A simple skirt and baby shower ideas

This past month, I headed out to see my daughter, son, and their families. I had seen a skirt here. I called my daughter and asked her to send me her measurements. She did so and I went shopping.

I hate looking for fabric. I don't seem to have the taste or should I say I don't have the confidence in my taste in fabrics. It took me forever to find what I wanted and I hope that she likes it. When I got to her house, I asked her to model the skirt.

It doesn't look too bad and it fits her quite well.

Here is a look at the back.

While I was at my daughter's home, she showed me the things that she had made for a recent baby shower. I was so impressed I took lots of pictures, but I will only share a few. These are the flowers that she made from tissue paper and hung from the ceiling.

Here is one of the absolutely beautiful pins she made for a thank you gift. I found the tutorial here.

That's all for now!

Buttons and Grandchildren

Recently my grandchildren spent the night with us while their parents enjoyed a much needed rest. The oldest children begged me to do a craft with them. Since my neighbor had recently given me a huge bag of buttons, I thought they might enjoy creating with them. It was a work in progress. At first they were going to sew the buttons on, but it soon became evident that they were going to use way too many buttons. It would take forever to sew them on. So we settled on fabric glue. This is the finished projects after I mounted them on foam board and finished the edges with binding, rickrack, and rattail.

CAPTAIN AMERICA'S SHIELD:

THE GIRL:

THE SWORD (DAGGER):

Here are the proud three together...

I would be so proud of my excellent grandparenting skills except by the time we were done, I was ready to shoot all three. They were all being so demanding and I had a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old demanding my attention too. How DO parents do it????

Jeanine's newest update

Jeanine and I took a trip to Minnesota about a week ago and came home with what sounds like good news. She went to the Mayo clinic in Rochester with the idea that they would check to see if removing the diseased part of her liver would lengthen her life and provide some disease-free time.

After checkups by the liver surgeon and throat doctor and a consultation with the oncologist there, they decided that she should come back in 6 weeks. At that time, she will get the appropriate tests to see if she is a candidate for surgery. From her old PET scan and CAT scans, they thought that it was a viable solution. Of course, after 8 weeks without chemo treatment, it is possible the cancer will have grown, but even that did not seem to deter them.

The problem has always been that the cancer is not considered to be just in her liver, but also in a lymph node in her chest. The interesting thing is that the spot in her lymph node doesn't seem to have grown. They are wondering if it is cancer at all. They also wondered if it was not a problem with the lymph node, but with the thyroid. If it is a lymph node, it is inoperable because of the consistency of that node and it's position in relation to lungs, windpipe, etc. If it is the thyroid, it is very much operable. Regardless, the liver doctor said that he was ready to operate despite what happens with the lymph node/thyroid issue.

So we are guardedly optimistic. The oncologist did say that the cancer will return sooner or later, but hopefully she will have some time pain free, disease free, and drug free.

More pillows

I wanted to make some birthday gifts for a couple of friends and since pillows seem my gift of choice, here is what I made.

This one was based on my pillow here. I used a fluffy, more expensive felt. I was a little sad because my eyesight is bad enough that I could not differentiate between the circles when I was sewing them. I ended up having a hard time knowing where to sew.

I sewed a zipper in this pillow, but white was a bad choice (but the only one I had at home.)

The second was for a moose lover who is remodeling her bedroom to reflect this theme. I found a reindeer silhouette in a book and modified it to look like a moose. I started out using leather for the moose, but I soon realized I didn't have the right sewing machine to sew on leather or the right scissors to cut out. I switched to felt and it looks pretty good.

I got the idea for it here.

Teaching children to sew

Last summer, I started a new tradition with my grandchildren who live close. I let each one come separately to spend a full day and night with their grandparents. They get to go out to eat for one meal wherever they want to go and we chose (free) activities that we can do with them. They get our full attention.

This summer, I determined that I would teach my granddaughter to sew. She did a little embroidery and machine-sewing. It turned out well. I thought about taking pictures, but I didn't.

When my 5 year old grandson came, he asked to learn to sew also. I told him that I would teach some hand sewing to him, not machine sewing and he was okay with that. He asked if he could make a light saber pillow and we did it! (Though you need to use your imagination to realize that is what it is.) Pictures came later with him also, but at least I remembered eventually. I started out by cutting a 6" wide strip of red felt approximately 3 feet long. I also cut out a 6" wide strip of grey felt about 8" long. He said that a red button was necessary so we went through my stash and found one. He sewed that on to the grey felt. He sewed the red piece to the grey piece along the width and then sewed the entire length of the saber leaving about 5" open so that we could turn and stuff the pillow. He hand sewed the entire thing. Then he stuffed it.

I used a chopstick to stuff the stuffing in better and whipstitched the opening closed. Here are the results. I am so proud of him! He did a great job!

Redwork Pillow

I should be at the Summer movies today. It is a program presented by our local theater. It costs $7 to go to 10 movies one each week in the summer. The movies are kid friendly and are usually kid movies that have shown in the previous year (though never Disney movies.) I go with my sister, my DIL and my grandchildren. My DIL opted out because one child was super fussy and she thought it might be too intense for another. We eventually got into the movie and found it was too intense for another of the grandchildren, so I left the older children with my sister and took the other grandchild to my house. As he watches a movie of his choice, I will share this, my latest project.

I have always loved hand embroidery probably because it was something my mother enjoyed. In fact, my sister and I were married in a wedding dress that had hand-embroidered roses all over. Each of the women in the family spent weeks embroidering those roses.

I have never tried redwork but have wanted to. I decided that I needed to try it and, of course, a pillow is always my favorite item to sew. I have wanted this pillow for my sewing/craft/guest room.

In doing this redwork, I have found that texture becomes very important. You will notice that some areas of the redwork stand out. It is because I used different stitches. When I first started, I just used the stitch that was easiest. Later, I started paying attention to the end look.

I did just a little patchwork and because I did and because I am horrible at figuring that stuff out, my 14" pillow is really about 12 3/4". I don't really care. I was able to make the 14" pillow form fit inside and that was all I cared about.

Circles Pillow

Have you ever fallen in love with a piece of fabric? If you sew, I suspect you have. I fell in love with a red fabric back in September of 2010. I am not sure what it is. It is soft, tough, doesn't ravel and feels like a suede though it doesn't have a nap like a suede. I bought it at Goodwill on half price day to make armbands for costumes. This is what they looked like.

Yes, that is a fake arm! We did a play where the girls chopped off fake arms.

I thought that the fabric deserved to be showcased so I came up with this project.

I was disappointed in the way it went together, but have since realized that I mounted the fabric to a very flimsy backing and what should I expect?

I still loved the fabric though and I had a little left. What to do? I saw a knock-off on-line of this pillow...

available here from Crate and Barrel. I would love to point you back to the original post that I saw, but I had issues with my browser and had to delete the history which is where I had the information.

It took every last bit of my material to make my version of this pillow. I had to make it 11 x 11 because I didn't have enough fabric to do any more than that. I used the Sizzix Circles #2 die to cut out the circles and since the fabric is hard to pin through, I used some "Quilt Basting Spray" to tack the circles in place while I sewed it. This spray specifically does not clog up the needle or sewing machine.

And here is the final project...

I dearly love this, my final project, made with this fabric.