Items for sale -- crayon rolls

Every child needs some crayons and a coloring book, right? Definitely a great take-along to help occupy a kid. I've toted crayons in everything from the original box to a ziploc baggie, none of which are terribly convenient. Figuring others might feel the same,  I made up some crayon rolls for the craft bazaar.

I love the fabrics I found -- they feature crayons, scribbles, crayon drawings and fun bright dots. Each roll holds 12 crayons, and then rolls up and ties shut to tuck in anywhere to carry along.



Items for sale -- texture lovies

In preparation for the craft bazaar, I tried to figure out what would sell well or be in demand. I figured there would likely be people looking for Christmas gifts for baby or even upcoming baby showers. One of my little ones' favorite baby item was a Taggie blanket. The concept is simple: a small blanket with ribbon loops around the edges to provide different textures for baby to play with. The name, however was a little more difficult. Since Taggie is already a brand name, I had to come up with something different...and texture lovie it was! My lovies were 12" squares, with varying fabrics for the body of the blanket. I tried to vary color and texture of the ribbons around the outside as much as possible, to provide the most opportunity for baby's stimulation.

As I began making the lovies, I started with 2 layers of fleece. And quickly decided that it would be both easier for me and a more interesting finished product if I used flannel prints for one side of the blanket. So I found some remnants and got some cute fabrics to make the blankets from. And made a bunch!

After a pile of those, I found some really cute patchwork fabrics, and had the thought to do some lovies out of "premium" fabrics. I bought the patchwork and some minky - super soft with raised dots, and used those as one side of some more blankets.

And speaking of items for sale -- Now that the craft fair and Christmas are over, I'm starting up a Facebook page where I will be listing all of my leftovers from the bazaar (and there are plenty! Traffic was a little slow) and taking custom orders! The page can be found by searching "Casually Crafty" in your Facebook search bar. It's bare-bones right now, but I hope to have it up and running soon!



More felting

As mentioned in my 'about me' section, my daughter is special needs. This encompasses a lot of things, one of which is a speech delay. As an effort to help her communicate with us, we purchased an ipad2 so she could use it as a choice making device/communication device. She has been working hard with it and is making steady progress. However, we are pretty hard on it in carrying it with us back and forth to therapy and all over, so I felt a cover would be a great idea. I found a pattern for a felted ipad case, and decided she needed one!



I can knit!

I've referenced my knitted bowl several times...it's about time I post about it! Over a year ago, I tried to learn to knit by working on a dishcloth on some super long straight needles. It took a lot to get the needles to cooperate with me, and the knit stitches were taking forever on this dishcloth. Finally I gave up and went back to crocheting everything.
I still wanted to learn to knit, especially socks. Crocheted socks just aren't the same. I also really want to do cable knitting, though I have been really impressed lately with some of the crocheted cables I've done. Since socks are knitted in the round on either DPNs (double pointed needles) or circular needles, I figured I'd better learn how to operate those. I also wanted to make some trinket bowls for my sewing space -- I have a lot of things that don't have a home or I need close by and not dig through a lot of stuff to get to them. So....I decided to knit a bowl out of 100% wool, so I could felt it.
DPNs took a little bit of getting used to, and my bowl suffered a 2 year old induced "fall" off the needles, after which it needed to be started over. After the 2nd start, though, it went very well.

in progress

Once I finished the bowl, it took me forever to get it felted, but it's finally done!



Crafting with Kids

With all the sewing I've been doing, Little Man's interest has been piqued. He constantly asks me if he can help sew something. The first couple times I hesitated, told him no and moved on...but I kept thinking that it's always a good idea to cultivate interest when it's shown. The next time he asked, I just pulled out a scrap of fabric and let him sew lines up and down it. During this practice run, I learned how much he enjoys using the reverse button on the machine.

Finally, in preparation for our trip back in September, I came up with the perfect project that he could help with -- we'd gotten several sets of Color Wonder paper and markers, so we needed a marker case to keep them in. I pulled out available fabrics and allowed him to choose his outer and inner, then cut prepped them to be sewn. Once they were ready, Little Man climbed up into my lap and helped sew the case together.

He did a very good job listening when I told him to push the button and when to let go so that we could form the pockets for his markers. As the usual attention span of a 2 year old goes, he was done helping about halfway through the case, so he left and I finished it up so that it was ready for the trip.



The idea for the marker case came from the crayon rolls that I made for the craft bazaar, which will be featured later, in my items for sale series.

Ahhh!

Time flies when you're having fun, and how true is that! I've been working my fingers off (almost literally, more to come on that in a bit) preparing for a craft bazaar that is coming up this weekend! A couple of weeks ago, I tried to hop on and post a blog, but my computer wasn't cooperating so it went by the wayside as I continued sewing, crocheting, sewing some more, and once in a while even taking a break to take care of my family!
All told, I have made several things for the bazaar, and plan to feature a blog post about each type, likely after the weekend is over. I've made: receiving blankets, ribbon texture lovies, bibs, crayon rolls, crocheted Christmas ornaments, market bags and hackey sacks.
As this is the final countdown, I've been working to get as much finished as I could. My goal was to finish all of my sewing last night so I could concentrate on crocheting the rest of the week. However, on my second to last ribbon lovie, I was trying to help the fabric through and caught my finger under the needle of my machine. It's ok, but still painful, and definitely put a stop to all sewing last night! Still, I shall persevere and have already finished the offending blanket and am moving on to my final 4 bibs and my sewing will be complete!

I hope to return soon to post a better update and some pictures of everything I've been working on! And then there will be a flood after Christmas, when I can finally post about all of my top-secret giftie crafting!

Serging marathon

After owning my serger for over a month, I finally figured out how to thread it, and got started on some projects to use it! As I posted about in my diapering post, Little Man's bottom really seems to favor all-cotton diapers, which we don't have too many of. So I pulled out a pile of t-shirts that I cut the designs out of for a tshirt quilt, and used the remainders to cut fitted diapers (so I can play with my snap pliers!). I also cut a couple of prefolds out of the tshirts and some scrap flannel I have on hand.

This picture is everything cut and ready to go -- 2 prefolds and 3 fitted diapers with snap-in soakers. I did the prefolds first to just get used to the serger before doing anything with curves, which were a little bit of a challenge, but I found some good hints and they turned out ok. My serging needs more practice, but it's ok because we need more diapers!  Little Man loves his new diapers, and they are definitely our new favorites. We recently bought Wall-E and have been watching it, so he's super excited about his Wall-E diaper! The sharks are a big hit, too.

Here's a picture of them post-serging:



Recent crafting adventures

I've been pretty busy crafting lately, and have several things I plan to post about. I've just been so busy making things that I haven't taken the time to write about them!!
I've finished my knitted bowl, but still have to felt it. I find that I can never do things the "easy" way...like learning to knit on a straight project on straight needles...no, I have to start knitting in the round on Double Pointed Needles! It took a little bit to get the hang of it, but once I got into my project it went smoothly.

Now, I'm working on a pair of baby legwarmers on really little DPNs! I'm surprised at how quickly I'm picking it up and getting pretty efficient.

I've also been hard at work on building up a stock for a craft fair this November. A friend and I are going to have a booth together, and I've been trying to get a lot of things made to try to sell. These projects will go up in a series of posts about my products for sale.

I finally got my serger threaded and was able to use it! This is another post I have planned...but I made some more new diapers for Little Man and they turned out really cute! The serging is obviously done by a novice, but I'm very happy with how they turned out for my first projects.

Finally, I've been working on Christmas gifts. I've alluded to it before, but I'm planning on making a lot of the gifts for our family and friends, so while I've been super busy making things...I can't necessarily blog about any of them until after Christmas! Planning these has been fun and I'm pretty excited about some of the gifts I've made!

Along with the Christmas gifts, I have plenty of other projects planned. I need some ponchos/capelets/sweaters with fall coming up, as my wardrobe is pretty basic and they're the perfect way to dress it up and keep me warm at the same time. I plan to make this poncho in the yarn I posted about last time -- Universal Yarn Uptown DK. I bought a dark silver and can't wait to get started! I'm also planning on furthering my knitting skill with this poncho, though I haven't decided for sure about the yarn I'll use. I need to hunt something down in my stash that will be perfect! I have fabric laid out and ironed to make myself a new purse, as my current one is falling apart...so that will likely be my next project!

Scarves

Earlier this year, my sister-in-law emailed me and asked if I would be willing to make a couple of scarves for her. I was completely flattered by the request, and excited to do it for her! I had been wanting to try  a couple of scarf patterns, but as I'm not much of a scarf-wearer, there was little point in making them for me, so it became a perfect blend of circumstances.

I had on hand some amazingly soft and beautiful red EllaRae Extrafine Heathers yarn that was just begging to be something, and I found a perfect pattern for it. I absolutely LOVED working with both the yarn and the pattern. I did have to hunt down some more of the yarn, as the scarf took 4 balls, and I only had 2 to begin with, but that was the only hang-up with this scarf.

the whole scarf                                                              the stitch pattern in detail

I LOVE how the stitch pattern lends to the scalloped edge...and if I wore scarves, I would make one of these in every color!

For her second scarf, I have been wanting to learn Tunisian Crochet and, again, waiting for the perfect project to come along to learn/ practice it. Prior to starting the scarf, I did make a small dishcloth to practice the different Tunisian stitches, but generally speaking this was my first tunisian project. This was also done with a new-to-me yarn. It's Universal Yarn brand's Uptown DK that I found at my local yarn shop. It's acrylic, but goes against every "eww, acrylic" stereotype there is. It's so soft and was absolutely lovely to work with and it has a shine that I'm afraid my photos just didn't capture. I will DEFINITELY be buying more of this in the future!

full scarf                                                                        stitch pattern detail

Tunisian crochet came pretty easily to me. I did have to restart the scarf once because I was adding an extra stitch when turning, so I had one edge longer than the other. And I made the scarf quite a bit shorter than I wanted to, simply because I ran out of time to keep adding on and still be able to send them to my sister-in-law for her birthday.

I'm still lamenting the fact that I don't wear scarves much...because I would love to make more of both of these!



New tricks!

When Little Man was born, I quickly discovered the need for a baby carrier. I tried a few, found out I didn't like them, and finally found the amazing resource that is http://www.thebabywearer.com/, and that opened a whole new world for me. They have an entire forum devoted to DIY carriers -- wraps, slings, and everything else! I browsed the forum and committed everything I could to memory, so I could shop for fabric and make myself a carrier. In fact, this is also the point where I decided I needed a new, better sewing machine and got the one I'm currently using. I made a couple wraps, and realized how tedious it is to fold and iron a hem for a 3 yd piece of faric -- and that was just for a short wrap! If I wanted anything longer, I would need something easier. So I invested in a set of rolled hem feet for my machine, tried to use them once, failed miserably, and let them and my fabric that I bought for a wrap sit for well over a year.

A few weeks ago I found a tutorial for using a rolled hem foot, and decided I'd try again (plus I really needed to get some fabric off my shelves!) and this time, it went lots better. I still had some difficulties with not feeding enough fabric in, so my hem got awfully skinny, but I have a hemmed, functional wrap.

the fabric going through the foot...finally the right way!

My finished hem! (one of the better spots ;) )

Diapering

Ever since Little Miss was born, I've been vaguely intrigued by the idea of cloth diapers. I looked into it, but the only research I did took me to the expensive all-in-one type diapers and I was scared of the startup cost (which still would have been less than all I've spent on disposables for my kids, but I digress...). After Little Man was born, I started researching more thoroughly, and found several sites devoted to frugal cloth diapering and how to make your own...so that's what I did. My first ones were rough and I'm still figuring out exactly what works for us, but they are SO fun to sew! I am now to the point, though, that I am able to use them consistently, and discovered the need for some accessories!

As I started to use them more often out in public, I decided I needed a wetbag to carry with me. I mentioned this in a previous post, though never posted pictures. I made another to try to better my technique with zippers, and still failed miserably. I think the 2nd actually turned out worse than the first. But, they are still functional.  They just don't look as pretty as they could.

The bag on the right was my first, and the polka dots were my second. I didn't get a close up of my zipper issues, but I have since found a tutorial that puts the zipper in differently, so I'm hopeful for my next one!
Once using my cloth diapers more regularly, I also figured out that my diaper pail (a small trash can) was not working, as it was 1) too small, and 2) taking up too much space in my itty-bitty bathroom. I had a large piece of the PUL fabric left over from making my smaller wetbags, so I decided to try my hand at a large hanging one.

I used more of the same polka dot fabric (just a basic cotton) and the bag is lined with PUL for waterproofing. The handle snaps closed so I can hang it over a towel rod, or I can just drape the loop over the door handle, pictured below.

It takes up so much less room and is so much more useful than my old pail! The bag holds about 2-3 days worth of diapers, which is about as long as I would want to go between washing anyway. And it's so easy to just throw the bag in with the diapers to keep it clean!  The only problem is, I only have one...so I just bought more PUL to make another for when this one is in the wash :) I also want to make a large zippered one to use when the family goes swimming. My small ones are perfect to stick wet swimsuits in, but are not big enough to hold the wet towels as well, so I want a bigger one :)

The other awesome thing I've learned in the process of cloth diapering is how amazing wool is. When I started using cloth with Little Man, he did get fewer rashes, and the ones he did get were easier to solve. But by far, he gets the least irritation when he wears an all-cotton diaper with a wool cover, because that combination is so breathable. Wool, especially when lanolized, is very water resistant, and can absorb quite a bit of moisture before it soaks through. Plus they're cute! Here's my most recent pair of crocheted shorties on my shy little model:

I love how cute they are, and so fun to make. I only wish I could crochet faster so he had more to wear!





My first felting adventure

As I referenced in my last post, I was mid-project with my very first attempt at felting. I followed the "Chocolate Felted Tote" pattern from Mary Jane Hall's Positively Crochet. The bag stitched up quickly, using a double strand of worsted wool and a large hook.

the bag - before felting

Then came the adventure -- actually felting it, without ruining the work I'd done! I threw it ina pillowcase and tossed that in the washer with my dryer balls and set the washer to warm...and then let it go. I checked on it about every 20 minutes to make sure it wasn't sticking to itself where I didn't want it to. I have a front loader, so progress was relatively slow. Even still, each time I checked I could see it shrinking down and getting more solid. By the end of 3 full wash cycles, it was perfect! I draped it over a cereal box to dry, and then it and the straps sat abandoned for another week before I finally put them together.

bag after felting

Completely finished!

The straps stitched on pretty easily, and I think the project turned out really well! The pattern includes instructions for adding a fabric lining, which I may do eventually. But for now, I love it and am so excited to use my bright purple bag (color is most true in the second picture), so I'll see if I feel the need to add a lining later.

Little Miss has been in the hospital this week, so I've not had a chance to sew anything, but I've made some big progress on my top secret gift (which is a Christmas present, so I still have 6 months to tease you all :) ), and a couple of other crochet projects. Looking forward to get back home so I can sew!



And the winner is...

ME! The last week or so has been yet another exciting one in my crafty world :)

Last week was Ellen Gormley's virtual launch party for her book on Ravelry...and she had random drawings throughout the party. All told, she gave away 2 full afghan kits and a signed copy of her book (she blogged about the party here) and I won one of the afghan kits! So I have lots and lots of yarn coming my way soon to play with and make one of her beautiful creations for myself!

Also last week, I found a new blog, as the author had posted about a giveaway she was hosting. So I checked it out, and figured, why not try? Then today she posted that I was the winner! So I get 2 of her sewing patterns for free :) I chose her pack-up backpack and rock collecting skirt, so I'll soon have a couple additions to my to-do list! Please go check out her blog and patterns for yourself!!

As for actually making things...I've been pretty busy! I'm experimenting with felting for the first time...I have a bag all stitched up and ready to felt, but haven't been able to keep the washing machine empty of regular laundry long enough to get my project in! Once I see how that goes, I hope to make some felted bowls for my sewing space, to catch odds and ends. I intend for at least one bowl to be my intro to knitting...since the final work will be felted, it allows room for error in the stitching process! I have lots of diaper stuff in the plans for my sewing machine -- I have one diaper about 1/2 way done, and plan to make another small wetbag for the diaper bag (and hopefully do better on the zipper this time!) and a large hanging wetbag to replace my diaper pail. I also have a few different fabrics ready to make some pj's and pants for both kiddos....so it looks like I better get busy!

Baby's Coming!

Not another one for us, though! One of my good friends is pregnant and due next month. Her baby shower was last weekend, and, of course, I did some crafting for it. I started a crocheted blanket back in January, and had a lot of fun working on it. Believe it or not, in all the time I've been crocheting (which really isn't that long... but still) I'd never done anything with granny squares, so I wanted to try. At the time I started the blanket, we hadn't found out what the baby was going to be yet, so I wanted to do something colorful and neutral.

These are the initial squares, each is a 3 round basic granny square. There are 5 each of 5 different colors.

After completing the initial squares, I added a round of white to each, and used the "join-as-you-go" technique to put them together.

When I finished joining all of the colored squares, the blanket still looked too small, so I decided to do a wide border of white granny squares around the outside. By this time, we found out that the baby is a boy, so I added a blue border to the outside edge. I really enjoyed putting this blanket together because it worked up so quickly, and join-as-you-go saved me a lot of time and energy sewing the squares together.

I also sewed up a couple of my go-to baby gifts. I received several handmade receiving blankets when I had Little Miss, and they quickly became our favorite blankets! From that moment, I determined that I would make at least a couple for every baby shower I go to. This baby has a jungle themed nursery, so I chose monkey fabrics.

finished blankets

The method behind these is really easy -- I buy 1 1/4 yards of flannel, trim it to square ( usually about 42 in square)  and then fold and stitch the hems. They are fantastic blankets for swaddling, laying on for tummy time, nursing cover-ups, giant burp cloths (or burp cloths when nothing else is handy), and my kids still use them when they just need a light blanket, or something that fits easily in the diaper bag!

the finished gift -- who needs tissue paper when you have receiving blankets?!









Yummy, yummy...

Wait, isn't this supposed to be a craft blog? What's up with the food-related title?

Only some of the most fun crochet projects ever :)

Breakfast:

eggs and toast

and some fruit!

I started crocheting food about a year and a half ago, after our kids and one of their friends got the same kitchen set for Christmas. Little Miss and her friend both have April birthdays, so I started stitching, hoping to get sets of food done for birthday gifts. Then when we held the benefit this past fall, I made up a "market basket" with bread, eggs, apples, strawberries, tomatoes, a carrot, pear and orange to put in the silent auction. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the completed basket. The pictures above are just the bits and pieces I've made up since then, and they're just sitting around waiting for a use! I LOVE the eggs ... as there's a pattern for a fried egg, and the shell to put it in, so you can actually "crack" the egg when play-cooking.

whole egg

cracked shell with egg

I love these little projects because it doesn't take much time to see progress, and they're just so cute! They are also fantastic for little ones to play with because they are soft so little throwers can't do too much damage, and they're easy to hold on to. Plus they're washable!

And now that we're all hungry....lets go have a snack :)

My awesome crafty day!!!

Yesterday was awesome!!! My birthday was last Sunday, and several family members gave me gift cards. One of which was an amazon gift card, and I hurried online to my wishlist to decide which items I needed this time. I've been anticipating the release of Ellen Gormley's  (http://gocrochet.blogspot.com/) new book, so that was #1 in my cart! I also bought myself a new sewing book to hopefully use up some of my extra fabric pieces. I placed my order on Thursday night, and with 2 day shipping, expected my items to arrive today. So what a surprise it was to see the Fed Ex truck pull up in front of my house yesterday, and that very kind FedEx man handed me a package with BOTH of my new books! The kids and I ventured outside to enjoy the sun that finally chose to shine, and while little man played, and little miss enjoyed the sun, I read Ellen's book cover to cover, and can't wait to get some yarn and pull out the hooks to start on one of the projects!

Then last night, my kind, loving husband volunteered to be on his own with the kids (we refuse to call it babysitting...they are his kids too!) so that I could go shopping and get a few other things. A few weeks ago I stopped into a small Sears store that is close to our house in search of replacement needles for my sewing machine. It appeared they were actually cleaning out their sewing area, as all of their display machines were marked for sale, and discounted. They had a serger 1/2 price, but I couldn't necessarily justify the cost. Well, for the last few weeks, I've debated whether I should have passed up the deal, and figured someone else snatched it since then, but we decided that if it was still there, I could have it. I stopped in last night expecting to find nothing...but lo and behold, the serger was still there! I looked it over, since it was the display model, but it appeared everything was there and ready to come home with me...so it did! Now I get to figure out how to use it, but I'm so excited! I know once I figure it out, it will make my sewing life so much easier!

I've still been working away at various other projects, and have more pictures taken that just need to escape the camera into a blog post! And I promise, I actually have something crocheted to post about!

Top secret gift #1

I've mentioned that this gift was on my sewing machine, and I told you in my last post that it could be revealed :) My Aunt and Uncle celebrated their 40th anniversary at the beginning of April, and my cousins threw them a very nice party on April 16. A few weeks prior to the party, my mom and I were discussing gift ideas, and learned that the traditional 40th anniversary gift is Ruby. My aunt is a multi-talented crafter, and loves handmade gifts, so my dad had the idea that he and mom could fund supplies and I could turn them into something. My godmother makes beautiful tied quilts that are absolutely wonderful for snuggling with...so we determined that a quilt like that would be an excellent anniversary gift.

We started with the "ruby" idea to select colors, and mom thought she remembered my Aunt and Uncle having an 'Americana" theme in one of their rooms. So we selected a solid ruby, a tan with flags and stars, a ruby/tan gingham print, and a ruby background with stars as our fabrics for the quilt. I give credit for the entire pattern to my godmom, because I totally just copied the idea of the quilt she gave me several years ago.

I cut 7" squares of each fabric and pieced them into diagonal lines:

the finished top

Then, it took some cutting and adjusting, but I was finally able to get the top, batting and back to line up so that I could sew them together. This being my first attempt at making anything resembling a quilt, I learned a lot of valuable lessons. The first being that I can't cut even, straight lines if my life depended on it. My "7 inch" squares varied drastically and there are several mis-matched seams throughout the quilt. The second; when sewing a quilt "sandwich," put the batting side down, because it catches horribly on the presser foot. I finally figured this lesson out and got it to sew together using the "turn and topstitch" method. I turned it right side out, and hand stitched the opening closed. (I will say that I normally hate trying to do the blind stitch, but in this instance, it turned out really well!) Then I topstitched about an inch in to create a nice border. Finally, I used embroidery floss and placed ties at the corners of every other square. (This helped cover up a lot of my uneven seams, too!) Once those were done, the finished product looked pretty good, and was very well received!



Notebook cover!

As is obvious...I've been slacking again! Like I said in my very first post -- I'm awful at remembering to take pictures of my projects....and it turns out I'm even more awful at uploading them to the computer! Today's post is one I've been planning since January...but the poor pictures have been trapped in my phone's memory until just last night.

My mom's birthday was in January, and I was inspired last summer to make her something. I had a fat quarter of fabric that I was going to use just a square of for a quilt (that post will come when I actually make the quilt that I've had pieces cut for for about 9 months :) ) and she caught a glimpse and said she loved the print. Mental note at that point -- make something for mom out of the rest of the fat quarter. Pause for something you should know about me...I'm a list-maker. I have to-do lists, grocery lists, sewing project lists, crochet project lists, lists of finished projects to post about and who knows what else! I also have to write everything down or I forget it. I believe I learned my list-making from my mom...who is the same way. She carries around a steno notepad in her purse, and usually has coupons, magazine articles or other papers that are important to keep. So, I had the brilliant idea to use that fabric and make her a cover for her steno pad that had a pocket for her to tuck her coupons and such. It just slips onto the cover of the notebook, so when the paper is all used up, Mom can move the cover to a new steno pad.

the cover on the notebook

the back pocket

flap to secure on the front

The cover was pretty easy to make, although I did hit a couple bumps in the process. I folded and sewed the white fabric so the raw edges were encased and no "wrong side" showed. The problem with that was I didn't quite have enough width to allow for seam allowances. The back pocket helped make up for that, and I crafted that with elastic to hold it tight to the notebook but still allow room to put things in it. The bottom seam of the pocket features a pleat, again to allow room for expansion. The front flap is where seam allowances became a slight problem...and I wound up just sewing really close to the folded edge. If (when) I make another of these, I will definitely allow more fabric so that I can make that look neater. All in all, though, I'm pretty proud of throwing this together and look forward to improving my "pattern" :)

Up for my next entry....one of my "top secret" projects is finished and has been given...so I can tell  you all about it!!

this and that

It's been a week already without another post?! Time flies, I guess. Last week, the kids and I got to spend some quality time with Mom for a couple days so I was away from both my sewing machine and my computer. It was a welcome break and we had a good time!  I have been busy with a few crafts, 2 of which are top secret :) I know I haven't posted much about my crocheting so far...and that's because one of my projects (I often have several going at once) is big, so I have a long way to go yet on it, and it's a gift so I can't very well publish about it online! I do have a couple smaller projects going so hopefully I can post about those soon.
As for sewing, I finished one project over the weekend -- a wetbag. I use cloth diapers part time, and even when not using cloth diapers, the wetbag will come in handy to hold wet or dirty clothes, or anything else that I don't want "contaminating" the rest of my diaper bag contents. It was my first experience with a zipper and it went ok. The stitching isn't pretty, but the bag is functional. Unfortunately...I don't have any pictures to post of it yet. And my other top secret project is on my sewing machine right now. I've been working hard on it...but no reveals until the gift is given!
So those are the other reasons for the break in posting, but I do still have a couple posts prepared from before I even set up the blog so hopefully I can get those up while I work on my top secret projects :)

Pillowcases take 2

As I mentioned in my last post, we've received several pillowcases from various hospital stays. They're adorable and we love them especially in the hospital...but what does one need 15 extra pillowcases for?! We do use a lot of them on both kids' beds, but still felt like we had too many. Enter another issue -- a couple of Sarah's rounds of chemo have required her to have a catheter inserted for several days...which completely cuts out the use of pants for those days. We started running low on dresses.....so I made some out of the cases we got in the hospital. Again, I made a couple over the summer, and finished a couple more this weekend.


Using tips from this blog and this, I mixed them together and made my dresses!

The picture quality isn't the greatest (I'm still new at this...I promise my pictures will get better!) and you can't see the black straps on the green dress because of the dark background...but you get the idea. I made the red one and the purple/orange one this summer, and the other 2 were my weekend projects :). Sarah wore the green one for chemo yesterday and has the yellow strapped one on today. These dresses are a little bit big for her now, but the adjustability in the ties will allow her to wear them for at least a couple of years, and then probably as a shirt after that. To be perfectly honest, if the bottom hem was just a little wider, I  could wear them as a shirt if I so desired!

My final process once I combined the patterns linked...

I cut the pillowcases down to 26" by cutting off the closed end of the pillow. Then measured in 3 inches and down 5 on each side and cut out a "j" shaped arm opening. I used double fold bias tape to finish the armhole and form the straps -- cut 36" piece for each arm and pinned it evenly around the armhole, letting the extra come up off of each side, then sewed it together. Once both sides are done, so is the dress! You can add any embellishments you desire -- 3 of mine do not, but on the green and pink one, I added a strip of black grosgrain ribbon around where the green and pink meet.

Sarah likes her dresses, too!

Pillowcases

For my first actual crafty post, I want to share something that's very near and dear to me and my family. Most anyone who will read this probably already knows a little about our family and situation...but in case you don't; almost a year ago (it will be a year on April 15) my daughter was admitted to the Hematology/Oncology unit at Children's Hospital, and the following week was diagnosed with Stage IV Rhabdomyosarcoma. "Rhabdo" is a soft-tissue cancer that can form anywhere, her tumor was in her jaw. The diagnosis was devastating, and it's been a long road since then, but she's doing well. It was at that time and through her being admitted that we learned about ConKerr Cancer. This is an organization that makes bright, colorful pillowcases to put on hospital pillows to brighten a child with cancer's room/life when they are admitted to the hospital. Here's a picture of Little Miss with her first pillowcase (and a beautiful hat that a friend made for her!) She has received 15 pillowcases in total.

So, once introduced to the charity, I decided I wanted to make some of my own to give back to the other kids at our hospital. I made a few early on...

Then I collected fabric as I found it on sale or clearance, and had quite the collection. So a few weeks ago I had a marathon pillowcase day and made another 13 to take to the hospital. 

The pillowcases are super easy to make, and work up pretty quickly, especially doing a bunch at once -- a little bit of time on each step, and then they're all done! I just followed the instructions on the Conkerr Cancer website.