Some Vday, quilt, journal and misc

Quickie pair of Vday yoga pants from our favorite Kwik Sew pattern.  I went with a ruffled leg theme after getting distracted tracing and cutting one leg off at capri length!  Heh.  So I hacked them both up more and we now have yoga pants a la Matilda Jane.  Quite cute!  This fabric isn't the best choice for yoga bottoms...they don't have as much recovery and therefore get a little bagged out by the end of the day.  But we like them for around the house and for Valentine's Day.  :)  Plus, they brought back memories of when I first started sewing knits...she had a pair, same style with a white waistband that I sewed when she was 4.  Her dolly got a pair too.  I'm pretty good with that lately!

 


The cute tag:


Her doll also got a new hat, scarf and pair of socks from an old pair of knee highs that became ankle socks as the years passed for E.  Saw the tutorial on Pinterest- quite cute!  We tried tights out of another pair, but I biffed that by not accounting for the lack of stretch in a sock vs. the doll nylon-tights.  Next time!  :)


My favorite sewing site  was having their annual doll quilt swap, and while I was too nervous to sign up this round, it did inspire me to give it a go on my own.  J and E also cut out their squares the same night, but have yet to sew them up.  A few of these fabrics date back to late middle school or early high school when my mom was on her quilting kick.  I remember picking out a handful of fat quarters at a cute quilt shop.  The black paisley backing and the brown swirly squares on the front are from that trip.  :)  I also tried free-motion quilting!  Harder than it looks and I've got lots to learn.  I love the stippled quilt look though- definitely want to try more of that sometime.



The binding isn't too shabby if I do say so myself!


I finally remembered to take a few pics of my journal I made this last summer.  It's a smaller size as that's the size leather I had hanging around.  Quite proud of it!  Someday I'd like to learn leather tooling and/or painting.  The pages are hand-torn which didn't take as long as I'd thought it would.  The closure is leather and a little button I had hanging around in my stash.  There's a little bookmark of a few beads and a cross- next time I'd make it a wee bit longer so it wouldn't shut in the book, but would hang right below it when closed.  It's lined with felt.





Other odds and ends this past week?  Yogurt making again...this time I overcooked the batch by not turning the crock pot off when it was time to let it cool.  I just shut the thermometer beeper off and set the time for the cool-down period and walked away.  Oops!  So this batch was quite runny.  Made great yogurt-fruit pops though!


And lastly- this was E's Vday gift from us this year.  We don't usually do large gifts, but we'd gotten this off Zulily about a month ago and couldn't wait until her bday.  It's to replace 3 dress-up dresses we had to finally retire.  She loved it!  She enjoyed swooshing around, dancing with her Daddy:
 

The next day, she spent most of our school-day in it.  Here she is curled up in the chair reading:


I'll have to post our cards and my gift to J later, I forgot to take pics of those before uploading this week!

Sewing Catch-up

I'm getting the sewing bug again, which could be a good thing since stash game on my favorite site is starting up in just a couple of weeks! Not that I'll win or come close by any means, but it's fun to play. :D

I made this for a birthday gift for one of Emily's friends this fall. Emily got her own version for Christmas:




This little matching skirt set was made from an old sweater. Another of E's Christmas gifts:


We had a crafty evening of ornament-making from an online tutorial. Put some cider and music on and chatted while stitching these little guys together. It was a fun night.

This was E's:


These were mine:


These were J's...the first one strongly reminded us of the 70's. Or the tootsie pop owl for some reason:

The second one here I hid at the side of the tree down at the bottom. :D Viking owls don't really jive with my whole golden-woodland-bird theme:


This giraffe flannel-lined minky robe was for my niece Romi for Christmas. She just turned 4, so it's quite large on her and quite small on Emily for the photos:


I want to make one just like it for E for next year. I don't have enough fabric though. :P I'll have to hunt this fall!

We made a few quick hair accessories for her small advent gifts:

The angry birds were inspired from a blog I follow. So cute!

I loved figuring out how to underbraid this year- looked really cute with all the Christmas-themed hairthings:


That catches me up for 2011. I finished a pile of hemming and finally sewed up 2 dryflex shirts I cut out for myself over two years ago. Heh. I also cut out a skirt last night and sewed it up today. Felt really good! I will post that soon. Off to watch Mansfield Park with J! :)

Gifts for Romi

This was for Miss Romi's birthday a few months back- I didn't have a chance to show it before my laptop died...










I loved the Paddington fabric and I figured my sis would too! I got it from another sewingmama awhile back knowing I'd be making it into something fun for her :) I made E a bigger and more laborious one when she was little and she still uses it weekly. Love these for going out and about! Hope Romi gets lots of use out of hers in the years to come!

I also sent these along a few weeks later (not as keen on the green ones but Lyzzy said they fit great so I am happy!). Love the yoga waists for round baby bellies!






More catch-up soon!

Christmas Sewing Part 1

This was my gift to my niece Romi...the red apron is for her mom :) We included some pots and pans, utensils and whatnot as well- I hope she enjoys them for years to come! The print fabric is a Japanese canvas from Crybaby's- it's quite fitting for them (ok...mostly her mom!).


Modeled by E, it will be much longer on Romi and will fit her for quite a few years by looping the waist ties through the neck in back:




The other apron kindly modeled by dh:



The pretty package- I found this ribbon in my stash...I pick some up now and then in the Target dollar aisle:


These following few pics are the night of the Nutcracker Ballet...E wore the same dress as last year:


Pardon the crazy grin on E :D


We went to the O'Shaughnessy at St. Catherine this year to a production by Ballet Minnesota:


It was a good night, although we both agreed that it wasn't the best we'd seen. Quite enjoyable though- always fun to see the variations in productions and much of it is 'new' to E each year as she grows. That being said, we like going to a ballet each Christmas season, but I wish that there were other performances. It's all Nutcracker. We've liked it so far as it's been new to us but I'm definitely ready for something else!

Part 2 to come.