Misc

I finally got some real business cards (as opposed to the printed out at home and cut by hand).

Instead of doing one of the million things I should have been doing this afternoon, I decided to give the shop and blog a mini facelift.  Both got new headers, the shop got a new avatar (it was a big, blue Maeve eyeball) and the blog got a new shot of me (though the shot itself is 3 years old).

I’m only 99% happy with the Photoshopping so I might still change them a little after I’ve had time to stare at them for hours on end.

… on his birthday because he isn’t getting any embroidered pants. I have a love/hate relationship with my sewing/embroidering machine. It sews beautifully. But when it comes to embroidering, it has a mind of its own. So (finally) this morning I was going to make him his alien pants for his birthday. They were going to have a cute alien/space ship on the bum kind of like Hanna Andersson’s Soft Landings Pants. I did the design this morning and got everything ready.

The bodysuit he was going to wear with the pants had aliens all over it and looked like it was drawn with a crayon (it’s from Target so you might have seen it if you’ve been in the baby section lately). The design was supposed to mimic that with satin stitches.

Well, this is where the pants are now.

After several tries to get the machine to start and center the design, it would not stitch. It stitched, but not properly. So after multiple rethreads, cleaning out, trying again and again, they just got trashed. I can’t even rip out all the bad stitches in them because there are so many. Maybe I’ll dig out some jean shorts for him to wear with the bodysuit.

Today isn’t going to well. Hopefully his flying saucer birthday cake will come out ok.

My silk quilt was featured on Peppermags blog today.

We have a silly little tradition of matching family PJs on Christmas morning. In previous years we’ve gone with Gymboree but they look exactly the same year after year. We needed something different this year.

Being a Hanna (Andersson) addict, I naturally turned to them. The boys were going to wear blue snowflakes and the girls got pink snowflakes. So I ordered them, tried them on and promptly returned them. I’m ok with the kids looking like little snausages, but Sean and I? Uh, no thanks.

Old Navy had a cute pair of snowman PJ pants but I guess they don’t do the cutesy family matching since they didn’t sell coordinating pairs for the kiddos. So I decided to make some myself! I ordered us all white tops, 2 pairs of pants for Sean and I and the largest size ON carries, Triple-XL.

Through the magic of scissors and a sewing machine we went from pants to this …

to this …

Christmas is saved! We can all match!

Progress…

All three purses are done.

Plus a nifty patchy fleece-lined scarf.

And the kids’ quilt is all pieced.

And Close Your Clothes progress too.

<drool>

Part of Miss Maeve’s Christmas Stocking goodies.

I wish everyone a very happy handmade Christmas!

Only Sean will know the correct tone of voice for that title.

Yup, finally tried my hand at a bag. This one is for sale on Etsy. Now to take the plunge and try a bigger size.

Even a spiffy pocket/divider!

Black elephants? Why, yes, a black elephant.

Yesterday was our anniversary, not a business one, but a marriage one. After a wonderful dinner at Angus Barn we headed over to Barnes & Noble and dragged Sean into the crafts sections. I found a book on making sock animals and of course had to pick it up since Maeve is in love with her sock monkey.

So I tried on and I think it turned out really well for a first try. Much better than the first pair of shoes I made. I’m looking forward to using socks other than Sean’s so they don’t leave black fuzz balls all over me.

The fuzz balls are usually all over my carpet.

I hate black fuzz balls.

The all-powerful Dyson can’t even get black fuzz balls off the carpet.

Anyways, back to elephants. Here she is. I look forward to making another one and plan on looking for cool socks at Target tomorrow. I need to try another one. Maybe a monkey… or sheep… or bird… or mouse… or…

Ah yes. A Saturday morning too hot to go pull weeds. We all know what that means! Sewing! Yay!

As I was ironing my pieced Shangri-la (tee da) quilt top I noticed that the water squirty function was not squirting. If you pay $100 for an iron it really does need to squirt water. I blamed Sean. It’s always the husband’s fault when an iron breaks. He Googled around and found the solution. Water deposits.

So we took the iron to the kitchen sink and let it steam and steam ’til it didn’t steam no more. Lots of ick came out of it. It was rather disgusting. Rowenta recommends that you don’t run the Self Clean steam more than once a month. This is the first time I’ve used it in the three years I’ve owned the iron.

Afterwards we were left with lots of icky white dusty things on the bottom of the iron. It came off on the fabric since I certainly wasn’t about to clean the bottom of an iron with my hands (remember the burn? Irons are hot.).

I can finally squirt water on my quilts again. Yay!

A sewer is where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live. I, contrary to popular belief, am not a TMNT.

One who sews is a sew-er. We are sew-ers. A sewer is smelly. Nasty. Icky. You’d really have to put a disclaimer in your Etsy listings if you were a sewer. Some people might object to the smell.

It will be in the low 60s tomorrow morning when Maeve goes to school. Not quite warm enough for shorts but she has no cheap-enough-for-preschool pants. Most parents would just go to Old Navy or Target and pick something up. I have to make everything more difficult of course. And didn’t remember she had no pants until after dinner tonight.

Sean had rejected a couple of knit shirts that I had bought him and I never got around to returning them. They were sitting on the floor of my room because as a sew-er, I couldn’t throw away what was essentially good fabric. Any guesses what I did? Well, I didn’t have a pants pattern, so I pretty much made her a really long pair of shorts.

So Maeve now has a pair of pants made out of a Hanes Mens T-Shirt. At least I sewed some ribbon on the sides to make them look slightly girly. And the best part? The ribbon matches her uniform t-shirt. Excellent.

Or maybe I should have gone to Target this weekend.

Need I say more?