spring table

This is our kitchen table, now complete with handmade placemats. Do you remember this fabric? Oh, I only bought it last year. *sigh* Anyway, the floral mats are for me and #1 Girl, while the dotty ones are for the boys, ages 7 to 42. Different prints, but with coordinating colors.

As you can see, the mats are reversible.



Whoops, suddenly I'm hearing a rendition of Sesame Street's "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others"!



See that mat there, with the stripes going vertically instead of horizontally like everyone else? Seems I wasn't paying attention when it came time to cut that backing. I did have enough fabric to cut another back the right way so that all would have horizontal stripes, but in the end, I was okay with the matchy-unmatchy of the set.



After all, I'm not perfect and neither are my projects.

And don't worry, much as I love my sewing machine, I still love yarn, so I'm back to knitting today. Have a lovely day, all!

Pin It Now!

number five

At the beginning of this year, I laid out a list of about 14 goals I wanted to meet sometime during 2012 (and goodness knows, I don't always live up to my own expectations so I was trying to take a low-pressure approach). Several goals relate to Christmas, so I'm not stressed about them right now.

Number 5 on my list was "get familiar with my sewing machine." Poor, poor sewing machine -- it's been parked on my dining room table, gathering dust since I first practiced on it many moons ago. A short while ago, I bought some baby fabrics for a family member whose significant other is expecting; I bought them with the intention of turning them into burp cloths. I was determined to meet at least one of my goals, so after letting the fabric sit for several days, I went through the trial of cutting them. As a newbie, I don't have a rotary cutter, and apparently, I cut like a kindergartener, but I forged on. Cutting was hard work, so another couple of days passed before I actually turned on the machine.



I had to start from scratch, viewing the video manual again, learning to thread everything, but a happy afternoon passed while I got familiar with my machine. I wasn't sure I was ready, but I went ahead with burp cloth #1, following this tutorial at Craftaholics Anonymous. I knew if I kept waiting/procrastinating, another year could easily pass. And this is it, my very first sewing project ever.

I know it's a simple burp cloth, nothing fancy, but I'm just so thrilled to have met my goal -- I can now thread my machine without referring to the video anymore. My goal was just "get familiar," not "get great." One side is babylicious flannel, the other is minkee.



I bought the minkee before reading about how non-newbie-friendly it is, and I did have issues (it shifts, even though I had pins everywhere -- at one point, the seams ran off the rails). But if I'd read about the minkee beforehand, I know I never would've bought it because I would've been scared away. I'm kind of glad I jumped in blind.



So, once my first cloth was done and I was dancing around the house, making way too much fuss over a simple cloth, showing the kids and feeling proud of my first imperfect efforts, Animal Magnet said "You made that? Just now? It looks like it came from a store." That kid, he knows the right thing to say, doesn't he? Because you know some of my seams were crooked and I just wasn't sure about the minkee, but hey, he gets second helpings of fried chicken tonight.

Pin It Now!

scratch what I said

So last post, I mentioned something about being "lucky" about the wildlife in our area. Maybe this little garden snake read my blog and thought that "our area" meant "inside our home" because that's where we found it yesterday afternoon. Needless to say, I was pretty worthless from my position standing on top of a chair; #1 Girl was also no help since she vanished into her bedroom and shut the door. Thank goodness for the boys! Animal Magnet lived up to his nickname and used one of his nets to scoop the snake up and take it outside (snake, by "our area," that's what I meant: outdoors), with the Dimpled One's help. Also, we have a dog and a cat, who could've taken care of the snake problem while I was away, but I guess they were too busy sleeping to notice a snake slithering through the house.



The rest of the day was much more boring, which is how I like it. I didn't get much knitting done -- still working on the doll -- but I paged through The Forgotten Arts & Crafts. I picked it up at the library, but if I can find a copy to buy, I definitely will. It covers just about everything you can think of as craft, including many I've never heard of or given much thought to: fork-making, for instance. And of course, there's a section devoted to textile crafts, which was my favorite part of the book. If you love history, old photographs of actual people engaged in making, and reading about crafting, you'll love this book, as it's full of all three. I'm going to hate taking this one back to the library.

Joining in Ginny's Yarn Along

Pin It Now!

scenes from a weekend

: : Gathering palms and placing them on the kitchen table as a reminder for this week
: : Enjoying greens again, and looking forward to a long season of fresh produce
: : Eating on the back patio with my favorite people, after the heat of the day has passed
: : After taking a few days off from crafting -- I do this whenever I finish a big project; am I the only one? -- getting back into making up a pattern, which is looking good so far
: : Kind of bummed that I didn't get any photos of Animal Magnet going to fish and look for animals and search for more turtle nests in our suburban neighborhood; we're actually pretty lucky to have such an abundance of wildlife in our little area
: : Looking forward to what I feel is going to be a great week

Pin It Now!