Snow Day!

Staring at the snow and general goobering.

 Snow day.  Stuck in the house all day with these two crazies, a bucket of animal crackers and my sewing machine.  Luckily, we'd done a run through Joann's yesterday and the flannel was $2.79 a yard!  The kids got to pick some for new pjs and since no one was going anywhere today, they got to help me sew them up.

I had supervision while cutting (did three pairs at a time with a sharp rotary blade. Yay mass production!), and the dude was put in charge of placing the pins back in the pin case.

The trains were his favorite, and the only pair I could wiggle him into, but three pairs of pjs done in one afternoon is probably a record for me.  I used the Parsley Pants pattern and cut a few corners, like ironing, and actually measuring the hems.  The end result is still a solid pair of pants, so it worked out.

The mustaches were my contribution to the pile.  I'm really hoping to convince him to wear them to school for the next pj day.  Instant cool.

Our other project for the snow day was to make Valentines for his class.  He made all the design choices and shot down a lot of my suggestions.  He just wanted hearts with glitter and his name in pencil, none of my yarn, stickers, or markers made the cut.  I love the focus.

We may have to make a few more for non-school friends, teachers, and family because he loved doing this.  Plus, why not make more since the house already has a thin coating of glitter on all flat surfaces.  :)

More Parsley Pants... With Hearts!

So I made another pair of Parsley pants for this little girl.  Not a big deal, but a nice little thing that I can point to and say I finished this week.  And it's been a hell of a week.  (Basically, her face says it all.)

We got our first real snow of the winter, complete with ice and slush, and I got into my first snow related car accident.  Ugh!  No one was hurt, except for the trees that kindly stopped the skidding and the front of my van, but the van really had it coming.

I was bummed because of the new expense of a car, but a bit glad to be rid of my minivan.  So a bit of an emotional up and down week.  Luckily, I have an amazing group of friends who had a laugh with me over the vans demise.  And I got to take a day out and go test drive new cars with just hubby.

So not a whole lot got accomplished this week, but I did make those pants!

Check back a little later, I'll be picking the name for the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway!

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday!

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween, so here's my Sinister Swarm Washi.  I was just going to wear black, but then realized this was actually clean!  How could you pass up that?

Spooooooky black knitting on my needles.  Not really spooky, but black and gray, and I think that counts.  It's a Chunky Dean Street hat for my little dude out of some Wool-ease I found in my stash.  I love this fast knitting with chunky yarn and giant needles.  

And here's that Bimaa I miffed the cutting on earlier in the week.  All finished, with a little bit of breakfast already on the tummy.  That's how you can tell a good piece of clothing, when it gets dirty fast.  

Here's the back.  I'd cut two fronts and sewn it all up, only realizing the mistake when the collar didn't go on right.  Duh!  So I took the two pattern pieces, traced the difference, and added some seam allowance.  The result is that little semi-circle seam at the top of her back.  Easy, and I only had to pull a few stitches out of the shoulders to sew in my patch.

Here's her scary face.  It's actually really scary.  How does a two-year-old know the Children of the Corn look?

Happy Halloween!!!

Linking up with Live a Colorful Life for Really Random Thursday!

More Parsley Pants!

Just a quick post today. I'm trying out the BlogGo app for my phone since I'm out an about. Not bad, but you can only do so much typing on a phone before you get tired of it. 

I finished up these teal, sparkly courduroy pants last night. I think I can officially call the children set for fall pants. I might actually start quilting now, or I might just start sewing up tops. Depends on what shiny thing I see next. 

Linking up with Amanda Jean for Finish It Up Friday , Better Off Thread for Sew Cute Tuesday and The Train to Crazy for Make It Wear It Thursday!

WIP Wednesday

I couldn't help myself!  I went into Joann's to get one very specific colored fabric for a swap block, and found this awesome sparkly teal corduroy on sale for $4/yd!  Who could possibly say no to that?  Plus, I had a half off coupon for the piping, so I'm in the middle of  making a seventh pair of Parsley Pants!  (Love that pattern!)

This is the stack of 24 Rainbow QAYG blocks.  I'll have to do some real scrap organizing to get the 16 more blocks I need.  And organizing might mean making these awesome color coded scrap buckets from Sunday Morning Quilts.  Of course, that could just be me procrastinating.

I think tomorrow these might end up being some quilted pouches.  Grown-up ones, for me that I don't have to fill with the kids' toys.  I definitely need a better make-up pouch, and maybe one for my EPP stars that I started years and years ago.  Carrying them around would definitely be incentive to work on them more.

For size reference, that's a giant 12 inch My Little Pony.  

And that is almost a whole second sleeve!  I've had more knitting time on my hands now that school's back in session and I'm waiting in the massive pick up line at the school.  I have maybe seven more four-row repeats before I can join it to the sweater, but I'm going to have to try on the sweater torso first to make sure it's long enough.  The more I look at it, the shorter it seems to be.

Linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday!

Pants, and Yarn, and Bread. Oh My!

I had a very productive weekend.  I made THREE pairs of Parsley Pants!  A pair for both my kids and one for a friend's daughter.  I had a couple yards of this yummy lightweight denim left over from making her Multi-Tasker Tote, and figured I might as well use it up.

I did all of them with pouch pockets, and used more of the piping I found at Marden's.  I'm going to have to start stocking up on that stuff.  I never thought I would get into making clothing enough to really use it, but now I want to add it to everything.  

Of course, pictures of the pants on the kids will have to wait.  I got both kids dressed in the pants this morning, we went outside to play, but before I could take pictures they'd started soaking each other with the hose.  Maybe I'll get to the laundry tomorrow and try again.

The rest of the weekend was filled with a marathon baking session.  I realized we were eating the last loaf of bread in the freezer and decided I might as well make two batches while I had the time.  I love this white bread recipe from Homemade Pantry by Alana Chernila, you just mix, ignore, shape, rise, and bake.  The whole process takes a couple hours, but most of that time you're just ignoring the dough.  I'll have to make some of her wheat bread too.  It's super yummy, but you have to refrigerate it overnight, and I find that by the next day I don't have the ambition to finish the job.

And I balled up some yarn and worked on the second sleeve of my Sweatshirt Sweater.  I only have two more hanks left after this, which makes me kind of nervous.  I have a feeling that I'll be fine, since I only have a bit of sleeve and the armpit of the body up to do, but I'll be nervously checking my yarn until I finish.

Linking up with The Train to Crazy for Make It Wear It Thursday!

Flower Power Parsley Pants

So, that friend with the amazing vintage fabric stash?  She also had this amazing denim.  Yards and yards!  I never actually measured, but it was probably north of twelve yards.  And she could tell by the way my jaw dropped when I saw it that I really wanted to make something from it.

Had to add a cute label.  And I used the same aqua to line the pockets.

Of course, I wanted to make another pair of Parsley Pants!  A pair for Dell and a pair for her daughter.  And it was pretty easy since they're mostly the same size, just do everything twice.  

This was my first time trying piping.  I found a couple packages of this pink piping for next to nothing at our guild trip to Marden's, and it turned out to be the perfect color.

I'd read tutorials (there's this one from MADE, and this one from Made by Rae) and new it wasn't hard to do, but I thought it would be more difficult to make it look good.  Not really, all I used was my zipper foot, and pinned a little extra.  And, I did both pairs with one package, leaving me three more packages of piping to make more pants.

And Dell approves.  She's been collecting treasures lately, especially flowers and tiny My Little Ponies, so she needed some real pockets.  I just have to remember to start checking hers when I do the laundry.

So, next up is making everyone I know a pair of Parsley Pants out of the blue denim I managed to sneak out of the stash.  And I have green and dark green piping to trim out the pockets.   I think this pattern is turning out to be one of my favorites.

The look of a girl who has fun pants and has been bribed to pose with globs of peanut butter.   Very satisfied.

Linking up with I Have To Say for Show and Tell Tuesday, and Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday!

WIP Wednesday

This week I dabbled in some paper piecing for our Guild's block lottery.  It went really well, and I hope to make another one of these before the meeting.

I found this fabric at Walmart (I know! Crazy!) and I've got it cut to make another Ruby Dress.  The pattern revisions were perfect, so I can't wait to get this finished.

And I'm onto the arms of my Sweatshirt Sweater!  I'm a little concerned that it's going to turn out too big with all those increases, but the cuff fits well at least.  I switched to smaller needles, so I'm going to see if that slows the growth.

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!