Saturday, March 26, 2011

Still Alive

And crafting if you can believe it. I don't yet have any pictures to show for it, ya know, since the one thing I have totally finished I forgot to take a picture of before I gave it away, but that's alright.

The point is, I have not been swallowed by work, and actually have been busy making quite a few things. I have....6 things in progress....I think 6, at least that's how many I can think of. With any luck, 3 of them will be finished very soon. I can't wait until the end of April when I can really get down to business again, but I'm doing alright all things considered.

I guess that's really all I have to say. I just thought it was time for a check-in here. In the meantime, are you familiar with pinterest? I am obsessed. And I am almost sorry for sharing the addiction. Almost. Have fun and I'll be back soon with pretty things :)

Monday, March 7, 2011

Curtains for the little one

A few weeks ago (maybe a month now actually) we moved the little lady into her crib in her room. Our nights are still pretty rough, but they are really no worse than when she was sleeping with us and now we have the added bonus of better sleep when we get it. Anyway, I thought that maybe if we blocked more of the light from outside, it would help her sleep, and so the search for light-blocking curtains began. Do you know how freaking expensive blackout curtains are?!?!? Maybe some would disagree, but I was not prepared to spend $30 per panel for boring, plain curtains. So I checked Joanns and found that insulating blackout lining is only $6/yard and I had a 50% off coupon. Thus it was decided; I was making some curtains.

Of course then followed the dilemma of what fabric to use. We tossed around a lot of ideas and finally decided that if we could find an inexpensive sheet set, that would be the way to go. I looked through many sites sale bedding section and finally found Pottery Barn Teen. They have such cute, colorful things! As luck would have it, they had a beautiful bold floral sheet set on sale. I was able to get 2 twin sets for $22 each which gave me enough fabric not only for the 4 curtain panels, but I still have a flat sheet left over to use as a quilt back! And some pillow cases!


I made them pretty simple, and just did some tabs across the top. I added a strip of solid color at the top and bottom to....I guess ground the large pattern better. They are definitely more girly than I usually go, but I really like them. I made the front a couple inches bigger around and then folded it over to meet the back and then over again and topstitched around. It keeps they laying nice and I didn't have to worry about flipping the lining right side out and trying to get it to behave.



They are not perfect, but they work and they look nice. Somehow they consumed the better part of my weekend even though they were a pretty simple project, but they are done and I am so glad to have that one off the to-do list. It was definitely one of those projects that needed to be done but was not on the list of things I really wanted to be working on. So there you have it, much cheaper and cuter than what I could have bought and so far the darkness seems to be helping with sleep.


And now, I'm off to play in the mountains of snow (or, ya know, large piles) that got dumped upon us last night and then curl up in a blanket with some hot chocolate. Amazingly enough, it is our first big snow storm in a long time, state of emergency and all. We'll see how the little one feels about snow :)

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Little Folks peek

It happened. An opportunity presented itself and I took it. And now I am super busy and will remain so for the next 7ish weeks. I keep reminding myself that in reality, I am not losing much crafting time since I had so little to begin with. I will just slowly keep trucking away and working on things when I can. Today I got a little time and made some binding and got some curtain fabric cut out for the little one and hopefully I will actually get to sew the curtains this weekend....since she really needs them.

Anyway, I thought I would share a peek at what I am working on. These are two quilt tops that are finished out of my Little Folks fabric. I love them. A lot. The top is the log cabin quilt I had been waiting to make since June when I got and cut the fabric and then I made a smaller baby size patchwork quilt out of the scraps. And actually I think I have enough little pieces to make a small mug rug perhaps to test out my quilting idea :) But we'll have to see about that. I hope that by the time I have time to make some more things in a couple of months, the sun will be shining more and the pictures will be prettier. I have the tops done, and the back of the big one done and the binding made, I just need time to baste and quilt it so maybe I'll find a spare weekend day for that in the next couple of weeks.


I am hoping that I have enough time to get some things done and can post once a week or so over the coming weeks, which I guess is not really that much less than I was doing before. We'll see if that actually works out, but I am sure going to try. My sanity would very much appreciate some time to work every week, so I'm going to do my best. And someday my child will be less needy and might even nap and then...oh the possibilities. Oh my I'm a dreamer....