Sewing, sewing, sewing

Those who know me know that I'm pretty crafty. And one of my biggest 'crafty' passions is sewing. There's something about taking a bunch of fabric, measuring, cutting and turning it into something. I've dreamed of opening a Etsy shop to try and sell some of the things that I make. Someday it will happen, hopefully someday soon :)
My amazing parents bought me a new sewing machine a couple weeks ago to help me grow my passion. Let me tell ya, it is A-mazing. It's the Lexus of sewing machines and I absolutely LOVE it! I've been doing some simple projects to get the hang of it and learn to use it. It's an embroidery machine too and with that part of it I have SO much to learn. I can't wait to literally personalize everything in my house :)
These are a few projects that I have done lately for some friends. Someday these will be in my 'shop' :)
Little boy ties - I LOVE making these...


Birthday shirt and party hat



Another birthday shirt for a little girl

Burp cloth


And thanks to Pinterest I have about a gazillion more projects that I have on my list to make!

Beach Robes

One of my very favorite blogs to follow is MADE. This woman is so cute, has such great ideas and is an amazing seamstress. A couple weeks ago I purchased my first pattern from her, a beach robe. I thought they would be perfect for our trip to Newport since the past several years it was pretty chilly at the beach. Well, of course there was a heat wave the week we were there and it was WARM so the girls didn't even need them :( But at least they are big enough and I know they will fit next year.

Chef Allie

A couple weeks ago after playing in her kitchen literally all day long, I decided that Allie needed an apron. A proper chef needs all the right gear right? I'm hoping that she can start making us meals soon. Well, maybe in a few years. For now, I will continue to eat wooden cookies and plastic chicken :)

My new beach bag...for the pool

One of my favorite things to do on a Sunday is look through all the store ads from the paper. (Actually sometimes it's my least favorite thing to do cause I can find soooo many things I love but can't have! ha!) A few weeks ago Ulta had the cutest beach bag in their ad. I actually went to the store to check it out only to find that the fabric was really crummy and it was pretty small. Well I couldn't get it out of my head so I decided to make one on my own. I actually copied the color combo because I absolutely loved it and spent probably hours looking for the perfect grommets (which are VERY hard to find!). I'm loving the way it turned out. I used outdoor fabric since it's heavy duty and won't fade in the sun and of course I had to put pockets inside. This bag is HUGE which I love, I put four beach towels in it for the picture below and you can see how much more room there is. I can't wait to use it when we go to the beach in October but I'm sure I will use it a ton for the pool (since we probably have 3 more months of pool weather because of this darn heat!)

A Little Pink Pillow

I've been on such a sewing kick lately. Actually, a craft kick in general but my sewing machine has gotten a lot of attention lately. I've been meaning to make a pillow to go on the rocker in Sienna's room for, well, a year now and I FINALLY finished one last week. I just happened to come across a tutorial for the pillow pattern below and I just HAD to make it. I used a pink satin that I had in my stash and now her room is complete (a year later! poor girl!)

This is the tutorial I used. I LOVE the white and gray stripe jersey she used - if I can find a yellow and white stripe jersey I'm going to make one for our downstairs. Isn't it cute?

0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

About a year ago I made these quilted alphabet letters for Allie. They are seriously one of those things that she has played with over and over. She's been able to say her abc's, count and spell her name for a while, but now we are working on the sight/recognition part more. I've always meant to make numbers to go with her alphabet set, but as usual life got in the way and it's taken me a year to do it. (Hmmm, if I had a quarter for every time I said that I'd be rich!) While I made the numbers I went ahead and made a few extra letters so we could spell Sienna's name too. Allie was so excited when she saw the numbers and we've already made up a few games for her to play with them. It was a very easy (yet time consuming) project, but great for those who have toddlers around!

Nesting Boxes

A very good family friend of Matt's side gave me an amazing sewing book when I was pregnant with Sienna. I spent hours looking through it picking out what I wanted to make. But unfortunately as it goes, I had little time while getting ready for Sienna to be born and had little time after Sienna was born.
Well, now that both girls are a little older, I feel like I have no more excuses. And to be honest another big reason I put off making something from the book was that I was totally intimidated by it. I do think I'm a decent seamstress, but my projects are pretty simple and pretty easy to create. The projects in this book are amazing but very complex!
Unfortunately my soon to be nephew has been my guinea pig for some new things that I've done lately so I decided I might as well give something in the book a try for him.
From a young age, Allie loved containers - to stack on top of each other and stack inside each other. So that's what I made for baby T, nesting boxes. They are very stiff, so they can be stacked, but very soft so they can be knocked down and not cause any loud noises or bruises. I searched and searched for fabric but I couldn't find enough that I liked so I decided to make them out of mens dress shirts (bought at Goodwill and yes I washed them, twice:) I think they turned out pretty cute and hopefully my sweet nephew will like playing with them :)



(I hope I made you proud Leslie! I promise I will be making more things from my awesome book!:)

More Baby Stuff!!!

I posted a couple months ago about my first time making some baby things for a boy. Everything I had made up until that point had been for baby girls so it was a bit of a challenge. Well, I just finished my second challenge. My dear friend Shawna is not only having two babies, but she is not finding out the gender of them until they are born! I had so much fun at Joann's picking out the fabric that I was going to use. I didn't want to do the typical yellow and green so I chose to go with chocolate brown and white. I love that color sceme for both boys and girls, plus she's doing an animal theme in the nursery so I thought it fit. I made my usual burp cloths, paci clips and diaper/wipe holder and think they turned out great. Congratulations Shawna!!!

This is my favorite diapers/wipes case I've made so far :)

Finally a Boy!

Since I started really getting into sewing and making things, all of my friends have had baby girls. This has worked out really well for me because, I'm sorry to say, but girl things are way more fun to make than boy things. There are just so many more girl ideas out there and let's face it, I'm a girly girl so I just love stuff with ruffles, bows, flowers, etc. I do have to say though that I was ready to take on a boy challenge. An old friend of mine had a baby boy a couple months ago, so I was excited to try some new things. Here are my manly creations (meaning no ruffles, bows or flowers:)

Lily's Crib Bumper

I was so honored when one of my good friends, Amanda, asked me to make her crib bumper for her sweet baby girl Lily who is coming in September. I must say, I was totally nervous but really excited at the same time to tackle this project. I had been wanting to make a bumper for a while but was very intimidated. Amanda gave me such good direction of what she wanted so it made it really easy, not to mention she was very easy going with everything too which calmed my fears a lot! She picked out the cutest fabric and ribbon and I think it turned out just great. I took the pictures below with it on Sienna's crib, but you can see it in Lily's nursery here. Check out the amazing stenciled wall that Amanda did too!

Sienna's New Bag

It's so true what they say that the second time that you do something, you can usually do it in half the time. Experience definitely helps. I remember making Allie's overnight bag, it took me FOREVER!!! Probably because I was doing it from scratch, and making sure that I created a pattern at the same time so that I could do it again. Well, I'm so glad that I did because I made Sienna one a couple weekends ago and it went so fast! I love the way that it turned out. It's similar to Allie's, the outside material is the same, but the inside material is different. I wanted them to be a little different but still match. Now Sienna is all set to join her big sister for all the the overnight stays at Memaw and Dodad's, and Tompa and Gammy's houses (well, maybe in about 6 months!)

Pet Owls

I found this really cute tutorial online for how to make these adorable owls. I had a lot of leftover fabric from Allie's pillows and figured an owl would go perfect in her new shabby chic cottage. The first one I made turned out so cute that I just had to make a baby one to go with it. Allie loves them and calls them 'mama owl' and 'baby owl' :)


This is Allie hugging her owls

Little Flower Shirts

I have been wanting to do this project for a long time and finally had the chance to sit down and do it today. I have to admit, I LOVE how it turned out. For those of you who know me well know that I am a total bargain shopper. I rarely buy anything full price and I get such a high when I find things on sale and/or on clearance. Target sells these great Cherokee t-shirts for girls that I just love. The cotton material really is great and they fit Allie so well. Regular priced they are only 5 bucks but every time I am in Target, I scour the sale rack and oftentimes find them on sale. Last week I found a black and purple shirt for $1.19!!! Seriously, I would have bought 10 of them but these were the only colors that they had. If you look in my closet, I am a bit of a plain jane. Bri has been trying to break me of my solid color habit (which I am doing better on!) so I did want to dress up these plain shirts for Allie. So this is what I did...

Before


After



Before


After



I used just plain white cotton fabric for the flowers so these shirts cost less than $3 together! I love a bargain, especially when it's cute!

My New Little Sewing Corner

I finally completed my sewing corner, I'm so excited. A few months ago after lugging my sewing machine in and out of the closet so many times, I decided that I needed a place to set it up permanantely. We have a perfect little area at the top landing of our stairs so I decided to claim it since it was empty. I found a desk on sale, painted an old kitchen chair, made a chair cushion and bulletain board and found some great accessories at IKEA. I just need a couple of baskets for the shelves and then it will be totally done but I'm holding off on those for a little while. Here are some pictures...

My little nook


Canisters from IKEA to hold buttons and thread


A silverware tray that was 99 cents! Perfectly fits in the desk drawer for thread, sissors, etc


Chair cushion before


Chair cushion after (the fabric is actually from a fabric shower curtain that I found on clearance)


Bulletain board before (Goodwill frame that was $1.99)


Bulletain board after


I have already done so much more sewing since my machine is always out and ready to go. Stay tuned for some more projects!