Signs of life...

The weather has finally turned to spring here! I got out and did some yard work over the weekend. I pruned my willow bush a bit and thought these clippings were pretty, so I brought them in. I love the red stems that this bush gets. I am curious to see whether the little leaves open up or not or whether the clippings will begin to root. This plant is supposed to root very easily. If so I may wind up giving some away and planting some elsewhere in my yard. :)

I love the way the stems look in the water.


Now that the weather is warming up, I am walking to work when I can, so my blogging may be a bit more sporadic during the warm weather. It is about a 17 minute walk each direction. I typically blog in the morning or on my lunch break. Both of these are shortened by the walking so, therefore I may not have as much time to blog.

Just to catch you up on the current projects (even though I have no pictures of anything, lol), here goes. I just finished 43 table runners for the sister of a girl I work with. This lady owns a catering business and uses them for decoration on her tables. They were just simple polyester organza like pieces, cut selvage to selvage and I rolled the edges on my serger. Easy peasy, well, mostly. Cutting that stuff isn't fun, and she had already cut them and they were croookkeeeddd. Holy cow were they crooked! Needless to say the rotary cutter and ruler came out first.

I also hemmed some pants for a girl, not too exciting.

I finished a little birthday present for a special little girl who has a birthday next week. More on that when the little recipient has received it. ;0)

I started another birthday present for another little girl who has a birthday on sunday. Lexi. I am making her just a little easy short set.

I have plans for two more outfits in the next week or so, too. One for Etsy, hopefully and one for the Pfaff store to replace the blue one that sold right away. The one for Etsy is going to be a bit of an experiment for me. I am making it from some pretty dish towels that I found at Big Lots the other day. We will see how that goes.:0)

On another note, today is my silly booga's (aka Aeris) birthday. She is 3. We celebrated with tuna for both kitties. Since we don't know when Sasha's birthday is, but we got her in April, we celebrate hers, too. Her birthday is more likely sometime during the summer, June or July. She will be 11 this year. We got her 9 years ago.



I threw this box in the floor the other day, intending it for the recycling bin. Well, Sasha decided it was hers and has taken up hanging out in it.

Holy cow!

Two crazy things happened yesterday!

First off the little blue dress sold already. I just gave it to the lady from the sewing shop Sunday at church.

Secondly an old friend that I haven't talked to in a LOOOONNNGG time called out of the blue last night. When I was traveling with the music group 11-12 years ago, she was also a member and we sort of lost touch after a couple of years after getting off of the road. It was really good to hear from her again. Sometimes I really miss some of the people that I traveled with. So, in case she is reading this, "Hi Steph!"

I am washing up a bunch of the new fabric, as well as some pieces from my stash, so I can get busy and get some things done tonight, hopefully. I have a couple of birthday gifts that I need to get done, and then I think I'll make something else for the sewing shop. The gifts shouldn't take long, they are pretty quick little projects. I hope to have those done by this time next week pretty easily.

I gotta head back to work, lunch break goes by way too fast.

Stash happy :)

I finished what I was making to put in the sewing shop here in town. Made 100% from my stash. It took a little ingenuity, and just sucking it up and using fabric that I had been "saving", but here it is, and I love it! :) Ruffledy bloomers and all.




So since I used my stash fabrics, ehem... as if I used ALL of them or something, LOL. I naturally had to go shopping. I bought a little over 11 yards yesterday. I don't think I used 11 yards in that little dress. :0) I have some specific projects in mind for most of it, though, so... That's ok, right? Yay for 40% off sales at Joann and Crafts Direct!

Lovely spring weather....

That we are having here. Come on.... it's APRIL, seriously...

My poor willow bush is falling over with all this wet heavy snow.


Do you know what is even more disturbing...? (now to preface this, my light bulb burned out on my sewing machine Tuesday night and the Pfaff dealership is only open late enough for me to get there on Thursday nights.) Yesterday at work a customer came in and was chattiing about the impending storm, talking about having enough milk and toilet paper to ride out the storm. Later I got to thinking "and my main concern is being able to get to the sewing machine dealership so I can get a bulb for my machine so I can sew during all the snow." And, yes, I did go and get one. Oh, and we are almost out of milk and toilet paper... (I think we have enough to get through, though for those of you who might have been worried...)
So with that I will leave you with a teaser of the pressing project which prompted my snowy excursion to the Pfaff store. :)

For those who are unfamiliar...

This is smocking. You've most likely seen it before, just didn't know what it was called.
I am planning a tutorial, but it may have to wait a little while. I am working on a project for the store that I mentioned in my last post. I also have a couple of other little jobs going as well. Not very interesting jobs, but jobs that will pay me a little bit of $$ so I can do the fun stuff. :) I also have a couple of birthday presents to make, too. I am hoping to get to it in May sometime. More on that later.

Excited.....

First of all my tulips are FINALLY coming up in my yard.
Secondly, I have a chance to have some of my little dresses and things displayed in on of our local sewing machine shops. The lady who runs Associated Sewing in Waite Park is a friend of mine and she has offered to let me put some things in her shop, with a price tag on them! She said she always needs samples up in the store, and doesn't always have the time to do them herself. Hopefully this will be a win-win situation for us. Now to get cracking on getting some things done....
Gotta go!:)

A muumuu for Mady-mu....

I finished Mady's dress for her birthday. I really like how it turned out, but it does have a certain muumuu-like quality about it. I think its the tiers. LOL I am still planning on making some bloomers to go under it.

Lots of twirl power in this dress, too. Just the thing for a 4 year old girl. :) The bottom tier is approximately 175 inches around. I took the width of the fabric and cut 4 strips. I didn't measure it, I just cut it.




I joined Amanda in her effort to finish up projects that were nearing completion. So far I have only finished one thing. I started this circle skirt a while back for Etsy. It's a girls size 8. I drafted everything about the pattern from scratch, and I have to say that I am very pleased with the results. I am thinking about redrafting the pattern in different sizes so I can make them for Etsy. I have some fun ladybug fabric in green, pink and yellow that I think will be the next one.



And here is the pillowcase dress I finished a little while back for Etsy. I just got around to getting pictures of it. Now, just to find time to do the listings.....



And finally I thought I'd add this picture because I thought it was funny. We have ducks nesting in the neighbor's yard, and this little guy was wandering around our front yard the other day. Aeris was mezmerized.