Drago[knit]fly

Do you ever find that when you look in your closet, it’s just rows of the same stuff?  In my closet, I probably have twenty dresses, fifteen skirts, but only four pairs of pants. Only two of which actually get worn, but that’s beside the point.  Despite this obvious pants deficit, every time I go shopping I find myself with an armful of dresses when I head to the dressing room.   The same phenomenon applies to my crafting.  I have a pile of scarves, yet my hands are perpetually freezing because I only have one pair of gloves.  Still, I keep knitting scarves.  I have yet to determine if it’s certain types of patterns I’m drawn to or if it’s the end product itself. Fabric:  Lotta Jandsotter, Bella Poppy  I suspect the real common denominator is the flash-factor.  Even if patterned or neon, pants just seem infinitely more utilitarian than a flouncy dress.  Am I right or am I right? Despite my love of the fun and fancy, someti...

According to Flickr , I bought fabric for this quilt back in July 2010.  The intention was always for a quilt for Alice’s big girl bed…. Which she moved into in ( again, according to Flickr ) in October 2010.   Let me break this down.   I thought I could sew a queen sized quilt in 3 months.  During my final weeks of pregnancy through G’s first month.   Reality: >3 years.  I really might be delusional.  This delusion coming from the same place that told me I could knit the sweater from this post in AN AFTERNOON.  I guess there are worse things than raising the bar too high for yourself, but still! With this project complete and now warming my favorite 5-year-old’s bed and not shoved half-finished and in pieces in a closet, I’ve realized some things.  One such discovery is that even though overwhelming to have a large-scale (for me) project in progress, I feel a little lost without a giant anchor project to give...

The past couple weeks, months even, I've been crafting away so that when the new baby decides to make her appearance (due date's tomorrow, yet no sign of baby) she'll be greeted into the world with a healthy bounty of handmade goodies. Sixth Time's a Charm Quilt While I know babies don't use quilts on their cribs (Alice still doesn't use more than a muslin blanket and she's approaching two!), I can't imagine not making a quilt for the little baby chicklet. When I made Alice's quilt, I conformed to the overall color scheme for her room. This time, I let myself loose with colors. I figure the chicklet will most often use the quilt during tummy time or any time she's on the floor and I don't want her covered in dog hair and what baby doesn't love bright, fun patterns during playtime? So, I settled on some fabrics from Michael Miller's Hedgehog and the Big E collections and some coordinating Kona Cottons. In line with my recen...

I’ve been obsessed with all things AMH these days.  Pretty much anything that pops up on her site, I have to make.  So, when I saw this dress on her website a few months back, it wasn’t long before I had some Little Folks Dobby in my cart.  I’d been eyeing this particular fabric, but didn’t pull the trigger because I couldn’t think of a pattern worthy of the fabric.  I did end up modifying the pattern a bit to make it more wearable for me.  I don’t own a slip and knowing me, it would take me a year before I actually bought one.  To remedy that, I lined the dress with some straw lining material.  In a perfect world, I would have lined it with some coordinating solid voile, but that’s a little rich for my budget, so I opted for some regular ol’ lining material from Joann.  I also shirred the waistline instead of zig-zag stitching elastic just because I thought it would be easier.  Lining and Shirring I didn’t intend to wear this dress whi...

First of all - Happy Birthday, Mom!   Hope you enjoy your special day! It’s rare that I can receive fabric and cut into it within a day or so of receiving it.  I like to gaze it from afar, pet it, imagine all the good times we’ll have – you know, normal stuff.  Not this fabric.  I couldn’t wait to slice into it and make it into something.  It helps when you have the perfect project in mind.  In this case, Anna Maria Horner’s swaddling blankets.   My one concern about jumping in – I didn’t prewash my fabrics and I have little experience working with either flannel or voile so I’m unsure of the shrink factor.   Working with the flannel and voile is like working with butter and um, melted butter?  Both so decadent, both so perfect to have cuddle your baby’s perfectly soft newborn skin.  As proof, when I opened the package Alice quickly snatched a piece of the voile and proceeded to wrap herself up in it.  It appears I’ll b...

When I got pregnant with Alice , we converted our office/craft room into her room.  My sewing machine and piles of associated sewing / craft stuff was relegated to the guest room and closet.  While picking up a sewing machine and carrying it downstairs to the dining room doesn’t seem like that overwhelming a task, I dread it and will knit a sweater or bake ten pies before I carry the machine down a flight of stairs. Of course when I do drag the machine downstairs, I take over the dining room and often spill into the kitchen, much to the chagrin of my clean-freak husband.  And of course since Alice was born and we have another on the way, there are eleventy billion cute little baby projects that I must sew.  During my maternity leave, I spent hours sewing during Alice ’s marathon newborn naps, the sewing machine humming along while she slept peacefully in her little swing.  Sewing these days requires much more planning and usually onl...

I’ve spent the last year picking up those foam laptop sleeves and inevitably putting them back down because I knew I could make something just as functional and infinitely more fun. Of course, that year saw my laptop getting tossed in and out of my weekender, me fearing that I would damage it, but the worry never reaching the point where I actually did anything to remedy the situation. Until this week. Of course, I didn’t have the foresight to photograph the process, but hopefully my instructions will provide enough direction should you decide to make one for yourself. And I have a feeling I’ll be making more of these in the future. You'll need: -Home Dec Weight Fabric - You'll need enough yardage to make the pieces described below. For my netbook, a fat quarter was just enough fabric. I used an Echino fabric from a couple seasons back. -Batting - I used fusible fleece. 1/4 yard. -Lining - I used Michael Miller's Organic Cotton Fleece leftover from a blanket I ma...

This Oliver + S pattern has been sitting and waiting for the greater part of a year now. Upon realizing that Alice was about to grow out of the largest size, I decided I need to finally make her a dress. It helped that my super-awesome husband bought me a serger for Christmas (after years of heavy hints and emailed links) that I was itching to use. For those of you wondering, yes, I begged and pleaded for a serger and let it sit for months before playing around with it. That’s a story for another day. Anyway, I fumbled through my modest fabric stash for something suitable and kept going back to a couple half-yards from Joel Dewberry’s Aviary line. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough yardage. I don’t know what took me so long, but eventually I realized I could mix up the skirt fabrics a la the hippie dresses I made during my younger days. I always overestimate the time it takes to sew clothing, especially with a serger. It took me twice as long to cut the fabric than i...

A couple weeks back (I'm a little behind), we celebrated Alice’s 1st birthday with a “Alice in One-Derland” party. (I obviously had no alternative but to use this theme this year, right?) I never thought I’d be the type of mother who goes overboard and treats their kid’s first birthday party like a wedding, but let’s face it, I’m exactly that mother. I did promise J I wouldn’t go too wild and I think I was successful in keeping that promise. I mean, she only had one outfit change! Well, two if you count when I stripped her down to a onesie after cake. I scaled back. Really, I did. Outfit #1. Obviously Alice had to dress up like Alice! Outfit #2 - The Handmade Outfit I made her crown, t-shirt and tutu. This one I’ll actually create an individual post for, I think. Outfit #3 - The Post-Cake Outfit More important than any decorations or fancy fondant cakes (made from scratch, thankyouverymuch) or a Mexican feast (what? Alice didn’t eat pork carnitas and tacos in Wonderland?) was ...

Thanks for all the lovely messages about Alice! We're getting into a groove around here and I've finally been able to do a little crafting. My sewing machine has finally seen some use and thanks to some sage advice from Elizabeth over at A Mingled Yarn (Thanks, Elizabeth!), I'm finally able to knit while nursing. Speaking of nursing, after tearing through a couple of boxes of nursing pads I decided to take matters into my own hands and make my own more environmentally-friendly version. I couldn't find an available pattern on the internet, so I thought I would share mine with you. There are probably better ways to construct them, but this worked for me. Don't they look like ravioli? What you'll need to make 12 breast pads (6 sets): 1/2 yard cotton flannel* (I used a natural color because I didn't want a wild print peeking through my shirt. You can go crazy with creativity, though) 1/4 yard cotton batting* scissors thread *A note on fabric: I used cotton fl...