I hate packing.

I soooooooooo want to be sewing right now. I want to embellish little pants and those ITYs are screaming to be made into Jalie tops (specifically the scarf-top and the twist top). One of them is screaming at me to be made into a Burda wrap dress. Dammit! Why is it when your mojo comes back full force you have no time?? The Jalie 3204 Dress is wanting to be made too. I think I’ll add an inch to lower the bodice and then we’ll be good to go.

Um, seriously? They’re too small??!?

My son is at that age where clothes cease to fit him in a very short period of time. I bought him several pairs of nice “school jeans” in August. Guess what? They are all too small now. They are almost all brand new and have minimal wear on them. I decided to refashion them into girl jeans. On this first pair, I ripped open the side leg seam so I could add some embroidery. It’ll be easy to sew that back up and hem them.

Is this not the cutest embroidery in the whole world? I got it free at EmbroiderThis.com. I want to make one with lace stripes and another with pink rick rack. I want to make one with pink bows on the pockets and one with flowers with button centers. I may even take off some back pockets and stitch them. Any other ideas? I’m sure Angie could do this 500 better than me. She’s so artistic and creative. Me? I’m a workhorse, I can get shite done. Creative, I am not.

 

Here are the seven pairs of jeans that are too small. Yee-zits!!!

 

I figure this is a fast, easy, simple project that will keep my sewing blues away but yet it don’t take much space and it doesn’t take much thinking. I’m concentrating all my spidey senses on packing  and moving right now.

Oh, and guess who’s ITY came today??! It’s weird too because my first order isn’t here yet but the second one came today.

KwikSew 3234 (ad nauseam)

See? Told you I could finish a project!! After buying a few *cough* yards of fabric I had to sew something up. I used KS 3234 again. Damn, that’s a good pattern. I’m only on size M too. That’s the 7-8 size range. This pattern goes all the way up to 12-14 so I’m all set for several more years.
First up the boy jammies. I used Urban Threads embroidery on the front in a variegated green. I love this Chez Ami ribbing. It’s so soft and it’s got great recovery. He ended up with two tops and one pair of pants. I didn’t have enough of the grey or the blue print to make up another pair of pants and I didn’t really have anything suitable that would coordinate.


Next the little boobins. They are twins, they are four, and for the life of me, I cannot make them sleep in separate beds. How do you say, “Stop snuggling your sister so much!!!” The problem is that a lot of giggling and tickling happens when they go to bed and it can keep them up for an additional hour or two. They prefer the top bunk and I usually don’t stop them from sleeping together. Maybe it’s just a twin thing. You can barely see the cute monster embroidery (again from Urban Threads) and I should have made it an applique.


My poor kids. This is how I woke them up this morning. “Good MOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRR-ning girls!!! Time for PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCC-tures!” This is their combined Death Glare.


I’ll probably offline for a bit. This is a big moving weekend for me. I don’t actually plan on moving into the new house until the end of February but I’m going to try to get the big stuff gone this next week while I have help.

Yup, I’m Bad

So I succumbed to the damn coupon and sale coupon. I ended up ordering, um, some fabric. Let’s just say it was a lot. I ordered two yards of several prints. Maybe, like, um, eight different prints. I know. Cripes. So much for my fabric diet.

This shows five of the prints I bought. There are three others but they aren’t on the website anymore. I’m thinking they sold out of those? Hopefully I’ll still get my order but maybe not. I guess we shall see!

 

Jammie Update: They are done! I’ll try to post pictures tonight or tomorrow.

Lucky Day?

I can’t decide if this is a lucky thing or not. Yesterday’s post is all about fabric I just bought. Well, last night I got the Fabric.com Deal of the Day email and it is none other than . . . wait for it . . . ITY for 40% off!!! I think I may buy some before I get my swatch since it’s about $2.00/yard cheaper than the other day! Here’s a link to the Fabric.com Coupon Corner which also has some other discounts that require a coupon code.

Acck!!! You may be seeing another “I’ve been bad” post shortly!

I’ve been bad.

I’ve been scrimping and saving to make sure that I have enough money for my new house and I haven’t bought fabric in a long time. Well, I fell off the wagon the other night. What’s my excuse? Well, it was late and I was alone and bored and well, my new house has a hot tub (woot!!!) so the kids will need swimsuits, and I was bored, and well, there is no good excuse (did I mention I was bored?).

Here’s the haul.

I’ve been into making kid jammies lately so I thought I’d but some of this thermal waffle knit. It’s black and white so it’s great for The Boy too. I often find that I buy a lot of girl prints instead of neutral or boy prints.
 

 

Seeing as my new place has a hot tub (***squeeeeeeeeee***) I’ll be needing little girl swimsuits. I have made them before when we went to Hawaii and they are super fast and easy to make. These are not prints that I would pick for myself but they are cute and the girls will love them. You will especially never see this French Canadian/Blackfoot Indian mutt (me) in yellow. I have olive, olive, olive skin that looks horrible in yellow.
 

 

I also ordered a swatch of this Jersey ITY. They have lots of fun prints. I sometimes don’t get the best knits from Fabric.com so I wanted to try out a swatch. I almost didn’t tell you ladies because there is only a few yards of some of them and I really like them all!

I also liked these colors.
 

 

I also got a swatch of this Rayon Stretch Jersey because I really liked it. We’ll see if it’s too thin for tops.

Actually making progress!

The other day I said I was going to work on kid jammies and, strangely enough, I’ve actually made a lot of progress.

• Cut out two pairs of girl jammies? CHECK!
• Trace next bigger size for The Boy? CHECK!
• Cut out two pairs for The Boy? CHECK! Oh wait. That’s an almost check. I cut out everything except two pairs of pants.
• Stitch really cute embroidery from Urban Threads (owl here and monster here) on the girl’s jammies? Half-check.

Here’s the super cutie-patootie embroidery. I think I’m going to add yellow button eyes too.

 

Here’s proof I’ve cut out the girl and boy fabric. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to sew some of this. My dad and his wife are in town right now to visit so I may not have too much time. We’ll see.

I bought a house!

So I’m about to be very busy again. I just bought a house and am hoping to close on it in the next week or so. I do have some pictures of the inside but need to get them off my camera. It’s quite big at 3100 sq. feet and it’s on almost 3/4 of an acre. That probably doesn’t seem big to most of you but it’s pretty big for Anchorage. Most of the lots here are small like .17 or .2 acres. It has bedrooms for each kiddo AND a sewing room downstairs! I’ll be able to have all my stuff together again. Right now it’s sort of shoved in one room and it’s a small room at that.

And, by the way, I have started cutting out the jammies. I have two pairs for the girls cut out and I am currently tracing the size M out for my son. I can’t believe how fast they grow!

February Burda

There are several items I really like out of the February Burda. I need to get out of my sewing funk and get crackin’. I find that since I started sewing, I get bored of my clothes pretty quickly. I also find that I purge clothes pretty quickly. I’ve lost about 10 pounds this last year and the pants and skirts that used to fit me snug are now loose and falling off of me. I should probably work on that sometime. I haven’t worn many skirts this winter because I’ve been juggling getting kids to two different daycares and trying to make it to work on time everyday (I have!) and haven’t really been that good at caring for my own appearance. Is it much harder to wear a skirt instead of pants? No, not really, but it involves tights and boots and coordination and blah. I’ve been on a steady diet of black/grey “pants and knit top” for the entire school year. It’s easy to coordinate, I don’t have to think about footwear, and it matches my mood. Time to change that. I’m really tired of black.

Here are my favorites from the February Burda. I love these two pencil skirts and the dress is cute and still very easy to wear (read: an easy alternative to black pants). I love a good t-shirt always and I should probably make some of those in bright colors.

 

 

If I have time tonight, I’m going to start on kid jammies and maybe make a pseudo plan for clothes for me as well.

Getting back on the hawsie . . .

Jeez, where the heck did I go? I did not, dear readers, drop off the face of the Earth. I’m finding that being a single woman with three children is taking a lot more energy and time than I thought it would. And thank you for the comments and emails about my well being! I’m certainly hanging in there. Some days my only goal is to survive but I’ll get back to the point of kicking ass and taking names soon enough. Enough about moi though.

I’ve always loved the kid clothes over at Chez Ami. They are super cute and, of course, I drool over the fabric. They also sell fabric but I had never ordered any of it. Well, right before Christmas I bit the bullet and bought some of the jersey and a bunch of rib knit. I bought everything from the clearance section so it’s pretty darn cheap (like $3.50/yard). It took a long time to get here but that’s mainly because I live in Alaska and UPS Ground and can’t ship to PO boxes and blah, blah, blah. I really, really, really love the rib knit. Don’t get me wrong either. The jersey is nice but it’s really hard to find good rib knit. I think this jersey will become a cute set of jammies for my girls and I’ll either use the green, brown, or teal rib knit to go with it.

 

I also have this black knit print left over from this KwikSew dress. I may use this up for kid jammies too. I’m thinking the pink or teal for this fabric.

 

My son is also lacking in the jammies department so it’s probably time to make him some too! I’ll keep you updated on progress now that I and back to the life of the living! For him, I will certainly use the KwikSew 3234 pattern I always use. It’s fits so well! For the girls, well, I don’t know. They love the Butterick 4910 but the KwikSew ones are warmer. I live in a cold drafted house so we’ll see.