Creating my own fabric on Spoonflower

Have you ever heard of Spoonflower? I discovered them when I was searching for a specific pattern for a fabric I wanted to use to make my nephew a baby blanket.  His mom and dad love the abominable snowman aka Yeti.  I searched for a fabric with Yetis but the ones I found were too girly or too mean looking.  I wanted a friendly cute Yeti.  Then I stumbled upon Spoonflower.com and found that I could create my own design and send it into them to print onto fabric!  I can't draw.  Let me repeat, I can't draw,  but I thought it wouldn't hurt to give it a try.  After spending a few hours messing around on the digital drawing pad, I finally created something I liked!  Here he is!  I put him against a background of snowy mountain tops.

I uploaded the drawing to Spoonflower.com and ordered a yard of the fabric. It was very reasonably priced, only around $18 for the yard including shipping.  Here is the fabric that I received.

I paired it with a blue and white stripe fabric and a snowflake fabric for the binding.

On the back I handstitched a "V" for Victor. 

So if you ever want to design your own fabric, I highly recommend Spoonflower!  I promise no one is paying me to say that!  Another great thing about their site is if you allow your design to be "Public" and allow other people to use it, Spoonflower will give you 10% of their purchase price. I haven't decided if I want to do that yet.  I am now working on turning the abominable snowman into Bigfoot!

Wish list: Sunroom/sewing room

Now that I'm sewing almost every day, the dining room has turned into my sewing room.  While Mr. H says he really doesn't mind, I would love to have a sewing room where I wouldn't have to put everything away every night, where I could put a spool holder on the wall instead of throwing them all in a plastic bin,where I'd have drawers for all of my fabrics instead of stuffing them into a bag each night.

We have a deck on the side of our house that we never use. It just gets way too hot in the summer and of course during the winter we don't go outside much. Here is what it currently looks like.

Here is the view from inside the house.

I think it would be perfect to enclose this area and turn it into a sunroom/sewing room!  Ever since I thought of this possibility, I've been obsessing over it.

I love these rooms:

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Of course there would be a sewing table in there along with all the other essentials!  Kind of like this room:

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The problem is we have a kitchen to renovate and a front porch to re-do so I'll have to try to figure out how to squeeze a sunroom/sewing room addition in there somewhere!

Thankful for new found passions

I haven't posted in a little while and it's because all I've been doing in my free time is sewing!  I stay up way longer than I should just sewing away.  I wanted to share one of the things I've made.  

This little fleece hoodie is for my friend's baby boy that she is expecting in January.  She and her husband are Green Bay Packers fans so I made the hoodie in their colors! It was so soft that I wanted to keep it just to snuggle with it!  I found the pattern on Etsy from a shop called Puperita.  Her pattern was really easy to follow!

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for discovering a new passion.  I am loving every minute of sewing and I hope it does not go away.  I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!  Enjoy time with your families and eat until you waddle!

My first hand made doll

So I've become a sewing fool lately. I am finally willing to say that I think I'm a seamstress now, well maybe a novice seamstress!  I've been making quilts,  baby bonnets, and even a fleece jacket for a baby!  But the thing that I was really excited to make was a doll for my friend's 5 year old girl.  A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon some websites that allow you to send in your child's drawings and they turn them into dolls or stuffed animals.  There are several websites but my favorite is Child's Own Studio.  I was inspired!  I thought maybe I could make a doll from a child's drawing too.  Visit the website if you have a moment and you'll see what I'm talking about. 

One of my friends had posted a drawing of an angel that her 5 year old daughter, Emily, had made so I thought I could start with that drawing.

I went to the fabric store and got some purple fabric, some light tan fabric for the skin, some stuffing, and black yarn for the hair.  One of the challenges I ran into was how to make the yarn curly for the hair.  After doing some Googling I found that you could curl yarn by wrapping it around round dowels, dosing it with boiling hot water and then baking it on a low temperature for about an hour.  I wrapped mine around some chopsticks!

I had never made a doll before so I didn't know how to start so I just jumped in and started!  After spending three nights on it, here is the finished product!

I wanted it to be a surprise so I didn't tell my friend that I was making it. Emily got it today and was so excited to see that her drawing had come to life!

I am so excited to try to make more toys from kids' drawings and give them that magical moment when they realize that they designed the toy they're holding.

Sew obsessed

When I started blogging back in June, my goal was to post something at least twice a week...well, it's been a week since my last post so I'm a little behind and here's my reason for it...I've become completely obsessed with sewing! I mean obsessed. I think about it at work, I think about it when I'm having dinner, I think about it when I'm hanging out with friends. I work it into conversations. It's gotten so bad that I'll get a faraway look in my eyes and Mr. H will ask "What are you thinking about?" and I'll say, "Nothing" and he'll say, "Oh you're thinking about sewing again, aren't you?". So whenever I get free time, I'm at the fabric store, behind the sewing machine, or on the internet looking for sewing inspirations.  That's where I found my current sewing obsession...baby bonnets!

photo from Sew Mama Sew

Look at that bonnet.  How cute is that? I found it on www.sewmamasew.com and had to try it. My good friend Jamie is expecting a baby girl, well, she actually had her two days ago.  Guess who gets to be my guinea pig for my first bonnet, baby Gianna! I used some of the fabric I had left over from the quilt I made for her. There were two tricky parts.
1) The materials that were needed included picot edge double-fold bias binding which I could not find in any store so I made my own! I bought pink double folded bias binding and lace trim and sewed them together.

2) Making the spaghetti bias binding for the adjustable closure in the back took me an hour, literally an hour, to do. It's almost impossible to turn such a skinny strip of fabric in on itself. 

craftyendeavors

I found a method that finally worked on craftyendeavors.blogspot.com. It involved cutting a tab and then using a bobby pin to pull one end of the strap in on itself. It sounds easy until a seam rips or the tab rips off the bobby pin. It took several ruined strips for me to get this done but it finally worked!

Here is the bonnet for Gianna. It's reversible!

Pesky drawstring that took forever to make

I also decided to make a Christmas bonnet since it's just two months away!  It's reversible too!  I'm putting this one in my Etsy shop. I'm so excited to make more!

Pink toile nursery rhyme baby quilt

So you may be wondering what I've been doing these past couple weeks...even if you're not wondering I'm gonna tell you anyway. Making baby quilts!  Yes, the girl who has been telling you that she's not a seamstress has made three baby quilts over the last two weeks! And I will still say I'm not a seamstress since I can't make anything else, but I am a baby quilt maker!  

Two of the quilts are going to be gifts so I can't show them to you just yet, but I found this pink toile with scenes from nursery rhymes on it and just had to get it because I love toile! Plus those two quilts that I can't show you are both for baby boys so I was itching to do something girly.

I also found a pretty green print with ivy made from hearts and knew it would complement the pink toile perfectly. A white quilted fabric for the backing would complete the look.  

Here it is all finished!

You may have noticed that I've learned how to do binding since the last quilt I shared with you! YouTube sure is handy! I think binding gives the quilt a finished look.

I discovered something that I never knew about myself, that I LOVE sewing, well, maybe not sewing in general, but I love making baby quilts! I love the process of it as much as I love seeing the finished product. I love picking out the fabric, laying it out and seeing that I can make something useful and cute! 

I've decided to add them to my Etsy shop. Now, I promise my blog will not become advertising for my Etsy shop, but I thought I'd share that I'm adding a new category that I'm so excited about it! Also, if I may ask those of you who have Etsy shops, do you have any tips to share that you've learned along the way? I've not sold anything yet and I know I just started but any advice would be appreciated so much!

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I made a baby....quilt!

I've mentioned before that I am not a seamstress but I can use a sewing machine and sew a semi-straight line. So with those two skills I thought I would try my hand at making a baby quilt!  

I was inspired by my friend Jamie who is 8 months pregnant.  Last month she was telling me about how she and her husband could not agree on the bedding for the crib and after looking at the photos she showed me on-line, I told her, "Hey, I could try to make you a quilt!"  I wasn't trying to decide the bedding choice for them, this would be more of a quilt to lay the baby on in the living room or just to snuggle in.  She gave me a very doubtful look but tried to sound positive and said, "Okay...go for it!"  She is such a sweetheart and wouldn't say it herself, but I could see it in her face that she was thinking, "Oh gosh, she's going to make me a baby quilt and I'm going to have to pretend to like it!"  

We knew the baby was going to be a girl so I went to Hobby Lobby and picked out the fabric you see above.  I cut the patterned fabric into 1 square ft pieces for the front and used the pink fabric for the back.   Here it is all sewn together!  I think it turned out okay for my first attempt at making a quilt!

I thought it would be fun to personalize it so I traced a "g" into some fabric and hand-stitched it on the back.  G is for Gianna!

It was so much fun that I'm going to make a quilt for my friend Julie who is due this winter. She's having a boy! 

 

Blue and white toile seat cushions

We've had these outdoor chairs since 2007 and they were getting quite wobbly and faded. Mr. H wanted to throw them out and get new ones but of course I said "No way! We can paint them!" So we tightened up all the screws and painted them a light blue color and they were as good as new! The problem was that the maroon seat cushions that came with them didn't match the new color.

Before paint

Painted

With clashing maroon cushion

I went to several stores looking for outdoor seat cushions but since it's so far into summer all of the stores were sold out.  That's when I decided I could try to make my own! Now let me tell you, I am not a seamstress. I am far from it but my mom did show me how to use a sewing machine when I was about 12 and I took a quarter (not even a semester!) of Home Economics in junior high so I can sew a line. I didn't say a straight line, just a line.  Off I went to Hobby Lobby and found this blue and white toile that I just loved.  It was so French!

I felt okay about my abilities to make the main part for the cushions; the part I was most intimated by was how to make the ties.

Scary intimidating ties!

I took apart the ties on the maroon cushions and looked at how it was sewn. It looked doable.  All of my blog friends who are experienced seamstresses are probably saying "duh!" to themselves!  Here is what I did. (You can click on the picture to enlarge it). It ended up being pretty easy and fun!

After the ties were folded, I just sewed them along the edges.

For the main part, all I did was face the "good" sides of the fabric together and pretty much sewed a box with an opening on the top to allow enough room to stuff the cushion in. I turned the fabric right side out and sewed the ties on each end, stuffed the cushion back in and did a simple top stitching to close the opening. I didn't even consider trying to put a zipper in (way beyond my level).  I did consider Velcro but the maroon cushions were top stitched so I decided that would work for my new cushions as well.
Et voilà!

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