Stay With Me!

I'm redesigning my blog and will be posting again after I close down the Cat in an Apron shopping site, tonight at midnight.

I'd love it if you would stay with me on my new adventures! Here is a little loveliness while you wait.  These sculptures are from Anna-Wili Highfield:

Each one is made of hand painted, archival cotton paper that she tears and sews together.  The are stunning.

Free Stocking Pattern

I know I've gushed about her before, but I simply adore Denyse Schmidt.  I'm pretty sure we would be fast friends and share ideas with each other and stay up all night sewing together.  We'd paint each other's fingernails and braid each other's hair - wait - that is my dream of what it would be like to have a sister - forget that last part....  She has done it again, not only has she created the MOST beautiful handmade stockings, but she is giving away the pattern for FREE.

This is such a great pattern, because like all of her designs, it is really open to personalizing it just for you and your kiddos!

Love it.  Oh please let me know if you make them!  I really want to, but I'm already running out of time with what I have to get done before Christmas!

Can I be HER When I Grow Up?

Or at least something like her for Halloween next year?  Holy crap the gorgeousness.  I have so many posts to get on here, I'm just going to start with our latest:  Halloween.  Some day I'll spend time on MY costume like her, but for now, I dress three kids and leave myself 5 minutes before we have to be somewhere!
I adore Halloween!!!  I love it so much I had my first baby a few days before it.  After 7 years of pirate, dinosaur and Lego parties I finally got to have our first Halloween birthday party!  Birthday party: Friday.  After that party, my daughter was invited to another great party by her sweet friend.  Saturday brought TWO more parties.  Trick or Treating didn't even happen until SUNDAY.  We had three days of costumes and revelry.  It was pretty fantastic.  And now I'm pretty sure my blood has reached some sort of sugar saturation level only rivaled by a child at a circus eating pounds of cotton candy.  mmmm...  cotton candy!

I took photos of the kids over the course of the three days and these are the best:

 

And then our favorite incredible photographer, Stephanie Bryan, took these:  (!!)

A Pillowcase Craft for the Girls.

A princess who is about to sit on a pea, really needs a pillow.  And a princess who is going to have a pillow, really should be able to decorate it herself so she will always remember the super fun party she attended with her darling friends.  I thought, "how EASY!  I'll just whip up a simple pillow case for each girl!"  It turned into more of a project than that, but I think they ended up great, and it was worth it!  A simple pillowcase just wasn't enough, so I found a pattern I had in a book here to do a "flange pillow cover" sort of like this.  I have a ton of extra muslin, so I made all of the pillows out of it.  I didn't have as many large pieces as I thought, so I ended up sewing strips together to MAKE the large squares... = time consuming, but free.  We bought 10 little blue pillows from IKEA that are about $1 a piece.  These say they are 14"x14" but the ones I used were 13" square if that is possible.  I made one 19.5"x19.5" square, and two 19.5"x13" rectangles for each pillow.  The two rectangle pieces each got a double hem (that is my term for pressing 1/4" under, then again, and sewing a line down the second turn), then the two hemmed pieces are sewn right sides together to the large rectangle, and that is it!  Here is the "double hem":

I pressed all of the remaining pillows (after my prototypes) at once, then sewed all of the hems:

After sewing all of the pieces together, the directions said to mark a border around each pillow to sew along for the flange, but that is way too complicated for me.  I seemed to have trouble remembering that half inch on the 19 1/2 inch side, so the pillowcases were all a little off.

I solved that by making a template out of muslin the size of the pillows and pinning it to each finished case - I just eyeballed the placement, then topstitched around it for the "flange".

First I thought we'd use some puff paint sort of pens, but they were SO gloppy and sputter-y and would take SO long to dry, so I went for these great pens instead.  I found glitter pens and solid colors and they were very easy for them to use.  The pens said it would take 4 hours to dry, so we did them first thing (after a couple of minuts, though, they were fine to touch.)

Here is sweet Miss T. showing her finished pillow.

And here is a final pillowcase WITH a pillow inside.  A friend of mine said she had girls decorate pillows for the birthday girl - so the birthday girl got to keep them all and adorn her new day bed.  I think that is a great idea, too!

A perfect pillow for a princess to avoid any errant peas.

A Princess and The Pea Party Invitation

My daughter's 5th birthday was this weekend. We had a lovely Princess and the Pea Party. I am incredibly lucky that one of my favorite people in the world, and the mama of my daughter's good friend is a fantastic photographer! She took the most gorgeous photos - they made me cry. It was two hours of crafting and story telling and good girl friends - those first girlfriends at 5 years old - yummy food and some more crafting and general celebrating. For ME it was worrying that everyone was having fun and happy and not escaping through a back door or something, and before I knew it, it was over. NOW, though, I look at her stunning photos and my memories are of a magical, almost slow motion, perfect two hours of princessy fun! (We also took some photos, but ours pale SO much in comparison, that instead of showing them, I'm going to wait for hers to post here.) I'll share the "getting ready for it" parts, though.

I'll start with the invitation. I ADORE using sewing and fabric in different media. I've made a few invitations this way, but this is by far my favorite so far. Here is a close up of the PEA.(I know it looks funny to blur out our info, but I'm still leery of all of that.) I love the imagery of the towering bed with loads of different fabrics. I knew I wanted the invitations to be tall and thin. Paperzone here in Portland has a line of blank invitations that I keep going back to. The colors are perfect, the weight is great, and I love all of the different proportions they offer. It is called PZ facets. It seems you can't order anything from the website, which is too bad, but if you have one near you, GO.

Here is the first sketch I did:The gorgeous font I used is from Dirt 2. He is SO talented! All of the fonts are free for personal use, or available to purchase for commercial use. I used The Quickest Shift. SO scroll-y and perfect without being too sweet. He also has gorgeous photoshop brushes!! I used a few of the Secret Garden brushes for the details in the bed posts and feet - you can't really see what it is, but I know they are there, and I love them. I can't wait to figure out what to REALLY use them for.

I did a bit of a tutorial on flickr if you are at all interested in making invitations like this. If you want ANY other information, I'm always happy to share.

*Stephanie's photography page had her old blog as the link.  I've updated it to the real one:  http://stephaniebryanphotography.com/ **

Group Quilt Project

I finished our group quilt! It is based on Denyse Schmidt's pattern for "What a Bunch of Squares" from her Denyse Schmidt Quilts book that I STILL adore.
I gave each parent a pattern for one block (number 1, 2, or 3), they chose their fabric based on the colors "Lake Blue", "Cloud White", "Limeade Green", and "Lemonade Yellow", and each child personalized their block. I sewed them all together and this is the finished product! I put more photos on flickr. I'm so, so happy with it. I hope our dear Kindergarten teacher will wrap herself in the warmth of all of our thoughts and prayers and know how very much we love and appreciate her!

Christmas Sewing with "Sewing With a French Twist"

I did make some lovely things from this beautiful book:Simple Sewing with a French Twist: An Illustrated Guide to Sewing Clothes and Home Accessories with Style
The reviews seem to really be mixed about the book. Some say the projects are too easy, some say it is great inspiration. I've not sewn many things from patterns, so I'm not a good judge of the easiness factor, but every page is just dreamy - her style really is impeccable. I wish I were the sort of woman who wore trench coats with butterflies aloft, and berets, and had cafe table linens... I admit, though, that it surprises me that someone would write out how to take the cover off of your EXISTING market cart, lay it on fabric, and make a new one, but I guess if you are trying to fill a book... Coming from my architectural background, I wish that the instructions weren't her chicken scratched drawings, although they are better than some I've seen. And the four things I've made seem miniature compared to her photos. I thought the bean bag chairs I was making for my kids would be BEAN bag chairs, when really they are sort of bean bag STOOLS. They actually use them more as propped up pillows when lounging.

My parents do a lot of traveling, so I made the "his" and "hers" laundry bags for them. I thought they could roll them up in their suitcases, and use them as they go. The "hers" bag is the one below with the sort of ruffled top. I'm very pleased with how they turned out. They each took me about 3 or 4 hours start to finish. To have a stack of fabric and two days later these lovelies is a wonderful feeling!

Snow Days

Why is it that when we are snowed in, and I'm forced to stay home, I seem to get LESS done? The kids don't have school today due to the winter STORM... And I feel like I'm chasing my tail trying to keep up with the house. I finally sent them downstairs so I could work on the main floor. On Monday they were home, too, and I let them go play outside by THEMSELVES. My son is 6 for crap sake, he should be able to play outside alone, but it scares me to death. I just think about all the horrible things that could happen to them with out me by their side. The freezing cold weather helped me overcome my fears. Too cold for me! I grew up in Alaska where I would wear miniskirts in the winter, and was mortified to have to wear boots with them (uggs were SO not cool then. wait, are they now??), but now, the snow is only fun if i have skis strapped to my feet!

Because of the crappy economy, and baby number three in our household, our Christmas is being WAAAAY scaled back this year. I've decided to MAKE gifts for my parents and the kids. The kids main gifts from Santa are going to be bean bag chairs that I'm making from Simply Sewing with a French Twist. They are sort of squarish instead of a big circle. At our house, Santa's gifts are not wrapped, but set around under and on the tree. This means the kids can't know I'm making them, and I have to work on them after bedtime and when they are in school. DID I MENTION THE SNOW DAYS WE ARE HAVING?? ugh. Christmas is getting close!
I'll take pictures as i go and post them. I've had this book forever and never made anything out of it. It'll be fun to see if I can make something from her notes and tiny drawings. I've never made anything from instructions without a pattern. And I'm going to try REALLY hard to just follow her directions. I usually get caught when I try to change everything and then don't have the directions to get me out of the hole I've dug myself!

Okay, back to cleaning my house!!

Poinsettia Brooches Finished

I finished these. They were so fun to make! I wish I would have made more. I wasn't sure how time intensive they would be, and I needed 25 for swag bags for the Holiday Shopping Soiree where we'll have a booth on Saturday, so I only made 30. I'm definitely going to make some different flowers for after the holidays, as well.

Boppy Cover Reality

After perusing the lovely fabrics at my local fabric store that evening, figuring out how much it would cost me to make my own and factoring my time in.... I decided to buy this lovely one off of etsy!! The fabric is beautiful, I love the contrast for Baby O to check out, and it is DONE and in the mail. GIANT sigh of relief. Maybe when I have a little more time, I'll try to make one of my own. She has some other really great products she makes, too, check out her store.

Instead, I have to prepare my son and his list of 10,000 things for his very first day of kindergarten tomorrow, get my daughters everything ready for her first day of preschool the NEXT day, finish painting the basement so this new child will actually have BEDDING to sleep in, and try not to go into labor.

I am completely not prepared for ANYTHING at this point. Everything Baby O will be using including the aforementioned bedding is in plastic tubs, unwashed, in our visqueened laundry room in the basement. We are going to try to get the basement painted tonight and this week so we can actually pull everything out of the laundry room and go through it. I have clothes washed for the little guy, and half of a box of diapers left over from my daughter and that is IT! I guess when number three comes along things are a little more relaxed??

Boppy Cover #2

I think this one looks a lot better - no zipper across the top. The zipper makes much more sense to me inside the inner "U". I'm going to try to remember how to sew a zipper from my zipper clinic at Bolt!!

Here's the LINK.
I'm not sure if there are other parts to this website? Would love for it to be a blog....

I'm headed to the fabric store to figure this little bugger out!

Boppy Cover

I just found these instructions for making a boppy cover - a great idea for me as I've had mine for years and years, and it has a really awful alphabet cover on it. I never nursed as well with the boppy as I did with pillows, but I used it for a million other things from sitting on it when I broke my tailbone in delivery to propping the kidlets up before they could completely sit up. There are actually quite nice covers out there these days, but I'm thinking I'll save some $$ and make my own. (this is how i approach everything - including the $300 window seat box cushion I made for our kitchen window. I'm sure I could have bought it for half the price, but I have a knack for making things take longer and cost twice as much by making them myself.... THIS time, it absolutely should be cheaper!!)

I'm having these nesting cravings that come and go, and I think this project is much more doable than the curtains which are currently a stack of fabric boring holes into the back of my head as I sit here.... I'll let you know how it goes.

Just looking at the pattern - it seems strange to me that the zipper is across the whole top of it like that? I'm going to try to make one just using my old boppy cover. I think that will be easier. I'll let you know how THAT goes.