Sewing day

Today was my favorite kind of day, a free day to spend sewing!  I'm almost done with all of the Christmas gifts that I wanted to make,  so today I let myself on a few projects that I wanted to do for myself - kind of.

We just got a Hancock fabrics dangerously close to my house, and they had a great sale yesterday, so I splurged on some fun fabric for a new tree skirt. This isn't a traditional tree skirt by any means, it's for the tree that I put up in my studio. I love this tree because I get to decorate exactly how I want! which means the entire thing is purple. Last year I didn't get to put the tree up because the base was broken, but my husband fixed it for me last night, so it is up and ready to go, with a purple ruffly tree skirt. 

I promise that I'm not the kind of person who decorates for Christmas before thanksgiving, in fact I love decorating on the day after thanksgiving, so I'll add all of the ornaments then.

I made a tree skirt for our tree in the house last year, and I definitely learned a couple of things in the process. That one was quilted, and while it turned out beautifully, I don't have that kind of time, so I went with a more simple pattern for my studio tree.. The other thing that I remembered from last year was how hard it was to make the skirt a perfect circle. I spent some time thinking about it, and let me tell you, the solution that I came up with. Is genius, if I may say so myself.

For this tree skirt I placed the fabric on top of the round table in my studio and cut using the table as a stencil. It was so easy! That worked so well that I actually had the patience to measure all of the ruffles for the border. I love how it all turned out - although I may do a little research on how to biase bind the inside circle, because that was a total disaster! Oh well, you win some, you lose some :)

What I've been up to

I mentioned in my last post that I've had a lot of down time, which has been the silver lining to this whole insane process.  I've spent the vast majority of it doing fun crafty projects.  I was lucky enough to score a great deal on a new sewing machine, which i am obsessed with! I wanted to share my latest projects with you - much of what I have been working on will eventually become Christmas gifts, so unfortunately I can't share those yet, but here are my recent favorites:

1. I taught myself how to knit, actually Kristin from Good Knit Kisses taught me how to knit, her videos are amazingly easy to follow.  I've wanted to learn how to knit for a while, and while I have a grasp on the basics, I am definitely in need of some more practice.  I keep starting the same scarf over again, but it has given me something to do!

2. I have started making hexagons and hand piecing them. It is my dream to make a giant quilt with all of my itty bitty hexagons (you know I have it all laid out in my head), but for now i'm happy to have a project that i can do little bits at a time.  I swear I have the attention span of a two year old! I have been following Mollie at Wild Olive for a couple of years, and her hexagon projects are so cute that I kept saying I would sit down and give it a shot, if it is something that you want to try she has a great tutorial.

3. I made myself a new wallet.  Well, technically I made myself two new wallets.  Since I took the leap and bought my nice new sewing machine, I promised myself that I would really learn how to use it. My first attempt was typical; I really wanted to do the project, even though I knew that I didn't have all of the supplies, I wanted to do it, and I wanted to do it now. It turned out ok, and I was proud of myself for attempting, and successfully inserting two zippered pockets, but after using it for a couple of weeks there was one major design flaw that was driving me NUTS.  See, I'm not really a pattern person, I don't have the patience to cut out all of the pieces and read the instructions, so I made up the pattern for this first wallet as I sewed.  The result was a wallet that had credit card slots that were just too big.  Every time I opened my wallet my cards fell out.  After a couple of panic attacks from thinking I had lost my driver's license or credit card (they were in the bottom of my purse), I decided it was time to ditch my very cute, yet highly un-functional wallet.

I decided to try again, but this time I found a tutorial (thank you That*Darn*Kat!) which gave me some measurements to follow, and some great techniques for creating card slots.  But I also personalized it a bit, including extra spots for coupons.  I had originally intended to create a tutorial for you, but to be honest, my favorite thing about making this wallet was that I could use some basic measurements and customize the rest to work for me, I think that is what DIY is really all about, not copying exactly what someone else has done, but taking a few ideas from a few different people and creating something totally new.  THese are photos of my second attempt, which worked beautifully. I am so in love with this wallet!

I'm sure to be busy attempting to finish these little projects. Hopefully they will help me stay sane while I continue to wait!

Too go to be true

I was so excited about my paper garland that I came home from the 5k I walked Saturday morning, went straight to my shed, and sat down to sew. I was ecstatic! It was so easy, and I had the whole thing done in less than twenty minutes. That is, until I began to wrap it up and realized that it was one big, giant, tangled mess.


It is still a giant tangle mess on my sewing table, I had to walk away. But otherwise I have had an extremely productive weekend, and I can't wait to show you what I accomplished, tomorrow, but now, I am exhausted and you better believe as soon as the clothes in the dryer are done, I am going to bed!