New Dress.. I made!

I like to sew.. Ok I love to sew and don't get enough of it... 

So, I signed up for a dress class the other day at Sewtropolis and look what I made! Patty at The Snug Bug was the instructor..

 Me in my new dress..

Avery in my new dress. 

Who looks better? :) 

Alyssa

Etsy find of the day!

I absolutely love bunting flags! I want a ton of them all over my house because I think they're really cute. They rate right up there with birds for me. The happiness factor is huge! Do you know what I'm talking about? You can use them for parties, leave them out as decoration all year, or take them out for whatever occasion you would like. I have thought about making them but the laziness factor kicks in for me. I love to sew, but I'm an instant gratification girl...sometimes this means the whole cutting thing bores me and leads me to forget about even starting a project. Then I found these! It's a bunting kit. Everything is in the kit and all you need to do is sew it! Yes, you can buy them completed, too, but that will cost you. These are $14.25 and you barely have to do any work! Love that!

These are all made out of vintage bed sheets. I think the reason why I like them is because I might have actually had some of these sheets on my bed as a kid. Wow, I feel old...they are now vintage. I am a child of the 70's what can I say! Anyway, I'm showing my age now.

If you don't sew yet, this could be a fun project to start with. I guarantee it will be easy and you can say you made it yourself. You did do the SEWING part of it afterall!

I hope you're starting to love Etsy like I do!

Stacy

The Last Minute Skirt.

Well, I would suspect most parents kids come home from school forgetting to tell their parents that they need to bring snack to school until.... 'oh, about 8 pm'. If you are lucky. Since those parents will have just enough time to run to the store before it closes. Otherwise, you are racing around in the morning trying to get said snack.

My house is no different with the exception that the other night I was told the choir concert is tomorrow and I need that skirt you promised to make me. Tomorrow. Wow. This happened to me on Tuesday night. Welcome back after a nice long weekend to you too. So.... at 9 pm I started making this much needed long skirt for her choir concert. The concert was music from 'The Music Man' and was fabulous by the way. (It was yesterday evening.) Little skirts for Miss Avery typically do not stress me out but this one had a lot of elastic. Lots. All needing to be brought through little pockets. Reminder, I started this at 9 pm Tuesday. I finished at 12 am.

 The fabric I purchased from Sewtropolis.  I picked up the pattern information there as well. The pattern is actually from Anna Maria Horner. It is the flirting skirt in the upper left hand corner.

Let me take you on my journey from 9 to midnight.....

 

 9 pm.. Started with a few rectangles... (shown here... the liner fabric)

 

Next.. sew the sides together for the outside and the liner. Though for the liner she has you baste 4" of one side to allow for easy entry when you get to inserting the elastic. The next time I make this, I will probably baste 4" on both sides as I ended up opening the other side up as well. You'll see below. 

 Press seam open. You will do a fair amount of ironing with this as with any sewing project.

 Once that is down put the right sides together and sew together at the waist area.

 Next create the channels for the elastic. The elastic channels are 3/8" with a 1/2" spacing between. There are 4 channels. Count them. 4. Doesn't sound bad until you try threading the elastic through.

 Open up the basted side at each channel. Insert Elastic. Now comes the fun part... inch each piece through. It works best to keep the all at about the same point moving one forward a bit then onto the next one, etc.

 This was about 10:30. Remember when I talked about 20 pounds of Trouble trying to get up on the bed. Meet Trouble. He is 20 pounds of really dumb cat. Amazingly, he has a brilliant sister. Oh, yes Trouble. What I wouldn't give to hang out on the floor with you right now.

 I was having trouble getting the elastic through at this point because of the pressed seam so... I seamed ripped the channels open here. This is where I would baste again, in a future project.

 Meet Hazel. Teasing me with sleep as well. We are getting to about 11:30 or so... She is Trouble's brilliant sister.

Publish Post

12 am. The final product... I hope she likes it! 

 And she does like any good, angelic child. :) 

 Here she is at the choir concert during her narration part. The concert was super fun. The kids were smashing.

Aww... now if this doesn't make up for the last minuteness of this project, I don't know what would...

Off to work! I will catch the spelling and grammar mistakes later today!

Alyssa

Etsy find of the day!

This basket (with handles) would make it FUN to get organized. That is why it is my pick of the day. I think it's a huge bargain at $27.99! If you sew, I bet you could make one. Otherwise head over to Sewingmomma on Etsy and buy one.

You can even choose from the above fabrics! Buy a few of them...one for each family member's extra stuff. We all need a place we can put the extras! Yikes, good luck deciding which one to get.

Happy Wednesday!

Stacy

Come visit my neighborhood!

My husband and I have lived in Northeast Minneapolis for almost thirteen years now. We moved here from South Minneapolis seeking a quieter more relaxed life. We love our neighborhood for it's mix of people, fabulous art, and sense of community. If you are ever in search of a place to visit, please consider coming to Minneapolis. Contact me and I will show you all of the great things we have to offer. If you already live here then you know how lucky we all our to live in this beautiful city. I wanted to show you a few of my favorite places to walk to in our neighborhood. If you haven't been over here, come for a visit!

My absolute favorite place in the neighborhood!

The Coffee Shop Northeast is a great place to meet friends for coffee and really yummy food, or bring your computer and study or look at blogs. The atmosphere is friendly, the people are nice, and the food is spectacular. Seriously...my favorite place in the hood!

Who doesn't LOVE a good old fashioned bakery? Umm, I DO!

Sarah Jane's Bakery is my pick for old fashioned goodies. Bring some of the maple bars to your older, crabby neighbors. I guarantee you will be friends for life.

Next, let's walk down to Crafty Planet and buy some of the latest fabric, or take a sewing class. They offer knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and sewing classes. Sew yourself a new summer skirt! Crafty Planet is an independently run shop and I love to support them. I'm so happy to have them in our neighborhood!

Are you more of a vintage kind of girl? No sewing required when you stop into Rewind. They're website is currently down, but I will update the link when it is up again. Plan on spending a lot of time in Rewind. They are loaded to the gills with clothing, shoes, jewelry and sunglasses. Even if you don't wear vintage, you WILL find something to take home. I promise.

More food. Hazel's is where you must go for breakfast on a lazy Saturday morning. When you eat the Drunkin Banana French toast you will think you died and went to heaven. Cliche, I know, but I don't care. I have never eaten something so yummy in my life. Hazel's is always busy, the ambiance is great...and you won't mind waiting once you taste their food. Yes, those are turkeys. We have turkeys that roam our neighborhood. They even follow the garbage men. Hilarious!

Not a great picture of  Amici and I apologize for that. The pizza and pasta here are fabulous. My husband and I head here often for middle of the week dinners. Grab a glass of wine and some homemade pasta but save room for the flourless chocolate cake with salted caramel ice cream. The service is great here too!

If you live close I hope you'll consider visiting my neighborhood. If you live a bit further away, I'd love to hear what your favorite neighborhood places are! I love supporting my local neighborhood shops and restaurants. I don't know what I would do without them!

Happy weekend!

Stacy

The truly mini - Mini Pick-Me-Up #3. Sewing edition.

This weekend I decided to have a play date with Ricky. Just for me. no burp cloths, blankets, pillows, skirts for Avery.. Something just for me. A few weeks ago I purchased a kit to make the cutest fabric scarf from Sewtropolis. The pattern is from Anna Maria Horner and is called 'Figuring 8'. This scarf is worn in a figure 8 pattern around your neck.. I took a few photo's along the way and love, love, love my new scarf..

 Pinning the rights sides together... I did learn to pin one side at a time as the fabric shifts along the way while sewing. I had a little shifting and had to do some minor trimming but overall not so bad.

 For those of you who have not met Ricky yet, say 'Hello!' This is Ricky the Riccar. He is my mother's old sewing machine still a chugging away after about 30 years of hard labor.

 This was the fun part. I am being facetious for those of you who don't know me. Next you aline the bottom edges after you sew the 2 long sides together. This was nothing short of an amazing feat for me. The edges didn't want to line up properly and for some reason an half an inch one side did not match the half inch on the other.. argh. major fudging here. After sewing the velveteen (the gold fabric) together you next blind stitch the sateen fabric (the purplish one) together to give it a nice finished edge. Yes, it looks nicer than a top stitch but it was so painful, I couldn't bear to photograph it...

If you go to Anna Maria's site she does a great job of photographing the process.

 But alas, I finished and love the outcome... 

My newest scarf addition. Love it and can't wait for fall. Knowing Mother Nature in Minnesota that should be in about 2 weeks. ;) Ha. Ha. 

Have a great day folks! Thanks for stopping!

Alyssa

My first Mini Pick-Me-Up .... Completed!

   Yay! Well, as you know from my previous post I did not get this done this weekend. Though my lovely husband was nice enough to get the light under the shelving installed on Saturday. Such a love he is.I did the rest yesterday and after some minor measuring issues was finally able to complete this project.

My love of a husband placing the light I purchased from Ikea. Unfortunately for him.. it is one of those under cabinet jobbers. They all were. So, he has to improvise as you can see  below.

 

He added a piece of wood to give the connection plate the cabinet it needed. 

Next for the install.. Note the other piece of wood above.. again faking out the light into thinking it is attached to a cabinet. Genius, husband, genius!

And we have light! 

Even in the dark. Amazing.. and sort of spooky too.

Next comes the curtain update. I decided to just make it fuller rather than add a color band..

So... I had to cut some off of the existing curtain because I did not buy enough fabric. Measure twice. Cut once. My new motto. 

Now showing that I have not cut too much off. Measure 4 times. Cut once. Updated new motto. Now time to cut some off the other curtain. I am hoping that I don't end up with a curtain that is looking for a flood.

There are those fabulous binder clips. Other people have duct tape. I have binder clips. I prefer to be the gray duck in the crowd. Or goose depending on your locale or age.

Yes. That would be yet another spool of thread almost out. I went through 4 this weekend and before that have never run out of one in my life. I guess I haven't been sewing enough. 

The finished product. A full skirt.. Lighting under the shelving and some little touched of happy in the corner. A vase with fake pink ranunculus and fake baby tear moss with a wire basket behind to store odds and ends of cleaning I may need in this area. I am not usually into fake flowers but down here I am a realist. Nothing will grow. Well upon further thinking maybe a hosta?  :) Oh... I almost forgot. The model in the picture is Ella. She seems to think there is something of interest under that skirt. Bummer for her to only find paint.

Oh and....I thought you might want to have a refresher of what it looked like once upon a time... 

Yuck. I forgot how bad it was.. 

Next on the docket: To find a cute place in my laundry room  to put up these cute little clothespin stickers my lovely cousin Stacy gave me. You can pick your own up here. 

 

Ciao for now. Headed to paint that pesky trim in the entry way. 

Alyssa

Sewing crazy....

So.. I have been on a project focused week. One project per day.. depending on the size. Thursday and Friday were eaten up entirely to sewing... I make burp cloths & blankets for friends and am now selling them on Etsy. So the end of the week became a sew-a-thon. I have a few other projects (home ones..)to share with you once I complete them and get the photo shoots done. For now.. I leave you with my sew-a-thon... and a sneak peek at my messy office.

 Let's start out with my little mess at the end of a very productive day... Yep.. don't think there should be 6 threads there.. 2 would suffice..

 Color me happy in thread... yes.. that is a bandaid wrapper in there.. I poke myself with the seam ripper. and yep.. the light died on my sewing machine as well. That one took me awhile to figure out why I was getting these unsightly shadows on my sewing area...

 My messy sewing area.... I do look out onto our lovely front yard.. now only if it would stop snowing! I realize it is May... and wish Mother Nature would realize that as well.

My lovely mother loaned me her cutting table for my sew-a-thon... which I also turned into a ironing table..Oh.. and that is Jed, the cowboy light switch plate, in the back there..

Ciao for now... 

Alyssa

Ps... I just caught my husband in a bit of a pickle trying to make the lining for our bunnies new litter box.. I will be sharing those photo's soon!