I apologize ahead of time for cramming all of this into one post, but it’s been a busy week! I cleaned the house all day and was exhausted when I sat down to watch Eureka, but the episode was so good that I held my breath through half of it and yelled at the TV for the other half. Now I’m wired. So massive blog post, here we go!
The weather has been amazing. The minions are loving having the windows open. Loki even gets to come with me in the car again. Here they are showing off their haircuts.
Somehow we were short a dog bed in my room, so I threw a blanket on the floor and that has become the new favorite spot, since it’s next to my desk and cutting mat. Loki likes hanging out with me, although apparently whatever I do is quite boring to him…
I spent a couple days playing with this one, trying to get the circle size right and some other minor things. Then I ended up changing the construction entirely and I still want to add/modify a couple things, which means all new pics but that’s OK, since they weren’t the best anyway. The pattern itself is pretty simple and should be ready soon. The pattern pieces, which I thought would be the hard part, are the easy part. Writing the instructions and getting the pictures to look right is the difficult part. The pics all seem to look great on my screen, but then they don’t print well. I want them to look great printed out since not everyone has their computer next to their sewing machine.
I showed it to my mom, and she immediately thought it would be a good pumpkin. So, I made one for Donna to put on her table at the Festival of the Vine this weekend. I’m curious what people will say. I signed up to do the Harvest Market, so maybe I will make a few of these.
In the middle of all of this, my iron broke. I had a new-ish really expensive Rowenta and I treated it so kindly because I wanted it to last forever. Well it started leaking really badly out of the plastic housing (not the steam holes) and basically emptying the water tank onto my ironing board every time I filled it. Bed Bath & Beyond let me return it, because they are awesome, but their selection was just more Rowentas. So I ordered a cheap iron from Amazon and it will be here tomorrow. I just hope I like the new one.
I was stuck on the zippered hipster. Not on the zip but on the rest of it. I can make it exactly how I want it, the problem is translating that to a pattern and pattern pieces that don’t need to be taped together 4 different ways. So, I took a break to make a fun lunch bag for my little cousin who is starting Pre-K. It came out so great! I kept all the dimensions and already made pattern pieces for it, and I think this one will get priority over the others. I will sit down early next week and write the instructions. It’s hard to explain this zip technique on paper. It really needs to be a video. I might have to put my iPhone 4 to work!
Is this not the cutest bag ever? I am going to have to make one for myself. I hate Insulbrite because it gets foil everywhere, but I will use it again just for this. I love this bag that much.
And finally, I made Donna a vendor apron for her festival booth. I had to get this from fabric store to finished in about a day. If I could do it again, I would change a few things about it, but it was nice to not be able to think about something forever and change my mind 18 times and make 5 prototypes – I just had to DO IT and make it work the first time. My favorite thing about this is the ruffle, even though I don’t have a ruffler and I had to do all of those ruffles by hand. The pins were sticking me so I even hand-basted them (I never hand-baste, I barely machine-baste!) to make sure they were even.
Sorry for the bad pic, but I literally took it over to Donna like 5 minutes after I finished it. Donna has been working hard this week too and it’s been fun to run across the street and check on her progress, as she finishes witches and pumpkins. Ken set her up with a Facebook page, so go check it out!
That’s it for now. We are busy this weekend with the festival and the Sept. 11th stuff at the Library, but I’ll have to work on something to try out the new iron :) Then Monday it’s back to work on this stuff!
