Still Alive

Just busy.

T-shirt blanket for a client.

Yes, those are real ballet shoes.

It's My Birthday - Again

I blame my parents for this awkward, between-Christmas-and-New-Year's birthdate which I have never once celebrated with a birthday party with friends on the actual date. On the other hand, I have never once had to go to school or work on my birthday. =)

I am writing this post ahead of time, so I am not sure what I am going to be doing....a trip to the museum or taking myself to a movie are two possibilities, or maybe making a purse for myself.

I did buy myself a little gift.....I walked into a calendar store and it jumped into my hand, I swear. I may or may not have spent 2 hours flipping through it last night. There are 313 different bags, some by high-end designers and some by unknown artists, spanning a length of time between the early 1800s and 2008. Anyhoo.....I won't be doing the big birthday extravaganza giveaway from last year, despite the fact that I will be turning 30 for the second time. But I do want to give you, my awesome blog buddies, a small token of thanks for sticking with me, despite the sporadic blogging and more than the acceptable amount of whining lately.

So if you would like to win this Wicked Witch bag, leave me a comment with what you like to do on your birthday. I'll draw one on New Year's day (Friday) sometime.

Thanks again for reading and good luck!

Blankets

I haven't made many tshirt blankets lately, but I recently got 4 orders (well, I'm still waiting on confirmation on number 4, but still) all in a row. I finished two of them over the weekend. I also now have a giant pile of tshirt pieces, which I need to find something to do with. I have some ideas, but am still waiting for inspiration to coalesce. I am also excited about Urban Craft Uprising this weekend....I haven't gone to a craft fair for a year, not since last year's UCU. I love these shows....and since I am short on time, maybe I will find some gifts for my family. Fingers crossed! If you are in the Seattle area, I highly recommend it -December 5 and 6 at the Seattle Center.

Oops

It's been a while....It has been an incredibly busy week but I am finally to the point where I can work on crafty stuff. So I fought with a purse lining last night until I ripped holes in it and flung it across the room. So I will try again tonight. Meanwhile. Last weekend I put together a memory quilt top for a client. Here's the finished product. She did all the squares herself except the ones with photos outlined in black, all I did was put it together since she was having trouble lining up the sashing.
Er....pardon the extremely dirty floor.....I was in a crafty Zone.

Weekend Update

It is COLD COLD COLD.....I am hoping for a Snow Day tomorrow...fingers crossed. Instead of grading, I finished this:
You can kind of see in the top center square that there are several things in one square. That started out as a child's hat, which I split and flattened, also a piece of a tracksuit (DO NOT IRON...) =) and they are sewed onto a pair of basketball shorts.

Orange and Fabulous

As I lazily enjoyed my more-or-less last day of summer (did you know that teachers have to go back to school a week before the kids????) I worked on the last of the t-shirt bags today...and for the first time, sold an item on etsy in less than 24 hours! Cool stuff! Here's the bag that sold today (I didn't even have a chance to post it on here!)

And here is the t-shirt bag I finished today! It is lined with very soft sky blue flannel.

T-Shirt Blanket

A few weeks ago, I picked up some shirts from a client who wanted a 3x4 t-shirt blanket. Normally, I can do these without a lot of thought, but for some reason - perhaps the lack of thought =) - this one gave me problems. First of all, she had enough material for 13 squares, but wanted some of the smaller writing pieces to just be added to other squares so that she would have 12 total. I cut the shirts apart, and for some reason ended up with only 11 squares. I couldn't figure out where I went wrong, so I just created an extra square, which looked great!

Then, I started putting the blanket together, which I do in strips. After I had all the strips sewn and was about halfway through sewing the strips together, I found the missing square. The client wanted to use the original plan, which meant that I had to take apart all of the stitching on the above square. Since this is t-shirt material, it meant that every stitch caused a little bit of stretching to happen, making it harder to line things up when I resewed it later. I got it done though, and took apart the strips, and sewed the pieces where they were supposed to go.

Back to sewing the strips together....and since I topstitch both sides of every seam for stability and flatness, I had sewed 12 seams when I realized I had sewn one strip on upside down. So...back to the ripper (not my favorite utensil) and I had to tear out 9 of the 12 seams. I finally got it done (thank goodness) and here it is....I didn't take pictures of the back, but there is light gray fleece on the back.

Winding Down

I plan on spending tomorrow at school and hope that at that point I will be motivated to start working on lesson planning, but as of now I am still in sewing mode. I finally felt confident enough to try my hand at a girl's A-line dress, but I cannot find a pattern that I like, so I have had to just try and design a pattern of my own. I think I like this one, although I would probably make the dress a little longer next time, or the top a little narrower. I made it from an old tablecloth that was given to me by a friend and the design in the tablecloth kind of determined the particular shape. It is cotton and is completely lined, with button closures on the top straps.

I also made a school bag for myself last night, while watching the men's swim team win the most amazing race in Beijing, defeating the trash-talking French (mwa ha ha ha!). This is the same bag I had previously screwed up, but I gave it another shot and now I like it. It is made from an old t-shirt from Goodwill (99 cents!) and lined with black twill.

And in the same line, I made another t-shirt bag that I will try to sell on etsy. I wish I knew how to target a high school audience, these are the same size and shape of school bags that my kids carry and I have seen them wear this same shirt before. This one has handles that are 4 inches shorter than the other bags I have made. It is lined with chocolate brown flannel (which I remembered to wash this time) and has an inner pocket.

Blanket

One of my other sources of income is making t-shirt blankets, and I've done so many they are pretty mindless by this point. I worked on this one all weekend....it is the first double-sided one I've ever done. I will say this, doing these gives me a window into what people were like in college. Hm...