from the 2008 election that were not doing anything except take up space, so I cut them up and this is the result.

And then the next pages are sort of subdued.

So, the other day, when I was wandering around the craft store, I kept looking for new styles of stencils for letters, like these:

I have a couple sets of stencils from a bunch of years ago and have always liked them, but I wanted some different options.  These were no where to be found.  So what do people do nowadays?  Does everyone use those cutting machines?  I have a cricut, but am sort of afraid of it.  I got it from someone who was selling hers and I don't think it came with directions.  It also didn't seem to cut very well.  I don't know.  Anyway, so is that what people do?  

Also.  I went into Archiver's.  Dude.  That place is serious and intimidating.  There's no way I am going to get my pages that fancy.  And everything in that store is so expensive. Insane.

A Few Pages

I've been filling the baby book with photos lately and working on a few pages of my own.  A few months ago, Shutterfly had a big promotion, so I got a ton of pictures and I am so glad to reducing that pile of photos.

The first pages I worked on only reduced the pile by three photos, but the concept was too cute, so I don't mind.

Dude!  Are those my toes!  Obviously I am too lazy to crop them out.
At least the toenails are obscured so you can't see that bit of hideousness.  Blah!

Anyway, I wanted to feature these cute photos of bedtime stories with her dad and then the idea came to me about showcasing all of the titles that we like to read to her.  

I wanted to give the books on the shelves some dimension, so I used that foam stick-um tape.  Next, I tried to give the edges some shadows with some black smudgings.  My husband says they just look like dirty books.  Oh well.  By the time I realized that, I was already committed.  I like the touches of gold on the spines.

I also like what I did here with the title of the page.  They are books!  And in that first photo I did the journaling on the spines of the books.  I don't know if that works or not, but it was the only place I could think to do it.

Next up, I used six photos on one page!  Yes!  Reduce, reduce, we must reduce the pile!

For the previous set of pages and this page, I used backgrounds from a book of Far East pages.  The solid colors have some shimmer to them.  I love the glitter letters.  I sometimes wish I could put glitter on everything.

And for the final page, I only pulled two photos off the pile.  Oh well...better luck next time.

That fun fence border sheet is from the Goodwill via Target's scrapbooking section, I think.  It was a little packet of fun autumn pages like that one.  I picked up those glittery stickers a while back when they were on sale.  I have a huge pack of them.  I guess I need to start scrapping all previous Halloween costumes in order to use them up.  

Anyway, I think that is it for now.  I'm also working on a hush-hush scrapbooking project as a gift for my husband.  DO NOT TELL HIM!  (And I can tell the world, here, on this bloggity blog, because he does not pay any attention to my crafts.  I've also got the album sitting in plain sight on the buffet, but again, he pays no attention to these things.)

Brewing

I've got something brewing in my head that uses these three fabrics.  Hmmm...what could it be???