More Projects...Part 3

This post has to be short and sweet, as I don't have much time. But it's been a while and I don't want to loose steam in posting, so here it goes! 

Baby Carrier! A Half-buckle, padded waist, wrap Mei Tai, to be exact! Yes, no story of my sewing life would be complete without referencing some of the wonderful baby carriers that helped me keep my children close to me:) I think a full post (or two!) could be devoted to the many carriers I've made, but for now, this one will do. It's a lovely Didymos Hemp Indio that I dyed, then sewed into this carrier. I loved it! Since the resale on these kind of DIY carriers is low, I've kept it, though my babywearing days are mostly over.

Here's Little Man and Myself. Oh, he was so much smaller then! What a big boy he is now! Can you see the chunk on his legs?! I LOVE fat baby legs!

I told you this had to be short, and it is. Sorry! I'll be back again soon!
~Ruth

Playing "Catch Up" on Projects! Part 2

Ok, so again, in no particular order...some more past, completed projects! This is fun for me!

These skirts for my girls are more than 2 years old, but I still love them! C. is still wearing her big sister's skirt, so I still get to enjoy seeing it from time to time:)

 My, how they've grown since then! H. is SO tall now!

This bag, I made from a blank from Dharma Trading. There's two things I really love about this bag...it's roomy front pocket (my addition) and the adjustable strap (also my addition). The size is nice, but not overly huge. This was made 3 years ago. Last year, I made another one ( I had ordered two blanks, but had saved the second one for a while). I'll get to posting about that bag too. I did it a little differently, but I love it too! This bag still gets pulled out sometimes...not bad for a little cotton blank that's been in use for 3 years!

 I added a little stencil to the pocket. It says "LOVE" in Chinese. At least I hope that's what it says/}

For a while, I was in the "swing" of making Amy Butler's Swing Bag pattern:) This one was for my sister. She likes owls, and this print was super popular. 

 Just in case the Amy Schimler  owls were too kid-ish for her (I was nervous!) I decided to pair it with a very gorgeous Amy Butler print. I still love this fabric and some of it remains in my stash to this day. I always envisioned it as a skirt...

 Six years ago when my niece was born, I made her this hand-tied quilt. I loved it, my sister loved it. All was well. Until it started to fray at the seams. My sister gave it back to me to fix and shamefully, I let it sit for a very long time before I decided what to do with it.

 This was the result. The fraying was not really "fix-able", so the only thing to do was to reinforce all the seams. I chose some coordinating fabric, cut it into strips, pressed it all and stitched over the seams. I think I like it better this way:)

  These were gifts for my niece and a dear friends little boy. They are fold-up blankets with handles, paired with matching travel pillows. These blankets have been my go-to gift for kids for a while now. These were among my first, and since then, I've only made minor changes to them. Someday I'll make a tutorial on how to make them. They are so easy and beautiful! Not to mention practical! (In this picture, the blankets are folded up, hanging from the chair back. Opened up, they measure 25"x25")

 Another Amy Butler Swing Bag. This time for my little sister. This doubled as a going-away gift when she and her husband moved out-of-state...much to my dismay.

 The reverse: I added pockets on one side, with grosgrain ribbon at the top of the pockets

 The other side was left flat. I still love this print. Too bad I don't think I have any more of it left:(

And that's it for tonight! Stay tuned...more will be coming!

Playing "Catch Up" on Projects! Part 1

This is supposed to be a place to chronicle my sewing projects and adventures. However, I've been terrible about posting pictures for my completed projects. So now, in no particular order, I'm going to begin adding pics of my completed projects. This is over a time span of more than 2 years, so there's quite a bit to show. It won't be all in one post, but I'll keep adding more. And this time, I'll try to keep up with my current projects more diligently...I promise:)

To start with...anniversary present for my little sister and her husband. Hand Embroidered, hand sewn (of course!) travel size pillow covers. My sis, like me, is enamored with vintage style and classic hollywood romance...hence the choice of the art deco monogramming.

These were gifts for a friend of mine, Lisa (If you are from TBW, you'll know her as "beachgirl3495"! This was for the arrival of her 4th baby...who is now 2 years old!

This is a bag for her (then 2 year old) son to carry his cars in. It has a detachable play-mat for making sure he always had a "road".

Every baby deserves fresh burp-cloths, so here's some brand-spankin' new ones. They are embellished cloth diapers. The fabric choices were a combination of mine and hers (she has really good taste in fabrics!)

 Individual sized wet-bags....perfect for cloth diapering! She picked beautiful fabrics from Heather Ross. See, I told you she had good taste!

 

 And a bag to hold all the goodies in. (There were goodies for her older daughters as well, but I don't have any good pics of them. Book covers and beaded badge card necklaces is what they got). This bag was just supposed to be a "gift bag", but Lisa ended up using it as a diaper bag for a while! I was flattered as well as happy that it held up as well as it did, considering it wasn't made for it!

So, I'll add more projects in another post...stay tuned! I have a LOT to catch up on!

xoxo, Ruth

Sneak Peek...

So there you have it, a sneak peek at my skirt which IS being published (with a few minor adjustments)!! I am very excited about it all! This skirt makes me want to tour Italy in it! The perfect summer skirt! Thanks for looking! 

Success!! My skirt pattern is done! Ok, not really DONE, done, but almost, done. I've been working on a skirt pattern to submit to CraftSanity magazine for the summer issue. The deadline is like, NOW, so I need to finish up the details and get my sample and pattern sent off ASAP!! I'll be back w/ a few teaser pics! See you soon!

Color in the Bedroom!

I am very excited about this project. It has been a long time coming.

We have lived in our house for 7 years now, and our bedroom has been too blue and boring for 5 of those years (well, it was boring before that too, except it was white then, which was even worse). Finally, it's beginning to take shape and show some "life"!

We had guests coming in town this weekend (staying in our bedroom), and so I used that as my incentive to get a new duvet done that has been in the works for over a year and a half now.

Incase you didn't already know that I love natural fibers...well, now you do! I love linen and cotton, wool, silk, bamboo...you get the idea! So, for our duvet, I had bought some chocolate brown linen on sale over a year and a half ago. I wasn't quite sure how it would all come together, but that's ok...I like it when a project takes on a "life" of it's own and becomes something even better than I had originally planned. That was how this was.

My anniversary present for this past year was fabric. 28 yards of Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks line to be exact. Before that even though, I had bought 3 yards of another of Anna Maria Horners fabrics (are you catching a theme here?!), from her Garden Party line to use w/ the chocolate brown linen (Navy Centerpiece). Well, as I had all the Centerpiece fabric laid out down the center of the duvet, I realized it was too much. While I love the fabric, I didn't like it in a 2 and a half yard strip going down the center of the duvet. A dear friend happened to be staying w/ us from NY, and she helped me figure out a plan to break up the long strip. The result is better than I had hoped for! For the reverse, I had originally planned on a solid chocolate brown linen. But I found I didn't have enough yardage, and even piecing it together would not create enough to match the front side. So, here's where the anniversary fabric came into play. I decided to piece together some prints from the Good Folks line to form a center for the reverse, then do a wide border in the linen ( I still had to piece the linen). This turned out to be quite the task. Since this is a duvet and not a quilt, there wouldn't be any quilt stitching to reinforce the pieces, and I didn't want to take any chances of a seam popping open while a fun-loving toddler is jumping on the bed. So, each and every seam is triple reinforced (stitched, serged, then flat-felled). And believe me, w/ both the front and reverse being pieced, that creates ALOT of seams! This thing has been my "baby" for 3 weeks now! I am so happy that it is finally done, and best of all, it's one of my favorite projects ever...and now I get to snuggle under it every night this winter!

Here's the "before" of our bedroom. Boring as can be. Plus the curtains are a tad too long and they drive me NUTS!!! This is the old duvet we've been using for the past 8 years...it was starting to get holes in it! In the summer, we have been using a blue matalesse coverlet (the same shade as the walls and curtains almost. BORING!)

Now, here's the duvet. The "front":

Now the "back". I really don't know which side I like best...I love them both equally.

The other part of my (rather long winded) story, is that I have wanted a headboard for our entire marriage (9 and a half years). Since we had guests coming this weekend, and a new duvet, I really wanted one. Here's the cheapest, easiest, most "bang-for-your-buck" headboard I have ever seen! Really, when you hear how simple it was and how cheap...you're gonna want to try it for yourself! I hope you do! This technique (NOT my idea, by the way! I read it in a decorating book years ago, and then later researched it online a bit and found more instructions) is SO COOL! It was even NO SEW!

Here you go: the headboard.

All it is is fabric and liquid starch. Really. Oh, well I did use iron-on hem tape to hem the edges first, but it's totally no-sew! AND...the bottle of liquid starch only cost $1.58. Yep, that's right, and it didn't even take the whole bottle to do this headboard. Maybe half.

My list of reasons why this starch and fabric wall adornment idea is so cool:

1.It's cheap

2.It's easy. (really, it took less than 10 minutes to get this up on the wall. A bit of time was spent ironing on the fusible hem tape, but that was it!)

3.It leaves no marks on the wall when you take it down. (I tried a sample first, and it's true...it's totally safe for walls! If you rent, and are not allowed to paint...this project is for you!!)

4.You can even re-use the fabric when you decide to take it down off the wall, just wash it!

5. You can't mess up this project...it's so easy to fix any "mistakes".

There...you want to try it too, now don't you? If any one is interested, I could briefly outline how I did it ( I did it a bit different than the instructions I had seen online had said). Just let me know. I now have lots of plans for this technique all over my house! No more boring walls for me!

While I was at it, I decided to make a set of linen pillowcases, trimmed in a medly of Good Folks fabrics. And since I have a special fondness for travel size pillows (I sleep w/ mine every night), I made a matching travel pillowcase size as well!

If you've read this entire post...I am truly amazed! I know I am a bit wordy in my descriptions of projects, but this is my craft diary, so to speak, and I like details. I hope that I may help inspire other crafters, just as I have been inspired by so many others out there! Thanks for letting me share!

~Ruth Elizabeth

Friday Night Fabric Bracelets!

My two daughters (6 and 4 yrs) have been bugging me to sew with them for a while now. It's been months since I've done any sewing w/ them so it was time.

Since we didn't have much time tonight, we decided on fun, fabric bracelets. They picked the fabrics from my scrap bin, and I helped out at the machine (they sat on my lap and guided the fabric, pulled out pins, while I operated the pedal).

Here's the result...two pretty bracelets, and two happy girls!