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! :)

Dining Room Chairs

It's about time I recovered these things! We've all grown weary of searching for those pesky poky grass-slivers...and Cassie was tired of always seeming to get the chair with the broken seat. Sad, I know. So here's the before (the closeup of the seat doesn't show all the fraying from E's shoes constantly on the seat):


I was going between these two fabrics Cassie and I had picked up. J and I liked the red...which has a bit of orange woven into the threads. We have a red chair in the living room with a pattern of orange and black in it so it goes well with it all. It also blends better with the rug whereas we felt the tan made you look at the seat more. Cassie fortunately concurred and I was able to start in :D We had to buy some plywood for the base as the straw seats had only frames. We also bought 1" thick firm foam...wish we would have had an electric knife for cutting...but we made do with a steak knife :P This project took such little time and effort as a whole...I can't believe I put it off for so long!

Ta-daa! The red looks very cherry in these pics...it's not as shiny and is a bit of a duller red than the pics. Between pics 2 and 4 I'd say :P Upholstery is always so hard to photograph...with my camera anyway:





Ahh...no more slivers!

Applique, dress, and yoga pants

Having fun playing around with applique with some torn pants...looking back I wish I would have either made this simpler or else gone all-out crazy with them. Ah well...they're pink and that's what E cares about :)






She kept making funny faces so I tickled her to get a big giggling grin:


Reading her favorite series- The Magic Tree House books:



This dress I'd made awhile back when I was starting out with knits...the neckline was all stretched out and the bodice was 3 sizes too big. I made my own puff sleeve using my patternmaking book but later realized the conversions and measurements I was using was for adults and so therefore her puff sleeve looked like I sewed some chef hats to her arm. I finally drug it out of the basket, cut the skirt off and made a new top for it. I love the new sleeve- the bodice fits great and I adore the organza trim! It'll be worn a lot this spring!



Yoga pants for older sis (the panda is the tag I made from grosgrain and canvas panda fabric from Japan...I hope to make some cute pants for Romi sometime with the pandas as the cuff :) ) I was having a bit of fun with photoshop if you couldn't tell :D